It was a week of lessons for me.
This Wednesday was the first session of my live training course, Smart Facebook Marketing. In it, I teach businesses how to profitably use Facebook to grow their organizations.
Several hours before the session started, I noticed that my desktop computer had Windows updates waiting. I thought I would restart my computer; I would have plenty of time to install the updates and make sure everything was working well. I like to be ready early.
I usually restart my computer a few hours before I do online training so that everything is working at its best. I don’t like it when I’m watching others online and their computer malfunctions, and I don’t like it to happen to me.
Well, this time it didn’t go well. There were twenty-four updates, and when my computer restarted, very little worked. I contacted my tech support person after I tried everything I could think of.
He responded right away, but my computer was so messed up that he couldn’t even log in.
Whoops. Now what?
I had worked on putting the finishing touches on my presentation the night before. Did I have the file where I could get to it? Was my laptop going to work?
Well, my laptop was going to have to do. It is a good computer, but with the built in screen and the smaller additional one I have for it, I didn’t have nearly the screen space to work with that I normally have.
I set it up and found the newest presentation file, and everything worked well (thank you, Dropbox). I waited to update the laptop until I had my main computer back.
My question is, what would have happened if I hadn’t stored my files on Dropbox? What if I didn’t have another computer I could use?
People had paid me for this training session. They expected me to provide what I said I would. How would it look if the very first session I couldn’t be on time ready to go?
In this case, I had plan B ready. I’m not always that prepared, though I try to be.
How about you? Are you ready to do what you promised by when you said you would do it, no matter what else is happening?
Take a look at your systems (there’s that word again). I wrote about systems last week, and if you missed that article, click here to read it.
Have a great week!