Open Your Self Up To New Possibilities

Gift
  1. Blogging for Benjamin Competition
  2. Why I'm Grateful to Work on the Web
  3. 24 Pull Requests
  4. Update Downloadable Product's Expiration Date in WooCommere
  5. Get Lost in the Flow and Work for More Than a Salary
  6. Why A Plugin's Popularity Matters
  7. Why You Should (Or Shouldn't) Use Premium Plugins
  8. WooCommerce Terms & Conditions
  9. Only Ship to Continental United States with WooCommerce
  10. Just Talk
  11. Why I Love Jetpack
  12. Making Jetpack Better
  13. Remove Billing Address for Free Virtual Orders in WooCommerce
  14. Notify Admin of Customer Address Change in WooCommerce
  15. Open Your Self Up To New Possibilities
  16. 2013 Resolutions Review
  17. Create a Community
  18. Tips for Starting a Community
  19. The Intent of Goals
  20. Create The Ultimate Invoicing System Using WooCommerce
  21. Change From Address in Ninja Forms
  22. Work With People Who Inspire You
  23. Contact Form 7 & MailPoet Integration
  24. Monotasking
  25. Giving Back to The Community
  26. Adding Fuctionality to Lean Plugins
  27. Choose Stripe For a Payment Gateway
  28. A Dip Into Entrepreneurship
  29. Reward Yourself
  30. Blogging for Benjamin Plugin
  31. Blogging for Benjamin Wrap Up

About two months ago I added Jetpack to my site and gave users the option to sign up for my posts via email. And since that time there's a whopping 7 users that have signed up. Coincidentally I also started using Jetpack's Publicize functionality to post my blog posts to Facebook and so my grandpa followed one of those Facebook posts and became the first user to signup for my blog via email!

New Possibilities

I wasn't expecting my grandpa to be my first subscriber but it's actually turned out to be a really nice experience. Over the last couple weeks we've had some excellent email conversations about showing passion about the things you work for, working remotely, getting lost in the flow of daily activities, and about becoming less shy (yes I used to be very shy). All of these conversations were based on blog posts that I wrote mostly for professional development reasons.

This experience really reinforces that there are new possibilities everywhere. When you write a blog post, either to document what you've done, to get some feedback from the community, or for some other reason you've just opened yourself up to connect to just about anyone on the internet. And it's not just blog posts; it's products, leaving testimonials on a site, going to a WordCamp, opening a pull request, etc. It can really be anything where you get your name or face out there.

I've had a huge number of these crazy random happenstances happen to me in the last year and when I look back I wouldn't want to miss out on a single one of them.

  • Dustin Filippini introduced himself to me after seeing me on the WPWatercooler. We later worked together to organize WordCamp Milwaukee and I was invited to speak.
  • After speaking at WordCamp Milwaukee an attendee came up and thanked me and we discovered that she actually build a website for my grandpa (different grandpa)!
  • After launching the my MailPoet extension for Ninja Forms I was contacted by one of the founders for MailPoet and we later met up at WordCamp Europe and discussed some further projects

Open the Door

My point here is that there are possibilities behind every door but you'll never know about them unless you open the door. In my experience it's pretty rare for an opportunity to fall into your lap. It's far more likely for you to have to first open the door. So take chances: blog, publish, code, review, travel, meet. It's only after you do all of these things that you'll have opportunities fall into your lap.

Photo Credit: Hades2k

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.