Under normal circumstances, our Producer, Dorothy Lee Donahue, books all our guests for our LIFEChanges With Filippo Radio Show. But because a while back, when I was doing interviews on the Red Carpet for a premier of a film at the Hollywood Egyptian Theater, I met, interviewed and had a great connection with a celebrity in this field, I chose to invite book her myself.
I got her contact information and contacted her personally, and as the beautiful gracious person that she seems to be in film and on video, she answered in person favorably and referred me to her publicist for the actual booking. I suppose what I should have done then was to give Dorothy her publicist’s information and allow her to take it from there. But being that Dorothy is already busy with everything she is doing, and being that I had already made the contact, I thought to myself, “how hard can it be?” and proceeded to book the guest.
Well, it is not that it is hard, per se, to book a guest, but there are some formalities that one does need to follow, especially when one is working with a celebrity. In this case, it was even more important to be extra particular because this person was not only a celebrity but since she resided in Europe and her publicist resided in Europe, there was some coordinating that needed to be done because of the time difference, if nothing else.
I took this all in stride and was excited we would have this person on our show and casually went about booking her through her publicist. As fate would have it, I was also traveling during the time that I was communicating with our future guest’s publicist. But we had exchanged enough information and material, including her publicist having sent me her book, etc., that I was satisfied that we were booked and off I went on my travels, not worrying too much that I couldn’t get to my E-mails right away.
I got back home the day before the proposed interview and the next morning, excitedly wrote a courtesy thank you to the publicist let him him know that I appreciated his efforts in helping set up the interview, for later that evening, with his client. The publicist, immediately wrote me back saying that he had never put our interview down on our guests agenda for the day, because he never heard back from me after his last E-mail in which he was still requesting further information.
As far as I was concerned, he had all the information the guest needed, but come to find out later, his client was so jam packed with appearances and radio interviews, etc., that she had almost every hour booked up not just for that day but weeks ahead of time. I completely understand that he would have wanted to make sure that all the t’ were crossed and the i’s dotted so there would be no mistakes or time wasted, etc.
I went about my day, happily, excited about the evenings interview while catching up with things I had not been able to do while away, all the while, not knowing that this E-mail from our guest’s publicist was in my in-box. Imagine my surprise, when I got back and read the E-mail and found out that we not only did not have our celebrity guest on the show, but that we most likely wouldn’t have a guest at all since we were now only a couple hours away from show time.
I chose to be a little confused, frustrated and a little upset, as you can imagine, with among others, myself. I started to go down some interesting paths. But then I reminded myself, that our show was about “LIFE Changes,” and that our Producer Mark Laisure says at the intro to every show, “…the only constant, life changes.” And here I was, with an unexpected life change and I was going to “make myself” deal with it as elegantly as I possibly could, and I was going to see a positive ending to the story, and I was going to LIFE IT! 🙂
The first thing I did was write the publicist back saying, “WHAT?” Then I noticed that the time in Europe was well after 9 PM, and I was sure that the publicist was no longer in his office and would not get this message. So then I wrote and called the emergency number the publicist had given to me for our guest, in anticipation of her being on the show and in anticipation of her being on our guest, in case we had any problems. Well, as far as I was concerned this was a problem and an emergency, and I called the number.
Of course, I got an answering machine and I proceeded to “excitedly” leave our guest a message saying, “HELP!” Of course, I didn’t hear back from our guest, nor from the publicist. In the final hour before the show, as I contemplated on how horrible life was that I not only wasn’t going to get to interview our celebrity guest, my mind went to how she probably now thinks I am an idiot for calling her in a panic, and here we were going to do the show without a guest at all. Thankfully, I have a great team and Dorothy and Mark both, calmly suggested we ask any number of people who have repeatedly asked if they could be on our show, to be on our show, in an hour.
When both of them pulled me out of my temporary state of dis-alignment, I thought of the perfect guest who I would enjoy interviewing and who we had wanted on the show for quite some time but hadn’t gotten around to asking. As fate would have it, I called this person, and this person was not only available, not only delighted to have been asked and to do the show, but was a great and perfect guest.
So, what does this have to do with practicing what we preach? Well, though I don’t preach, I certainly spend a lot of time talking about how life does change, and it does. I talk and write about how we can potentially look at all change and see the benefits in it as opposed to just the negatives. And I impress upon my friends, our fans, and myself, how we can choose to spend less and less time in the panic, in the dis-alignment and more time in the knowing that we might find the good, potentially in everything, if we look for it.
Well, that was my lesson to remember to stay as aligned as I could. In other words, I could have looked at the situation and said, “Great, this is happening for a good reason, and I don’t see it yet, but I welcome the lesson, or what is to come, which will be better than I could have imagined…” 🙂 How do you like them apples?
But in fact, this would have not only been an easier way and certainly more gentle on my psyche and panic stricken body, but it turns out that it would have been the truth of what was to happen. First of all, our guest that we ended up having was great, and I am so glad we had him.
Secondly, during the show, we got a phone call message from our guest, letting us know how sorry she was that this had happened and that she had no idea how it happened, but that it didn’t matter. She hoped we were able to manage the show and that she would be on it the moment her scheduled allowed. The next morning we also got an E-mail from the publicist saying that he did get the E-mail at 9 PM and that he tried to rearrange his client’s schedule to allow for our show, at the last minute, but it was not possible since she was traveling during that time…
Both of these people did not have to do either of these things, since technically, it was my mistake and lack of follow-up that potentially caused this misunderstanding. This potential guest, is in such demand that she doesn’t necessarily need us, and if she missed one interview, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. And technically, she doesn’t know me, or owe me anything. But she called as soon as she heard my panicked voice mail and tried to calm me with hope for a future show, and her publicist did his best to accommodate at the last minute, even though I hadn’t gotten back to him as was requested.
What was most beautiful about this, to me, in retrospect, is that this incident created a situation which illustrated just how much in integrity and alignment our guest is with her work, with her book and her beliefs. I got to witness first hand what she says in the book we were going to publicize, and that is, that we are all connected, and that what we do affects us all, and that each deed is of utmost importance.
This could not have been a greater testimonial to who she is and what her book talks about. I was not only impressed but touched and delighted. Though I wish the incident hadn’t happened, on one hand, so as not to cause a panic in the energy fields of all of us involved, especially our guest and her publicist, but, on the other hand, I am so happy that I got the lesson out of it, and got to see our guest “at work” putting into practice all that she preaches and knowing that she is the real thing and that she embodies her work.
And though this is a great testimony to her, I would love to mention her name, but will contact the publicist and have him read this before doing that, as to make sure I don’t make another wonderful mistake, and go out of lines, again. 🙂 Given the okay, I intend to share this story in our monologue as a testament to the work we will discuss in the interview in a couple weeks.