The other day I had the privilege of attending a speech from the world champion of the Toastmasters organization. For those of you who are unfamiliar with toastmasters it is an international organization that has helped millions of men and women become more confident in front of an audience. Mark Hunter has risen through the Toastmasters organization through international speech competitions to become the world champion.

I was able to really resonate with the message in Marks speech “Each loss brings an opportunity to learn”. This brought to mind how in this industry there are many losses that we experience i.e. loss of candidates, clients and bids. Each loss that I have experienced in this industry has never felt nice, after all who feels good when they lose? However, every loss has given me the opportunity to learn. Now when I find myself in situations where the loss would be more of a risk for the company I am able to apply lessons learned from my previous situations to help mitigate that risk of failing.

Mark left us with a quote that put a great visual in our mind – “You must be burnt to succeed. A Phoenix will only rise from ashes”. I find that taking a step back after each time you encounter a problem to analyze what you could have done better and how to prevent the situation again you are inevitably taking two steps forward.