Back in my days with Gemini Consulting, I remember being regularly staggered at just how much some of our junior consultants were able to achieve.

I used to always think “there's no way I could have done that at their age” (I think the same with my kids these days too and their early forays into business and entrepreneurship).

I discussed it once with another experienced colleague and she said something I'll never forget:

“It's amazing what you can achieve when you don't realise it's impossible”.

She was absolutely right.

Thanks to the good old Dunning-Kruger effect, the more experience and expertise you have, the more grey areas, subtleties and potential problems you see.

Those with less knowledge are sometimes able to achieve more because they're less tentative. They go “all in” because they don't see the potential risks we do. And that commitment gives them a better chance of succeeding. 

Of course, it also opens them up to more catastrophic failures too. That's why we experienced consultants kept an eye on the more junior ones :)  

Anyway, my point is that you're very often more capable than you think. That challenging task you think is just too difficult is probably within your reach.

I'm risk averse, the idea of going “all in” on something that might not work is too scary for me.so I always avoid putting all my eggs in one basket. if something I'm trying might not work, I make sure it's not the only thing I'm doing in that area so if it fails, it won't cripple me.

Instead, I used a “portfolio” approach to trying out new things. I make sure I'm also doing a few “tried and tested” things in a similar area to the new one I'm trying out.

For example, when I first tried out Facebook Ads, I didn't stop my other lead generation activities. I made time by reducing the amount of face to face networking I was doing as that was my lowest ROI activity at the time. But I kept going with my blogging, doing presentations and joint venture webinars as I knew they would keep working for me reliably.

I went “all in” on Facebook Ads. I wasn't tentative. I didn't keep second guessing what I was doing. I went as fast as I could – but only with a quarter of my time.

Safe in the knowledge that if it all went belly up I had my other approaches to fall back on.

And when it started working really well it became one of the core lead generation activities I do (replacing joint venture webinars) and freeing up a slot for me to try some other new things.

Next time you're thinking of doing something but are worried it won't work, take a similar “portfolio” approach. Dedicate enough time to it to do it properly. But make sure you have other things going on in case it doesn't work out.