Millionaire Marketer Finds His Purpose with Yanik Silver

In this Episode

• [00:30]Stephan’s guest, Yanik Silver, brings evolutionary growth, impact, and fun in redefining business in the 21st century. He is referred to as a cosmic catalyst, a maverick mischief-maker, and a galactic goofball.
• [02:15]Yanik recounts his entrepreneurial and mischief-making journey.
• [04:14]Stephan wants to know about the people who significantly impacted Yanik’s life.
• [08:35]What is the difference between a cosmic alarm clock and a regular intuition?
• [15:11]Stephan asks Yanik to explain synchronicity, an intuitive hit, and its distinction from the subconscious mind, imagination, and instincts.
• [20:18]Yanik gives a more detailed description of how people have used synchronicity in different ways.
• [24:52]Yanik discusses his latest diary, the cosmic journal and how it works for him.
• [28:10]Throughout his search for a COO, Stephan shares his experiences, obstacles, and intuitive hits.
• [34:14]Yanik explains the cycle of history and the phase of life in which consciousness is ascending.
• [38:55]Stephan and Yanik both believe in the importance of connecting to a higher power source and having a conscious intention.
• [45:20]Visit Yanik’s life-changing genius network, Maverick, at maverick1000.com. More topics are available at cosmicjournal.com on Amazon or Hay House, and read his book Evolved Enterprise to make a more profound impact.

Jump to Links and Resources

Yanik, it’s so great to have you on the show. 

Yeah. Thanks, Stephan. I appreciate it. 

You started your journey as an entrepreneur and as a mischief-maker when and how? Did you start like that with the proverbial lemonade stand as a little kid and then built a small empire by the time you were 20? How did this all unfold for you?

It didn’t feel like it was lucky at the time but lucky enough to have a really big head start because our family immigrated from Russia, came over when I was three years old, and then my dad ended up starting his own company—medical equipment, sales and service—so he can get fired from his hospital job because he was moonlighting on the side. He took a path that many of us do, which is that path not as well taken, that you’re just responsible for yourself as an entrepreneur. I grew up in the family business.

I got an early education in marketing and sales. Very early on, I wasn’t very good at it.

At 14, I was telemarketing for latex gloves. At 16, the only way I got a car was if I went out and called the doctors. I got a really early education in marketing and sales. Very early on, I wasn’t very good at it. I realize that cold calling really sucked, but then I had a doctor who gave me a Jay Abraham tape and it really turned the lights on about direct response marketing. This whole idea that, wow, you could write an ad and have people, in this case, doctors respond. It really changed that company from a little regional player to a national player. I went on from there.

Jay Abraham, has he made a lasting impact on you and how you do not just marketing but overall business? 

Jay, he’s definitely the first person that I ever got introduced to, and I think some of his ideas continue to be foundational for the things that I do. One of my favorites was his idea of a host beneficiary is what he would call it. For me, even to this day, I think my greatest leaps have been in partnerships. But it’s figuring out how you create something for other people, not just a win for them, but I think of it as the ultimate win, like a win, win, win, win, win. How do you make them look like the greater hero to the people that they want to look like a hero too. 

Then also, how do you gather them up in small circles or communities and create these alliances so that they could do something together that they couldn’t do on their own. Taking his concepts a little bit even further than what he’s taught about there. So yeah, it’s been absolutely foundational in many ways. 

Who are some of the other important and impactful people in your life that you’ve never even potentially met perhaps, but ones who have influenced your life significantly? I’d love to hear from you. 

We know we are on the right track when the universe continuously gives feedback through synchronicities & magical moments. Click To Tweet

Sure, I think that your life changes through the books you read, the material you study, the people you meet, and the experiences that you have. That’s what I’ve really helped optimize for and continue to do. 

Very early on, it was all related to direct response marketing. People like—not as well known maybe—Ted Nicholas, who is an incredible male or a person, and also just an incredible gentleman. Someone who I reached out to before I had any sort of success or name recognition or whatever you might call it, and he responded back and was just such a gentleman. Then many years later, this is a great, kind of full-circle moment where he and I are teaching copywriting together at one of my events. It’s just really, really powerful. 

I love finding people and then going back to who were their influences. When I was learning and studying marketing and advertising, it was like going back to really, really random people. Like a guy named Robert Ruxton who wrote Printed Salesmanship who (I would assume) 1 out of 10,000 marketers might even know who that is. Contemporaries of Claude Hopkins and others like that, I’d study everything I possibly could. 

I love finding people and then going back to who were their influences.

