Given the myriad details swirling around in exhibitors' heads, it's easy to get a little disoriented now and again. But when your booth suffers an orientation issue at a trade show, you'll likely need a Herculean effort to get matters turned around.

Several years ago, I was a one-woman marketing machine for a manufacturer in the heating and air-conditioning industry. At the International Air-Conditioning, Heating, Refrigerating (AHR) Expo at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, my company landed a prime location for its 20-by-40-foot double-deck booth: right in the front row near one of the show's entrances. Knowing that many attendees would be taking a right after walking through the doors, we planned to have a 16-foot-tall branded banner face the front aisle and lure passersby to our stand.

Under my supervision, installation got underway on Thursday morning, four days before the show opened. I had a fantastic union crew with Stan Shramko - who turned out to be quite the MacGyver - as the crew leader, and we got the booth set up by Saturday afternoon. This was going to be a walk in the park.

I stopped by the venue early Sunday morning to make a few final adjustments. The entrance doors nearest our exhibit, which had been closed during setup, were open, so I walked through to get the attendee experience. As soon as I crossed the threshold into the hall and tried to turn right, I almost vomited. It never dawned on me until that moment that the doors were inset so far that once visitors stepped into the exhibit hall, they were already even with the front of our booth and would shoot past that "front" aisle. Essentially, by the time visitors first saw our exhibit, they'd be staring at the side of it. That meant our beautiful front-facing banner was marketing to a concrete wall. To allow attendees to meet our branding head on, we needed to rotate our booth a quarter of a turn in less than 24 hours. This was a catastrophe!

Stan and I roped in his manager, Mike Santarpia, and we started spitballing solutions. Every idea we tossed up, we swatted down because it was unfeasible, dangerous, or both. The only solution was to dismantle and rebuild the entire exhibit. It seemed impossible with our timeline, but Stan convinced me it was doable.

With Mike's approval, Stan wrangled every Tom, Dick, and Harry available and swarmed the exhibit. Soon we were sweating bullets as we tore down the structure and started getting things turned around. Long after the show hall became a ghost town, our crew was still hard at it, taking few breaks and snacking on the fly. I still don't know how we managed it, but by Monday morning that booth had done an about-face. And when attendees spilled onto the show floor, our banner was clearly visible.

Thank heavens for those union workers who came through for me like family. It goes to show that when things get turned around, sometimes you need help getting yourself pointed in the right direction.