Things Will Go Wrong

One of the most important lessons I have learned while running VaynerMedia is that even though everything may appear to be done and ready, the successful execution of a project doesn’t occur until the metaphorical clock reads zero and “the game is officially over,” or in this case when the client says “great job!” It is important to understand that anything can go wrong at any time (and more often than not… it will).

We’re done, or are we?

A great example of this concept is a project VaynerMedia recently executed, utilizing a Facebook Page tab. The night before the project launch, I made a “final” review to make sure everything looked and worked correctly. It was 11:30PM on Friday night and the project was set to launch at 7:30AM the next morning. Everything seemed perfect, but to be safe, I set an alarm up for 7:15AM to ensure a smooth launch. I woke up the next morning and, of course, the tab wasn’t working*. I immediately notified the client and started calling members of the VaynerMedia team. We were able to quickly diagnose the issue and applied a temporary fix, followed by a complete fix later that day (shout out to Sameer for picking up his phone at 7:30AM on a Saturday).

The lesson learned

Be prepared for the worst. As I was setting my alarm that night I thought to myself, “there is no way anything can go wrong, everything is done, I should just sleep in.” If I had followed through with that initial line of thinking, our client would have had an unsuccessful launch, and would most certainly be upset with our work. Thankfully, I decided to set the alarm anyway and I recommend for you to do the same.

* The issue? Facebook and the client’s website decided to stop working together some time between the 8 hour window of 11:30PM and 7:15AM.