I learned from Earl Nightingale. I’m talking about mentors in audio form. I would have all these tapes in and around my car. I played ice hockey and my buddies are in my car they’re like, “What are these things?” I’m like, “Don’t worry, you’re not going to like these.” But I learned from him the concept of if you want to study for one hour or two hours a day, you can become an expert in that subject within three years or a world-class expert in five years. I’m like well, what happens if you study two hours a day or three hours a day? 

Many of those people, I was just going deeper and deeper and deeper. Dan Kennedy was another one for sure. Eugene Schwartz. Some of the other mail order guys. Maxwell Sackheim is a big one, David Ogilvy, John Caples, a lot of those original advertising people that I learned from. Then it turned into more of the Wayne Dyers of the world and Earl Nightingale, Jim Rohns, and so forth. Again, I got a really early step at this at 17, 18 listening to all that kind of material and then continuing to apply it. 

I actually had Dan Kennedy. Well, I had Jay Abraham on this podcast. Dan Kennedy was also a guest on the show as well. 

That was pretty good. I worked with Dan for many, many years. He certainly was the one that was absolutely foundational in helping me move from where I was working with my dad’s business, helping them in the marketing side, and kind of opening up that door in that idea that, okay, there’s higher leverage that could be done. Some of my doctor clients were like, oh, you’re pretty good at marketing. Can you help me? So then that turned into me helping them market their practice and so forth. 

If you want to study for one hour or two hours a day. You can become an expert in that subject.

There’s only a limited amount of time you can do consulting work. He was instrumental in helping saying, okay, here’s how you could package this up and sell it as information and content. Literally, I’m answering my phone on my desk in my dad’s office, but it allowed me to move out of there. That was a hard decision leaving that company where I thought I was going to kind of take it over and my dad thought that too. I’m like no, there’s a bigger thing. I always talk about following your heart is never wrong, but frequently scary, and there are these moments that you continue to make these leaps. 

You don’t know exactly where you’re going, but your intuition, your heart, and these other nudges come along. I even call it a cosmic alarm clock. Anyone has probably had multiple times this cosmic alarm clock, and it’s something like a little voice that gets louder and louder. You either hit snooze or you can answer it. Typically, it’s going to require you to do something different than what you’ve ever done before, but it is going to create these giant leaps for you.

Let’s distinguish for our listeners, what is a cosmic alarm clock in terms of it being different from regular intuition or that still small voice and the nudges that you get from above? How is this cosmic alarm clock different? Because it sounds more urgent than just an intuitive hit.

It usually comes from these feelings that you’re getting either frustration, depression, or just not feeling like you’re really fulfilling what you’re meant to be doing. I think it has this little voice that continues nudging at you and it’s like, there’s something more, what’s next, or what are you really meant to be doing? And then it’s examining what is truly your greatest work in the world and what does that look like? A lot of times we have like little whiffs of it or just little hits of what it could be. But answering the cosmic alarm clock usually equals taking a bigger leap in some way and trusting.

You don’t know exactly where you’re going, but your intuition, your heart, and these other nudges come along. I even call it a cosmic alarm clock.

I have this little sign on my desk that says, “Trust the universe has even more in store for you than you can imagine.” That came from me journaling it at sunrise on Necker Island this one time there. That’s really been one of my guiding principles of continuing to lean forward and see what shows up.

Do you feel like it needs to be a dark night of the soul, some sort of depression, or feeling lost before you get the wake-up call? Can you just preemptively, proactively say, all right, I’m going to make a shift. I don’t need a light or a fire under my butt in order to do it?

That’s a really, really great question. I think of this notion of the universe continues to sort of bunk you on the head harder and harder. If you think about this, you got joy here at the top. Joy is like what is leading you forward when you’re connected to that. And then you have your guard rails which are pain. Pain, they could be really wide and that’s where you get these dark nights of the soul. It could be health issues, financial issues, relationship issues that are really big, but they’re all moving you continually forward. 

But if you are more in alignment—so if I talk about your head, your heart, your higher purpose—then it’s going to be a much smoother transition in that way. And if you’re also proactively creating time for checking in with yourself—we can talk about journaling a little bit later as one of those practices, but also having bigger moments. It could be retreats or moments of silence and so forth where you’re just really checking in. I don’t think you necessarily need that dark night of the soul. But I think for so many people that is what’s needed because it’s kind of forcing them to make that big difference. 

It all depends on what you signed up for and what you’ve got going on, or how stubborn you are even.

Also, if it’s become urgent and important enough for you to make the shift, it might be one of those someday maybe sort of things. Finally, you get enough pain, you’re like, all right, I got to do this right. Somebody who is perhaps even like Joe Polish talks about this publicly about how he had to hit rock bottom with his addiction. Now he is changing so many people’s lives, but he couldn’t even save his own life until he hit that rock bottom so that he could snap out of it. It took a lot. Sometimes that pain is the best medicine that you can possibly get. 

