Key Takeaways
- Check in regularly on things you set up; backups, automations, and campaign flows need attention.
- Lost data isn’t lost impact. Just because something isn’t recorded doesn’t mean it didn’t matter.
- Setbacks don’t have to be full stops, they could just be a pause or a reset.
Read More: Are You Buying What You Are Selling?
On Easter Monday, April 21, 2025, the much beloved and revered Pope Francis died. As I watched the coverage coming in from Vatican City, it pulled me right back to January 2023 when I visited the Vatican City, as part of a larger trip to Italy and Portugal. I love to visit places with rich history, and not many match the Vatican City. I took so many pictures and videos, the landmarks, the side streets, the food, the quiet corners most people don’t notice, and the people themselves. I had an amazing tour guide and was part of a group of tourists from all around the world. It was incredible.
Well-Made Plans, Interrupted
At the start of that trip, I made myself a promise: I would finally start that travel blog I’d been talking about for ages. I was at a point where I had to travel quite a lot for work, and this was a good thing because I love to discover new places. A very close friend always told me, “You should start sharing your experiences.” So I decided that this trip would be the beginning. So, from Casablanca to Rome to the Vatican City, I played tourist like I’ve never quite done before and documented everything — or so I thought.
Then, the night before I left Rome for Lisbon, I lost my phone.
I told myself, “No wahala, I have backups.” Except I didn’t. Well, I used to. Turns out my phone had stopped syncing to Google cloud almost three weeks earlier — and I had no idea. Just like that, everything from Casablanca to Rome was gone. The only pictures I had left were the few I had sent to my family groups. Ahhh! How? I’ve never been into pictures or videos (how hard it is to get a picture of me has been a long-standing joke with family and friends), and the one time I decide to go all out, this happens?
Marketing Lessons Learned From Heartbreak
I was so disheartened, I abandoned the whole travel blog idea without even knowing. The next morning, I caught my flight from Rome to Lisbon. I went on to visit Braga and Porto (both cities also in Portugal), and I didn’t take a single picture. No videos, nothing. The excitement of documenting my journey just fizzled out.
I never started the blog, and I didn’t even think about it again until all the Vatican footage from this week brought it all back. That entire experience taught me a few important lessons that I’ve carried with me ever since, especially in my line of work:
1. “Set It and Forget It” is a Lie. Always Check What’s Running.
I had set up my cloud backups long ago and assumed they were running. But something had gone wrong weeks earlier, and I didn’t check. I have seen the same thing happen in business quite frequently. Just last week, during a social media workshop with a client, I had the team check their Instagram link in bio on the spot, only to discover multiple broken and outdated links. These broke long ago, but had not been fixed, because no one was checking.
2. Some Wins Show Up In Unexpected Ways
I was so disappointed with the fact that I had nothing to post from my trip to Rome that I didn’t consider that I still had the memories. I can still tell you how Vatican City felt at sunrise, and how it felt to stand before the breathtaking frescoes in the Sistine Chapel and walk through the ancient burial chambers under St. Peter’s Basilica. Those moments still live in me, even without proof on my camera roll.
In marketing, we sometimes obsess over numbers, dashboards, and performance charts. But some wins don’t show up on Excel sheets. Not everything valuable is measurable. And not everything measurable is valuable.
3: Don’t Let One Loss Kill the Whole Dream
I lost a phone, yes. But what I really lost was the motivation to pursue a path. That travel blog dream? Gone with the pictures. One bad experience made me move on from the whole thing.
I’ve seen this happen with teams I work with, too. Something doesn’t go right; maybe a campaign flops, or engagement drops, and the instinct is to throw everything out. But sometimes, the core idea is still solid, and a bad week doesn’t always mean the strategy is bad. It may just need a little tweak. As we say in Naija “never throw the baby away with the bath water”.
4: Passion Can Pause — But It Doesn’t Have to Die
The truth? That travel blog idea didn’t die, it just found interpretation in a different type of blog (this very one that you are reading now 😂). I weave in those and other travel experiences into my writing because they are an important part of who I am.
The same goes for that idea you parked months ago. The one you believed in, but abandoned after one failed try. Maybe it’s time to dust it off and try again, older, wiser, better prepared.
Go ahead, get back in the saddle. I’m rooting for you!