As I write this (in October), my eldest son Chris has just started his second year at University.

Like all students, he's a bit short of cash, so he decided to go for a bar job at a local pub that had just got new owners.

Now over the summer, he'd learnt to set up simple websites in WordPress, so I suggested to him that since the pub was new they might be on the lookout for a new website too. And that he might be able to help them with that and get paid rather more than he would for bar work.

So he duly got talking to the owners, showed them the websites he'd done before, and ended up getting both the bar job and the job to do them a website.

But what really made me proud was he then decided to take a walk up the local high street looking for small businesses that didn't have a website or just used a basic template or directory listing.

He then went inside and asked them if they'd like a website doing.

Not the most advanced of sales techniques.

But it worked. He came out with a list of half a dozen interested businesses that he then followed up with and actually won some clients.

Now at 19, he's got way more bravery than I ever had. It would have scared me witless to try something like that. And I'd have lost sleep worrying about what people would think of me if I just strolled up to them and tried to sell them something.

It's amazing what you can achieve if you don't care (so much) about what people think of you. And if you don't know how things “should be done”.

If you're anything like me you probably overthink things. You probably worry too much about what others will think of you. You probably don't want to be seen as a “salesperson”. You probably don't want to put yourself in an uncomfortable position by asking for business.

But maybe if you did then like Chris, you could win more clients.