Once upon a time, in the ‘good old days’, I had a Triumph 1500. Cream-coloured saloon, 4 doors, double headlights, manual, leather(ish) seats. Great first car.
(photo: By Charles01 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11341226)
I did all my own servicing on that car. It was like a giant Meccano set (for those not familiar with the brand, you had all sorts of metal shapes full of holes that you could bolt together to make fabulous machines, the big-kid version of Lego). In that Triumph, you could take stuff apart, clean it, replace worn out bits, put it together, and it was better than before.
I do have a mind that likes taking things apart and putting them together, I will admit. All the same, the Triumph 1500 made it quite easy. Generally, access to things was easy enough, spares were easy to find. I was a Mechanic!! (and now I’m regularly on a big red fire-truck, but that’s another story…)
My next car was a much more modern Ford hatchback, I forget the model. It had electronic ignition, was packed into a small engine-bay. First time I tried to tune that Ford, I stuffed it. Because now you need specialist equipment, skills and experience.
So I gave up my car maintenance hobby and let the professionals do it. It costs me to get a car serviced by someone, of course, but a) it’s easy and b) I can be reasonably confident it will be done properly and quickly.
I’m sure I could still do it myself. However, I have other things I could and should be doing – including newer hobbies like family, doing up this house, learning guitar. Servicing my own car would no doubt still give me a sense of achievement, but it would suck up time and need a bit of learning plus some new equipment and gadgets (hmm, there’s a thought…).
This same principle is almost certain to apply to you. What are you doing, where are you spending your time, effort and funds to do something yourself that someone else could do more quickly, more effectively? If you enjoy it, stick with it. But if in a perfect world you could stop doing it, it’s worth considering the benefits of outsourcing.
Weigh up the cost of getting someone else to do it against what you would do with that free time, alongside knowing that it has been done properly (no left over bits!).
An example is book-keeping. Are you catching up on your accounts on a Sunday? Imagine just handing that over to someone else. Checkout Roneta’s services at Enhanced Power for what I mean.
Another example might be your website. When are you managing that? Are you adding new content every now and then? More importantly, how often are you making sure all the components are updated with security and bug fixes? Backups? Again, all of this can be handed over to someone else for around the price of a couple of hours of your time per month.
At Winch Websites, we offer a Website Care plan that looks after all the technical stuff (updates, security, backups, search-engine basics, speed & performance) and also lets you make any changes you like simply by sending an email with what you want done. Your website hums along all tuned-up. Easy and stress free.
Sure you could look after your website yourself. A great many do. This isn’t about whether you CAN though, it’s about whether you SHOULD. You’re running a business, it’s a business judgement you need to make – at what point is your time worth more doing other things? Are you going to build and grow your business more through DIY website maintenance or have you reached a point where it’s more cost-effective to hand it over?
I did really enjoy looking after that old Triumph 1500. The cars I drive now though, I’m not interested in getting under the hood. Aside from a wisp of nostalgia, I can’t say I regret that, with a lot else to do instead!