I’m often amazed at the opportunities I stumble upon. I used to think it was “luck” until I researched luck and ran in this video:

I found that video, over ten years ago, through this book.

This post isn’t directly about luck. It is, instead, a story illustrating how “luck” works.

Figuring Out Work That Works for Me

This story begins with me deciding, almost exactly four months ago, that I was going to “work from home”. I meticulously track practically all of my thoughts, make note of the insane time/date stamp. 🙂

I actually know what the PERFECT work from home job for me is, but I’m still just a lowly padawan.

I didn’t begin the job search immediately because my schedule was too busy to be able to start working right away. First there was the holidays, the busiest time for my current job, then the fiancé was visiting from abroad, a snowman had to be built and I snuck a quick trip to Puerto Rico in.

Even though the time for searching wasn’t right, I had time to hone skills and figure out what kind of work I could do. The last time I tried the work from home experiment I did article writing jobs. Those are plentiful, and I like writing, but I didn’t like how limiting the income potential was (doing it for someone else).

My brother suggested I try becoming a Full Stack Developer, so what I did was make a routine of studying every day. I started with [FreeCodeCamp] and added [CodeSchool] to the mix later. I really enjoyed (and enjoy) coding but it doesn’t really effectively leverage the marketing skills I’ve been developing over the years. Another conversation with my brother led to my new focus, “digital marketing strategist” (a title I’m still working on fully comprehending!) I can’t magically start there, but I want to be moving in that direction.

That’s a lot of background information! Where’s the luck!

Lucky Isn’t So Lucky…

 

If you’re interested in working from home and haven’t heard of [UpWork] yet, check it out! It’s the result from a merger of, what used to be, Elance and oDesk. A few days ago I updated [my profile], the next day I submitted two “proposals” (just conversational inquiries) and the day after that I got a reply from one. Huzzah!

It turns out that the one that replied is a company working in the health and fitness industry, an industry I love! Double huzzah!

I’m not hired yet, and this post was intended to be a review of testing their service… I was clearly sidetracked! What felt “lucky” was applying to two places one day, getting a response from one the next and it being something extremely relevant to my interests.

If viewed through a keyhole, what happened over the past two days seems extremely lucky. When you open the door and look at it from point of view of the last few months, or years adding my first experience with oDesk (it wasn’t UpWork yet), it doesn’t seem lucky at all.

The first time I used oDesk I was applying to things left and right. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for (other than writing work) and I took whatever came my way. I learned from that. The months that led up to a few days ago involved serious study, reflection and getting focused on what I was looking for. I didn’t spend very long looking through jobs but, since I knew what I was looking for, I skipped a lot of stuff. It was vastly easier to identify something that could be a potentially good fit because of the clarity with which I was searching.

Seems like common sense, but that’s my point. Most stories about “luck” are the results from a lot of historical common sense. If I told you “Man! I only applied to two jobs and one got back to me already!” You might think, “Man, so lucky.” If I tell you all of the events that led to the “lucky” event you might think “Duh, that makes sense.”

Serendipity and luck are definitely real things. I was really surprised by what the company turned out to be. That information wasn’t a part of the ad, but everything I did leading up to applying helped create an environment for luck and serendipity to happen.

Enter WaiverKing

Alright… we’re finally to the section of the post that this post was suppose to be focused on!

[WaiverKing] is aptly named as it is a service which is mastering the process of handling waivers (just like I’m mastering the process of creating serendipity! 😉 ). I went through the process of digital filling out and signing a waiver from my phone earlier today and it worked practically flawlessly. At the end of the process I got a digital copy of the waiver emailed to me.

Now, waivers don’t sound very sexy (because they’re not!) That’s what makes WaiverKing awesome! If you’re running a business which is constantly getting new clients who need to fill out waivers (think yoga instructors, fitness coaches, crossfitters, acupuncturists, etc.) WaiverKing eliminates the paperwork involved and even allows for someone to have the waiver filled out and signed before they get to your studio.

That’s already awesome. What’s even awesomer is that they’re partnered with another service, [MindBodyOnline], which handles a full suite of services which health nuts hate dealing with. Marketing, billing, customer relationship management, etc.

So… The way it would ideally go down is a new client fills out the waiver digitally (at home or at the studio), a profile is automatically created inside of MBO and now you’re able to easily process payments and manage your new client! They’re seamlessly put into your marketing funnel and, ideally, you didn’t have to lift a finger!

Wow… That was a mouthful! I hope you pulled something informative from all of that (or at least had a chuckle somewhere). This is all the result of such a simple request… lol

Hi Casey,

Here is a link to try out one of our waivers

[LINK]

Give it a go, then can you write me a short article about you experience – anything you think that can showcase your talents.