READ: Welcome to Luckortunity! You will only see this once but I invite you to keep coming back and browse through the archives to Help Yourself Get Lucky. To get started, read 40 Ways to Increase Your Luck.
You can subscribe to my RSS feed and get lucky all the time. Thanks for visiting!
Joseph Jaffe from Jaffe Juice has a podcast that I have been listening to over the last week and a bit.I found him on ITunes while looking for good marketing podcasts (and it is good) to listen to while I commute.I downloaded his last 11 episodes, starting from his 100th episode and have enjoyed every second of it.His shows average at above an hour so if you do the math, I listened to about 11 or so hours of this guy speak over the last week.Joseph, if you’re reading, you are that good and “thank you”.
On his podcast I fell in love with one of the segments called “Winners and Losers” where he mentions major companies that either did a great job marketing or made a major marketing screw-up.One example he’s been ranting about is a really bad experience with Delta Airlines where they treated him, a business class platinum member frequent flyer like garbage and they refused to really do anything about it.The amount of bad publicity that caused for delta made them a huge “loser”.
Since I like the segment so much, I wanted to give a winner and loser of my own:
Winner – K-Mart
My wife has been really busy running errands all week with my 2 kids (ages 3 and 1) which is not an easy job.One of her stops was at K-Mart where to her delight they had shopping carts for kids.These were not the typical mini carts for kids to push or cars for kids to sit in, they were trucks with little TVs in the front so kids can sit inside and watch while their parents shop and dump the articles they are buying in the back of the truck.The TVs had all the shows that kids love and keep them busy.
Any kid with that experience will beg their parents to shop at K-Mart on a regular basis and any parent will gladly go back to have a calm shopping experience without kids driving them crazy.
Loser – Best Buy
A bit over 2 years ago I bought a laptop computer at Best Buy.While I was buying it, they convinced me to buy the 3 year complete warranty for close to $400.I decided to buy it when the salesman told me that if anything happens to the computer, they will replace it.He even went as far to say that after 2 ½ years, I could throw it down the stairs and smash the computer and get a brand new one.It sounded like a great deal and well worth the money so I went for it.
It was a great computer but there was a little flaw in the screen that they gave me.After about a year, lines started appearing on the screen.Happy that I had a warranty, I took it back to the store to be fixed or replaced.There were also some other small issues with the computer so I asked them to fix them as well.They took my computer and sent it off to their service center.After 2 weeks, they called me up and told me to come pick it up.I rushed over to the store only to find out that it was still at the service center and they made a mistake.
I finally got the computer back a few days later and the screen was fixed but the other issues were not fixed.They asked me if I wanted to send it back for another 2 weeks but I opted not to since I needed my laptop for work.When I got home, I realized that my battery which used to hold a 4 hour charge, now only held a 10 minute charge.I don’t know if they killed my battery or replaced it with a dead battery but the fact was that my computer wouldn’t work unless it was attached to a wall.
They took my computer back for another 2 weeks and when I got it back, the power cord was loose.Another 2 weeks go by, I get the computer back and it doesn’t charge at all.I kept sending it back and each time, they call me up 2 weeks later to pick it up but when I get there, I realize that they haven’t fixed anything and even made it worse at times.
I spoke to the Geek Squad, customer service, the managers and even some of their managers about the situation and I asked if I can have a new computer because it has now been about 7 months that I have been without my laptop and they are not fixing it.I got the same answer from every one of them, “all we can do is send it to the service center and they decide what to do”.
According to the warranty, if the computer needs to be repaired more than 3 times, it’s considered a “lemon” and qualifies for a replacement.My computer doesn’t qualify because they never do anything to fix it when it’s sent back.They just waste a lot of postage.
To make a long story short, they still have my computer and have refused to give me a replacement or even a $10 gift card for my troubles and inconvenience.
I have had several other bad experiences with Best Buy and if you do a Google search for “I hate best buy”, you’ll see that many other people feel the same way I do.
About 8 years ago I spent a summer traveling with a camp around the west coast of the United States.Throughout our travels, we would stop off at rest areas to fill up with gas and junk food.The most popular stops were always the ones with a Starbucks inside.Everybody was crazy about the Frapachinos or whatever they are called but I was never really into that, particularly because of the $5.00 price tag but also because of the sugar and calorie content.At one of the stops, I was exhausted beyond belief and needed a quick caffeine fix.I decided to see what everyone was going crazy over and I bought a cup of Starbucks coffee.The bitterness of the coffee and the price left me with a very bad taste in my mouth for the company.
I recently started to gain respect for the company when I heard about their new website www.mystarbucksidea.com where they let their fans post their ideas for the company and let everyone else vote on them.I thought this was genius because it created a 2 way conversation between the company and the fans, it helped them increase brand awareness and it let everyone else do their market research for them for free.Because of all of this, I decided to give Starbucks another chance.
A week ago I went to a local Starbucks to get some writing done.My local shop acts as a home office to dozens of people in the community and I figured that I would give it a try.While I was writing, I needed to look something up online but to get online I needed an account with one of their wireless partners.I asked someone sitting at my table and he said that If I was a Starbucks reward member, I could get 2 hours of free wireless access per day as long as my rewards card has been active within 30 days.
