Jack of all trades - master of what?
July 22nd, 2008 | Published in Authenticity In Entrepreneurship, Strategy, Taking Care of You | 2 Comments
I was teaching my live Effective Newsletter workshop yesterday, and a participant brought up a really interesting point. We were talking about how she is publishing a set of CD’s and she said that she found a wonderful publishing company to work with. She was grateful for their help because she wouldn’t have known even where to begin with a project like that.
Her expertise was in creative piece - recording the CD’s. She had no idea how to get them published or on Amazon.com. She said “I’m a master at what I do, I don’t need to be an expert at publishing - I let someone else be the expert in that, and I gratefully pay them for their service.”
How many times in your business do you try to master something that you’re really not an expert in? I know so many practitioners who dive into things that are outside of their area of expertise.
What ends up happening is a lot of frustration. It’s not easy to learn the ins and outs of something and try to expertly apply it to your business. Like web design. I know so many people who try to tackle web design. They end up mad, frustrated, and worst of all - with a web site they aren’t even close to being happy with.
The biggest reason we try to tackle these things is money. We plead that we don’t have the money to hire someone to do these things for us.
If you explore your options, you can find ways to outsource tasks that aren’t going to be expensive. And, if you really look at your budget, where is your money going?
It’s worth it to get the help you need. It saves you time, it gives your business an edge, and it allows someone else to be the expert, and allows you to do the work you were really meant to do.
About Jenn Givler
July 24th, 2008 at 9:31 pm (#)
This is fantastic advice, Jenn.
It’s easy to look at a task and think it’s not worth it to pay someone else to do what we think we can do ourselves, but there’s a big difference between scraping together something that will get you by, and having a professional create something that will get you results.
Just the amount of frustration that it saves to hire an expert can easily be worth the cost of certain projects.
Two points that finally helped me make the jump to outsourcing some of tasks and hiring help with several others was that (1) I admitted that it wasn’t my strength and I didn’t enjoy it, and (2) if I had someone else do that, I could invest the time in my profit-generating activities instead! So, less frustration, more profit.
July 25th, 2008 at 10:55 am (#)
Awesome insight Michelle! Thanks for sharing.
I agree, it’s hard for people to fit certain things into their budget. But, I think what we sometimes don’t realize is that we can start small.
For example, if you want to hire a VA, hire that person for just a couple of tasks, or just a couple of hours.
Many times, experts offer their services in bite size pieces - so you don’t have to be making a mountain of money before you get the help you need!