Being a Planner Failed Me Today, But It COST Them Even More | 35
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Podcast Description
If you’ve been in my world for any amount of time, you know how big of a planner I am, but I like to preach flexible planning. And you know what? Even that failed me with the experience that I’m talking about on that podcast today.
Tune in to find out exactly what happened, how being a planner failed me this time around, but how it costs the company on the other side even more.
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Episode Transcript
(Note: This is a formatted AI-generated transcript to make it easier for you to read through, but is not an optimized blog post. Please excuse any spelling or grammar errors and filler words – it’s just how I speak LOL)
If you’ve been in my world for any amount of time, you know how big of a planner I am. But I like to preach flexible planning. But even that failed me with the experience that I’m talking about on that podcast today.
This is a total off the cuff, just a I needed to record this on a Saturday evening type of episode before I forget, because it’s something that happened to me that is really a good lesson for us as only in business owners.
And yes, it has to do with business organization but tune in to find out exactly how me being a planner failed me today, but how it costs the company on the other side even more.
Hey, I’m Lucy Reyes, your host of the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast, where I’m on a mission to help online entrepreneurs like you focus on all the right things and kiss overwhelm goodbye. Here, you’re going to learn strategies that will boost your productivity so that you can scale your online biz and impact lives sooner. It’s your time to shine so let’s get started!
Hello, hello and welcome to the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast. I am so excited to be here, and boy, do I have a story for you! So I know I had said that I wasn’t going to be popping on here for a couple of weeks. There was going to be a little bit inconsistent, but something happened today.
It is currently Saturday evening when I’m recording this. But I told my husband, I was like, I have to record this today while it is fresh in my head because something happened and it just, as it was happening and I’m going through all these different emotions and in my head, I’m just like, this is something that I need to share with my audience. I need to share my experience from the other side.
So, this is a very off the cuff. It, like I said, it’s very fresh, so might get a little ranty, but let me give you a little bit of background and what it is I’m even going to be talking about. So, One, this is a story that happened in my personal life. Okay.
But there is a lesson to be told here for us as online business owners so that is the real reason why I was like, you know what? I need to record this. I need to record this ASAP.
So here’s what happened or here’s a little bit of the backstory. So my son has been playing soccer since he was like three years old. We’ve had that, we’ve had him in several different leagues throughout all of the different years. So it’s kind of like a staircase where, you know, he upgrades from certain leagues at certain ages and he’s very passionate about playing soccer.
And so as, as parents, we’re trying to give them the best that we can to help him grow and improve on his skills. Right. So it was like three years ago, it was a little bit after the pandemic hit when we finally like put him back into soccer because we had taken a break, you know, that pandemic year that no one went outside or did anything.
And then when we put them back, everything has changed. Right? So everything has changed everywhere. I think we know that just the world changed period. And so the soccer world changed as well.
So we are aware of these kinds of things, but ever since we came back, everything has been really downhill and we have really struggled to find a really good league to keep my son in permanently.
So before the current league that he’s in right now, He was in another league and it was supposed to be this elite team. It was the first like elite team that we were putting him in. We were super excited for it. We weren’t that excited about the fees, but we were excited for what was supposed to be the level of coaching and experience that we were going to get.
And… it was the complete opposite. We kept him in there for a year and a half and we, we tried it out. We stayed, but that league was incredibly disorganized and it really, really showed. The coaches, never knew which team they were coaching. They were coaching multiple, multiple different kids at once on like in different fields for, during the games.
They wouldn’t show up on time. They weren’t like, it was a mess, but we stuck it out for a year and a half and then we were like, no. Like this is not working. We need to find a new league. And so my son, he has some friends where they were in a different league and so we’re like, okay, let’s try out that league. Let’s try out the league that his friends are in.
So we put him in his, this new league, which is the one that he’s in right now. And once we signed him up, his, his friend’s parents were like, yeah, it’s not that organized here, but the coaching is amazing. And we’re like, well, great. Another league that is not organized at all. Okay. Fine. Whatever. Like, we want really good coaching for my son. Right. And I was like, okay, that’s fine. Like, we will deal with it.
And then that first semester, first semester of that first season that we were in that league, in the league that we’re in right now. It was fine. Like, we didn’t really experience all of the disorganization that they hadn’t mentioned. So we’re like, oh, this is great. Like, the coaching is great. They get, they’re not perfect with like their schedule and all that stuff, but it’s decent enough and it’s better than it was before.
