May 6, 2025

My book launch gave me a black eye (literally)

What You Can’t Plan For

I heard the crack before I felt the searing pain of it.

It only took a second for my brain to register what had just happened.

”NOOOOOOO!!!” I heard Lindsey, my Director of Ops say, bolting out of her chair in the corner of the salon.

My hairdresser, Nicole, came up for a closer look. “It’s ok,” she said with a look of reassuring horror on her face, “I’ll clean up the blood.”

THE BLOOD?!?!

A big, heavy metal light fell and smacked me in the face, cutting my cheek, bruising my face, and making me feel more swollen than PopEye after he took too much creatine.*

Not that it would be fun any day of the week, but…

This happened on April 15, the day my book came out.

I only had 4 hours before I hosted a party for 65 of my local friends.

I had interviews to do, podcasts to go on, and lots of pictures to take.

Forget how I looked — that’s never bothered me much — but I was in a ton of pain. Funny enough, smiling hurt the worst.

Lindsey says I said, “it’s ok, I’m ok,” about 325 times. I didn’t want anyone to panic or feel bad about what happened.

(A major downside to being a lawyer is that everyone thinks you’re going to sue them. I’ve been through more in life than most. Breaking my nose/cheek bone is one of the least painful things that’s ever happened to me. Which you know if you’ve read my book.)

Here’s the thing –

Me and my team had planned every last detail of my book launch.

The funfetti hand-drawn book cake was perfect.

The 2 parties on Long Island and Manhattan went incredibly well.

Thousands of you bought the book and celebrated its release.

One thing that wasn’t on my to-do list?

Break my face on book release day

On release week, I couldn’t stop smiling.

I was so grateful for all the hard work my team put in, for my friends flying in from all over the country, and for all of you for helping to spread the word about my book.

But behind the scenes, I could feel my pulse in my face, my swollen eye made it hard to see, and my intense headache wouldn’t let me sleep.

Whether you’re planning for a book launch, launching a new business, or releasing a new offer, there’s a lesson you can take away from my “I planned it perfectly, but still broke my face” experience:

You can only plan so much.

A ‘light’ might fall from the sky and crash into you when you least expect it.

Your tech stack might fail in the middle of your launch.

A horrifying thing happens somewhere in the world, shifting the world’s attention away from your launch and tanking your social reach.

A family emergency might pop up mid-launch, making it impossible for you to show up on social or feel excited about it.

I’ve experienced all of those ^ at one point or another despite having a team, lots of experience, and having “planned” for every single thing I thought I could control.

As you build your business, don’t wait to put things out there until everything is ‘perfect.’

Because you can perfectly plan, and a light can still fall on your face.

Perfect isn’t the goal.

If you’ve read my book, you know the goal is to just get it out there, track the stats, keep an experimental mindset, and adjust based on the feedback.

Before you go…

It’s been a while since you’ve gotten my normal weekly blog posts thanks to my book launch, so do me a favor —

Comment below and let me know what you thought of today’s post. Did it resonate? Do you want me to keep writing posts like this to you? It’s sort of my signature style 😉

With that… I’m off to pop another advil and ice my face.

*I broke my nose and cheekbone. They’re minor breaks, so all I need to do is rest and heal. No surgery needed

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