Girls Got Gadget

It’s true. As enthusiastic as I may be about technology and cool gadgetry, at times it is my undoing. Right now I am putting in place all the pieces to launch GadgetSister.com — a new online storefront featuring my own hand-picked assortment of cool gadgets.

Within 48 hours I had blazed through what takes many business people weeks or months. I reserved the domain name, fleshed out the concept, set up the DBA, the bank account, the merchant service credit card service, obtained a supplier, and engaged a company that builds online stores that are totally compatible with my supplier. I got the logo designed and did the front page graphics myself. Sometimes it pays to be a Renaissance Woman as well as Gadget Sister.

And then I felt a familiar bite on the butt cheek.

The e-mail declared that my “site had been loaded”—and it was! To the wrong domain name, with the wrong graphics, without my logo, and it didn’t like my user name and password with the supplier.

Poo. Talk about a buzz kill.

Now, I know from experience that this will all sort itself out with a couple of phone calls to some very reasonable and talented people who just didn’t get the memo. I know that I will be over this little obstacle in less than a week. (And now I am grateful when stuff like this happens because it gives me great material for something to write about in a blog. )

The whole episode did bring up for me a great philosophical debate, however. (Almost anything can inspire a philosophical debate with Gadget Sister because she is by definition a very philosophical Renaissance woman who likes to think deep thoughts.)

“Why do I celebrate and adore technology and gadgets so much when they are just as often a source of pain, confusion and frustration as they are efficiency, simplicity, and fun?”

Well, that’s really just life in a nutshell, isn’t it? Everything in life has its good and bad, it’s light and dark, it’s sweet and sour and we just have to take one with the other. It’s “the whole catasrophe” as Zorba the Greek pointed out. The question is, where am I going to focus and what am I going to learn?

My Focus. Am I going to let this little glitch shut down a business before it starts or am I going to figure it out and keep moving forward? The reality is that even with this small set-back I have shaved months off bringing this concept to market because of the amazing technology that has been put in place that I didn’t have to spend a dime to develop. Talk about leverage! There are many thousands of people hours and huge development costs at my disposal that I get for about $25 a month! So, I am choosing to focus on the greater benefit of the technology rather than its inevitable frustrations.

My Lesson. I now have a huge pile of valuable knowledge to share with my design and web clients to help them market their own businesses better. I can add a new service and create more value for others. I tested the boundaries of my new arena, and emerged with very useful information. I suspect that I will have a more interesting store as a result.

So here’s the bottom line. While it can be frustrating at times, I remain strong in my conviction that “the right tool at the right time in the right hands can often save the day.”

And if it doesn’t? Sometimes the most useful “gadgets” are experience and wisdom.