Absolutely. It’s also what is the meaning that you create out of it. We, as humans, are very much meaning-making machines. What is that why that’s created out of it? Moving from my dad’s business, I moved into the internet marketing space back in 2000. I thought I was actually late to the game and did really well there. Selling my own products and then other people are like, “Oh, how did you do that, could you teach me?” That turned into another career that I didn’t expect of helping them take their information and knowledge and so forth. 

Then about 12, 13 years ago I just asked, am I happy? Would I be happy doing what I’m doing 10 years from now? When I was really honest, especially in my journal, the answer was no. Everything before then, I’m like, well, great. I’ll just follow my intuition and enjoy here, and I’ll just create something that became Maverick, which was we’ll go off on these amazing adventures and go Baja Racing in Mexico, go fly and make jets, or do whatever. Bring entrepreneurs there plus have a charity element plus have a business element where we do sessions in the middle of nowhere and so forth.

Yeah, this is amazing. But about $400,000 in, my wife’s like, what the hell are you doing? There was a decent level of pain there, and then it took a really just examining what is my why and why and why it wasn’t to build an adventure travel company, it was to change the way business is played. Then it took a lot of reflection because what was working before didn’t work anymore. 

It really felt like the game had changed on me where I could easily have gone back to when I was doing the digital marketing space and having golden handcuffs in a way. But that didn’t feel like I was growing or expanding it anyway. 

It was really painful, especially when you connect as a “successful entrepreneur” you have that identity wrapped in that aspect as well. When you’re a little bit more public-facing as well, it’s more difficult to make those transitions. It really forced me to look at what is it? I use an interesting technique. I’ll use left-handed writing, so my non-dominant hand—I learned this from a guy named Bill Donius who wrote Thought Revolution. 

I know Bill. Yes, I’ve had him on this podcast.

Great! So you know that process. I’ve taken it and expanded it quite a bit and I love it. But I ask myself, what would my 111-year-old self tell me? It was light a thousand suns who can each light another thousand suns. That became the real impetus for what we’re doing with Maverick and changed it from Maverick Business Adventures to Maverick1000. This idea of 1000, so 1 entrepreneur can change an industry but 1000 suns could really change the world. It changed everything. 

Trust the universe has even more in store for you than you can imagine.

I had this intuitive hit that we should be in 2012 in the Mayan Riviera to do our summit. My team’s like, “Are you crazy? That’s three days before Christmas or the solstice.” I’m like “No, we should go there.” They’re like, “Okay.” We were in this Mayan sweat lodge called temazcal. All these things started opening up that were completely different from what we were doing before, but really we’re on the right track. I find that these synchronicities and these magic moments start showing up when we are on the right track. It was one of the ways that the universe continues to give us feedback.

You said so much here. Let’s unpack a little bit of this. For our listener, who’s not really in that woo-woo, let’s explain for them what synchronicity is and what an intuitive hit is. Because those can be very marginalized terms and a little too new agey for some folks. That used to be me, frankly. I had my own awakening. But everybody is taking things at their own pace and they’ve got their own journey. 

If somebody who’s not on the train yet or like oh yeah, I get guidance from above all the time, how does this show up and how do you know that it’s not just your own instinct, subconscious, mind, imagination, synchronicities, intuitive hits? What the heck is this stuff?

I spent a lot of time with some interesting icons, and they very frequently tap into their intuition.

Good questions. It’s interesting, I spent a lot of time with some interesting icons and they very frequently tap into their intuition. It’s not in a woo-woo way at all. Intuition usually comes from pattern recognition. That is by being able to be deeply in that field or wherever you are or you’ve seen so many business ideas or opportunities, or you’ve seen so many different aspects of whatever it is that you do, then you start recognizing patterns. But it is intuitive because a lot of times, you think about our language or some language that we’ve developed is like a gut feeling. I trust my gut. Why do we use that as one of the terms for intuition? 

It’s because the gut, and you can look this up in a very scientific way, contains essentially another brain. It’s like an entirely new neural network that we’re just really understanding more and more of. When you feel it in your gut, it’s not a made-up woo-woo thing, but it’s us getting more present in our body. There are more subtle energies. If you’re only using this part or even like this part, your frontal cortex only, you’re really limiting yourself. 

