I mean, the title of this one gives away the disaster.

Our family snuck away Labor Day Weekend for a final summer camping adventure, having secured a last minute cancellation camping spot at Wallowa Lake. The destination holds a special place in our hearts. We’ve visited nearly every year since Anson was about 2, and experiencing it through our children’s eyes as they’ve grown up is utterly delightful.

And this trip was fraught with unexpected, unwanted surprises. As the title suggested, the diamond of my wedding ring went missing on the last night of our trip. Not a little one out of the band, no siree. The big one in the tongs, the main event if you will. GONE.

I had a sneaking suspicion it had been knocked out when I was running down to the river. I had just barely hit my hand against the side of the big metal garbage bin for the campsite, and I surmised that the impact had been enough to knock the diamond out and send it flying.

When I told Zeb as much, his response was “It’s as good as gone.”

But I was not so easily discouraged. I was determined I would find the diamond, and set to searching immediately after I discovered it was missing. A fruitless hour later, I decided I might have better luck looking with a flashlight after dark. The location I figured it was hiding in was a gravel patch. A diamond in a bunch of gravel? Should shine like a… well, like a diamond in the beam of a flashlight after dark, right? I went back to camp to eat dinner and refuel for another hunt later.

And then, it rained.

Hard.

And my dusty gravel patch became a field of glittering wet rocks. My nighttime search was also fruitless.

Another search in the light of the next day didn’t turn up my diamond, and I helped packed up camp feeling sick to my stomach. Somebody may someday discover a carat-plus princess cut stone at this RV Park, or maybe the treasure is lost forever. But what isn’t lost forever are the lessons that I took away as I hunched over that patch of gravel looking for it.

Lesson One: When it rains, everything looks shiny

While this made looking for a diamond in a gravel patch VERY difficult, it did stand out as a possible business lesson. When things aren’t going quite right in your business, it’s easy for everything to look the same, and as leaders it becomes more difficult to see the diamonds in the day to day.

But it is our job to find and celebrate the diamonds in our days. At Erica Walter Writes, we do this by sharing wins every day in a slack channel. How do you find the diamonds in your days?

Lesson Two: When you’re not worried about looking normal, you attract a new audience

I was hunched over that gravel patch by the garbage bin for hours. This is not normal behavior. And it enrolled several other campers in the search. “Need help?” “What are you looking for?” “Is everything all right?” I got a troupe of middle school aged kids, a little girl and her mom, and a grandma helping on and off. I had people googling “how to find a missing diamond” on their phones. I didn’t go through camp with a mega phone announcing “missing diamond, all hands on deck!” to get this help.

In business, the lesson is that when we authentically show up rather than trying to look like everybody else, we’ll find the people who will help our business grow. I don’t try (often) to look like a tech genius… I’m just a girl with a laptop who loves the power of email marketing so much I can’t stop talking about it. This attracts people who aren’t looking for a slick, polished tech person. Thank god (love ya, best students and customers in the world).

Lesson Three: Sometimes, losing something is just an opportunity to make space for something much bigger.

My husband’s nearly-immediate reaction to my losing the diamond that he proposed to me with was basically, “Look on the bright side: Now we can get you a bigger diamond.”

I was so focused on what we had lost that I didn’t have space to see what it was making room for. In my business, I’m working on getting better at recognizing the opportunities that are created when things don’t go exactly to plan.

When we mess up on a project, it’s an opportunity to shore up our processes and a chance to be authentic and transparent with our clients.

When a contract you had expected to get renewed doesn’t, it means there is room and capacity on your team for another, better contract, or a project you’ve been putting off.

When you lose the diamond, maybe it’s just creating room for a bigger one.

Despite the disastrous end to our camping adventure, what my family is talking about isn’t the fact that mom lost her diamond. We’re all talking about how much fun the get away was. How glad we are that it worked out for us to snag that last minute spot. We’re raving about Thai Food Trucks and Giant Cinnamon Rolls, horseback rides on Pancake and Reno, Go Kart races, so many fish in the stream you could see them (but they weren’t bitin!).

And despite somewhat disastrous days in my business, I am striving to focus on the fun. To find the diamonds in the shiny gravel, to be authentic, to see the opportunities that a loss can open up. If you found this at all helpful I’d love to hear your a-ha moments – just email me! And if you’ve been thinking about leveling up your email marketing, I’d love to connect with you to see if I can help. You can browse current solutions and pricing here, and you can get in touch for “Meets & Treats” here. I can’t wait to hear from you, either way.