Some experiences don’t just stay with you – they change you. This is a series of personal stories from our colleagues about the moments that shifted how they think, lead, and work. Hear from our Account Director, Meg Webster.
I said yes when I should have said no. And here’s what it cost me and what it taught me.
The events industry runs on adrenaline. Tight deadlines, competing priorities, clients who need answers yesterday. And if you’ve been in it long enough, you learn to hold a lot at once. That capacity becomes your identity. Saying yes becomes your default. Saying no starts to feel like failure.
I was mid-site visit on a different time zone for an important client when an RFP deadline crept up on me. Not because I hadn’t seen it coming. I had. But I’d told myself I could do both. That I’d find the minutes. That I’d make it work. I didn’t.
What I missed
The deadline passed. A document within the RFP went in late. The kind of moment that sits heavy, because it wasn’t about capability. It was about a choice I hadn’t actually made consciously. I’d let two things compete instead of deciding between them and truly recongising which one needed my attention more.
We talk a lot in this industry about being across everything, always available, never dropping the ball. But what I learned in that moment is that trying to hold everything means something, somewhere, gets held badly. The site visit needed my full presence. The RFP needed real thinking. Neither got all that it should have.
Looking back, the deadline was just the moment it became visible. The mistake was made long before that when I convinced myself that committing to both was the same as being on top of both.
What I learned
Saying no – or not yet, or not me – is a skill. A professional one. One that takes more confidence than saying yes, because it requires you to trust your own judgement about what matters most.
Even at my level today I continue to welcome involving. I became better at looking ahead. At naming conflicts before they became collisions. And when things did go wrong – because they will – I got better at treating it as information rather than evidence of inadequacy.
Mistakes are data. This one told me I needed better boundaries around context-switching, clearer internal communication when two priorities land at once, and the honesty to say something before it became someone else’s problem too.
Experience changes everything. The trick is staying curious enough to learn from all of it.
