How to Recover After You Screw Up

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1:33There's no safe like SimpliSafe. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch.

1:58I recently bombed for the first time in my professional career. Like, truly bombed. It happened over the summer. I was speaking at a conference in Las Vegas, telling a story that I had told hundreds of times. Because, in case you don't know, this is part of how I make a living. I travel around and I give keynote talks to professionals, organizations, companies, and so on. So I've done this so many times and never, never had something gone wrong in the way that it went wrong. My mind scrambled. I couldn't recover. I stammered. I struggled. Hundreds of people watched this happen. It was excruciating and embarrassing and alarming.

2:43But here is the truly shocking part. It wasn't a disaster. People were happy, grateful even. They thanked me. So today, I'm going to tell you what happened because the next time that I lose control, this is the insight that I'm going to rely upon to get me through. And I know that it can help you too. So that's what's coming up today on Problem Solvers. All right, we're back. Well, let's just get into it. Here is what happened. So picture it. I'm in a Las Vegas conference room about to be the keynote speaker at something called Valuation Expo. It was a conference for real estate appraisers. And before I go on stage, this guy comes over to me and introduces himself and says, hey, I'll be your timekeeper.

3:28So I'll flash you cards when you have 10 and then five minutes left. I say, thanks. I'm not worried about time. I've been hired to give a 30-minute talk, and I know exactly how to do that. So no problem. Then I'm introduced, and I hit the stage, and I'm feeling good. crowd is engaged. I'm full of energy. It's happening. I do my opening. And then I am halfway through the first real section of my talk, of which in this case, there were going to be three of them. So I'm halfway through the first section and the timekeeper flashes me a 10. Well, that can't be right, I think to myself. Maybe he means I've been on stage for 10 minutes.

4:06I certainly don't have 10 minutes left. It's confusing, but I try to put it out of my mind. I wrap up the first section of my talk, and then I start the second, and then the timekeeper flashes me a five. Now I am very confused. Clearly, he means that I have five minutes left. But how is that possible? I know how long my talks take, and I should have like 18 minutes left. But if there are five minutes left, then the way I'm thinking about it is that means I have been on stage for 25 minutes. My mind starts to spin. Where did that time go? How did I just waste all that time? Did I just ramble for 25 minutes?

4:46Is something wrong? And what do I do now? How do I even wrap this talk up in five minutes? As I am wondering all this, I am also, of course, trying to keep my talk going because nobody else sees this. Nobody else knows what's going on. I'm still performing. So in fact, I was in the middle of a fun story about a beer company. Again, a beer company that I have told a story about for years. But now my brain is overwhelmed. I start to lose control. Words become harder. I'm just processing too many things at the same time. And now look, I have experienced a lot of problems on stage, and I pride myself on navigating them.

5:25I've had tech failures, loud noises, disruptive audience members. I know how to handle it all with grace and humor. But the problem has never been me. And I have no playbook for this. So I stop. I apologize to the audience. I try to keep going, but I can't find my mental footing. Then I stop again. An attendee tries to be helpful. It reminds me of the last words that I said. And I try. I try again, but I just cannot do it. And then I realized something really important. I am trying to finish my story here on stage, and the crowd is nervously rooting for me to just get through it. which means that the story is no longer the point.

6:10In fact, this whole talk is no longer the point. So I take the clicker, you know, the clicker that you use to advance slides on a presentation. I'm just holding it in my hand. I take this clicker and I just fling it onto a nearby chair. And I look at the audience and I say, you know what? Fuck it. The crowd laughs, they clap, the whole room relaxes. And then I just start talking to them. I tell the crowd that I'm exhausted, which is true. I had slept poorly the night before, woke up early, flew from New York to Las Vegas, and hit the stage at 4.30 p.m. Pacific time, which was 7.30 p.m. from my body.

6:47It had been a long day. And then I tried telling them some other things. I mean, my brain is in knots, and my body is a mix of adrenaline and panic, and I'm only half as coherent as I wished, but I try. I tell them that I have seen this happen to other speakers. I tell them that this is scary. I attempt to give some advice about maintaining control in difficult situations and how every mistake is an opportunity to learn. I apologize. I make a few jokes. I thank them for being so understanding. And then I just get off the stage defeated. And that is when I get clarity. First, the timekeeper runs over to apologize.

7:25And he is so nice, guys. He's so nice. And he explains what happened. So it's worth pausing here to appreciate how this all went wrong. Okay, I was supposed to go on stage at 4.30, 4.30 p.m. And this timekeeper's job was to get me off stage at 5. 30-minute talk, 4.30 to 5. Got it. But the previous session went long. And then the sound guys had to fix something. So I didn't get going on stage until maybe like 4.43. And the timekeeper was not sure what to do. What does he do? Does he let me talk for 30 minutes? or does he just get me off stage at five, which was what his original plan was? So he decides to stick to the original plan.

