I have this lovely saying, ‘If in doubt, give it ago’ and have developed my career using this concept.
Often people will ask ‘What happens if things go wrong?’ Well, of course, things can go wrong, but you will still benefit. Why? Because you will learn from the experience and that’s the key concept of the saying, ‘If in doubt give it ago’. Learning from your experiences.
When I started my own company providing training courses for businesses, I had to do some work as an Associate Trainer for a well-known training company. I built a very good relationship with all of the Account Managers who would call up me up and ask if I could run courses for their clients.
More times than not I would say yes, even if it was a subject I wasn’t totally familiar with. I just thought well ‘if in doubt give it a go’ and I did.
I carried out the research, wrote the course and materials and, along with some practice, I was good to go. Yes, I learnt from the experiences and I would say 97% of the time all went well. After a period of time I had a totally new portfolio of courses I could now deliver with all the materials. Bingo.
Naturally, I didn’t accept topics I knew I could not deliver or wasn’t interested in the subject matter.
Since those days, I have built my own client base with good relationships with my contacts. Quite often these clients would challenge me with requests to give talks to groups and facilitation of challenge groups - my answer would always be yes.
What can you say yes to more often?
Enjoy, David
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