To me, the leaders that have continued to invent, reinvent, and do the things that we want to see as visionary entrepreneurs use all of it. I even talk about connecting your head, your heart, your higher purpose, then we can connect our heart, which is, what is the impact we want to make on the world? Our head is obviously our business side, our marketing side; and then our higher purpose is just being open to is there something else, whatever it is? I’m not forcing any of my own ideas or beliefs. I like it as hey, try some stuff on and see what happens. 

In fact, I love experiments where you’ll be like, okay, let’s try meditation or something else that I’ve wanted to try and then you see. You give it a go for 21 days or 33 days, then you see. Sometimes it’s like, I want to exclude sugar out of my diet or I want to take away alcohol, and then you start seeing. The experiment gives us then, we have this N time, great. Did it enhance my life or did it not enhance my life? Then you can see it’s not always and forever thing.

If you’re only using your frontal cortex, you’re limiting yourself.

So the synchronicities, it’s really fascinating when you start opening up to that because there’s always going to be this pragmatic side of you that’s like, well, maybe this could be explained away in this way or something like that. But when you start tracking them, I’ll track them in my journal or a lot of them, or in my camera on my phone, I’ll have a different folder or something of the pictures that show up.

Synchronicities are really just meaningful for you. It doesn’t have to be meaningful for anyone else. A lot of times when you’re trying to explain it to someone else they’re not always like, oh, wow, I get it. It’s something that is meaningful to you, and typically a meaningful coincidence that can’t really be a coincidence. I mean, it can be if you’re just completely pragmatic about it. 

I have this mug that I actually drink cacao out of almost every day. There is one of my favorite Einstein quotes which is, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Again, it’s just like how do you want to see things? 

So powerful. I love that. A few thoughts on what you were saying. One is, where you treat everything like an experiment and be open to seeing what the impact is, I refer to that as the willing suspension of disbelief. That’s kind of a guiding motto for my life. It makes a huge impact. Makes all the difference. 

And it makes it more fun. 

It brings joy and delight to everything that happens in your life. Even the stuff that’s hard.

I’ll just mention one superfast example about synchronicity, and then I’ll let you finish that one thought. These are sometimes big ones and small ones. We were going to invite one of our videographers to come with us to Antarctica. He’s a wildlife videographer. We’re like, he would love this, but let’s do it in a fun way when we invite him, let’s have a penguin puppet or something like that. 

Literally, as my business partner and I, Sophia, are like walking down the road to get some other stuff for our retreat. Literally, as soon as we said this, 10 steps later I saw this penguin. It’s not a puppet, but it’s a little plush animal penguin and I looked down, I’m like, “That’s a penguin right?” She’s like, “Yup.” We’re just like both laughing our ass off because it was like that fast. Of course. someone can be like well, whatever, there’s some random penguin that some kid dropped, but that’s really hard to not feel like that’s magical. 

Oh yeah. Especially when you start seeing that without a doubt signs, it’s like, okay, that’s pretty amazing. For example, a friend of mine was telling me how he had a girlfriend that her mom had passed, and they were going to go visit the cemetery but only if they had time. They were running close to not having time. They made a quick stop at a CVS or Walgreens to find one of those plastic wreath things that you can stick into the ground. They couldn’t find it anywhere. Let’s not stop. We’ll just go straight to our destination. They don’t even have a wreath. 

In fact, a whole bunch of them fell right from the top shelf onto the floor of the aisle like, whoa, okay. Well, I guess we’ll stop and here are the wreaths. Let’s pick one up.

I’ve got goosebumps as you’re talking about that. That’s a good one. 

Oh my goodness. The universe is magical. It is absolutely magical. 

Exactly.

These synchronicities are not chance occurrences. They are ways to guide you down this beautiful path that you’re on. We’re all as Ram Dass would say, “We’re all just walking each other home.”

Synchronicities that are meaningful for you don’t have to be significant for anyone else.

It’s fascinating when you start looking into this from a historical standpoint too because there are lots of ways that people have used synchronicities, oracles, and different intuitive connection tools to really start getting messages for themselves. Like you said, the Ram Dass, walking each other home, one of them is allowing—I forgot what it’s called, but it was a Greek term where you would essentially plug your ears and then go into an environment where there’s lots of people, lots of things going on and the first words that you heard were the message for you. And there are other things where you’ll use a book. That’s been called bibliomancy where you’ll have an opportunity to flip through a book and you find a message for you.

That’s actually the way that I use this Cosmic Journal. I have a couple of books I use like that, but I’ll just either just sit for a moment or I’ll just flip it open and then see what pops up. There are also oracle cards and things that you can use. Again, like, it’s going to work for certain people, but they’re just really, really powerful if you’re open to it. If you’re open, do you want to flip a page?

