For generations, the golf club was a primary place for doing business away from the office. But Yanik Silver, founder of Maverick Business Adventures, says today's entrepreneurs are looking for something more aggressive than swinging a 9 iron when they step outside to network.
Silver, a 34-year-old Maryland-based Internet entrepreneur who has made a small fortune with his Web-based businesses, is an unabashed adrenaline junkie with an ambitious to-do list: Climb Mount Everest; scuba dive at the Great Barrier Reef near Australia; swim with the great white sharks off South Africa; fly a MIG fighter jet to the stratosphere. He has already run with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain; raced across the Baja California desert; gone whitewater rafting in West Virginia; and signed up for the Virgin Galactic space flight.
Now, he wants company.
"Entrepreneurs are loners in a way," Silver says. "It's like a club we all belong to, and when you meet another entrepreneur who's been successful in business, there's always something in common, no matter what their age group, or what business they're in."
Maverick Business Adventures is designed to be a venue for adventurous entrepreneurs, "a group of people who are like-minded and share the same principals, and want to experience life to the fullest," Silver says.
People like Tim Houston of Melrose, a 35-year-old transplant from Santa Cruz, Calif., who owns AffiliateLifestyle.com, an Internet-based marketing company.
"I'm not a member of a country club," Houston says, laughing. "I golf once a year, in Lake Tahoe, with my folks. I'm horrible. I'm not sure you even want to call it golfing."
When Houston takes time away from his computer, he's thinking high-octane travel, from car racing school to skydiving. Maverick, he says, was a perfect fit.
In late January, Houston will attend MBA's inaugural five-day trip to the Baja Peninsula to skipper customized dune buggies along the Mexican coastline. The attraction, he says, is simply "the ability to network at a high level, and to have fun. And to thaw out."
Houston represents a shifting demographic. "If you include the entrepreneur and the Internet companies, the average senior executive age now is 36," says Daniel Schorr, who's Boston-based Start2Finish Marketing firm represents Maverick.
"Twenty, 30 years ago, you might have been talking about the CEO of established brands, like Procter & Gamble and Aetna, or IBM, being 55 or so. Now, with the New Age technology and mobile devices, you're finding that the average age of the executives who have the time and the financial wherewithal and desire [to combine networking and travel] is much younger. When they do want to do something for a break with a business connection, it's not golf. It's snowboarding, or rock climbing, or rafting."
The name of Silver's venture is a deliberate double entendre, representing an alternative to "master's of business administration" for adventurous spirits. But the emphasis is on the maverick, not on the business.
"For me, maverick stands for someone who is unconventional, someone who is a renegade, or doesn't follow the rules and gets things done on their own terms," Silver says. "It's someone who, when they tell their families or friends about these adventures, are told they're crazy."
Ironically, the Maverick concept is based on the country club model. Prospective members apply to join, paying an initial entry fee after being accepted. Silver's target audience consists of (but isn't limited to) entrepreneurs 25 to 60 years old who are the owners or CEOs of companies generating anywhere from $1 million to $35 million annually.
Members can choose from a number of trips offered by MBA, including an annual closed-door luxury "lifestyle summit" to suit their own comfort level. Silver initially plans to offer four trips a year - ranging from African safaris to snowmobile excursions to whitewater rafting - that will be coordinated by top-flight outfitters.
"Every single trip I want to make a once-in-a-lifetime experience, something the members couldn't do on their own," Silver says. "Each trip will offer some sort of access, an element of something special, that they couldn't get if they simply booked with an outfitter."
For example, the Baja trip, coordinated by the outfitter Wide Open Baja, includes detours to the coastal village of San Ignacio (in the hopes of up-close encounters with Pacific gray whales) and the remote water-sports mecca of Scorpion Bay.
There will also a "formal business part" of each trip, where participants present a 15- to 30-minute workshop on "something that's working in their business," says Silver, who has made millions selling informational products (such as InstantSalesLetters.com) and now works as a consultant teaching Internet marketing strategies. To ensure an open exchange of ideas, MBA members will sign confidentiality agreements.
Houston is game. "I'm all for sharing my ideas, and looking at other folks ideas to see what works and what isn't working," he says. "I've got something to bring to the table, but I've also got a lot to learn from these guys."
MBA trips will also include workshops with "celebrity" participants. In Baja, Carl E. Banks, a two-time Super Bowl winner as a linebacker with the New York Giants (the trip features an optional Super Bowl party in Cabo San Lucas on Feb. 3), and Jesse James of West Coast Choppers fame (he's married to film star Sandra Bullock) will be on board.
And when members aren't networking, they'll be behind the wheel, or in the water.
"The key part is that it's not about sitting in the Sheraton in Chicago, or the Hilton in Boston, and listening to a lecture," Schorr says. "Networking, and the actual, real-life business applications, will come about through the shared experiences that the group has together. Those experiences are pivotal to breaking down the natural walls that you have when you have people packed into a room like so many sardines.
"Nothing is better at building relationships than humility. When you have really bright and accomplished people, but they're falling off surfboards, everyone comes in at a level playing field."
