Are you ready to be uncomfortable?
In 2001 I woke up to a cacophony of snoring Chinese people sleeping next to me on the floor. “Where the hell am I?”, I panicked. And then it came back to me. I was dating Sophia at that time, and I decided to celebrate Chinese New Year with her family in Tampin, a small town in Malaysia just north of Malacca. A little voice in my head said, “I can do this.” In that brief moment, part of my white Kiwi boy died, and an egg hatched inside me.
Transformation happens in a moment.
Innovation at its best creates transformational experiences for your customers. Your customers never forget these moments and can’t stop sharing it with others. There’s a catch: You need to be ready to make your customers uncomfortable.
You need to be ready to make your customers uncomfortable.
Brian Chesky, the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, designed Trips to create transformational experiences for their guests, offering unique culturally immersive tours and activities:
When you first go to a city you need a welcome event within the first 24 or 48 hours where you’re around people. (...) By day two or three you need to have a challenge out of your comfort zone. If you do not leave your comfort zone, you do not remember the trip. If you can belong out of your comfort zone and something new happens to you, then there’s going to be a moment of transformation where the person you were in a small way dies and a new better version of yourself is reborn.
May the year of the dog usher you into the zone of creative discomfort. Tampin, here I come.
p/s: Hardboiled egg - white on the outside, yellow on the inside.
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