COVID Changed My Life
A crisis redefined his career through virtual connection and service.
Oct 24, 2025
A crisis redefined his career through virtual connection and service.
When everything paused, one question - 'How can I help?' - reshaped a legacy.
I remember clearly, March of 2020. My phone was ringing off the hook, but NOT in a good way. It was client after client cancelling team building events scheduled around the world. It was excruciating and heartbreaking to see so much value and so much revenue disappearing in one day. I have talked to many other business owners about this day. There were so many human and understandable reactions to this day. One speaker lost over 40 programs during this time. She confessed she was in pure shock and did nothing for at least 30 days. I remember sitting in my office now with nothing to do. My first intuition was, “How can I help this world at a time when it needs so much?” This ONE question changed my entire COVID experience and it changed my entire life. I had been researching all the best virtual team-building practices for over 38 years. This meant trying out every new platform that came out, including Prodigy, the very first graphic online meeting space, at a time when modems used to make noise. This meant trying out team building activities over early web conferencing platforms like WebEx in 2000, GoToWebinar, Skype, and eventually Zoom. In 2015, I remember that the video conferencing system we were using was being discontinued. My friend at a conference said her college is just finishing reviewing over 15 video conferencing systems and that they chose Zoom over everything else. I skipped the research and signed up for an account then. This also meant I had a 38+ year headstart on virtual meetings and a 4+ year headstart on Zoom. We were using Zoom to save 30–60+ minutes of traffic every day with my teammates as we learned all the tools, such as chat and share screen. I created a class called “Virtual Team Building” and put it on EventBrite. What happened next could only be described as a COVID miracle. The class took off. I was presenting the class every day, 5 days a week. I met people all around the world, Florida, Texas, Georgia, not the city, the COUNTRY! Everyone was having the same problems and I was helping all of them. By the end of 2020, over 5,000 people had taken the class. After I sent an email about the class in my newsletter, my publisher, John Wiley & Sons, called me back and asked, “Do you want to write your second book?” In what I felt was one of the cruelest jokes my publisher could play on me, they said, “We don’t know how long this COVID thing is going to last…can you RUSH the book?”
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My last book took me 6 months to write. This one took me just NINE weeks. 60,000 words. And let me remind you, there was no AI in 2020; there was only JI. What’s JI? John Intelligence! I wrote all those words! The book was released in October 2020, and it hit the #1 Amazon list. I changed my entire company from Geoteaming – In-Person GPS-based team building to Engaging Virtual Meetings in under a year. I had two of my greatest years in business. I helped people all around the world, including Germany, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and more, all from the comfort of my home. I “Failed Faster” than anyone I knew. I tried over 4,000 Amazon items to make virtual meetings better and my studio grew from one laptop to 17 screens with 600 watts of sound, a mixing board, a wireless Countryman (read Madonna-like) mic, a green screen big enough that I can walk around and 64 buttons of automation. All of these innovations meant that I was able to respond faster than any virtual producer or attendee to what was happening right now. What did all this mean to the people I worked with? Every meeting rocked out with music, had seamless transitions between speakers, made it fun and funny and often “THE moment of the conference” when mistakes happened, While many say have a plan B, C, & D, what do you do when the totally unexpected happens? For instance, I was the virtual emcee for a hybrid conference out of Georgia, the state. Five minutes into the keynote, the audio goes out. As the virtual emcee, I immediately let the virtual audience know, said I’d check and played music. I texted the technical team in Georgia and their reply…. “It’s going to be a while.” Instead of apologizing or letting the virtual audience down by cancelling, I am a student of Improv. The heart of Improv is saying “Yes, and…” I have actually practiced presenting slide decks that I have never seen before…so that’s what I did. I presented this slide deck that I had no idea what the next slide was or when it would advance for THIRTY-TWO MINUTES. Try it sometime, for most, this is an eternity. When audio was finally restored, the virtual audience asked two questions to the speaker and then the chat blew up. They were so impressed that what I presented was spot on to the presentation and chatted comments like “BRAVO! What can John Chen NOT do?” “Thank you, spot on presentation, and so impressed you saved this presentation!”
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"“I’m the best 38-year overnight success you’ve ever met.”
– John Chen, CSP"
When everything paused, one question - 'How can I help?' - reshaped a legacy.
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Yes, you can provide text passages
Like all entrepreneurs, it’s not enough to be great once. You have to do it every day. The world turned back to in-person and there is a lot less virtual business today. So I took all my skills and learned how to do hybrid better than anyone else. The top 2 complaints are: (1) it’s too complicated and (2) it costs too much. By using off-the-shelf equipment and clever automation, I can provide a hybrid that’s so good that a PhD said, “This is the best hybrid I’ve attended E-V-E-R.” and “I feel like I’m in the room.” I’m in the middle of a rebrand to change the company from “Engaging Virtual Meetings” to “Engaging Meetings.” So the next time you have a big change in your business, think hard about the question you ask about that change. Why it may feel like a disaster in the moment, your next disaster may be your next big business opportunity… if you just ask the right question. The next time your business faces massive, unexpected change – pause and listen carefully. Before rushing to pivot, before sinking into despair, ask yourself a powerful question. It might not be “What do I do now?” It might be, “How can I help?” Because your next disaster might just be your greatest opportunity – if you ask the right question.
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