Just realized my old boss was right about something I ignored for years

I used to work at a small marketing firm in Cleveland about 4 years ago. My boss there named Karen kept telling me to stop jumping into projects without asking the client what they actually wanted first. I thought I knew better because I was fast and could figure things out on the fly. Last week I messed up a big freelance gig because I assumed the client wanted a Facebook campaign but they really needed email marketing. I lost about 800 bucks on that job and had to apologize. It hit me that Karen was trying to save me from exactly this kind of headache. Has anyone else had a former boss's advice suddenly click way later after a costly mistake?

3 comments

3 Comments

willowr9623h ago

Did you ever read that book about how people jump to solutions too fast instead of figuring out the real problem first? I saw a summary of it somewhere and it kind of explains why we keep messing up like this.

amyh1221h ago

Not sure if it's that deep honestly. People have been jumping to conclusions since forever, that's just how we're wired. Maybe we just need better shortcuts, @willowr96, not a whole deep dive into why we do it. A bit of trial and error works fine most of the time.

emma_garcia5h ago

amyh12 I get what you're saying about trial and error working most of the time, but that 800 dollar mistake was a hard way to learn a lesson the easy way could have taught me. willowr96 I haven't read that book but it sounds like something I need now. The whole thing is, jumping in fast feels productive until you realize you just built the wrong thing. Clients don't pay for speed, they pay for getting what they actually asked for.