Your Portable Empire: How to Make Money Anywhere While Doing What You Love

Chapter 38. The Fun Zone

Some of my mentoring clients have been working on an issue that, while it's not exactly Internet marketing related, is an issue that most Internet marketing professionals have to deal with: courage.

Let's face it. It takes courage to do anything of value. Stretching yourself is scary stuff.

Unfortunately, the only way to handle scary situations without facing them is to avoid them. You can always hide in your comfort zone. Keep doing the things you're doing now. Of course, you'll keep getting the results that you're getting now.

To make something different happen, you have to do something different—and that means busting out of your comfort zone into the Fun Zone.

I wish I could say that I've conquered my own fears. It wouldn't be true. I can say that the things I fear now are much more interesting than the things I used to fear.

For example, I don't remember the last time I got stage fright. I do remember being twenty-three years old, hiding in the bathroom backstage, while several thousand people waited impatiently for my band to open for Cheap Trick in San Antonio. My stomach hurt. I was hyperventilating. I was a small town kid just a year out of college, and way out of my comfort zone.

Eventually we went on. The show went fine.

A couple of years ago, I headlined a similar size show in Germany. The sea of people stretched as far into the distance as I could see. I had a blast. The show rocked. My comfort zone had expanded quite a bit.

When I launched my first ...