Now on to my normal post for today. Mike I went to an event called "National Achievers Congress" or something like that and if it sounds scammy, well, it kind of was, but get this, Tony Robbins was there. Tony. Robbins.
The story starts a few months ago when Mike says to me, hey Tony Robbins is coming to Portland, want to see him?
And I say, duh, of course I do, but I don't think we can afford him.
And then Mike shows me the ad and it shows the 3 keynote speakers (including Tony) and I say:
GARY VAYNERCHUK IS COMING?!?!!!!
With this look of glee as if I'm talking about the Pope, and Mike just looks at me like I'm nutso. This is how I look at him when he talks about Dr. Nassir Ghaemi who is Mike's Beyonce, and I have NO IDEA who Dr. Ghaemi is or why I should care about him.
So I have to explain that Gary Vee is only this really awesome speaker and entrepreneur and he is so energetic and inspiring and Mike must see him. Ok, and Tony Robbins is pretty ok as well, so I've heard.
After Mike gets the tickets I read the fine print and it says Gary Vee is appearing via "humagram". And I don't know what Humagram means but I'm guessing it doesn't mean "live and in person". I was disappointed, but I had a few months to get over it and then at least get excited about seeing Gary Vee's hologram.
Unfortunately, the majority of the people at the event (7000 people) did not read the fine print and so were verrry P.O.'d that Gary wasn't really there. The hologram thing was cool though. Now, I personally had cheap seats in the way back so Gary's hologram defo looked like a real person on the stage. But when the next speaker came on, I wasn't really sure if that guy was real or a hologram. Which is the condition of my eyesight and a testimony to how far back my seats were.
This link is a 30-second video someone else took, so you have an idea of the hologram up close:
https://twitter.com/GregOakford/status/837068831436619776/video/1
The sad thing about this event was that - well, check that, there were A LOT of sad things about this event. One of the sad things about this event was that of the 6 speakers, Gary was the only one who didn't try to sell us anything. So in a way that was a relief to me, that after all I had done to hype up Gary Vee, he didn't let me down. But the rest of the event was sort of weird.
I guess I can give Tony Robbins a pass because he just threw up a photo of his new book that just came out this week, but he didn't actually ask us to buy it.
The other speakers all gave sales pitches for their classes that "coincidentally" will be taught in Portland in April. Incidentally, it worked because we signed Mike up for one of them.
The scammy event was oversold, so we spent a good hour trying to find parking, and then the fire marshal kicked us out because we couldn't find seats, and we had to sit in the lobby until we could try again to get a seat (which we did), and then we had to wait an hour and 20 for a sandwich at lunchtime, and the event was scheduled to end at 5pm and Tony was still talking at 7:30pm and we had to go get the kids from the babysitter. According to Twitter, Tony was STILL talking at 8:30pm when other people gave up and had to get THEIR kids from the babysitter.
And yet, we really had a great time. I took a lot of notes and now I can say I saw a hologram and I saw Tony Robbins live.
For a different perspective, here is a very interesting review. All of what she says is what really happened.
http://www.thoughtsstorieslife.com/2017/03/tony-robbins-tour-scam/
There were about 5 minutes when Mike and I considered asking for a refund (when we got kicked out and had to wait in the lobby until..."we're not sure what, but something is going to happen" said the event staff), but we overheard a couple women asking for a refund and the staff member was saying, WELL, it's a VERY LENGTHY process, at which point we just laughed it off. And I guess that's my point. Despite a very long list of things we could complain about, we actually had a great time in spite of it all. Is it our new Jocko Willink (aka OLW Good) attitudes? Are we more used to weird events than other people (e.g. Bulletproof Conference)?
I don't know. But for this one, I achieved my goals. See Tony Robbins, because he's Tony Robbins. (I wasn't the only one...Tony spoke to a guy in the front row, asked him, "Why are you here today?" The guy says "To see you." And Tony says, "Yeah, but what did you hope to get from me?" The guy says, "This moment, right now. To see you." Which probably sounded really stupid but that's the same thing I told Mike. Basically, "I want to see Tony Robbins because he's famous." The truth is I didn't agree with everything Tony said and did that night. That's ok. My goal was to see him, and I did.
And I'm grateful to Gary Vee for his contribution, and he came out of the whole thing smelling like a rose.
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