But then this season happened and it was like a complete 180. It has been very, very stressful. And mind you that this season was supposed to start in January. And I am recording this in April and we are just finishing like our real, our real first game of the season.
Because for those first four months, almost four months, we had no team to play against. They didn’t know what to do. They like we were playing a bunch of scrimmages. And that is definitely not what we signed up for. It is not what we had paid for. Right. We’re paying this exclusive fee for exclusive training and exclusive competitive games against other leagues. So that there’s that kind of background there.
So when the coach sent out this week, like, Hey, here’s a schedule for the season. Go put it in. Go check it out. Please let us know if you’re going to be there. And so here’s where like the actual like core of the story comes in.
Because if you’ve been following me, if you’re, if you’ve been in my world for a while, you know, I’m a big planner. You know, if it’s not in my calendar, I don’t get it done. Like it doesn’t happen. Is, and this is true for my personal life. Like I live and breathe by my Google calendar.
And so when they’re like, here’s a schedule, I was like, yes, finally. Right. Because we need to know what times these games are, because we have things to do besides living our lives around soccer. Right. We have families and birthday parties and events and all these other stuff that we have to plan around. And it makes it really hard when we don’t have our schedule until like the day before, which was a very frustrating.
So he sends out this email and he’s like, Hey, here’s the schedule. Let us know if you’ll be attending. So I put in all of those dates inside of my calendar. I transfer everything over from the app that we use.
And put it all into what our into my calendar, which also syncs up with my husband’s calendar so that way he can try to plan the best he can, his schedule around this soccer schedule, where so you see there’s a lot of moving pieces here that rely on this.
And so this is the part that failed me. Because apparently they changed the schedule location. They changed, they didn’t change the time, but they changed the location of the game to be at the complete opposite end of what they had put previously. And they didn’t let us know. They didn’t send us an email. They didn’t let us know.
So why they didn’t let us know. We have no idea. I’m like, why didn’t you tell us that you changed the schedule. Maybe you assumed that I was just going to go in and check on the app, but no. No, that is not the case.
So me and from what I could tell, at least another one other parent went to the old location and we were there. We’re both like, okay. We’ve never been to this location before. I don’t know what field it’s supposed to be, because again it’s so disorganized, every time we go play at a game, All of the parents are always very confused as far as like, which fields are we on? Which team are we playing against? Who’s coaching the team today.
It’s not good. So we’re there and me and her were talking and we’re like, where is everyone? We’re looking around? We see other other kids from the same league and we’re like, is that them? That doesn’t look familiar. And so there’s a coach, there’s a coach within the league. And we go and ask them.
And he’s like, oh, it’s going to be on one of these fields. And we’re like, okay, cool. Well, let me also share that on the app, they tell us, Hey please, please be there 30 minutes early for practice time and then the game starts.
Well, they never show up on time. They never show up for practice so a lot of parents have started not showing up early and then just show up in time for the game. Because most of the time we’re kind of left in limbo with no coach and the kids are just like, passing the ball around because they don’t know what to do. So it wasn’t strange that people hadn’t shown up.
And again, we went and asked the other coach and he’s like, oh yeah, it’s going to be in one of these two fields. And then there’s like five minutes before the actual kickoff time. And we’re like, okay, now something is up like what is going on? We don’t see anyone. So we go ask the coach again.
And now he’s actually like, okay, let’s figure this out. Let’s find out what’s going on. They changed the location. And then me and this other parent were like, what did you do? Did you put it like, did you get it in whenever they gave you the schedule and put it in your calendar? Like yes, she’s like, yeah, that’s what I did too.
So my lesson learned here as a planner is like, I can’t rely on other people to be the same way. Right. And this includes in my personal life. And I know this, I know this from my experience. I know not everyone is a planner. But we expect that this doesn’t happen and besides that,
it’s just the fact that they didn’t let us know. So this is the part where I say being a planner failed me this time. Like it truly, truly did because I just, you know, I was ahead of the game. I’d put it in my calendar and then they happened to change the location and they didn’t let us know. And so, because I have it on my calendar, I didn’t go back to check the app before heading out, which now I know that I need to check the app.
But because of everything that has been going on, all of our experiences, we will not be signing him up again. We are not going to sign them up to this league again because it has caused us so much stress for how disorganized this league is.
And this is where I wanted to share this with you because just because, like basically it’s due to their lack of organization in their business… they lost us as a customer, just like the last league.
