What is the definition of VALUE? I’m sure business people have a good idea (I hope!). Most people (myself included) have a pretty good idea what they want and/or expect to get out of a new investment they make. What they have a hard time with is, “How will I manage to do more and get less?” I’ve heard the statement before. Do or do not… it’s all good.
Unless you’re in business exclusively to build self-confidence!
Think about it… when you hire someone, do you expect them to do all your work? You hire a contractor to do your plumbing and roof repair. Do you expect them to be your affiliate and take care of everything? No? Then why do you hire anyone? Because they’re experts in their field and are only going to do that one thing and that one thing only. Your objective is to be the expert in your field and continue to educate yourself so that you have an asset in that particular field (assuming you’re already there).
So, to maintain and/or enhance my ‘expertise’ let alone the ‘expertise’ of others, I’ve decided I’m going to ‘inherit the work’. After all, I’m the expert in my field.
Here is where most people in business fall down and what I like to call ‘doing more and giving less’.
A few years ago, a company I worked with had a person who came into our facility to hire us to do some work in their offices. He told me that they could do all their work internally and they didn’t need us. I asked what he was going to do before he met with me and he told me that he was going to do all the work himself. Great… right? At least he had a plan… not so much. What was his plan?
He told me it was going to be easy because he was going to do everything. He made it sound so simple that when we left his offices, the other guys were all ready to take this guy’s stuff and do the work. Yuck! In order to capitalize on his expertise, I had to ask him why he was doing everything himself. In his mind he was just doing it for himself – which is in no way equate to the truth.
The first part of his plan was ridiculous. In his mind he could do the work himself AND it would save him a bunch of money in the long run. What’s his rate? Who’s time is he saving…. do I have to go on? Let’s stop for a moment and examine this a bit bit closer.
First, when he started doing the work himself, he had to go out and get work to do it in the first place. Just getting work from a janitorial work truck wasn’t going to help him save anything.
Second, what about all those services that are so readily available that do not require the doing of any work on his part at all? He spent the money, and those services created inventory, daily activity for his hourly rate that remained the same in people speaking including himself. This is the reason he was doing everything himself. Don’t get me wrong, he was a great guy, a really great guy, and was a great problem solver. However, not in a position to invest in his business. What was he missing?
A third reason that a client chose to do the other way was that he didn’t have enough money to hire other help. I’ve seen this happen a lot. They run up a bill for transportation, servicedozen or more areas, and they didn’t hire new help. That’s just waste. Why would you want to add another non-value added resource to your business when you have the money right there to pay for it?
A fourth and last reason is that every client tells me they love doing the project themselves but they can’t justify it to the bank. They don’t know what to do. It must be the easy way out – and it usually is. I call this a false economy. Want to spend all your time working? There’s no way anyone does that and get all the value a client receives in one job/day. It just doesn’t work.
In order to do that, re-evaluate your goals, re-evaluate how you’re doing them. Take your time and step back to a larger view of what you’re doing and what you are getting for THE BUSINESS. Some of the things I have observed do not apply. That doesn’t mean you should pull back or stop doing them. My advice is not to stop doing the things that get you in business and to not add into this area.
