As a professional speaker who travels for a living, I know that on any given day the weather can mess up plans with clients. Miraculously, in the 24 years that I have been speaking, the weather has impacted my ability to deliver just three times. Tuesday was one of those times.

I had been asked to conduct a day-long practice retreat for the Boltz Eyecare team out of Columbus, Ohio. But after six hours yesterday at O’Hare Airport, several delays, and then finally mechanical failure, my flight was cancelled with no opportunity to get there in time for the retreat.

So how can I still deliver great customer service and not cancel on my client? Technology to the rescue!

After discussing it with Dr. Boltz, we came to the conclusion that rescheduling to another day would not work for a variety of reasons. We agreed to try a virtual retreat. The whole team all gathered at the meeting site while I stayed at home and joined the meeting by computer. And although it was not quite the same, it was a very close second best option. We laughed, learned, and found ways to still have a very productive experience.

My lesson from all this: instead of being stressed and worried about what we couldn’t do because of circumstances out of our control, we quickly dusted ourselves off and said “What CAN we do?” I found the people at this office to be one of the most in-sync and truly patient-focused teams I’ve met over the years.

Here’s our group photo. I’m the one inside the laptop screen—what a hoot!