Hi there 🙂
If you’ve known me for more than a few days, you probably know that I play World of Warcraft…
And one of the old adverts for a new addition to the game used the words “you are not prepared”.
Try to say them out loud and put the stress on different words:
“YOU are not prepared” – “You ARE not prepared” – “You are NOT prepared”…
I’m babbling a bit, because I was up all night playing…
Then I thought I would take an easy day and then go more playing, when things happened really fast…
Would you be prepared if this happened to you?
I was. Sheer luck – ah, and maybe some careful planning.
What happened was this…
I had two tasks in my calendar for today, and I was preparing mentally for the first with a good cup of home-roasted coffee, when I received a support ticket.
Somebody couldn’t find the buy-button for the product that was scheduled to launch tomorrow. I told him it would be there tomorrow at 10am EST.
Then two other support tickets arrived simultaneously. Weird. Same questions.
I started to see a pattern here…
A few seconds later my friend Leah wrote to me on Skype: Where is the buy button? Help!
I told her that the product hadn’t launched, and she said, “Oh no! I thought it launched yesterday.”
While we were discussing what to do, more support tickets arrived, and she received more mails, so we decided to put it up for sale, a prelaunch, for a fixed price until tomorrow at 10am EST.
I was SO lucky that this didn’t happen last time I launched…
This time everything was ready. Well, almost everything. I didn’t have time to test some new settings, but I got it straighted out fast.
What I do is simply this:
I’ve made a check-list.
Since I have made products in the past, and I plan to make products in the future, I’ve made a check-list, based on my experience about what I had to do, and things I’d forgotten previously.
It contains everything, like “create the product” (doh! but I included it), “set up product in Zaxaa”, “set up product download page” – everything.
That makes me prepared. And luckily, I was also prepared ahead of time.
Do you use checklists?
I find that they save me a lot of trouble and energy, because I make sure I get everything done.
I have my checklist inside Evernote, and it’s syncronized with Evernote online, on my gamer PC, on my tablet, and even on my phone, so I’m certain to have it with me, even if I’m not at home.
And now the video
This is the video, I was talking about in the beginning. Listen to that voice: “you are not prepared” 😀 Awesome!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBHL_-biMrQ
Best regards,
P.S. Watch the video – that voice is just awesome 😀