I took it to share with my team at 8.15 am last Wednesday (simply to show off my chia, coconut yoghurt and fresh fruit medley), while in downtown Wyong, NSW.
At that moment, I was less than an hour away from presenting a full-day copywriting workshop to the comms team of a regional council – feeling quietly confident and relaxed.
And why wouldn’t I be? I’ve been a corporate trainer for over 17 years now. And although things don’t always go 100% to plan (dodgy whiteboard markers, I’m looking at you), it’s fair to say I’ve got this schtick down pat.
Or so I thought…
Because soon after polishing off my chia delight, I headed to the workshop venue, a 3-minute stroll away… only to discover I was in the wrong place – the wrong town – entirely!
The actual venue was a solid 15-minute drive away. (And I didn’t have a car.)
SIDE NOTE: If there’s one thing you should know about me as a workshop presenter, it’s that I’m borderline obsessive about punctuality. I start on time, every time (which means I arrive at least 30 minutes before kick-off, without exception).
So there I was, stranded on a dead-quiet side street in regional NSW, heart pounding as my Uber sat frozen ‘22 minutes away’. My 9 am start time? Not happening.
(Spoiler: Kev in his white Toyota Camry never showed. 🙃)
So what did I do? I called the client, fessed up and went into solution mode. (This was a workshop about communicating with humanity and clarity, after all.)
Thankfully, my client agreed to push the session out by half an hour – and I managed to arrive in time for the revised start time of 9.30 am. (This was all thanks to one of the workshop participants kindly who jumped in her car to rescue me. Shout-out to Ally!)
Breathe, Vikki. Breathe.
At 9.28 am, I charge in and race to the front to start setting up… but then the next bombshell:
I had forgotten to pack a specific cable that my client had specifically asked me to bring to connect my laptop to the room’s AV.
Breathe, Vikki. Breathe.
Back into solution mode we go again. Enter Jen, yet another ever-so-kind workshop participant, who offered to race down to the nearest Officeworks – a casual 20-minute drive away – to purchase the elusive cable. (Another shout out please, this time to Jen.)
By now it was now 9.35 am. So I decided enough was enough and kicked off anyway, despite the obvious absences:
No cable. No slides. No Jen. 😟
Fast forward to 10.17 am. Jen was back, the new cable was projecting my slides beautifully – and all went swimmingly from that point on.
And you know what? I honestly think I ended up delivering the best workshop of my life. (If I do say so myself.)
Naturally though, a morning like that comes with a few solid takeaways. The kind you don’t get from a textbook. And here they are.
1. Even great systems need a tune-up I’ve always been a stickler for tight processes. And while I thought our workshop briefing and logistics processes were solid, this event showed that there’s always room for improvement. (My team and I have already performed a post-mortem: I’m confident this type of screw-up won’t happen again.)
2. Short lead times come with risks One of our policies at CSA is a 30-day buffer between workshop booking and delivery. Over the years, we’ve found this to be a good amount of time for our team to get a proper brief from our client, design the course, print the materials and confirm logistics. In this case, we made an exception – with under 7 days to pull it all together. I guess it’s a good reminder that policies are there for a reason.
3. Recovery is about action, not excuses Things went wrong. No denying that. But once that was behind me, I was 100% in – and gave it my absolute all. And the feedback from the client at the end of the day backed that up. They LOVED the course. Plus, when I learned that one of their staff members was off sick that day, I offered a free spot in our next public copywriting course – a small gesture to help make things right. When stuff goes sideways, owning it really matters.
That day, 19 March 2025, was a humbling reminder that no matter how experienced you are, things can and do still go wrong. But with the right attitude – and a few helpful humans around you – you can turn it around.