It’s an ongoing struggle for most entrepreneurial types – do you go DIY in your business or bring in a pro to take care of it?
Most entrepreneurs are the kind of people who are good with tinkering, figuring and doing what it takes to get the job done. But that personality trait isn’t always a good thing.
I must confess, I’m a recovering DIY fanatic. Because, why not – I’m smart, I can figure this out. (Uh, huh. No lady, you cannot learn HTML in a night.)
For many years, I had an acute case of DIY-itis. Signs of this affliction include:
- Spending 8 hours trying to install and customize a WordPress theme only to lose your shit entirely.
- Being convinced that you can TOTALLY figure it out. You discover three weeks later that you really can’t.
- You’re addicted to free training and sit through hours of crap to learn the one thing you really need to know.
- You claim that you enjoy DIYing it because you love to learn new things.
- Last night you got 2 hours of sleep because you can’t figure out what to name your program so you spent the night tossing and turning.
Do you recognize these symptoms? Do you have a raging hot case of DIYitis?
Having a bootstrap budget means that DIY is often a necessity, but you need to learn how and when to let things go. Especially when you aren’t doing your business any favors because you are a coach, consultant or speaker – and that thing you are ready to DIY is going to end up leaving you with one big old #hotmess.
[Tweet “Do you have DIYitis? You may be turning your biz into a #hotmess – via @magspatterson”]
To really step it up – you need to step away.
So step away from Canva, Google Docs or Wishlist and ask yourself “am I best serving my business by doing this?” Get real with yourself and figure out what your DIYitis is costing your business.
Here’s the math on that one:
89 hours you spend working on things that aren’t serving you X what your time is worth = losing your mind for no good reason
~OR~
7 possible clients you lose because you look like a rookie + hours you spend marketing yourself to find more clients = hustling but making it way harder than it needs to be
That my friends is DIYitis math and it’s costing you a lot more than you probably realize.
Where to Get Help
In the perfect world, you’d have the budget to simply get everything off your plate that isn’t core to your business, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Stepping it up by stepping away is about identifying the biggest roadblocks.
Typically, these are the “public” facing things where most of us are out of our depth:
- Graphic Design – Canva and Picmonkey has made us all into DIY designers. But that’s not always enough. Sometimes you need to bring in a pro who will stop you from using 4 fonts, having zero proximity and chronically abusing whitespace.
- Branding + Positioning – Who you are and what you say is more than your logo or the cute words on your website. Skipping this step and throwing up a website without understanding the conversations you need to show up in and your customer’s needs is going to hold you back in a major way.
- Copywriting – Newsflash! Writing for the Web is not like writing an essay. Or a corporate data sheet. You need to speak English, not industry jargon,and use things like subheads and bullets. (Case in point, this list.)
- Tech/Development – If your checkout for your ebook doesn’t work or requires you to manually do anything, stop. Or you’ve got Wishlist installed but anyone and everyone on Google can see all your content…do not pass go. Find a techie person to help.
Start by picking one of these things where you need to bring in a pro. Just one. Then figure out what your options are. Talk to your business BFFs, get recommendations from people you trust and carry on from there. Find the right person for the job and get a handle on the budget you’ll need.
Maybe you don’t have the budget you need right now, but with your commitment to recovering from your DIYitis, you can start to plan ahead.
After DIYing most of my current site, that’s exactly what I did. I literally saved up knowing the budget I needed to get what I needed for a new brand website. For me to take things up a notch in my business, I needed the next step up, so I had to get over my DIYitis because it simply wasn’t going to work any more.
Was handing over the money scary – hell yes. But it is an investment and a promise of things to come. Isn’t your business worth it?
[Tweet “The math of DIYing and what it is costing you with @magspatterson”]
Are you suffering from DIYitis? What’s one thing you need to be ready to turn over to a pro? Comment below. (And no judgements, I get it, DIY has a time and place for all of us.)
