In Part 1 of this post, I shared my son’s thoughts about my continuing to make mistakes.  The focus of Part 2 is recent work at improving my skills.

Last April, as it became clear that COVID was going to be here for a while and I’d have time for deep work, I decided to invest in some training on sales messaging.  I’ve mentioned books by Oren Klaff called Pitch Anything and Flip the Script many times in my What’s Dave Listening To column.  I hadn’t done substantial, deeply focused training in a while, probably because I felt “capable.”  Oren Klaff’s new thinking felt enlightening to me, so I decided that perhaps it was time to dive into it.  I signed up for coaching by Oren’s team, and with their help and I’d estimate about 100 hours of work, I’ve become WAY BETTER and more effective at something I thought I was already pretty good at.

Even with all that work, I still make mistakes, still wish I’d made another edit to a released document (mostly to make it shorter) or had or hadn’t said something.  Overall, I’m encouraged to know that a) I HAVE gotten a LOT better, and b) if I’ve worked this hard to improve, even though I continue to fall short, I’ve gained on “the field.”