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.
READ: Welcome to Luckortunity!
If you liked this article, you may like some of my past posts. I suggest reading 40 Ways to Increase Your Luck next to give you a better introduction.
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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.
I recently read an article about Steven Jobs from Apple that joked about Steven having a plaque on his desk that read “my way or the highway”.The article gave Jobs a lot of credit and called him a genius but they mentioned that he has gotten himself into a little bit of trouble with his “do it my way” attitude.I don’t know the whole story and I wish I could remember where I read the article but it made me think of so many people who are not flexible and lose out because of it.
Over the years I have dealt with a lot of stubborn “my way or the highway” type of people who lose out because of their attitudes.They lose jobs, lose clients, lose friends and burn more bridges than they can count.Any yet, they never notice that maybe the problem is not with everyone else in the world.Maybe if these people were just a little more flexible, things would be easier for them and just might work out in their favor every once in a while.
Flexibility does not only help you out when dealing with other people but can actually help you in more ways than you can imagine.When booking a flight online, if you put in exact dates, you might not always be happy with the price that comes up but if you are a little flexible, the price gets a little more reasonable.The more flexible you are, the better the rates will be. If you want proof, try searching for a round trip flight between any 2 specific locations to leave on Friday and come back on Sunday.Then, if there is an option for “flexible”, click on it.Otherwise, do it manually.Add in surrounding airports so there are more choices, for example, in New York, instead of just JFK, add in La Guardia and Newark airports.Then change your dates to Tuesday, coming back on the next Wednesday.You’ll see the difference.This is just a little example of what being flexible can do.
If you are looking to buy a car and you are hoping for a one year old Mercedes with under 1000 miles, you will get a lot more results if you search for a slightly used luxury car.You may not get the exact car you were looking for but you will have a lot more to choose from and will probably end up with something just as good.
It’s always good to narrow things down so that you have a direction to move in and you can plan accordingly but it is just as important to be able to roll with the punches.Not everything in life is simple and works as planned.To get lucky, you need to be able to react to situations, be open minded and flexible enough to readjust every step of the way.Listen to co-workers, they may have something really interesting and helpful to say.After all, the more options and opinions you have, the more flexible you can be and the luckier you can get.
There is a new blog born every half a second? That means that there are 175,000 new blogs every day and that the blogosphere doubles every 60 days.
The Average person is exposed to 3,000 ads per day?
Just a decade ago, if you needed to do some research, you would have to go to a library and work with the few books and encyclopedias that they had on your subject.Today we are not only surrounded by information, we are completely overloaded with it and we don’t know how to handle it.If you don’t pay attention to any of it, you will fall behind and get lost but if you try and take it all in, you will never in a million years have enough time to soak it all in.
The solution to this problem is “social media”.Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon as well as RSS readers allow you to keep on top of everything that is important.Unlike a newspaper or the 6:00 news, you define what is important.With social media, you get to build your own community of likeminded people and friends who help each other out on a regular basis.If your interest is humor, your social media group will also be interested in humor.If you are a marketing professional, then you will be connected to other marketing professionals or at least people who enjoy marketing.It is these people who will flag articles, blogs, videos and anything else that would be of interest to your group so that you don’t have to wade through all the other garbage out there and you can focus on what is important to you.
True that not everyone from a certain group has identical taste and that is why you can build your own network, person by person.You do not have to lock yourself into any set group and hope that you are compatible.You can build your own group based on your friends, your likes and your needs.
People used to have to check their email and the news every few minutes to know what is happening in the world.Now all you have to do is check your social networks every once in a while and see whats going on.If something is important, you can be sure that it will keep appearing.
By using Twitter, instead of sitting on Google for hours calling everyone you know for suggestions, you can just send a tweet and people from your community will help you out.For example, if you are traveling on business and get hungry, you can send a tweet from your phone that you need a restaurant in the city that you are in and everyone in your network will send you suggestions if they have them.Now, your network is only as strong as you make it and will only give you as much value as you put in.
So, make sure you build a strong network and add as much value to it as you possibly can because if you do, your network will be there for you when you need it and make your life a whole lot easier.
Last week I wrote a review of Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Workweek and I wanted to share the story below from the book since my last post was about redefining the “impossible”.
While teaching at Princeton University, Tim Ferriss offered a challenge to his class.He preached to the class that you don’t need to work like dogs to be successful in life but he also knew that most of the students in the class will probably work 80 hours a week as “high paid coffee fetchers”.He wanted to prove that his teaching can be used in real life so he decided to offer his class a challenge that would put his teachings into practice.
The winner of the contest would receive a round trip airfare to anywhere in the world.The challenge was to contact 3 “seemingly impossible” to reach people; Jlo, Bill Clinton and J.D. Salinger and get at least one of them to answer a few questions.
Close to 1/3 of his class remained after class to hear the challenge and participate.None of them completed the challenge or even gave the challenge a chance.They all had an excuse why they didn’t take or complete the challenge.They all thought that someone else would outdo them, so none of them even showed up.According to the rules that Tim set up, if any of them even gave a one paragraph illegible response, he would be forced to reward them with the prize.
The next year, Tim offered his class the same challenge but with one small difference.He told them about the previous class’ results.The results in the second challenge were 6 out of 17 students completing the challenge within 48 hours.
