i was stood up today
first, let me give you some background.
last week, a younger kid in the entrepreneurship department at my college reached out to me on linkedin, a platform that i’m very active on. he complimented me on my personal branding — not only on linkedin, but in general. my brand is something in which i take a lot of pride and have worked tirelessly to grow in the last few months.
he also added that he’d love to meet to talk about tactics and strategies to grow his personal brand before he enters the real world following graduation.
kinda cool right? i’ve always dreamed of people going out of their way to ask me how to do something.
anyway, i excitedly agreed to meet today at 1p in the business school, a location we’re both all too familiar with. i grabbed a sandwich and sat down at a table ready to go. but seconds, then minutes passed and he didn’t show up.
now luckily, this wasn’t a huge deal to me because i just pulled out my computer and did some homework —exactly what i would have done had i not had a meeting scheduled. but i patiently waited for him to reach out and explain why he wasn’t able to make our meeting.
i purposely didn’t assume that he had forgotten about me or stood me up or anything. i simply waited to hear his reasoning before i came to any conclusions about the kid.
at 1:20 (20 minutes after our supposed meeting time), he linkedin messaging me saying this …
i sat back in my chair and wondered hmm this is actually one of the best apologies i’ve ever received.
i wasn’t upset at all. i didn’t feel as if he wasted my time. and i think it’s because he was so genuine in our initial conversation. i knew that he actually wanted to meet and talk shop about branding.
if you’ve ever been in his position, you know it’s tough. to schedule a meeting with someone and not show up because of a circumstance outside of your control and not have the ability to follow up with me is really tough.
you simply have to hope that the person on the other end doesn’t immediately jump to conclusions. go out of your way to apologize and make it up to them because your reputation may now be stained with tardiness.
something to be aware of…
sorry. 😅 every post in the 5-minute challenge may end a little abruptly. we apologize in advance for not completing our thoughts. this is just the nature of the challenge. we have exactly five minutes — no more, no less — to make an impact on the reader (YOU!).
we don’t have time to capitalize, spell correctly, or proofread. we write, save, and publish after 300 seconds. that’s it. simple.
join us in the 5 minute challenge! we appreciate your opinion and perspective.
