This week’s interviewee is Jenna Tiffany, Founder & Strategy Director of Let’sTalk Strategy.
1. Biggest Mistake you made in the last year & how you fixed it?
Falling into a canal in Surrey! To provide some context, my husband and I had just bought a liveaboard narrowboat from Surrey to move to London. It was my first time pushing the boat away from the towpath as we ventured towards a lock. Naturally, as I pushed the boat it moved further and further away from the towpath. Being a newbie I didn’t let go of the boat soon enough and before I knew it I was swimming in the canal with the boat!
There are two great lessons that I took away from that experience.
Firstly, let go sooner! Secondly, everybody has a first experience with something and that includes business; whether that’s creating your own website, writing your first blog, sending your first email etc. Don’t think you’ll get it all right the first time around. Let yourself learn. We all make mistakes but what’s important is the learnings you take from those mistakes.
2. A lightbulb moment
On reflection, the lightbulb moment for me was in the last quarter of 2016 whilst I was reflecting on my achievements for the past year and then looking forward at the next 12 months determining what I wanted to achieve. It was in that moment that I decided to stop dreaming about owning my own business and make it a reality in the next 12 months. Here I am today with my own Strategic Consultancy business called Let’sTalk Strategy.
3. Tip for tomorrow
A risk is always worth taking.
You may be thinking, what does this actually mean? An opportunity may present itself at work, at home and in your general life that you may consider being a risk. Without taking that risk you’ll never know what could have been.
For me, the risk was to start my own business. Many would love to do just that but never do. Why? Because they are too afraid to take the risk. When you reflect on the risk, what’s the worse that could happen? If my business isn’t successful I’ll get a job, but at least I’d know that I tried.
Yet many will be dreaming for the rest of their careers about what could have been. Mark Zuckerberg is an example of a risk taker and he wouldn’t be where he is today if he hadn’t taken a risk. He risked joining a new startup project whilst at Harvard. Whilst working on that project he had an idea for a new social network, Facebook. Now he could have thought it was too big a risk to start another new project and what happened if it didn’t work etc. but he didn’t, he took a risk and look where he is today. There are countless stories like this one and it isn’t all about being rich, it’s about brave enough to take a risk to follow your dreams and to do the things that make you happy.
Want to share your advice?
NWB confessional style interviews are posted every Monday from people in the business community. They are not self-promoting, or carefully selected quotes to make you sound good. They are full of useful, actionable insights from experience, not egos or bravado. If you like NWB’s style and have something useful to say, we’d love to interview you. Tweet @nowankybollocks or email katie [at] subjectconsulting.com.