Let’s do it. Absolutely. Before you do it, I want to share one quick example. My daughter is an SEO expert and she’s 30 years old. She’s an entrepreneur and everything. She has this book from Deepak Chopra on The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and I asked her to pull it off the shelf and to open it up “randomly.” And when she did, it was the perfect thing that she needed to hear. That was exactly about the whole discussion was about. 

This stuff is real. If you shut your heart to it, then you’re not going to see it. But if you open your heart and you’re willing to, again, have this suspension of disbelief, all the magic starts to happen.

Think of it also in a playful way. It’s a very joyful process. When things like that show up, again, check in with your body. Usually, it’s pretty exhilarating, awe-inspiring, just a wow moment and awe. You can see what is right. This thing, the Cosmic Journal, is my latest, very much random creation. I like experiments. I follow my own advice. This is an experiment that I saw which was a 100-day art experiment or art challenge. I’m like wow, that’s a lot. 

Every single day you were supposed to create a piece of art. In my journal, I’m like, well, what would happen if I did it? What would happen if I didn’t do it? I’m like, it would be some sort of weird byproduct, I’m sure that would happen. That’s the longest I’ve ever done a challenge, but for me, I’m like, okay, I’m going to do it 108 days. Every single night I’m going to draw something. What would I draw? I’m going to draw an illustrated page and I’ll also journal on that illustration, whatever came through me. I’d meditate or see what came through me, or I’d go back through years of journals and redo some of them.

It was just for myself. Every single time, I would check off that little checkbox. It could be two or three o’clock in the morning, it was really powerful and it felt like I was doing something. It was never intended to be published, it was never intended to really go out to people. Then I started using it as my own oracle. I would flip it open after about 50 or 60 pages. I’ll be like, this is really fascinating. The right message would come through. I really wrote it for myself. 

When I handed it to people, I said, this is the galactic instruction manual you’ve been missing when you were born to fulfill your destiny here. One of my friends saw it. He paid for me to publish this little special edition vegan version. Then I got a meeting through a friend, to Reid Tracy at Hay House. I showed it to him. He flipped it open. He’s like, all right, I’ve never seen anything like this. That’s what this became. 

Let’s flip it open, or you can pick a page number between 3 and 189, however, you want to do it. What will you pick?

Sixty-seven. All right. So this is the page. Stephan. 

(please insert page 67)

This might be fun. We have synchronicity here on the left-hand side too. I’ll tell you about it in a second. This says embrace fully, this picture of Ganesha and says, “Ganesha is the remover and placer of obstacles. What if any obstacle you encounter is really there to steer you in the right direction you need it to go? How different would you look at them? Sometimes we’re blocked and frustrated, but realize how that was the best course. 

Ultimately, from an elevated view, all paths lead to the same place. Your return path to true remembrance, embrace fully each potential roadblock, obstacle, frustration, or setback as a way to re-calibrate towards your true destination of destiny. And when you’re in alignment and attuned to that place, allow Ganesha then become the remover of obstacles. Say yes, to it all. Fully embrace everything with wonder, awe, appreciation, grace to navigate the dream unfolding.”

You look back at your life, and you’re like, okay, could there be these obstacles that were there that were moving me in the right direction?

Pretty good as we’re talking about, do we need a rock bottom moment or any of these things. Not many people really realize Ganesha is that a lot of times known as a deity of removing obstacles and of great fortune and happiness. But not everyone really knows that it is also considered a placer of obstacles. You look back at your life and you’re like okay, could there be these obstacles that were there that were moving me in the right direction? That’s the way I always bring meaning to anything that shows up as an obstacle. 

This is very much what I needed to hear. I’ll provide the context around this. The last call I had right before we started this interview was with a recruiter who was referred to me by a fellow Genius Network member. A great guy. I need a recruiter because I’m looking for a COO. 

I had a COO that I hired in February and it didn’t work out. He’s now on to his next opportunity. He’s taken another full-time job elsewhere. He’s a friend. There are only good feelings both ways. But this is an opportunity, it was a disappointment, it was a challenge, it was an obstacle that didn’t work out and then he took another job. 

Okay, that’s something I just have to get through, but in actuality, it is a wonderful gift because the right person, somebody who can run an agency or the operations side have an agency—because I have an SEO agency—and can see the future of where we’re heading to be more in the woo-woo space to have a media company and a personal development self-help book, which I’m working on currently. All this sort of stuff that’s very much a significant pivot, but still we’re going to do agency work. It’s not like we’re going to step into this new world and leave the old world behind. We’re going to stay in both worlds. 

