DIY or pay for expertise?

Do it yourself or pay for expertise?

I'm in an interesting place, and I want to share it with you.

And that is that I'm building my first software app and said, you know, what wouldn't it be cool is if the particular processes for a small number of systems were defined as I built them out to specifications that I knew that they worked.

And then to simplify it further took it to an app.

Now, this is for you, if you're a software developer, if you've been in the software world for a long time, then this is easy.

You'd be like, Ah, cool, of course.

But for me, I've not done this before.

But I'm excited.

It's a relatively simple app. my wife referred me to one of her company's software developers.

And so we had a chat.

And He was like, You know what, this is unusual.

This is actually relatively doable on a budget that isn't $5 million, that isn't even $1 million is like, No, this is doable.

And that was good news as like, Oh, sweet.

He's like, this is unusual in these days, like, typically new ideas or new software developments, they have to be in that 5 million-plus, then everyone's going for that startup and Silicon Valley, then obviously, this is standard play, like, Yep, we're going to do the convertible notes, we're going to have all of that money, we're going to have a runway, but I didn't want that.

What I wanted was, okay, let's get this operational.

Let's get these three systems done.

And have it so that you don't need to know the systems at all.

All it is, is fill in the blanks, click Next, fill in the blanks, click Next, select the right things, click Next.

And out of that comes three very powerful things.

Number one, who you are serving for this particular product of yours, whatever that product is, you're very clear on exactly who you are serving.

Next, up, you know what problem that they've got, you fill in the problems.

And in fact, even better than that, it's like, hey, come up with the problems and then do these searches.

Easy, it all gets done for you.

The really cool thing about software was that He was like, You know what, to get AI to do this, this is entirely possible.

Like, really, you're telling me that basically, I can give you a basic outline of who I want to serve, what problems they are, and the software will now go out, the AI will go out and extract all the really cool answers.

And now I'm just choosing between that sounds pretty good to me, I hope it sounds good to you.

But then I was faced with what do I do? Know, either I can pay for the expertise, or I can try and do it myself.

And what I came to is like, I can do it myself, it's just going to be slow, it will be slow.

Unless I want to ditch the idea entirely and do it very poorly, then it could be fast.

And what we're left with is the same problem that we've discussed before in systems and which is you can have two out of three, you can have good, you can have cheap, and you can have fast you can have two of those.

So I have found great success in life by doing the good and the fast.

Doing good and fast that guess what this means expensive.

But it has served me so well.

Why? Because in life, there is so much a time factor, the ability to get to an answer quickly requires that it is good and requires that it's fast.

Like if I can get those two things, then I can know with feedback and say, Hey, did that work? Can I do it another way? Look? Yeah, I could do it poorly.

But I won't know whether a good version would have worked.

And I could have done it slowly.

But I will be likely to be beaten to market by people who can move faster, and just finished the unicorn project.

And this was a really interesting book because it was suggesting that market Goliath's that are currently struggling with innovation, and tech could turn into the next unicorns because they have one advantage that many people will not that startups do not.

And that is they have pre-existing customer relations.

And they have the ability to put large amounts of resources to get answers quickly.

And this is why I have come to the conclusion that is better to pay for expertise.

Rather than trying to learn a lot of skills.

I don't want to learn the skills.

I just want the end result I just want the product and this may be very true for you in business as well.

You know you don't really care how you get us this as long give me the results.

And if there is a better, quicker, faster way to get that result.

then it is worth the pain.

That's the philosophy.

It served me well across my life, I'd hope that you may well have found a similar philosophy that works for you.

Perhaps you learned by saving money to buy something that doesn't actually work just led you to have to buy the good product afterward anyway, like, well, I should have just saved my money and got the good one.

In the beginning.

In building houses, I chose specifically in terms of choosing a builder.

He was like, look, it's going to be more expensive, but we're going to get it done.

And we're going to get it done.

Well, I'm like, great, you're my man.

What's your experience been easy, worthwhile paying less? Is it worthwhile being slow? Or would you just rather find someone who's got the expertise and pay for it? That's an interesting decision.

It's a physical, philosophical decision in life.

And in business.

I'll leave you with that.

I'm going to head off I got a date night with my wife tonight, which should be a lot of fun.

And I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode as we continue this journey into the power of systems to create results.

Oh, by the way, if you do want some help with systems in head over to systemio.dev, go watch the training there about how to get systems to work for you in your business in a better and more effective way than you've got right now.

I look forward to seeing you on the next episode.