The Difference Between Professional and Do It Yourself

To me, it is part of the American Dream that anyone can start a business if they are determined enough, even if they don’t have money. It takes an unbelievable amount of determination though, and a huge amount of time and grit to do it.

I’m a firm believer in Do It Yourself bootstrapping. I got where I am that way. But I also know the price. And it is a heavy one.

• The first toll it takes is learning. You don’t just have to DO the job yourself, you have to take the time to learn to do it right. And even then, there are things you won’t learn except through experience – but at least you can learn to avoid the most serious errors if you give it the time and study that it takes.
• The second is time to do it. You’ll take longer doing it yourself than a pro would.
• The third one is professionalism. You’ll never be able to do as good a job as an experience professional, and it will show in ways that you won’t be able to recognize for years. Unfortunately, your customers can tell the difference – even if they can’t define it, they can feel it.
• The fourth is effectiveness. It may be effective enough to get your foot in the door, or it may not. Some people seem to be able to pull it off, others do not. You won’t know which you are until you are a year into it. Literally, a full year. Because it will take you that long to learn how to do everything yourself, and then to see whether it will work or not. And then if it doesn’t work, you are back at the beginning – we are frequently approached by people who tried to do it themselves and find themselves a year later without any appreciable business to show for all their effort.
• The fifth, again, is time. Your business will grow more slowly. If you are doing everything yourself, and trying to run the daily operations of your business, then your business will grow more slowly. You’ll take two years to get where you could get in six months to a year with some help.
• The sixth is mistakes. You are going to make embarrassing and costly mistakes. We all do, but when you try to do everything, and learn everything (some of which you may not be highly suited to), you’ll make more mistakes. Those mistakes will cost you monetarily, and in more time – good training can keep you from making the ones that blitz your business, but many sources offering training aren’t even addressing many of those issues.

If that is the only way you can get started, then do it. But be prepared for the reality of learning it, and for the inevitable effects that you must deal with. Many people start this way, because they know it is the only way they can, and because they are determined to succeed no matter what. Others start this way out of the mistaken idea that it is cheaper, or that the things they are trying to do are easy. If they were easy, there would not be entire professions dedicated to doing them!

Nowhere is this difference more prevalent than in Web Design and SEO. These two areas are often perceived of as the “easy” things, because there are companies out there telling you it is easy. It isn’t.

Yes, you can do it yourself. But you won’t get the same results that you would if you hired competent help. So make that choice if you have to… But don’t make that choice out of the mistaken idea that it is cheaper or that it is just as effective. Do it Yourself means Compromise. If you can afford to not compromise, then your business will develop faster with the right help.

In the mean time, I’ll continue to try to educate people in how to do it themselves in the right way, and I’ll keep developing new service options to help people afford the help they need if they can’t do it themselves. Because I believe in the American Dream, even though I do know what it costs to achieve it.