I recently went to a social media conference hosted at a local university. It was an awesome experience, but I couldn’t help but notice that some attendees were feeling totally overwhelmed. Or, they had a big fear that they would become overwhelmed and not be able to keep up with changing technology.
This is something I see in a lot of my coaching clients as well. Many people are terrified of technology precisely because it’s always changing. There’s a new social media platform blowing up every other day, Facebook changes it’s algorithm right when you finally get it, and there are so many different tools to use in the back-end of your business to make sure it runs smoothly.
Believe me, I get the frustration. I’m not exactly the most tech-saavy person around (that gene skipped me entirely). However, I don’t let the fear of constantly changing technology paralyze me into inaction. Here’s what I do instead.
Learn to embrace change.
At this conference I attended, one of the speakers specifically addressed the issue of constantly changing technology. He said, “The only constant in life is change. That means you need to embrace it.”
He’s right. We have no control over changes that occur in technology or even in our own lives. We’d be much better off trying to embrace it than trying to resist it. That’s why when a new social media platform comes onto the scene I at least experiment with it to see whether or not it will work for my business. This is much different than saying “Oh my gosh! Now there’s Snapchat! I’m never going to understand any of this!”
Turn it into a fun challenge.
One of the reasons I say that if you want to freelance you better be sure that you actually like the process of building a business is because of constantly changing technology.
Every time Facebook changes their algorithm I begin to see it as a new marketing puzzle I need to crack. That’s because I actually think it’s interesting. Business and marketing fascinate me to no end so I tend to see it as something new for me to learn.
Outsource it if you can.
If I can’t crack Facebook myself and I feel like it’s something I need for my business then I’ll probably outsource to someone who can.
Sometimes the best way to deal with changing technology is to not waste our own time trying to figure it out and just hire it out. For example, I’ve been known to mess around with the back-end of my website and break some things. Rather than trying to fix it myself (I usually have no idea what happened) and waste an entire day of my life, I immediately email my web designer to she can do it for me.
Jump right in.
When I rebranded my business in 2015 I also upgraded all the systems we were using on the backend. Guess what that means – it means my team and I were dealing with changing technology that we were imposing on ourselves!
We upgraded to Infusionsoft which is an all-in-one system that handles e-commerce, email marketing, and it’s a CRM. It’s also a technological beast.
Rather than procrastinating on learning the system out of fear, we forced ourselves to jump right in. We put ourselves on a tight deadline, signed up for training and jumped right in! It was basically trial by fire, but it helped us get used to changing technology.
Final Thoughts
Since there will always be changing technology, our job as business owners is to embrace it and jump right in. Or, at the very least, experiment with new technology to see if it’s worth it.
