Embrace What You Resist

I was in a hurry and just wanted the solution quickly. So I did what I usually do when stumped with a programming related challege – I called GoDaddy tech support.

Only this time, it seemed like they were on to me. I expected, “You go here, click there, open this, scroll to that, add the following and you’re done.” Instead I got, “Let me find two articles from the WordPress site that explains how to back up your SQL database and migrate your site to the new URL. I’ll email them to you.”

Grrrr. This is not what I wanted to hear. But it helped me more in the long run. As far as the Web goes I’m skilled at strategic tasks like content development (writing, organization and design), defining Web frameworks, driving traffic, ecommerce, conversion testing and overall marketing, but I’m not a programmer. I equate programming with learning a foreign language – something I hated for 5 years in school. I resisted both because I never thought I’d have to use either of them.

Then IBM sent me and my family to France for two years. And I loved it – including learning French again. As an adult, you typically learn things as needed versus, “Hmm, I think I’ll learn French this month even though it’s unlikely I’ll ever go to France.”

I’ve felt the same way about html and other programming languages for years. As a marketer, why did I need to learn that stuff when there are competent people who specialize in it? I can just recruit them as either internal or external helpers.

But entrepreneurship has a way of excellerating your learning because you’re constantly debating whether or not to pay for services you can learn yourself. So even though you end up doing a lot more while you’re building a business, it is a tremendous boost to your confidence.

For example, in my last company I hired a world-class Web agency and paid $308,000 for a team of programmers and Web experts to help us rebuild and relaunch our company Web site in PHP and MySQL with a sophisticated content engine. I worked with the agency to define the framework and look-and-feel; and I saved an additional $100,00 by writing all 60,000 words of content myself. The whole process took 5 months.

In February, as an entrepreneur, I taught myself Drupal in a week, lined up Web hosting services and took another two weeks to write and design a Web site on the same platform – for less than $500. As I’m writing, I’m getting ready to relaunch the Personal Semiotics  Web site that you’re viewing as a blog in WordPress – again for a few hundred dollars and in less than three weeks. The things that have become routine tasks for me would’ve been unthinkable 9 months ago.

Don’t misunderstand. I love learning new things and I’ve always worked very hard in my career to stay ahead of the curve. But I focused my learning on the things I believed were strategic and that would get used. What I’ve realized this year is that I’m finding a way to use everything I learn – and the interconnections are getting really interesting. Case in point: Personal Semiotics.

Among other things, Personal Semiotics teaches us to embrace new learning as a way to preserve and enhance our intellectual health. And one of my most important symbols for intellectual health and for career is a close connection to the Web.

So be careful what you wish for. I never expected to be answering programmers’ questions in a technical forum or figuring out the answers to my own problems before the forum could respond. But when you embrace what you initially resist, you progress much farther.

Unfortunately my French has grown a little rusty in the past few years, but my Drupal and WordPress are très bien.

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