Terra Milo
Have you ever been going along through your day, checking tasks off your to-do list, when suddenly you run head-first into a technological wall? I'm talking about one of those things that it seems like it should be simple to do, but when you do the things that should make the thing happen, nothing happens. Or something else happens entirely. Or the working icon endlessly spins around but the work never ends. What do you do?
My go-to solution is usually to search for a YouTube tutorial or two on whatever process I’m trying to accomplish. Sometimes this works. But sometimes the first YouTube video I try is out of date. It tells me to go to a page and push a certain button, but when I go to that page, it looks different, and maybe the button they push on the video isn’t there at all. So, I try another. And maybe another. And then a google search. That leads to a forum. Maybe someone gives a great answer in that forum, but then I realize that answer was given two years ago and there have been several updates to both the program and my operating system since then.
In my house, my husband and I both run online businesses. My husband is a sweet and lovely British man who is one of the least woo-woo people I have ever met. And yet even he has this phrase to describe a day like this to me now.
"Is Mercury in Retrograde or something?" he will ask me angrily in his adorable accent, while dragging his clenched fingers across his scalp, sometimes literally pulling out his hair. Does he actually know anything about the astrological phenomenon called Mercury Retrograde? No. And honestly, neither do I. I haven’t a clue. But we use this phrase as code to mean that technology just isn’t working. We can't explain why, it's just one of those days.
I'm usually pretty good at getting up and walking away. Turn the computer or the internet off for awhile. In the words of Roy from the IT Crowd “Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?” I have no idea why that works, but every now and then it does. So I take some deep breaths, move on to something else and leave the thing that isn't working for later when maybe the technological stars will align in such a way that magically, I can get the site to upload, or the newsletter to segment the way I want it to, or whatever I am working on to suddenly work. But some days you just don't have time for that patient approach.
So, what is a frustrated, tech-challenged, online entrepreneur to do? Well, you can either waste hours of your life running down YouTube and tech forum rabbit holes, or you can find someone like Terra Milo who can not only fix the problem but will teach you how to do it so you can make it work yourself next time.
I recently had the chance to interview Terra on my podcast and thoroughly made use of the time to get some private coaching about all of the things that frustrate me most in my own tech world. And in the meantime here are a few of the suggestions that Terra has for all of us less-than-tech-handy folks:
- Your business and needs are unique. A canned YouTube video won’t get you personalized results or make it easier to understand online tools since they change so frequently.
- You’re going to be more effective if you target a niche - specific people instead of a mass group of people.
- If your budget allows, run testing. Once you test and get results, you’ll know where your best audience is.
- Figure out the best systems and tools for you. Just because a tool works for someone else doesn’t mean it’s best for your business. You don’t need all the bells and whistles when starting out.
- Keep it simple and inexpensive, so you can scale when you need to. There’s nothing wrong with using a free account in the first few years.
You can listen to my entire conversation with the delightful Terra Milo right HERE.