What I learnt about leaving my laptop on the plane…
Last October, I was in the US for 12 days. It was pretty fabulous.
It was fabulous for a few reasons, but one of them was that I had a baby in 2020 and another in 2022. I fed both for two years each, so I hadn’t really gone anywhere on my own for the last four years.
And I LOVE to travel.
I used the event I was attending as my “deadline” to stop feeding Rebecca. I was convinced she would be devastated when we stopped. Lesson learnt—when I told her that "milky" was staying in Donegal (where we were on holiday in August), she never asked again. All that worry, for nothing! 🙃
(A question to ask yourself: What are you worrying about in business—catastrophising, perhaps— that’s draining your precious mental resources?)
Anyhow, it was so interesting flying again. The sheer JOY of six SILENT hours on a plane. No one needed me. No one climbed on top of my head. Just me time.
But it’s funny how easily we get out of habits. I used to fly to London from Belfast every Monday and Friday for years. Sometimes, I visited two to three cities a week for work. Ah, the joys of Big 4 life. Getting on a plane was like catching a taxi.
But for this first big trip to the USA, I was like a kid. Checking my passport many times. 😆 My boarding pass. Going to the airport hours too early. You’d think I had never flown before! And I packed WAY too many clothes.
(A question to ask yourself: What have you stopped doing that, if you restarted, would help you share your thought leadership with the world? Maybe it’s simply about rebuilding the habit.)
I had an incredible experience in the USA—New York, Florida, then back to New York to speak on stage.
Finally, I was returning home to see my babies, and I couldn’t wait. Everything on the trip had gone like clockwork. None of my flights were even a minute late.
But, as I woke up groggy from my overnight long-haul flight, I realised I'd left my laptop on the plane.
I noticed as soon as I got to the baggage carousel. Ugh. What a sinking feeling.
The lady at the lost property desk had zero ambition to help me. Staring into space, not giving a damn. I got her to call the gate—no laptop. Crap, I thought. It must have been stolen. It was only two months old too.
After some pleading (okay, begging) and telling her exactly where I’d left it, she said, "No, no laptop. Fill out this form and good luck."
So, off home I went—tail between my legs. From a fabulous trip to feeling like a twit.
But here’s what I want to share. I’m a firm believer that process in business is everything. When you have systems in place, there’s no chaos. No running around like a headless chicken. Instead, it’s all about focused, successful client delivery.
My laptop was still on the plane. I turned on the Find My tracker, and there it was, sitting in Terminal 2, Dublin. At least it wasn’t stolen.
I spent the next day on hold to a gazillion departments. A beautiful lesson in how NOT to run a company. I was frustrated because I wanted to see Paul and the kids after being away for so long.
Later that evening, off my laptop went to JFK—still on the plane. No process was in place to find it. They clearly weren’t cleaning where I had left it.
Then it went back to Dublin. Then JFK. A little trip to Boston and Portugal later (I had NO idea planes worked that hard!), it made three more trips to JFK. My laptop was becoming a seasoned traveller.
But their process sucked. Finally, as fate would have it, they took the laptop off the plane in JFK. Someone called to tell me and said they’d ring back in 30 minutes.
SIX days later, they called again.
I had tried following up many times, but got nowhere. Eventually, they said, "You'll have to come to JFK to get it."
"Erm, I’m in Ireland."
"Well, how on earth is your laptop in JFK?"
Well... 😅
The moral of the story: their processes sucked.
Yes, I left the laptop there in the first place. But the lack of systems made it next to impossible for me to retrieve it.
If you’re too busy working in the weeds of your business because you lack systems and processes, you might be falling into what I call Growth Gridlock.
Growth Gridlock happens to entrepreneurs who are well past the "figure out what you're doing, who you're serving, and what you're selling" chapter. Usually, these entrepreneurs are doing £300K+ per year.
I’ve noticed three common traps here:
1. Silver Bullet Syndrome
You’ve been told you just need "one funnel" to become a millionaire. It doesn’t work like that.
2. Revenue Obsession
You keep saying processes aren’t important—until you spend your life putting out fires because they don’t exist.
3. The VA Myth
You think the patchwork of VAs you’ve thrown together, who "grew into" roles without training, can take your business to the next level. They can't.
Final Questions for You This Week:
Where in your business are you flying by the seat of your pants?
What can you systemise, standardise, and proceduralise?
Where are you feeling stress, anxiety, or overwhelm due to a lack of systems and processes?
What advice are you unable to hear because your mind is cluttered from the chaos?
Till next week, Maeve
P.S. Happy ending—yes, I got my laptop back. 😎