And when we were on the last league, we had friends on that league that were saying the same thing. They weren’t happy and they were saying the same thing, like, we’re not signing up for this again. And this is trickling around in the soccer industry here in my city. Because it seems to be a common trend.
So we’re like, do we go to a different league and try again? Do we just take a break and wait it out until middle school? Do we find a local personal coach? Like what do we do?
But what we do know is, we definitely did not get the services that we signed up for, nor that we paid for. we’re not going to sign up again. And we are very much willing to sign him up again. We’re very much willing to pay a company money to teach my son the skills that he needs to improve soccer, to improve his soccer, playing skills. But this company just lost our business and it’s because they are so disorganized.
So I wanted to point this out to you because I always say how important it is to get your business organized for you, for your own sanity, for your own over like, to reduce your own overwhelm for all of the different things that I talk about on this podcast, that it’s important for you to be organized.
But something that I’ve never covered and I don’t know that I ever really even like thought about until today when it kind of happened. And I was like, This is an ah-ha moment for me. , is Whenever that we experienced this.
So I wanted to come on here and just let you know. You being disorganized as a business owner can impact more than just your own business. It can impact more than your own mental health and your own sanity. It could actually translate over to your clients and to your customers and to your students and to your members as well.
And of course this is depending also on just how disorganized your business could be, because isn’t that this is probably worst case scenario, what happened with us. We’re talking about a large, large company here.
But the point is getting your business organized not only helps you, but it helps you deliver a much better experience for the person on the other side.
And this is something that I never really touched on because I never really thought about it to be honest. I focus on helping you. I focus on helping you, the business owners so that way you can then go do what you do, work your magic and help the other people that you’re trying to help, the people in your niche. But you can help them in a much better way when you yourself are organized as a business as well.
So that is really what I wanted to share with you today because yeah, it was it’s coming from like a place of frustration of from myself and experience that I experienced. And while I know that there are other factors that are playing into this for us. There’s no communication. There’s no streamlined communication with us as far as any of this.
The coaches seem to be just as confused with their schedule. We we know that there seems to be a shortage amongst coaches and people to work with the organization. But that’s even more reason why you need to get your business organized and I’m not even just talking to you. I’m talking into them.
Because us as solopreneurs, we can run our businesses, which is a lot like we’re managing a lot of different things. We have a lot of different hats. We have a lot of moving pieces.
And so even us as solopreneurs, we’re moving all of these different things. Or we’re doing all of these different things and we can get that organized and it makes it easier for us to run our business. And then it makes it easier for you to bring on team members to help you do the same.
Getting your business organized is so, so helpful, not just to you as apparently I’m experiencing, but to the person and the people that you’re trying to help as well, because you are going to be able to do a much better job at helping them and delivering the best experience possible because you are going to be the best version of yourself.
You’re going to know where all your things are. You’re going to know when you need to send emails and reminders and all of these things. And of course, you’re going to have mistakes.
Of course you are going to forget sometimes like no one is perfect. We don’t expect you to be. Nor do I expect these leagues to be. It’s just been a constant thing over and over and over again where we can see that there’s no improvement.
There’s no improvement. And the underlying issue besides, you know, some of these other factors that we may not know about, but if they were organized, they definitely could have avoided some of the confusion and the frustration that has been going around going around, not just with us, but with all the other parents as well.
So that is my little stories slash rant slash lesson of the day that I just wanted to come on here and record about, so hopefully you got some value out of this lesson, out of this episode and let me know what you think.
If you have been experiencing something similar. If you have personally had an experience like this in your personal life. Or if you just want to like, share something else that you would like me to talk about on the podcast, go ahead and send me a DM on Instagram or even better is take a screenshot of you listening and tag me @cheerstoblogging.
I would love to know what do you think about these types of episodes, period. Like keep it to myself? Because this was very much a story telling type of episode. Absolutely no prep. It’s not in my Podcast Workflow Trello board. Like let’s just me coming on here and recording this for you so let me know we thought a bit about this episode and i hope that you have an amazing amazing day.
Thank you so much for tuning into the Cheerful Productive Chats Podcast with me, Lucy Reyes. To get the full show notes and all the links mentioned in today’s episode, visit cheerstoproductivity.com/35. And before you go, I would absolutely love it if you could subscribe and leave me a rating or review on whichever podcast app you’re listening from. i’ll talk to you soon and cheers your productivity and success!
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