Webinar Flop.. And What I Learned.

March 16, 2017

My Webinar Flop

I was all setup to run my first webinar. I had run a mildly successful Facebook ad to drive in some viewers. Everything was setup and ready to go! It would end up being my first webinar flop.

Then I noticed that my internet speed was almost at a crawl. I thought to myself, “There is no way this could be happening.. Right now!” But it was, it really really was happening in that moment.

I panicked and called Comcast in a hurry to see if there was anything they could see or do on their end. While the phone was ringing I quickly rebooted my modem. There was less than 15 minutes less until the start of my webinar. The lady on the phone wound up not being of much help to my situation.

Booting up my iMac to run my webinar off my iPhone’s cell connection. I was far from prepared to deal with this crisis in the moment. I started to move the phone as it quickly became apparent that the tech on the phone wasn’t going to be able to help me in this situation. At that point the webinar was a flop, I was three minutes late to start.

What followed was mess up that I created and potentially lost business because of.

I loaded up the webinar webpage on my iMac where I thought I could run it off my cell phone’s connection. Then I realized that I didn’t have an easy way to share the presentation and view the preview window for the upcoming slide. I didn’t think I had hit the broadcast button, but I totally did.

With my iMac still streaming I switched back over to my Windows PC in front of me, and thought I was broadcasting from there. It showed my camera, and the presentation on my second monitor properly. There were a few people in the the webinar waiting for it to begin, so I hit the broadcast button on my pc and started to talk. About 5 minutes in I received a text message from my VA letting me know that they couldn’t hear my voice. To boot she could only see the title slide to my presentation and a live video feed of the side of my head.

I looked to my right and realized I had hit the broadcast button on my iMac. I quickly shut that down, but it didn’t change the fact that my PC wasn’t streaming to the webinar. I hit the refresh button, thinking I could just jump back in and start over. Unfortunately, when I shut down the broadcast on my iMac I couldn’t my PC to pick up the stream.

And then…

I realized that the stream had ended and officially.. I had a webinar flop on my hands. I decided to not be defeated and started up a new webinar and then sent out an email to each of the users that had registered for the webinar.

Not a single one showed up to watch the new webinar. Even my VA couldn’t watch because it was cutting in and out for her.

I decided

Annoyed and frustrated but I decided to not let this get me down. I got on the phone and called Comcast to try again. One hour later I was convinced my issue was an analog issue that I couldn’t fix myself. I had my next webinar scheduled in two days. Fortunately I was able to schedule for 7 AM that morning (Friday) of my next webinar.

I could have let this completely ruin my night and entire next day. Trying to not let frustration get the better you is a decision. Decide to take the harder road and defeat frustration. Looking at the bright side is not just about a mindset shift, but a complete overhaul of how you look at life. I talk about this in my first book 31 Life-Changing Concepts.

End Result

Comcast came out two days later and corrected my issue with a wire that needed to be replaced. The tech was super helpful in many different ways that I won’t even get into on this post.

I may potentially have lost revenue in my new business venture (234 Solutions), and that is OK! The most important parts to this story is I got to experience the software for the first time and my internet issues corrected for the future. Keep your head up at all times. Always be looking for another solution or route. Be aware that lessons are at every turn. Refuse to be bogged down by what didn’t go right with your plans. And above all to remember even with a webinar flop..