Phew! I’m semi-recovered from the sold-out Underground(tm) III seminar 3 weeks ago!

Over 400 top-notch attendees packed in for content from all-new Underground speakers and the networking was truly unbelievable. I lost count of how many 7 and 8-figure earners were in the audience. (Most of them names nobody would recognize!)

I truly think this was the best Underground yet and the speakers and attendees just keep getting better and better! This year I was honored to have one of my heroes, Ted Nicholas, agree to speak. It was really amazing for me to be able to bring Ted in because he’s one of 3 individuals I’d directly attribute to helping me achieve financial independence at such a young age.

Speaking of young age – my 19-month-old son, Zak, made a quick appearance the first day up on stage. I had in dressed all in black like I was and told the crowd he was my stunt double!

Unfortunately I don’t think we got a pic of him there. [Update I did find one - it’s a side shot]

Luckily, I was able to get Zak to make a guest appearance and pull himself away from his customer support work at SurefireMarketing.com

I figure my 8 loyal blog readers don’t want to hear about the marketing stuff so we’ll gloss over most of that and go straight into the fun stuff!

On the first night we had our VIP networking dinner and everyone was treated to a roaring stand-up performance by Bob Marley. Bob has appeared on Leno, Letterman, Comedy Central, etc etc and now he can add a true feather in his cap…the Underground Seminar!

Bob is pretty damn funny and a fellow hockey player! Check out his site at www.bmarley.com and get to one of his shows! (Especially if you’re married.)

I’ve actually been taking a stand-up comedy class and really liking it. I doubt I’ll “quit” my day job. I actually have my big show at the Improv this week. Maybe I’ll post some video if I’m feeling especially bold.

Basically my act revolves around my Dad who still doesn’t know what the hell I do….and when I figure it out I’ll let him know.

Okay on to Saturday night – the evening started to get a bit out of hand with my Underground(tm) Secret Society newsletter subscribers. The event that night was mixer only for subscribers and everything went from a nice, calm group of Secret Society members having a few drinks to….A Congo line led by the very dangerous Ashley Allen (congratulations to her and Secret Society member Todd Dickerson on their engagement)…and ultimately a ‘no-holds’ brawl with me and Marlon Sanders!

1. Just a nice group of quiet gents…

2. I reluctantly joined up at the last minute and was doing my best to try to steer the group through as many people as possible - hoping for some sort of explosion like in TRON with those racers.

3. Winner by TKO!

It was pretty cool on Sunday when Peter Graves came out. Peter is famous for his role as Jim Phelps from the TV Show “Mission Impossible” and also from his hilarious role in Airplane!

You gotta love “me” dangling behind his head here!

And finally, after all the event was over I took out all the speakers and my buddies to an undisclosed location for dinner on me. I tell Missy this is a big reason I put on these events so that I can somehow convince my friends to come to D.C. and party together!

I knew I was in for trouble when the 6L bottle of wine (that’s 8 normal size bottles) I ordered especially for that night’s steak dinner was polished off in about 30 minutes. For those of you interested in wine, the bottle was a 2002 Parradux Zinfandel blend from the same makers of the collectible Duckhorn Merlot. The guy who got me into wine a few years ago is Michael Holland, one of my business partners on the Public Domain Goldmine product. I wouldn’t say I’m a connoisseur but all I’m definitely dangerous with the wine list when we all go out.

But I let Michael pick the next one. He picked out a nice Chateau Lynch-Bage Bordeaux for us. I was actually hoping for some cool wines on the list – but didn’t see too much beyond the basics.

Somehow Michael always gets screwed out of the good wine I bring from home. I had brought with me a bottle of 92 Colgin Herb Lamb Vineyard Cab to the hotel and gobbled that down with my brother a few friends Saturday night. I called him that night and even showed him I called in my cell phone log – but for some reason his phone wasn’t working. Ha! Last year he missed out on a Kistler Pinot and a Bryant Family Cab.

Not surprisingly, dinner got out of hand when we finished off the night with shots of chilled SoCo and lime all around. (I was impressed Ted Nicholas took one!)

That then lead to a 40-person mob hitting the hotel bar for about an hour until last call. Then Perry Belcher (Mr. X) decided we were moving the party up to my suite. We all go up there and 5 minutes later – there’s a bar, ice, mixers, beer, etc all set-up and ready to go. I couldn’t believe it. The security guards even told me to have a good time!

This was probably around 2 AM when we moved upstairs. Slowly the meek slowly trailed off – until only the hard-core survived. I think it was probably around 4 AM when we went to the old faithful – quarters! The table up in the Presidential suite was a nice perfect wood for it! We kept going until 6:30 in the morning when the beer finally ran out and our quarters game ended.

Here’s a nice aerial view of the Quarters Game - and if you have a trained eye you can spot Jeff Mulligan causing trouble - like always.

The game probably should have ended long before my brother, Adam, (only a few years out of college) decided his rule would be that we all wear our socks on our hands.

If you look closely at my socks (which have been featured on this blog before) I didn’t have matching socks. I had mis-packed when I left from home and didn’t think anybody would notice! Silly me – I wasn’t thinking that somehow there would create a rule that you had to play with your socks on. I’ve never had that rule before but it was incredibly funny! And the skill of the game took a significant downturn.

Trust me, it was rough going home the next day.

Good thing Zak took a long nap and I got to catch up on some sleep before it was back to changing poopey diapers.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 7th, 2007 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.