8:06He decides to have me wrap up by five. This is why his time cues were off. Instead of pacing me for a 30-minute talk, he was pacing me for a 17-minute talk, but I had no idea. Nobody told me. Now, again, I don't blame him. I could have paused and I could have asked for clarification. I could have said, excuse me, this is a little weird, but I'm getting signals that don't really match, which would have been awkward, yeah, but also would have totally saved the day. I was on stage. I was in charge. It is a great lesson for next time. But then attendees started to approach me and they started telling me their own stories of blanking out.

8:42It made me feel better about myself knowing that you're not perfect, one said. That was the most real thing I saw today, another person said. And then I learned that nobody, nobody in this room is upset. The event organizers, my dear friends Hal and Kim who put this event together. I've known them forever. They thought I handled this really well. It also taught them an important lesson. They said next year, they're hiring a showrunner to avoid these kinds of miscommunications. And then the sponsor who had paid specifically to cover my speaking fee so I could go out there and do this talk, sponsor was also happy.

9:14They thought the talk was positive and memorable. So thank you, Service Link. That was the sponsor. As it goes on, my brain starts to clear. I feel relieved, but something, you know, something still nags at me. And it's this. I keep thinking, what could I have done better? I struggle to fall asleep that night because I keep replaying the situation in my head. And I keep wondering, what else could I have done on that stage after my talk fell apart? How could I have made it even more powerful, even more memorable? I start to conjure scenarios or what psychologists call counterfactual thinking. I settle on this alternate reality.

9:55It goes like this. I'm standing on stage. The talk has crashed. And then I should have asked everyone to raise their hand in the audience if they have messed up in a big moment. And then I would be like, look around the room and recognize how universal this experience is. And then I would share some big, powerful lesson. I just cannot get this idea out of my head. I am so regretful. I wish I had thought of that in the moment. I wish that I had done better. And I need some kind of outside perspective because I'm just, I'm stuck in my head. I'm not going to get any sleep. So I opened my phone and I mean, it's really late.

10:29Like my friends are all asleep at this point. And I record a voice memo from my friend, Catherine Morgan Schaffler. She is a brilliant psychotherapist. I explain what happened. I tell her how I handled it and how I'm now stuck imagining all these ways that I could have handled the moment better. And And this idea I had for everyone raising their hand and blah, blah, blah. You know, speaking aloud is so helpful. It's like taking ideas out of your head and putting them on a shelf where they can just be dealt with later. And then I text Catherine that voice memo. It was like 10 minutes long. And I fall asleep.

11:02And when I wake up, I have her response. Catherine says that she loves everything that I did in this whole story, except for my fantasy about how I could have handled the moment better. You're looking for a perfect version of this, she told me, but your perfect version is much less powerful than what ended up happening. And then she tells me this. It was so good that I wrote it down. So I'm just reading it word for word, but this is from her voice memo. She says, your version of perfect is a version where you don't trust the audience to figure out what everyone in that room knew and now gets to remember, which is that we all get scrambled and we all have a choice to make about how we recover.

11:40And the speed and efficiency with which we recover isn't the thing that matters. What matters is that people see us trying. People see us making mistakes. And people see us making reparative measures. The reparative measure is what matters, not whether the reparative measure is immediately efficient. End quote. That was Catherine. This is exactly what I needed. In other words, Catherine was telling me, don't measure yourself by how quickly or impressively you recover. Measure yourself by your efforts and intentions. That is what's controllable, and that is what people will see and remember. When I get home, I tell my wife, Jen, this whole saga, and she has a great perspective too.

12:25She tells me, you know, you went to give people a helpful message, and what happened wasn't the message you intended to give, but it was an important message anyway. And they'll remember it. And that's all true. This happened over the summer. And I honestly have been getting messages from attendees ever since. One person wrote me and they said, earlier today I was shaking just to stand up and ask a question of a panel of my peers like a fragile child. You were a rock star. Another person wrote, I know you feel like you bombed and lost track of your story, but literally you were the best speaker by far.

13:00And I loved how authentic you were, even with your frazzledness. These messages, I got to tell you, meant the world to me. They still do. But now I also understand what motivates them. You are not measured against perfection. You're measured against something deeper, more human, more realistic, and more lasting. So in difficult moments, move towards that thing. Don't worry about whether you do it well or quickly or beautifully. Just worry about doing it. and that by the way that whole thing came from a newsletter that i wrote it's called one thing better each week one way to be more successful and satisfied and build a career or company that you love you can find that newsletter by going to the web address one thing better dot email like i said that is a web address so just plug it into a browser one thing better dot email each week i send out something like that it is full of stories and lessons and my goal is to just help you be better.

14:00And I hope that that is what me sharing this, this excruciating moment has done for you. And that's our episode. But hey, let's keep the conversation going. I write a newsletter called One Thing Better, where each week I offer one way to be successful and satisfied and build a career or company you love. You can find it at onethingbetter.email. That's a web address. Just plug it into a browser. One thing better dot email. And if you respond to any of those emails, I'll get it. And I promise to reply back. Problem Solvers is a production of Entrepreneur Media, and it comes out every Monday morning.

14:40So make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss an episode. Thanks to the team at Entrepreneur and particularly Deepa Shah for production. My name is Jason Pfeiffer. See you next week.