the mario blog

Despite my Saturday night encounter with the local hip hop scene, I know little to nothing about hip hop or rap for that matter. Actually, I couldn’t tell you the difference between the two? Is there a difference?

But I just got done watching the Notorious B.I.G movie and it is darn good. I love stories and Chris Wallace was a man with an interesting story and a talent for telling stories through his music.

Unfortunately I don’t understand the lyrics of non-Germanic music, so it took me a while (or until I saw this movie) to figure out that Notorious B.I.G was an awesome story teller.

You should watch this movie, if you haven’t already. I also went and bought both of his albums and hope that at least a small part will go to his awesome mother and kids.

Peace out. Or however Chris would say that.

Prior to going on this cruise, I had all kinds of reservations about spending my vacation time this way. I was envisioning a week-long outing with people elder to my grandfather, buffet style food and hours of mandatory bingo every day. But that wasn’t the case at all. Here are the top ten reasons of why I thought this cruise was great. It should be noted that we traveled with Royal Caribbean on the Adventures of the Sea which might be a completely different experience than other ships or cruise lines.

1. The food was ridiculously good, with lots of choices and no shortage there of it. I particularly loved the formal dining room dinners. Unfortunately the great food also resulted in my mother not being able to button her pants for the latter half of the trip which was an avid topic of discussions amongst a number of anonymous cruisers. Leave it to my mum to ruin the family’s reputation.
2. The service was terrific. I couldn’t believe how nice and accomodating the staff was. They always went out of their way to please the customer. Going back to cleaning my apartment on a monthly basis will be quite the change to them cleaning my stateroom three times a day. On our boat, there were 3500 guests and 12oo crew members. That says it all about the level of service offered.
3. There was plenty to do. We were on a big boat, mind you, but there was no shortage of activities. Ping pong, gym, sauna, steam room, pools, and yes….bingo.
4. Cruises are a great way to meet people. You start running across the same people and everybody (happy and well fed) seems to be excited to strike up a conversation.
5. You do get to see a lot of different places. I think we visited six different islands on our cruise which was really neat. I would have to say that the one big negative of going on a cruise is that wherever you arrive people look at you as a dollar bill. That was no fun, and I don’t enjoy being labeled as a cruise tourist. But you don’t have to be. On Barbados, we simply jumped in a cab, had them drive us to a great beach and spent the day snorkeling there.
6. They don’t make money on everybody. If you enjoy gambling and expensive mixed drinks then I am sure every cruise line would love to have you as their customer. If you’re a frugal German who can eat seven meals a day, then …not so much. I ate like crazy, went to all the shows and didn’t spend a dollar in the casino. It was a complete luxury hotel experience without the luxury price tag. True, camping is cheaper. But if you want a luxury vacation, I don’t think there’s a better way to do it than cruising.
7. The entertainment was short and sweet. Every night there was a new show - jugglers, dancers, ice skaters, comedians, singers, etc. The shows were highly entertaining and short so I tried them all.
8. It’s a fun activity to do with your friends. I was lucky to do this with Jen, my family and my host family. We had a great time together – all while being pampered by 1200 cruise staffers.
9. Cruise employees are interesting people. Most folks working on a cruise are young and from all over the world. On our boat, they came from 67 different nations. I got to meet many of them and found their stories to be very interesting. There also was the rather uncomfortable Sauna encounter with a gay dancer from Argentina. Jen won’t shut about that one.

Ps. If you ever do want to go on a cruise, then my host mother Diane at Cruises Inc. can set everything up for you. She does that for a living and spent her entire career in the travel business. She’ll make sure that your experience will be as great as mine.

he also looks really good with a wig and fake mustache

I am lucky. I have a lot of great friends. People who care about me. People who I care about. Due to my rather nomadic lifestyle, those friends live all over the place and today I want to point out the one friend who’s been around the longest and whose commitment to our friendship continues to amaze me.

Sebastian.

Sebastian and I grew up as neighbors in Plettenberg. Our mums worked together as nurses in a hospital and we spent our free time playing soccer - both on the field and on my Amiga 500. That’s all we did. Play soccer.

