Maybe You’re Not Bad at Tech After All

I didn't learn to drive until I was in my thirties.

I'd had a go at 30. Six months of lessons and then I got stuck and I stopped. It wasn't because I couldn't do it, but because I'd convinced myself I couldn't. Every time I got behind the wheel I was braced, ready for it to go wrong. I'd sit there rigid, certain I was about to make a fool of myself, that I wouldn't progress, and eventually I just let it go. Easier not to, I told myself. I told everyone else it was a cash flow problem...

Some people can drive and some people can't, and I was clearly one of the cant's.

Does that sound familiar to you? Because I hear the same thing about tech almost every week.

"I'm just not technical."
"My brain doesn't work that way."
"Everyone else seems to get it except me."

I said all of that about driving. Word for word.

What nobody's told you.

A couple of years later I went back to it, this time with a different instructor and twelve weeks to get it done. I made a decision to sit my test in my home town, the place I'd first learned, rather than in York where I'd would be moving to in, you guessed it, twelve weeks. People said do it in York, because those are the roads you'll be driving. I said no. I wanted the roundabouts I already knew, the junctions I remembered, the roads that didn't make me panic, too much. Familiarity.

That wasn't me being soft, it was me being sensible. I gave myself the best possible chance instead of the hardest possible test.

I was still terrified of course, let me be clear about that. Passing didn't feel triumphant, it felt like a fluke I'd managed to pull off before anyone noticed. But I passed. Me. The person who was certain she'd never get it.

Then came the bit that matters the most.

Passing wasn't the finish line

The test was never the hard bit. Well it was, but not as hard as what was to come.

Driving.

Passing your test doesn't make you a driver. Driving alone for the first time, with no instructor and no dual controls, that's when your stomach drops. The only thing that fixed it was doing it. Again, and again, and again. The supermarket run, the trip to the tip, the dual carriageway I'd been avoiding. None of it felt natural at first. All of it does now, because I did it enough times that my brain stopped treating it as a threat.

Then I started enjoying it. Me in the car, heading up and down the A1(M) to various regional offices, music on, LOUD, and singing, EVEN LOUDER! No-one wants to here that, trust me.

That's the thing, the bit I wish someone had told me when I was learning to drive. You're not waiting to become the kind of person who can do this. You become that person by doing it badly a few times first.

So let's talk about tech

Well for starters, if you send an email to the wrong person, or mess up an automation, the risk of doing actual harm is FAR less than every time you get behind the wheel. Sorry.

When you open MailerLite for the first time and it throws automations and triggers and groups and segments at you, none of it means anything, you are exactly where I was in that first driving lesson. Rigid. Braced. Certain everyone else got a manual you didn't, or, even worse, other people have an innate ability. One you simply don't possess.

You didn't miss the manual and there isn't an innate skill. The people who look confident with this stuff aren't cleverer than you, they've just sat in the seat more times. That really is the only difference.

As the saying goes:

"Passing your test doesn't mean you know how to drive; it just means you've earned a license to learn."

What's better about email and MailerLite is you there isn't a test you have to pass before you start doing it. No-one sitting next to you marking your performance.

You don't need to learn every road in the UK before you pass your test, you need enough to get going, and the rest comes with time. You need enough of MailerLite to build your system, not a mastery of every button. Enough to get moving, then the confidence follows the doing, not the other way round.

One more thing, because it made my week

A while ago I was mid-way through a project for a client, and she messaged me about something separate. Her welcome email needed updating and she wanted to know how. I made a note to get back to her in the afternoon.

By the time I did, she'd already sorted it herself.

I cannot tell you how good that felt. She'd stopped waiting to be rescued and just had a go, and it worked. That is the moment I'm working towards with everyone I teach. Not you depending on me forever and you realising you can do the thing.

You are closer to that than you think.