Go With Great
I recently had the experience of remodeling my house, and — let me tell you — I learned a lot about myself, my business philosophies, and my plumbing.
We originally hired 2 different contractors: one that was cheap for the simpler labor and another that was very good, but charged accordingly.
When we first looked at the bids, we thought, “We really have to go with the cheaper one because we could save so much! We’re just throwing our money away having a master builder tile the bathroom.” You can imagine how that turned out in the end. What a mistake!
The worst part is I started to recognize the same mentality in my own professional life. At its most basic form, bookkeeping is simple. But if you’re thinking that simple means it is easy to do, take a look at my tile! In your speciality, how often have you been called in to clean up the work of a budget company? My guess is more than once. Nevertheless, I fell for the same thing in an area outside my expertise.
During the tiling, the budget company nicked a gas line. Did they say anything? Nope. They were hired to put the tile down and that’s exactly what they did—nothing more and without a single thought for everything around the tile.
It is a sad, but wonderful, analogy to business. All departments need to support the business goals and if they see something, they need to say something. The gas leak could have blown up my family—thank goodness I have an excellent sense of smell! Situations like this ruin companies all too often. And in a best case scenario, the product is simply poor.
In the end, we had everything checked and redone for a grand total of much more than we would have paid had we gone with the high quality contractor, and that is nothing compared to the emotional toll it took on all of us. Because of our choice, I spent a huge amount of time supervising what should have been simple tasks, and had to put my work on hold. I love my job and I hate watching people lay tile, yet there I was, months on end, away from a job that brings me fulfillment and joy (plus pays the bills) to supervise something that left me frustrated and exhausted at the end of every day. All of this could have been avoided if I’d only trusted my gut and gone with the other contractor.
Nicole Rose Yen
Advisor
So what are you doing or supervising that you don’t love? What leaves you frustrated and exhausted at the end of the day? Give those things over to someone that loves it and can be trusted to do it without constant supervision—even if you end up paying a little bit more.