What do you do when things don’t go as planned?

Even when you plan things… and plan them well life can throw you some curve balls.

This month my husband and I are living aboard our 38′ sailboat, Ostara in a marina in St. Petersburg, Florida. Our plan? To spend some time getting boat projects completed so we can sail off into the sunset for several weeks.

We were organized. I organized the daily sort of things–making sure we have food and a reasonable comfortable place to live. My husband organized the boat repairs things. He’s a spreadsheet kind of a guy and he had things listed and categorized according to importance.

We arrived eager to dive into the list of chores and although we weren’t really quite on a hard and fast schedule (it’s a vacation too for heavens sake) we were making progress. Then… the crown from my dental implant fell out. Not the best situation but how hard could it be to cement the thing back in?

It took some work finding a dentist but our boat neighbors referred us to someone who saw me the same day I called and I went in full of hope that this would be over in an hour or so. Not so. Turns out the quick fix (I won’t go into the technical details I don’t understand) didn’t work and he needed to order some thingamabob in order to make an impression, then do some additional work in the office and then finally voila he can get the crown back in.

How long would this take? About a couple of weeks.

Even this plan didn’t work out…again, I’ll spare you the details but ultimately, I would have to live with it until I returned home in June.

Needless to say, none of this was on our spreadsheet or calendars. And honestly, this is just one example of things happening that weren’t planned for.

But business is a lot like this too, right? You set goals, you make plans, you set up systems and life happens.

The book doesn’t sell. Clients don’t show up. Equipment fails and is on back order.

What do you do? First maybe you cry and panic. That’s okay. Take a moment.

But then you go back to the drawing board and you revise your spreadsheet. You decide to use the problem in a productive way.

Does it help you understand your clients better? Does it inspire you to create a new product or program? Maybe you create a better system. Did you need the extra time before a launch anyway?

Here’s a question I’ve learned to ask: Where is the opportunity in this?

Sailing and running a business have a lot in common. Sometimes things don’t go as planned and you just gotta work with it. But there is always something to be learned and alternate paths to venture down.