It has taken me a while to do this, too long. I have been trying to figure out some way to communicate with my clients on a regular basis.
It reminded me of 
starting my evening class’s at accountancy college. I was genuinely terrified arriving for that first class.
I was working by day as an apprentice baker (with a 5.30am start!). The only member of my family at that time, who had anything to do with an office was my cousin Fran, who was arrested for robbing one!
I arrived early and took a seat at the very front of the room, I felt I needed to position myself where I could learn most. As the other students arrived, I noticed how well they all seem to be dressed and the nice brief cases they were carrying. I had just come off a twelve-hour shift in the bakery and had cycled into the city centre straight from work. I looked more like something the ‘cat had dragged in’. One guy walked in dressed in a sharp grey suit, I figured he knew all about accountancy already and like everyone else in the class, probably worked with an accountancy firm.
The class started bang on time, after 15 minutes I was completely lost and could not follow anything that the lecturer was explaining. I looked behind me and all of the other participants were writing away. I put up my hand and asked the lecturer if she could explain what she had done again. She was an excellent lecturer and after her second explanation, I understood the concept and she carried on. 10 minutes later, I was lost again, I again put up my hand again and asked her to explain the new concept.
The whole first hour of the lecture was spent with me asking questions and feeling more and more insecure. I believed that everyone in the room must have thought that I was stupid.
As soon as the lecturer said its time for a break, I ran out of the room and contemplated not coming back. The little voice in my head was trying to convince me that I didn’t belong in such exalted company. But then, I heard a voice behind me, ‘what’s your name?’. I turned around and it was the guy with the sharp grey suit. He said again, ‘what’s your name?’. I tentatively said, ‘Mark….Mark Donovan’. He said, ‘Mark, thanks for asking all the questions, I hadn’t a clue either what she was talking about’. I felt a little bit better. As I walked outside to get a breath of fresh air, there were a group of smokers from the class, one of them said, ‘thanks for asking all the great questions, we didn’t understand anything either’.
The reason I share this story is, how many of us put off doing things because we feel that we are not good enough.
By the way, of the thirty plus students that started on the evening course that day, only three students managed to become qualified accountants, me being one of them!
Your challenge for this week: what have you been putting off that will benefit you or your business and put the first step in place to start doing it NOW.
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