I’m quite open about the fact that I don’t have an abundance of money and never have. The reason why is because this didn’t and won’t stop me from creating businesses and projects that help people, and I want to destroy the myth of ‘starting a business is expensive’ to encourage more dreamers to take the lead and create projects that make the world better.
If you follow my tweets, you’ll probably have seen that over the past few months I’ve been working on a project called WhatisMyComfortZone.com, which is essentially a ‘comfort zone calculator’.
I started the project for two reasons: 1) to heighten people’s awareness of their comfort zone and hopefully inspire them to take a step outside of it, and 2) to help people like myself who are fascinated by the philosophy of ‘growing your comfort zone’ learn more about the vastly unexplored concept.
Unfortunately, these two goals are rather open-ended, which means it’s going to be hard for me to throw in the towel and say ‘I’m done!’ any time soon, but until I’m no longer getting excited by the insights and thought of encouraging people to do the challenges that scare them, that’s not a problem ☺
After several weeks of collecting user’s scores and analyzing them in the thousands, I’ve finally reached a point where I can make some statistically significant assumptions about what our comfort zones are and how they vary across demographics. Here is an infographic summarizing some of the most interesting findings (if you’d rather see raw data and charts, I’ve posted them here).
Have you ever wondered what the source of any service or product is? If not, shut your eyes and think about it for just a moment.
At the core of every useful service or product is knowledge, or more specifically ‘specialised knowledge’. When a plumber, marketer, or scientist sells their time to a customer or an employer, they’re transferring their knowledge into a useful action – installing a bathroom, increasing a business’ turnover, developing a new drug.
“There are two kinds of knowledge – general and specialised. General knowledge, no matter how great in quantity it may be, is of little use in the accumulation of riches” – Napoleon Hill
It’s said that on any given day approximately 60,000 words go through our head, but even more interestingly, 95% of those words are the same as the ones that went through your head on the previous day.
My new journal that I bought in Melbourne, for inspirational and creative idea writing 
Depending on how you look at it, you can learn a lot from this fact. It suggests that we should think less about our past, it suggests that we should spend more time thinking of new ideas, but what I find particularly interesting is how it links to the idea of why writing things down on a piece of paper increases the likelihood of us achieving what we want.
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In Brazil, they say that before a man’s life is complete, he should do three things; start a family, plant a tree, and write a book. It wasn’t until recently that I realized why Brazilian men live up to this mantra – those three things give a man legacy that lasts beyond his lifespan.
When we think about writing a book, we often only visualize the tip of the iceberg – that is, the ultimate feeling of accomplishment gained from holding a paperback with your name written across the front. But what lies below the surface is far more profound.
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If at any point in the past few years you asked me what my idea of a dream lifestyle would look like, I would have told you that for me it would be something like this…
It would involve living in several different countries each year, working in cafes from a laptop, meeting inspiring people on a regular basis, and building useful things that people appreciate. I love eating at restaurants and trying new food, so I’d like to make that something I do at least 3 or 4 times a week in my ideal lifestyle. No billion pound saving accounts, no mansions, just a simple but interesting lifestyle that keeps me learning and surrounded by great people.
Tomorrow I’m leaving the UK to spend ten months living in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Hawaii. Out of the many reasons that are making me ecstatic even thinking about the year ahead, the thing i’m most excited about is destroying my comfort zone, again.
In 2011 my new year’s resolution was to take a huge step out of my comfort zone – I succeeded – I jumped out of an aeroplane from 13,000ft, wrote and published a book, spoke at a several major conferences, drove my favourite car around a racetrack, faced my fears and got a tattoo, and moved out to live in a new place. All of those things scared the hell out me.
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In the Western world, we’re brought up with the mentality of building on our weaknesses rather than our strengths. Am I the only one who feels that that’s a bit backwards?
If a kid at school sucks at French, the teacher will make them do more French until they’ve got the hang of it, regardless of whether that kid wants to learn French or not. When you’re forced to work on the things you dislike doing or you’re not passionate about, your outcome is at best average and people don’t get to see you in your best light.
A few weeks ago I was having a chat with my friend Rob about this and he told me a story about a girl who was troublesome at school – she had terrible grades and was disruptive in class. The school invited her parents in, and eventually the parents met with a psychiatrist to find out what the problem with their kid was.
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If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from selling information products, it’s that customers can be a pretty irrational bunch when it comes to interpreting value and price.
Image Credit: Santos
Three of the most profound things that i’ve learnt about value over the years are:
1. People are crap at differentiating value from price.
2. The more time or money a customer invests in a product, the more value they’ll get out of it.
3. Value is 100% psychological – it’s a feeling, not a thing.
Generally speaking, we assume that the more expensive a product is relative to other similar products, the more quality or value we are buying. In most instances this is a safe assumption (as the old adage goes ‘you get what you pay for’), but it also means that sometimes we’re tricked into buying overpriced products because we believe that they are better than the cheaper alternatives, when they’re not.
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Ever since I read Predictably Irrational, I’ve been amazed at how true it is that ‘the busier a person is, the better they are at answering e-mails’. The thing is, it’s not being busy that prevents people answering emails, it’s their attitude towards their inbox that counts.
Several days ago I emailed Derek Sivers asking whether he had any advice on what to see when I’m in Singapore next month – he responded to me straight away. Derek is one of my biggest inspirations as an entrepreneur, speaker and writer, and so his response meant the absolute world to me.
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Marcus is an author, speaker, & entrepreneur currently travelling the world, building projects that explore why people do what they do.
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