Archives for July 2011

Upcoming marketing thingy

July 22, 2011 by Neville

OMG OMG OMG I’M SO EXCITED!! :-D :-D :-D

The reason I sound like a 13 year girl is that next week I’m going to a marketing conference at the Lakeway Marine (here in Austin fortunately, so I don’t have to travel far).

Some of the main draws are the speakers, several whom I already highly admire:

Joe Sugarman
Joe Polish
John Carlton
Bill Phillips

…..to non-marketing people these names won’t ring a bell. But to someone like me….

…it’s like a doctor getting to meet the famous Dr. DeBakey

…or a bicyclist meeting Lance Armstrong

…or a murderer meeting Charles Manson

It’s very exciting :-)

This event after registration, hotel, and extra spending will run about $2,000.

However it’s a really cool conference. I went last year, and they did “sessions” from only 9am till noon. THAT’S IT! The rest of the time is spent yachting around, jet skiing, wakeboarding and mingling (part of the big draw).

3 hours of sessions is about as much as a dummy like me can realistically absorb in one day. Simply packing in 8 hours of sessions would just be a snooze-fest (and when there’s a lake, pool and jet ski’s waiting for you outside….it’s REALLY not cool to spend all day indoors)!

The event is also pretty much invite-only, so there’s no newbies asking you, “Ummmm…so how do I make money online cause I hate my job cause my boss suckss bllahahh blaaahh blaaahhh.” You get to hob-knob with all the big names out there. I believe last year attendance was capped at 85 people.

That’s neat, cause you get to hang out with the big guys in a personal, social settings…..not some massive conference where you can’t really talk to them.

Last time I was there I got to meet Joe Polish and Joseph Sugarman (I didn’t know Sugarman at the time)….. I love this picture:

….after that conference I bought everything I can find written by Joseph Sugarman, and have learned an IMMENSE amount from him.

I also got to hang out with Tim Ferris and do handstands with him:

I’m not sure if many people know, but apparently in the last 4 months or so I’ve become a semi-famous copywriter (thanks much in part to this same conference last year)…..so Joe Sugarman and John Carlton are now heroes of mine.

I made this shirt to take pictures with them:

…it should arrive right before the conference. I have a course coming out soon called KopywritingKourse…..and for some reason like spelling “copy” with a “K”.

I purposely didn’t write “KopywritingKourse.com” on the shirt since I’m looking to blatantly plug my stuff….rather just honor the greats in my own way.

This will be a GREAT time…and hopefully I’ll pull a lot of great connections and notes out of it :-)

Vancouver and The Grand Cayman Islands Trippy Trip

July 18, 2011 by Neville

“But Nevillleee…this is supposed to be a FINANCIAL BLOG…not a personal blog!”

Screw off…I forget pretty much everything that happens, so I have to write it down.

And I DON’T want to forget what a blast I had the last two weeks!

So a quick re-cap :

I first went to VANCOUVER.

I went there for a Zoroastrian youth congress (if you recall, I’m a Parsi Zoroastrian). We’re such a small community that we have these “Congress” events where everyone meets up.

They put everyone up at the Gage Towers at UBC (University of British Columbia), so this was the view a lot of people got. Gorgeous:

….got to stir up trouble with old friends (you might see what I’m talking about if you Google “Neville Medhora” ;-)

We went on a Canada Day cruise through Vancouver….it was amazingly perfect outside:

And they had fireworks at night…..really fun to stand around with close friends watching this view:

We went to the Stanley Park beach for a while…once again, terrific weather and amazzzzinngg views:

Of course I took my obligatory handstand picture :-)

Got to hang out with friends from across the country:

This is officially my favorite picture of the whole trip. After 5 days of craziness, I remember being physically exhausted, sad I had to leave, and already missing everyone……but it felt SO comfortable at this moment :-)