We never were best friends but always were connected via our passion for soccer. When I turned 16, I moved to America. Sebastian began working in the biggest factory in my town, where to this day he maintains the machines and tools workers need to produce car supplies.

Naturally, we still don’t have that much in common. Sebastian works in a factory in a town of 30,000. I work in advertising in Los Angeles, a city of millions.

But thanks to Sebastian our friendship never missed a beat. And it really has been all because of him.

He sends me birthday and christmas gifts. Once a month he walks down the street to visit my parents. Heck, the guy even sends care packages to friends of mine who’ve visited Plettenberg. Whenever I am in Europe (or anyone is in Europe), Sebastian becomes the tour guide and proudly showcases everything that our town has to offer.

Every few years, Sebastian takes his annual vacation to come and visit me. He’s crashed on my couched and slept on my floor (albeit it being a floor in the girl’s dormitory that I used to work in). This year, Sebastian was planning to come and visit me. It was the highlight of his year.

But due to the current economy, the state of the car industry and the fact that his factory is significantly reducing everybody’s work hours and work pay; he can’t.

Today Sebastian reached out to me to tell me that he couldn’t make the trip. And he felt very bad about such. He felt bad for me, like he somehow has let me down.

That is just nuts.

The world is moving so fast these days, and while I do consider myself to be a good person, I don’t take nearly enough time to cultivate my friendships and to think of other people’s lives. I am constantly running from meeting to meeting, from social network to social network and project to project.

Sebastian doesn’t. He works very hard, mind you. But to him friendships aren’t about having a couple of hundred friends on Facebook. They aren’t about following people on Twitter.

To Sebastian, a friendship means sending people physical cards and presents on special occasions, checking in with people’s parents who we spent our childhoods around and thinking about others and not just himself.

At some point, we’re going to have to wake up and realize that we need more Sebastians and fewer Marios. Or maybe it’s just me.

Tough choices.

I don’t think you can be succesful without making tough choices. It doesn’t mean you can’t make those tough choices quickly and easily, but it means that sacrifice often comes hand in hand with success.

I haven’t been moving up and down the West Coast for the past 7 years just to live in different climates.

I also didn’t work as a custodian in college to learn more about how my skin reacts to different chemicals.

I did however work as a security guard at a ZZ Top concert just to get a t-shirt that said “security” to wear to the gym.

Most times, I had to make tough choices. But I like that.  With tough choices come opportunities and with opportunities comes success.

So the next time you have to make a tough choice, dream a bit about what kind of opportunities might come because of it.

And if that doesn’t help, shoot me an email and I’ll let you borrow my security t-shirt.

Catastrophes happen. They are terrible. Look what just happened in Italy, a town that has been around for centuries, torn down by an earthquake in a matter of minutes. 20,000 people are now homeless.

I think we should do whatever it takes to help them. Do you? I think most people would agree that in times like these, we as a collective need to help the individual.

That’s what we did for the 9/11 victims. That’s what we did for Katrina victims. And that’s what we need to do for the people of small Italian towns like L’Aquila.

With that in mind, I don’t understand why anybody would be opposed to the concept of universal healthcare. Because when someone is diagnosed with cancer and can’t afford a health insurance policy, then that is a catastrophy. They either don’t get the treatment they need, or they’ll bankrupt themselves for years too come.

And while some might make the argument that certain cancers are avoidable (smokers, obesity, etc), most of my close acquaintances who were diagnosed and died of cancer neither smoked, drank or where overweight in any way or shape.

Catastrophes happen. Considering that we’re the richest nation in the world, everybody should have access to proper universal healthcare. That’s how you can prevent the personal catastrophes that millions of Americans have to deal with every year.

Universal health care is the only way to go, and I hope we recognize such before the lack of such turns into catastrophes for millions of Americans.

I was up in Seattle for business this week, and had the pleasure of taking a number of cab rides. With that naturally come conversations with cab drivers. And let me tell you, Seattle has the friendliest and most interesting cab drivers in the world - followed by Portland and Missoula (well, there really are only two). Los Angeles…not so much.

