Product Launch Disasters, Delayed Planes & Flat Tires

What do you think these three things have in common?  Well besides the obvious, that we wouldn’t want any of these to happen to us, or wish them upon anyone else…

The commonality in these three things, is each of them has happened to me… Thankfully only two of them have happened in one week, the other one occurred many moons ago.  So the two I had happen to me this week are the flat tire and the delayed plane.

The ironic part about the delayed plane is not once in my 7 trips I’ve taken this year was I ever delayed or have any issues flying.  So the one time I’m not traveling for more than 30 days, but my son is, he gets this incredible delay.  He’s only 12 and flying alone. He was supposed to leave on Sunday afternoon at 4:50pm for a short flight to Portland, Maine. He’s visiting his aunt, uncle and cousins.  There was bad weather and the plane was delayed 5 times.  When it was 8:30pm and we were in the President’s Club, trying to access our situation, the plane was delayed again until 11:50 pm. That’s when I made an executive decision that he wasn’t going to be leaving tonight. It was scary enough this was his first flight alone, and then he’s leaving at such a late time.  So the agents at Continental were awesome and were able to book him on the next flight in the a.m. for no charge. (Albeit, that plane the next day was delayed 2 hours, but eventually it did take off- yeah!)

Then as my son and I were driving back from the airport (mind you he had been there since 3:30pm and it was now 9pm) I hear this funny noise and the car starts pulling to the left. Thank goodness there was traffic and I wasn’t going that fast. So I pulled over on the side of the highway. I very carefully got out of the car to check out the tire and as the cars were literally whizzing by my head going at least 80 mph,  sure enough, the tire was flat. It was bad too.  (Check out the photo- see that ragged edge all around the tire- not good.  I couldn’t take the photo while it was on the car- way too dangerous, it was on the drivers side front tire).   So I safely got back in the car and called AAA.  This had happened to me before at night like this, so I was pretty calm and I knew how important it was to stay calm.  So we hunkered down with the hazard lights and headlights on.  After a few minutes we were visited by a state trooper who wanted to make sure we were ok.  He said to keep all our lights on and to keep our seat belt fastened. That didn’t make me too comfortable, but I totally got it and said a little prayer that we wouldn’t end up as a statistic or casualty of the Route 78 west in NJ… And my son was so cool about the whole thing.  He laughed at one point and said “well we needed an excuse to spend some “quality” time together.”  He can be funny under pressure…  

It only took 2 more calls and our AA angel arrived and made us stay in the car while he jacked it up and changed our tire. Now that was kind of weird, but safety first.  So it only took 75 minutes, then we were back on the road with the spare on making our way home.

It’s these types of experiences that keep me grounded and centered. To me my life now and going forward is simply about being in THE moment, not thinking about the past or the future, just about being in the present, the here the now…

So this brings me to briefly touch upon my experience of being a part of a product launch disaster.  If you haven’t seen Jeff Walker’s video on this, you have to check it out.  I learned everything I know about making money online from Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula and from being in his Platinum Product Launch Manager Coaching Group. (That photo is when I first met Jeff over 3 years ago at his first ever workshop for Product Launch Formula 1.0)  So over 3 years ago when I first started doing launches I had my own failures.  The real secret to doing a kick butt product launch is having an incredible tech person on your team. This is what hurt me on one of my earlier launches.  I have many more tips for you about launches. I’m dedicating my June newsletter to launches and product creation.  So… if you’re not on my printed newsletter list, sign up here so you can get all my behind the scenes secrets about launches.

Here’s to staying in the moment, being grateful and not letting the little stuff like flat tires and delayed planes ruin my day… I truly have so much to be grateful for.  Your thoughts?

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