I couldn’t catch a cab to save my life.

The window between working with my Brooklyn interior designer client, and the last-minute meeting that the luxury faucet/fittings company had requested, didn’t allow for cabs whizzing by.  Two intensives, one meeting and two dinners in two days didn’t start out planned that way, but I trust that when opportunities show up, you take them.  

That’s when I noticed a man I didn’t know waving at me from across the street.  It looked like he was pulling up the handle on an imaginary suitcase.  That’s odd, I thought, until I realized I didn’t have mine.  I gave my client a quick hug running back to meet the kind stranger now rolling my suitcase outside.

Not surprisingly, cabbies are quick to stop for a gal with a suitcase.

Still In Heels

Less than two hours later, I was running out of a showroom on the upper west side and into another cab, who for some reason, decided that driving me past two elementary schools just as the bell rang, was faster than the highway.  Surprisingly that delay worked in my favor.

With thirty minutes to departure, I flew into a terminal and through customs, both of which were — mercifully — quiet.  I started following the arrows to my gate.  It’s close, or so I thought, which is why I stopped to buy a sandwich for the flight.

In hindsight, I wish I’d used one moment of that calm to change out of my heels, because shortly thereafter I realized the gate numbers I was passing were going the wrong way.

“All the way at the other end of the terminal,” the security guy said as I hobbled off, swearing.  “Stop the driver.”

I flagged down the old-folks-mobile and mumbled something with enough desperation that I was given the go-ahead to hoist myself in.

“Isn’t it the other way?” I said clutching my suitcase for dear life as she sped off in the direction that I’d just come from.

“I have to turn it around first,” she barked, driving through the terminal, around two bends and down several long hallways at breakneck speed, honking her bell at pedestrians to get out of the way.  As I balanced my purse with my foot and tried not to roll out off the side, I had a few thoughts.

Timing Is Everything

When you make a decision to up-level your business, you have to be nimble to arrive at your success.  Even when you’re following a map and you know exactly where you’re going.  Even when you’re absolutely sure that you’ve got everything that you need, you probably won’t recognize you’re off course until it’s too late.

That is unless you pay attention to what I call those universal nudges.  Are you available to let the right people in to help you the minute they notice something you didn’t, because they’re looking at what you’re doing objectively from the outside?

Or do you know it all? Do you think you can do this all by yourself without asking for help?  Are you blocking the help that’s trying to flag you down?

Your ego doesn’t know what it doesn’t know and it will fight you, especially if you’re in, and expecting to conquer, new territory.  As the saying goes, timing is everything but perfect timing is truly divine.