On Tuesday, October 3rd we were lucky enough to learn how THE Marc Lewis earned his first million(s)… and it was not entirely shocking to any of us that he did it in the weirdest way possible (finding a loophole to allow people in South Africa to access phone sex operators in California???). Oh, and we also learned other stuff.

The key takeaways from Marc’s masterclass were:

• It’s worth the effort to find the right words

The example he gave was from when he was sitting in on a public murder trial, as one does, and the lawyer asked for the judge’s permission to refer to the knife as a weapon, rather than a kitchen knife. The point of this was to show how much weight words carry and the importance of choosing the right words. Calling it a weapon may sound much more incriminating to the jury than just calling it a knife. He never did tell us what the verdict was… 

• What you choose to focus on in life will have a significant impact on how you experience it

Opportunityisnowhere! 

Do you see opportunity is now here, or opportunity is nowhere? Positivity can change your life!

• Find problems that real people really care about

We did a “Thinking backwards” activity, but I’ll add more on this later. 

Marc also told us to write down all the wishes we have whenever we think of them, or are faced with a problem and think of a solution that we wished existed.

• Creativity runs on curiosity

Marc defines creativity as “the expression of an original idea that provides value”. For instance, street art can be nice to look at but creativity is the spray painted images of childrens faces on shop shutters to reduce crime! 

During this masterclass I learned that everything you own and everything you purchase, big or small, is not only a solution to a problem but also comes with a new set of problems. During the “Thinking backwards” activity we each thought of something we recently purchased, big or small, and then started writing down all of the different solutions that its purchase provided. After we went over the solutions, we were instructed to write down a list of all the new problems that could be associated with the same item. This exercise was very powerful because it shows how complex every small purchase is in addition to all of the opportunity for improvement. 

We did another activity where we had to write down 3 wishes and Marc encouraged us to  make a habit of writing down these wishes whenever they may pop into our heads starting with, “I wish that…” “Wouldn’t it be great if…” “What I’d really like to see is…”. I felt inspired by this to start writing down all of my random little wishes whenever they may pop into my head, and have already written down some real winners: I wish Lime had tandem bikes! 

At the end of the class we were assigned groups for the new Supermarket Challenge– NPD Brief! Now we’re all working on creating a new groundbreaking product that will shift millions of units, seems easy enough! 

So, go have a positive outlook and enjoy your week! 

I’m signing off to write down more silly wishes,

@izzystordy