I went to buy a rewards card for $5.00 since I figured that the wireless access alone was worth the money.When I purchased the card, I was told that I would also get a free squirt of syrup in my coffee whenever I wanted and free refills of my coffee.I used the internet and went home a happy camper.
A couple days ago I got a post card in the mail that could be redeemed for a free drink at Starbucks, as bonus for being a rewards member.One drink alone can be worth $5.00 which would make my original purchase more than worthwhile.
To sum it up, for $5.00, I got:
2 hours of free wireless access per day for as long as my card is active.
Free syrup in my coffee (about a $0.30 value per squirt).
Free Refills of my coffee (value depends on how thirsty I am).
There is a famous story that I have been thinking about lately of a Businessman who meets a Mexican man fishing on a little boat.It’s a great story that makes you think about your life a little clearer and see what is really important.
The businessman notices that the Mexican man caught a few fish so he started a dialogue:
Businessman:how long did it take you to catch those fish?
Mexican:About 2 hours.
Businessman:What are you going to do now?
Mexican: I’m going to go to the market and sell the fish.Then I’m going home to take a siesta with my wife, play with my children and relax.
Businessman:Why don’t you fish a little more and sell the extra fish?
Mexican: Why would I do that?I make enough money from the fish I sell to buy what I need.
Businessman:Well… you can start a business and make a lot of money.
Mexican:What do you suggest I do?
Businessman:Well fish for twice as long, get twice as many fish and then sell the extras.Eventually you will have enough money to buy another boat and you can hire a second fisherman to work for you.
Mexican:And then what?
Businessman:Then you can make even more money and buy more boats and hire more people.Eventually you will have enough fish to start exporting them to the United States.
Mexican:And then what?
Businessman:Then you can build a business in the US importing the fish.Eventually you will be able to go public and make a ton of money.
Mexican:How long will all of this take?
Businessman:Oh, about 20 years or so if you work really hard.
Mexican:And then what do I do?
Businessman:Well, that’s the best part.You can retire with a ton of money, buy yourself a house by the beach, go fishing, take a siesta every day, play with your kids and relax.
The lesson you learn from this story is to think about why you would work so hard for so long to get what you already have.It’s not always so hard and complicated to get what you want out of life.There are many ways to get to where you want.Don’t just follow the crowd.Think about what you really want and how you can get it.Then if you have to, take the road less traveled.It made “all the difference” for Robert Frost.
I just found this new website that allows people to share documents.You can upload as many documents as you want and also browse through other people’s documents.You can find all sorts of business templates from letters to contracts to budget calculators.There are also many finished docs that you can read or use for reference.Not only that but you can also comment, review and share the documents.You can even save your documents privately online for personal storage.
Here’s how I got lucky and found this site:
I’ve been in the workforce full time since I graduated college so I’ve got about 100 versions of my resume saved on my computer waiting for any occasion to whip it out and send it off to potential new employers.Lately I’ve been thinking very strongly about going out on my own so that I can answer to myself at the end of the day instead of another irrational person who I make rich.That’s beside the point… The point is that my wife has been staying home and taking care of our kids for the last few years and although she has tons of experience, she has no employment history and no resume.
We have been talking about her going to work for a little while so that I can dedicate some time to start something of our own to pay our bills and feed our savings.We knew that to find work, my wife needed a resume and having no employment history it wasn’t going to be the simplest task.When faced with a situation like this, I like to look at what other people have done and try and emulate the best example.In this case, it was to find a resume template for “workers returning to the workforce”.The first place I looked was on Microsoft Word where I found a nice selection of templates to choose from.The problem was that my computer is in the shop right now, I’m working on a loaner and for some reason, Microsoft didn’t allow me to download the template because it could verify my account.I’ll save my frustrations and thoughts on Microsoft for another post but for now, I’ll tell you this little challenge was good luck.
I Googled the name of the resume template I was looking, clicked on one of the top links and I was taken todocstoc.I was a little hesitant to sign up for yet another service but decided that I have not much to lose and a whole bunch to gain.The sign up process was really simple, I found the resume template I was looking for and downloaded it.Last night we put together a pretty impressive resume for a person with no “real” experience.
I didn’t pay much attention to the site until this morning when I got a welcome letter in my inbox from the Community Manager at docstoc.The subject of the email was “new docstock message from Kat”.I get these types of messages all the time from sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc… so when I saw it I decided to take a look.The message was pretty much a regular welcome letter but it was written as if Kat was just stopping by to say hello.I’m not sure why but this welcome letter hit me a way that most other welcome letters miss completely.
I went back to look at the site and I was sold. A few years ago, I would have wasted hours cursing out Microsoft and dwelling over how I couldn’t download the template that I needed.Now that I am working on my “luck”, I saw that not only was there a way around the problem, it also led to new “luckortunity”.
Next time you get frustrated at a roadblock, think of this and how you can get around the problem.You might end up being much luckier in the end.
If you have any stories like this to share, please leave a comment.I’d love to hear them.