Most cab drivers work a pretty insane amount of hours. Especially when gas prices are high, it takes them a number of hours to recoup their costs (cab lease, fuel, etc) before they actually start earning money every day. It is not uncommon for a cab driver to work twelve hours a day, six days per week.  So naturally, I have tremendous respect for cab drivers, which was only heightened these past few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago I was in Missoula where I met Mick. Mick was a former UPS driver who got sick of seeing all the gas guzzling cabs out there. Hence he started his own cab company, called Green Taxi. Mick his wife and staff chauffeur people around in their gas-saving Toyota Prius. Mick is helping save our environment and creates jobs while he’s at it. If you need a cab in Missoula, Green Taxi is the way to go.

On Thursday, I met some friends for dinner in Seattle’s Fremont District. On my way home, my cab driver’s name was Eugene who was originally from Kenia. Eugene drove his cab every day from six at night until three in the morning. Then he sleeps for three hours and work in his own grocery store from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon, after which he’d go home, nap and was back in his cab just a few hours later. Eugene was excited about starting his own grocery store and told me stories of how he’d go kill and slaughter a goat just so his customers would get the freshest meat possible. He didn’t mind the long hours, as he wasn’t able to hire anybody yet for his grocery store. But as Eugene said, no sacrifice…no success.

Yesterday, a gentleman named Freddie drove me to the airport. Freddie drove cabs ten hours a day, seven days a week. He would do this for six months out of the year, and spend the other six months living his own semi truck which he’d drive all across the country. He used to work for a different trucking company, and used the money he made from that and driving cabs to buy his own semi truck. Next year, Freddie is planning to buy another truck, hire to drivers and then just manage the operations. In the meantime,  he will give up his apartment, put a few things into storage and then live out of his truck for the next six months.

While these three examples are probably only a small slice of the overall cab driver universe, I really can’t think of any other industry that displays such a high ratio of and ambition for entrepreneurship.

I have been spending quite a bit of time talking to recent and soon-to-be college graduates about what makes people successful. It got me thinking.

While there seem to be a variety of factors such as intelligence, people skills and ambition, to me there’s one characteristic that stands out amongst all of them.

Focus.

Warren Buffett became the most successful investor of all times, because of his intense focus towards such. The same holds true for Bill Gates and his focus towards creating great software. Last but not least, my good friend Richard Thalheimer’s relentless focus on creating fun and useful gadgets resulted into him building a legendary company such as The Sharper Image.

My own track record of successes varies wildy solely depending on whether not I was truly focused on the task at hand. Unfortunately, I get distracted rather easily and when my focus swithces, I begin to fail. Because we all have limited bandwidth and you can’t be focused on a dozen things at once.

So if you really want to find a job, stop worrying about your fantasy baseball team. If you want to run a marathon, stop playing golf. If you want to be a world-class marketer, don’t read fiction, read marketing blogs.

If you have to sacrifice your passions in order to focus, then you’re focusing on the wrong thing.

Passion for what you do allows you to focus, once you do, success can’t be stopped.

Yes. This is exactly what this blog has gotten to – a place where I post pictures of my cat Otto. As you can see,  he’s having a really rough time adjusting to the Southern California weather. In this picture you can observe him protecting himself from the sun while doing his afternoon, pre-nap, wash.

20/20 ran a segment on Friday, which featured about five minutes of content centered around How To Complain For Fun and Profit. It is pretty cool to bring an idea to life that gets this level of exposure. Most of my ideas normally don’t get past Otto’s mute input.

Click here to see the video.

As you might remember, I helped publish a book last year, How To Complain For Fun and Profit, which was written by my former boss and good friend Bruce Silverman. Tonight it will be featured as part of a segment on ABC’s 20/20. It’s pretty cool to have an idea, execute it and then see it featured on national television. If you have the time, tune in to 20/20 tonight.

Here’s what the folks at ABC are saying about the segment.

Congrats to Bruce for being famous. And a big thanks to both Mike Vitellaro and Scott Carver who helped bring this to life.