Nikki and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Internet

at least I didn’t wake up with gum in my hair ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ I ran a workshop for ProductLed last Thursday. I was really excited about it – I’ve been doing a lot of ecomm presentations lately and it was SO good to be back into teaching SaaS stuff. Also, Wes (founder of ProductLed) was super hands-on in the prep of the material and it was going to be super interactive. I loved that participants would walk away with their entire onboarding experience mapped out. Should’ve been perfect, right? Enter: tech Monday? Zippy internet. Tuesday? We ran a completely snag-free dry run. Wednesday? Zippididooda. But not Thursday. Worse: It wasn’t just intermittent audio. I was juggling a few tabs (my slides, my notes, the example workflow map, and the template workflow map in Whimsical) and every time I switched tabs, everything reloaded all over again. It. was. painful. I couldn’t sleep that night. I was rehashing every slow transition.  wondering what I could have done differently. feeling like a total, unprofessional idiot. Should I refund him? I wondered. But I put in so much work. And the audience did get value, just not the experience we wanted to give. Partial refund? But it wasn’t even about the money, was it? Wes cares deeply about giving his students the best. All this was on loop in my head, the entire night. The next morning I saw an email from Wes and I... ignored it. I figured I could get away with a little head-in-the-sand-ing because it was Friday, and he knows I don't usually work Fridays. But come Monday, I didn’t have that excuse anymore. I opened his email.  And breathed a HUGE sigh of relief. Because he told me everyone loved it and no one noticed any internet issues and – NO. Because he was honest. His feedback was incredibly encouraging and positive – but didn’t skirt around the tech issues. (Or the fact that my delivery was flat because I was so flustered.) He unveiled the elephant in the room. And he gave me an out: Could we do a re-record? He didn’t just move on – oh well, that was a failed masterclass, better luck next time. He didn’t play ostrich – that was great, thanks for joining us! He wasn’t mean – that was a horrible waste of all our time and I’m demanding a refund He thought about what went wrong and the ramifications. Brainstormed a little on how – not to mop up spilled milk but – to optimize for the future. We couldn’t salvage the live version. But we could make the vault version better. And the cherry on top? He offered to send me a Yeti. So I’d be happy to spend the extra time – and to get the super audio clarity he wanted. Now that’s what I call genius people management. – Nikki 🍒 P.S. I’ve since called my internet provider and after a surprisingly not-3-hour-hold-time, they rebooted and things have been swimming. Not sure why they need me to call them to reboot things but m’kay. We’ll be switching to fiber optics, thanks very much. Sent to: {EMAIL} Nikki*Elbaz, 25 N 6th Ave, Highland Park, NJ 08904, United States [Unsubscribe](