I need a pretty special person to fill this role of COO and I just have this magical connection, this recruiter and I. I know my gut, my guide, my guidance, my intuition tells me that he’s the one who’s going to connect me with this perfect match. Unless, of course, this perfect match is actually listening to this podcast and wants to come, that’s possible, too. 

Intuition usually comes from deeply seeing many ideas, opportunities, or aspects & starting to recognize patterns. Click To Tweet

That message that you just delivered for me, which wasn’t on page 66, it wasn’t on page 60. It was on page 67. I was waiting for it. I waited for the response. I actually get these intuitive hits, psychic messages, et cetera. If you were to tell me this year ago, I’d be like whatever. People change, things change, we get awakened. That was really, really helpful because it was an obstacle for my benefit.

Exactly. Now you have space for the perfect COO.

Before I had the COO that I had this year, I had nobody for the last 10 years since my previous company that I exited from that I sold in 2010. I have not had a COO. I have not had number two. 

This was really a wonderful shift for me to know that I could step back and it was like training wheels. Like oh, yeah, I can do this. I can do this again, that’s right. That’s how it feels to have a COO. I forgot. Now I’m ready to take the training wheels off and to embrace this magic of okay, here’s an obstacle. It’s like you’re at the bowling alley and you got bumpers on how to bowl.

That’s exactly right. Then the additional synchronicity that I was going to mention, on the left-hand pages of this so you can kind of see here. There are very few pages that have this, so each left-hand page has something different. But this has text a friend roulette, and it says, “Send this entry to a friend and see what happens, or tell them you’re inspired to send this to them as an answer to something they’re working on. And this is a bonus try to someone you haven’t seen in six months.”

(Insert page 66)

Again, playing with these things and playing with synchronicities and then you see what happens and what shows up back. We’ve had people take that and then they’ll send it off to someone and see what happens. It all starts intermingling and being interconnected.

I know just the person to send it to. I was given that intuitive hit as you were talking, and it’s Anthony Capobianco. He was a guest on Get Yourself Optimized. The most discussed topic of that episode was synchronicities. 

I love it. I mean that’s one of my favorite topics. I love Carl Jung. You talk about inspirations, I have an entirely new suite of inspirations and people that I’ve learned from in the last 10, 15 years, and Jung is certainly one of them. He was a fascinating character where he was wrestling with this idea of his professional life and his spiritual life. 

He’s got many books but one is a red book, which is this huge oversized volume on there if you’ve seen it, which came to him as these really channeled works that he would paint. He was a very good artist, and he would paint all these things. He didn’t want it released until after he died because he thought it would just discredit him in his professional world.

You spoke about this earlier that as a public-facing person, it can be really hard to make this transition to go from the empirical, scientific, tangible realm to the woo-woo, the metaphysical to the spiritual, to the ethereal. You get marginalized, discredited, ostracized, and ridiculed. It can get really ugly. You make yourself a target for some people, although you can choose to not have that energy of being a target and I would recommend that.

It is about exploration and then consciously deciding with reverence, understanding, and proper guidance from a source to God. Click To Tweet

Yeah, I agree with that for sure. I study a lot of different ancient cultures and philosophies. The Cosmic Journal was never created with a page by page in mind. It was just whatever I was inspired to do and so forth. Then when my friend, Eric Lochtefeld, “All right, I’ll invest to make this little vegan version of it for you that you really want.”

Then I had to create the actual, what is the arc of it, and there’s a real arc to it now. Page one starts with the very beginning and then at the end of it, we go into this notion of where the world is heading in this very cyclical notion of people have heard about the Golden Age, then Silver Age, then the Bronze Age, and Iron Age.

A lot of people mostly believe that history is like this. It’s very linear and it just continues getting better and better and technology gets better, et cetera. But there’s a lot of credence to very cyclical nature of history, and this is where a lot of cultures, especially Mayans, there’s a reason they had 13 calendars that they were keeping track of.

There’s roughly this 26,000-year, science would say it’s only procession, but these other cultures would talk about these periods of darkness and light. We are in this period of ascending consciousness because we’re actually in a different place in the universe. It’s fascinating. 

So right now, people are being awakened, they’re nudged, or having their cosmic alarm clock go off because there’s a greater purpose to what they are being called to. It’s not forgetting everything else. It’s like, how do we incorporate all of that and that becomes the ground floor for what’s next.

Yeah, and something I heard—I forget where but recently—is that if you choose not to ascend, that’s fine. We’re all taking our own path. But if you choose not to ascend and go to a new earth, the fifth dimension, or however it’s referred to in your circles, but the idea is you can choose to then stay here in the 3D world and process back down towards more of middle ages. 

