Ha! I am so proud of myself... Today I have faced my own technology fear and triumphed...
Regular visitors will know that I recently relocated from London to Cardiff. The removal company I used are 100% trustworthy. Nevertheless, I took my PC in the car with me - nestled in a carefully fashioned den of duvets and pillows. If anyone was going to damage my 'life support' machine - it would be me.
When I put it all together again at this end, it worked perfectly. Then the day I got back online, it coolly announced it couldn't find the sound card... thus no skyping, no podcasting, no music etc. Historically, I would have called a techy friend to come to my rescue, but this time I decided to tackle it myself.
Over the years, my v. v. dear friend Rory Reid, taught me that a logical approach generally 'does it' when it comes to PCs, so given that one day the sound card worked and the next day it couldn't be found, I reasoned that it sounded more like it'd somehow come loose from its holdings (rather than it'd died per se). So yesterday, before booting up, I 'got down and nerdy' and opened up the box. No big deal for some people, I know, but 'going inside' is relatively new territory for me. (I have Andreas, another techy friend, to thank for getting me comfortable with that.) Anyway, sure enough the card was hanging out of its holding - no wonder the software couldn't find it. So I refitted it - and booted up and... Oh!.. nada! Hmmm.
Later that day, Rory happened to call so I told him what I'd done. He suggested I check that I'd pushed the card all the way down into its holding. So this morning, I opened her up again - and sure enough, I could still see a large amount of the little gold coloured stripey things on the base of the card (no idea what the techy word is, but they are the connectors and if a card is fully inserted, you wouldn't be able to see them.) So I took it out again and reinserted it so the stripes disappeared from view. Closed her up and rebooted... and bingo! I have sound again.
Now I'm not recommending you start tinkering around inside your PC base unit, particularly as doing so may invalidate your machine's warranty. But this is a classic example of 'feel the fear and do it anyway'. And the result of taking that advice is invariably empowering and liberating.
One of the most rewarding things about what I do is seeing people go through that transformational process. For many of my clients, starting their business blog is a leap of faith. They know they should, they really want to, but they also tend to be a little afraid - of whether they will be able to 'work' the blog interface, of their writing ability and, perhaps the biggest concern, of 'putting themselves out there' - sharing their thoughts and opinions with the rest of the world and (even scarier) inviting feedback - yikes! But the reality is that once they take that first step, everything somehow becomes clearer and they're often surprised at how, like ducks to water, they've so easily become a fully-fledged business blogger - in control of their online presence. Beautiful!
What are your fears around business blogging? Click on the Comments link below to share and I will do my best to allay them here on BusinessBlogAngel.com.
