So there I am, running a meeting yesterday morning with 40 people who we have marketed to talk about our coaching programmes and my internet goes down. It is too late to get cover but the Zoom meeting has kicked me out 5 times in 10 minutes. Panic starts to rise in the pit of my stomach, I can’t continue the meeting, I have to shut down it down early and let them know we will have to reschedule.
These sorts of things are the stuff of nightmares. Marketing is a tough cookie and getting people into a room often takes a good amount of time and money. I have had a lot of challenges running events in the past
- Challenging client personalities (very assertive and disruptive people who think everyone is trying to scam them)
- Venues being double booked
- Illness (and sometimes hangovers)
- Laptop having the blue screen of death (resorting to me have to deliver the event by memory)
- General tech issues with projector screens
However, I never having to stop half way through. I was coming off my back of the first bout of illness in a while and was feeling a little groggy. I am currently on a short trip and not in my usual house and it just so happened that the internet decided to keep dropping out.
The worries and thoughts that were on my mind were:
- This is not very professional
- I hope we don’t lose credibility with these people
- What a waste of time and money getting those people into the room
- This is a big opportunity cost, we could have got a good number of people onto the coaching programmes to help them with their goals
It was a moment of frustration and vulnerability. These things aren’t nice. There isn’t always a hidden meaning behind these things and it is okay to be frustrated by them. I allowed myself to sit in those feelings whilst I closed the meeting down and went to see my 5 month old daughter in the other room. It took me about 15 minutes to shake off the negative cobwebs and get back to normal.
I then felt inspired to write about it. I honestly didn’t want to write it that day, it was a little raw, so I am writing it today. Again, this isn’t your 5 Steps to Avoid Failure style blog, this is more of a Bad Stuff Happens Sometimes style message instead.
Sometimes you can’t plan for this stuff. The internet had been working previously and I had a meeting the day before, it was just a number of factors (new house, new internet, not having cover, internet randomly playing up) that happened.
Just the day before, I was speaking with some of our newly qualified coaches about the fear of failure. Some were stuck in the ‘Overthinking’ box and worrying about the ‘What ifs’. I was encouraging them to take action and lean into opportunities. If you run the event and only one person turns up, that is one person you can help. It takes a bit of time to build momentum and there are many different skills to learn (marketing, sales, confidence, coaching skills, etc). I would always prefer to take lots of action, even if that means making a few mistakes along the way. Instead of being stuck in the perfectionist trap which leads to a lot of procrastination. You can learn from your mistakes and improve the next time.
So, the message for today is…Mistakes happen and it can suck. I know, not that motivational. However, in reality, it is a drop in the ocean. I am incredibly grateful for the work that I do. I am surrounded by very interesting people that want to make a difference to other through speaking and coaching. I have a lot of flexibility with my job and get to travel and choose my working hours. At SPEAKup Challenge, we have run over 750 of the events in the past few years, having 1 go wrong isn’t that bad. We will bounce back. If you have or are facing set backs, you will bounce back too! As long as your pursuit it interesting enough for you and you enjoy your work, you won’t mind the odd mistake.
For anyone that was affected by that event being cancelled, I do apologise. We have more coming up for coaching this month and will have some more for speaker training soon (for confidence and presenting skills).
1-Day Coaching Diplomas to start your coaching journey. For those who want more speaking support, here is the link to our speaking training. It’ll help you to develop a plan to achieve your goals and build a successful coaching business.
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