It’s not going to jump, it’s going to actually proceed to darker, darker, darker more like a procession. That’s a long hard row for you to hoe, and if you choose you can do that, but I choose the ascension path.

Me too. I think that it’s happening regardless. You just look around. I’ve been meditating now for about eight years or so pretty regularly. If you would have asked me before, there’s no way I thought I could meditate because I had a million ideas a minute. I’ve had some great mentors and people that have come along. Again, that experiment, try that experiment. 

If I asked groups of entrepreneurs I work with now, do you meditate? Almost 60%, 70% of hands will go up and it’s completely different than a decade ago where it might have been 10%. To me, that’s a leading indicator of something happening. This is not a distinction that you have to meditate in order to be enlightened and is essentially like you’re talking about, but it is one of the leading indicators because it allows you to connect deeper and into more subtle energies and so forth.

There are lots of other mindfulness practices. Some people are going at it from a much more pragmatic technological aspect of it where they might have like the headband on or the binaural beats and other things. I like all of these things. You’re probably around my age, do you remember the cartoon Voltron?

Vaguely. I mean I’m 50. 

The mechanical lions would all come together and then they would form Voltron, the Defender of the Universe. Kind of an obscure cartoon. It’s a Japanese cartoon but then got a little bit bigger. There’s actually a new version on Netflix that’s been pretty good that came out a couple of years ago. I think of all these different traditions and all these different methodologies, all having a piece of the bigger secret.

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Right now it’s like we’re in this beautiful opportunity to be like, oh, well this makes sense for me and this makes sense for me. Some people just go on one path and that’s great for them too, but they all lead to the same place. We have this really beautiful chance to almost have a buffet of all these opportunities. 

Of course, now, you can get lost on only just picking a little bit over here, picking a little bit over here, and never going deep enough to really see any movement. Like you’re talking about, the guardrails on the bowling alley, you all end up in the same spot.

I think the most important thing is to listen and to communicate with your higher power. If you choose one modality over another, you choose one spiritual discipline over another, one religion over another, that’s really of no consequence at the end of the day. It’s really about having that dialogue with the creator directly. Meditation is listening, whereas praying is speaking. So if you only pray, it’s a one-way conversation.

I think of all those, what is the conscious intention? You’re born into some sort of, I don’t know, it could be a religion, it could be whatever it is. Obviously, you’re inheriting your beliefs typically from your parents or those that are closest around—your friends and peer group. Then also even all the ancestors. There’s also been very much scientific proof that you inherit traumas and things that are from multiple generations. It’s fascinating.

To me, all of it is about exploration and then consciously deciding, okay, what do I believe in? Then also having that direct connection like you’re talking about to source, to God, to whatever it is and not having an intermediary. This is also why it’s becoming really much bigger now as a lot of plant medicines, a lot of entheogens, a lot of things like that. Again, those are not the only path, but it’s another catalyst that opens up new ways of being like oh, this is really really interesting. 

You’ve got to be careful though. If you do this without the proper guidance and preparation, you can end up with a psychic break or some sort of psychosis. It’s not to be treated lightly.

Exactly. You can’t treat it lightly at all. You have to go in with reverence, understanding. Just like anything, is there a calling for you to explore it instead of being like I’m going to check off the box. Everyone’s doing this. I should go do it or whatever. It’s got to be the right one for you as well. 

I have a couple of quick easy ones that can help you bring more awareness and really connect in that way. One of my favorites is always journaling. I don’t know if you journal or not.

I do, yeah. 

Get a journal that you feel great about writing in.

It’s one of my favorite processes. I think of it as a foundational success principle. I’ve done it for a long time. I remember Jim Rowan talking about it that the most successful people journal. And then you want to get a journal that you actually feel really great about writing in. I’m looking for the most expensive journals is what he would say. He’s like, they don’t always make them, but my thoughts are worth it. 

This idea of capturing that moment. So many people have some adverse reactions to it because they’re like, well, what if someone reads it or if someone finds it? How honest do I want to be in my journal and all these things? You can lock it up, you can hide it, you can do all sorts of things, but there’s been scientific proof that you actually become happier by journaling because it creates a beginning, a middle, and an end on that page. Again, those experiments, just give yourself a window of time and say, okay, I’m going to give it a go and see what happens. 

Typically, what I start writing about isn’t the same thing I end up writing about. It’s just a process of getting going. I’ll do it before I knock off for the day so I can process my day. It’s just a really really powerful way of seeing what’s going on in your inner world. But also working on ideas, what are you grateful for, all sorts of things in your journal. Then you can use it in lots of other unusual and expanded ways like we were talking about like conversations with your left hand, your non-dominant hand, or even have back and forth conversations with different archetypes like even my 111-year-old self, my 11-year-old self, or even the universe. 