People tend to give up when they think that a task is “impossible”.They look at it for a few seconds or even minutes and decide whether it is possible or not.Then if they come to the conclusion that it is “impossible”, they drop the task and go into “excuse” mode.They think that if something is “impossible”, nobody can possibly expect them to complete the task.
If someone gives you a puzzle to do, you will try to figure it out but at a certain point, you may decide that it is “impossible” and stop trying.But, if someone else was doing the same puzzle and came up with a solution, you would probably take a second look at the puzzle since you now know that it is “possible”.
An experiment was once done where 2 groups of people were given 2 bent nails that were attached and told to try and detach them.One group was told that it may not be possible while the other group was told that it definitely was possible.Who do you think gave up first?
You guessed it.The “impossible” group gave up after a few minutes while the other group kept on trying until they figured out how to separate the nails.
Now you have to think twice before writing something off as “impossible”.
I’ve always wanted to visit Japan.I am people watcher, I love to travel, see new places and see how people live their lives.The different cultures fascinate me and I am always excited to see new things.I have traveled to six countries, seven provinces in Canada and forty-four states in the USA.Although it would be great to see how people live in Japan, the main reason I want to visit is because they are extremely innovative.They have hundreds, if not thousands of products and inventions that the United States have never even heard of.
I once stumbled upon a website with pictures of all kinds of different funny things in Japan as well as a vending machine like parking lot where you would park your car in one specific spot and your car would be taken automatically to an empty spot in the parking garage.When you wanted your car back, you would punch in your number and your car would be vended right to you.
One amazing innovation from Japan is the square watermelon.I was amazed when I first heard about them a few years ago but was reminded of them yesterday while reading another article by Andy Sernovitz about the Lesson of the Square Watermelon.The story behind them is that watermelons are traditionally big oval shaped and heavy.It is very hard to ship them to stores and stack them in the isles.The square watermelon was the response to this problem making them more efficient to ship and stack and resulted in a huge increase to the bottom line.
As Andy said in his article, people never thought of square watermelons as an option so they thought that it would be impossible to grow.In life we think of many things as impossible and because of that, we never attempt to do them.By writing things off as “impossible”, we give up on many great opportunities.
Unlucky people give up right away when faced with a challenge claiming that it is impossible.Lucky people take the challenge and may come to the conclusion that the challenge is impossible but they may figure out a way to complete the challenge and realize that it is a lot easier than it seems.
I love my IPod.I have Itunes set up to download Podcasts every day and I sync them while I am at the office.I do most of my listening and watching while commuting while I am nowhere near a computer. Yesterday I was watching a podcast from Andrew Lock of “Help! My Business Sucks!” and in the podcast, he asked his viewers, if they liked what they saw, to share his video through any social media such as dig, facebook, stumble, etc.
I listen to so many different podcasts that it is sometime hard to remember where everything is coming from.I carry around a notepad to jot down any ideas or interesting information as well as ideas that I come up with based on what I am hearing.When listening to a good podcast, I can fill up a couple pages in my notepad with things to try out, things to post about or things to research.Each of these podcasts help me get lucky by keeping a continuous stream of great information and ideas coming my way.
I realize that the people who create the podcasts do not do it for me alone, but they do it to create value and share it with the world.If I was the only one listening, I am 100% positive that most, and probably all of them would stop podcasting.If I want to make sure that the information and ideas keep coming, I have to make sure to do my part in sharing the information.To do this, I post articles to “pay it forward” and I use social bookmarking to spread the original content to more people, even if I have to spend time searching all over the internet to find their actual site to submit.
I thank all of the blog authors and podcast creators who have helped me get to where I am and I ask you, my readers to “pay it forward” as well by stumbling or social bookmarking my posts that you like, joining the community by leaving comments and spreading the word.
For all of you Entracard holders out there, you must already know that Entrecard has partnered up with SezWho to create a better, more interactive experience for bloggers.To build momentum for this partnership, they launched a contest which they hope will get a lot of their members to start publicizing the 2 sides and also start interacting more with each other.The Contest has members blog about the partnership, twitter it and comment on other blogs about it.My first thought was “wow, it’s amazing how they can get so many people to give them free advertising, free word of mouth and a huge push for a successful partnership”.
After taking a few deep breaths and thinking about it, I realized that although everyone is helping out Entrecard, they are helping us out just as much.They are causing us to write an extra post, add a twitter and comment on other blogs.All things that we need to do anyway to build up our communities.It’s not only a push for us to do these things because we can post, comment and twitter about anything, but by participating in this contest, it opens new doors for all of us.By taking this opportunity, we are becoming better and more important members of the community which raises our rank and profile.
Thinking about this contest I recognized that the only reason that anyone would join in is because it is providing value to them as well.Andy Sernovitz says on his blog that “nobody cares about your products (except you)”.They don’t care what you do or how you do it.All they care about is how it impacts them and what value and benefits it can give them.
Unlucky people will look at the contest for a second and forget about it.It is the lucky people who see the advantages to joining in and running with new opportunities. It’s also a little funny that they call it a contest even though everyone can be a winner by following all of the steps.It’s like kindergarten all over again.
This self improvement blog is full of advice on how to increase your luck and improve your life. You can start off by reading 40 Ways to Increase your Luck.