You can also do automatic writing, you can do automatic dictation. There’s a lot of opportunities once you have a pen or a stylus in hand and you’re ready to go.

Yeah, totally. I think there is a big difference. People are like can I just do this on a computer laptop? I’m like, nope. It’s not the same neural pathways. Having that pen, the stylus works, at least I believe it works if it’s the same kind of handwriting.

It works. I’ve done automatic writing on it. I use a reMarkable tablet. I really love that thing. 

As long as it’s handwriting, not typing.

The reMarkable tablet is amazing. It has a feature to OCR, but I actually never use the OCR feature. I like to see it in my own handwriting, whatever I’ve written six months ago. 

It brings more resilience for you because you know you can get through whatever you’re going through right now.

And you go back. You think about synchronicities, I will typically go back a lot of times in my journal. I’ll flip it open. I’m like, all right, what do I need to know? I’ll see something that I wrote before. I’m like, oh, that’s a good idea, or oh, I didn’t realize that was a struggle that I had, but now it’s not a big deal. That also brings more resilience for you because you’re like, I know I can get through whatever’s going through right now too.

That’s really powerful and profound. Thank you for that. The lights went on for that because I never applied the principle of bibliomancy to my journal writings and my reMarkable tablet.

Yeah, give it a try. 

That’s amazing. 

I also go back to specific dates. I’m like, what’s going on on my birthday three years ago or whatever. There’s a lot of things that you can do to really make that a record for yourself that you can keep learning from yourself, really. 

Amazing. Well, I know we’re out of time here. I would love for you to just share for a brief moment your Mavericks program because as I mentioned before we started recording, I’m a connoisseur of fine masterminds. I’m very seriously considering Mavericks. I would love to hear a very short pitch of Mavericks for our listeners too because it can be very life-changing. Genius Network for me has been such a life-changing thing and I have a feeling that Mavericks is in this similar vein.

Absolutely. Maverick, again, we started that 12-13 years ago from really scratching my own itch and answering that one question, and it’s evolved quite a bit. It’s for entrepreneurs that are seven-, eight-, nine-figure entrepreneurs who have had success, are successful, and are either aligned on their vision and want support to go there faster further, or they are thinking about what’s next and that support there. 

We combine growth, impact, and fun. How do you grow yourself? How do you grow your business? How do you impact the world individually through your company or companies and collectively through our own brainpower, resources, and networking coming together? Then having some fun. Why do it if it’s not if it’s not fun?

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We take all three of those in equal measure, and especially the fun we take pretty seriously with different themes, custom parties, and all sorts of stuff. We spent a week on Necker Island with Richard Branson with a really incredible group, all the way to going to Haiti and building self-sustaining villages. Though the political climate has changed there so we haven’t been there in a little bit, and different retreats and experiences.

Amazing. 

That’s available at maverick1000.com. You can check that out. We also have a really cool upcoming Antarctica trip that we’re going with the group. And then, if anyone wants to just explore some of these other topics, I would check out cosmicjournal.com, on Amazon, or Hay House and check that out. Or the book Evolved Enterprise to just think about how you can make a greater impact in the world. 

Or your Oracle deck too and all of the above. 

Yeah, the Oracle deck is really fun too. I always wanted an Oracle deck and that was part of the contract with Hay House. It was a great process to put that together because the journal itself works like an Oracle, so it was an interesting way of being like, oh, well, how am I going to make this thing different? There’s journal prompts, and all sorts of things that are part of it, plus these archetypes that we’re talking about to have conversations with. They’re pretty cool. They’re definitely really, really neat. 

That’s awesome. I love how you just embrace the pivot and you’re like, I am no longer defined as an internet marketer. I’m a sun lighting a thousand suns, lighting thousand other suns each. That’s amazing. Thank you for who you are and for what you bring to the world.

Looking forward to hopefully seeing you at one of our experiences and events, and really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. And thank you, listeners. We’ll catch you on the next episode. This is your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off. 

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About Yanik Silver

Yanik Silver has been called a Cosmic Catalyst, a Maverick Mischief-maker and a Galactic Goofball. He redefines how business is played in the 21st century at the intersection of evolutionary growth, impact and fun. Yanik is the creator of the Cosmic Journal, author of Evolved Enterprise and the founder of Maverick1000, a global collective of visionary entrepreneurs making a serious difference in the world, without taking themselves too seriously. In fact, it’s not unusual to find him dressed as a lemur, a showgirl or even in matching mermaid tails with Sir Richard Branson.