Do You Need Professional Help? The Limits of Doing It Yourself
Until recently, I seemed to prefer to always do things the hard way. If a website needed to be created, I would learn how to code it, populate it, and then publish it. During renovations of my home I learned how to do my own electrical, dry wall, plumbing, and first aid. I nearly had to learn how to handle my own divorce, but luckily that was avoided. We justified learning these things ourselves in order to offset the cost of paying someone else to do it, but in retrospect, this is probably a backwards way of looking at things.
Doing it yourself can be a false economy. Sure, we might have saved $1500 in labour by painting our house ourselves, but this is time that kept us from doing the things we like. On top of that, the house looks like we painted it ourselves. Now that I have my own business, I am starting to understand that my time is worth much more than I had previously thought. If I want to be considered a professional in my industry, I need to work with other professionals. Here are a few professionals that you might consider using in order to achieve your own goals.
Financial Planner
You don’t need a financial planner because you are already great with your money. You can do it yourself. Right.
A good financial planner can help you find money you didn’t know you have, and make your investments work harder than you thought possible. Financial planners aren’t magicians, so don’t expect them to take your $10 and make it a million, but if you are willing to work for it, they can help you set and achieve your financial goals.
To help you choose the right financial planner for you, I’d suggest the following:
- Talk to your friends – Chat with your successful friends, not the ones that struggle to live paycheque to paycheque. Find out who their planner is and if they are happy with their choice.
- Talk to your boss – Chances are your boss is able to make a solid recommendation for you, and showing that you have the maturity to be concerned about your future needs can help put you in a good light with your company.
- Talk to a bunch of Financial Planners – Don’t settle on the first planner you come across – no matter how charming he/she is. Interview at least three different firms. Find out what kind of service schedule you will be on. Ask them how they get paid. Ask for references. Call the references. Just because someone says they do something – doesn’t mean they really do.
A good financial planner will help you achieve your dreams – so take the time to find the right fit for you. If you spend less time choosing your financial planner than you do choosing your next car – you might want to rethink your priorities.
Accountant
You don’t need an accountant – you’ve got Freshbooks and Quicken. You can do it yourself. Sure.
Maybe when you are just starting out this is an acceptable arrangement, but in the long run it will cost you exponentially more than hiring a professional. A good accountant can help you avoid paying too much in tax, and with your financial planner, can ensure that you don’t have to worry about being audited, becoming financially overextended, and ensure you are billing your clients properly.
To find your next accountant, use the same process that you used to find your new financial planner. Forming these relationships now, while your business is still young, will help you find the success you crave.
Lawyer
“Lawyer: An individual whose principal role is to protect his clients from others of his profession.”
~Anonymous
Your lawyer is going to help you with many of the things that you will want to have in your life. They will help you negotiate contracts, purchase your home, and draw up your will. But the other reason to have a good lawyer is to help you with the rough spots in your life. If someone tries to sue you, you get divorced, or you are wrongly accused of murdering your wife, but it was really a one-armed man who was trying to kill you both. A good lawyer can help you negotiate the intricate world of law.
How do you find a good lawyer? The same way you find most of the other professionals in your life. Talk to your friends, your family, your coworkers. And then interview the lawyers that interest you. Do not pick the lawyer based on his suit or the quality of his TV commercial. Sometimes good lawyers dress poorly, and poor lawyers can hire good ad agencies.
Personal Coach
A personal coach is much more than someone who will show you how to get the results you want. They can help you learn to take advantage of your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. They are not a sycophant that works for you, nor are they a caring spouse that will support you. The personal coach will tell you things you don’t want to admit about yourself, but you need to hear in order to reach your ultimate success. The best reason to have a personal coach comes from a quote from a fairly talented ceiling painter:
The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that our aim is too low and we reach it. – Michaelangelo
There are many people that are going to read this article and disagree, arguing that because they know their own accounts better, they can manage their business better than anyone else. My challenge to these folks would be to find the professional that can demonstrate that your success is tantamount to their success – and let them do their best for you.
I’ll end on a quote that will hopefully put it in perspective:
If writers were good businessmen, they’d have too much sense to be writers.
~ Irvin S. Cobb
Makes a lot of sense. But this article is primarily for those who have attained a certain level of success or put it in other words, certain revenue stream. They will definitely need accountant, FP and Lawyers and so on. Now, if I talk from a freelancer point of view, a large percentage of them will not exactly require these many services except for the last one, personal coach and that is actually complicated.
An article on this particular aspect, ‘Finding Personal coach’ will be really helpful for many freelancers.
Thanks for the share. It was great.
A good mentor never hurts.
Hi,
Great tip. I have never considered this aspect. Your arguments certainly carry weight. I will be giving consideration to this!
Thanks for mentioning this.
Kindest,
Nabeel
Good post and points on this topic. I think once someone does reach a certain level they will need some type of help to reach the next level.
When I told my friend that I was going to be a freelance writer, she scribbled a name on a piece of paper and said, “Talk to her. She’s an accountant.” I have to admit that I was completely lost, as I’d not earned a penny from this mysterious writing stuff.
Thank you for the tips. I cannot afford the financial planner, the personal coach or the lawyer right now, but I found the money for the accountant. Mine was worth every penny even *before* I officially started.
some really good points – i have a tax/accountant guy ( i refer to him as my “controller”) that has made all the difference in my payroll, taxes, invoicing, etc – without him i know i would have been doing things wrong and possibly illegal. i suggest finding someone in this field and ask them questions!
Agree with everything written here!
I agree with Jay with regards to a lot of professional services, but one area that Jason cites is in web development. That is an area where a freelancer needs to know his limitations. Realistically, using tools like Freshbooks and Outright allow us to handle billing and bookkeeping. As for personal coaching, that is indeed a luxury you can obtain after a certain point. When starting out as a freelancer, the key is to do it all yourself and know your limitations. My rule is: 1) don’t hire out non-billable work until it hurts or is critical and 2) when taking on billable work yourself, find a partner outside of your discipline and use them. Don’t try to be a coder and a designer to keep costs down. If you partner with a good coder, you are going to find that the quality of your work and the size of your contracts go up.
Great comment Nick, your point suggested to me one other oversight in the article. Yes, web development (or design rather) makes all the difference in the world with regard to the effectiveness of your site but the other big mistake Jason seems to be spinning is saying that you need an accountant because Freshbooks and Quicken are capable but insufficient. Who, today, uses Quicken to manage their business?? (If you are, you’re nuts). I found Outright a few months ago and it is my accountant; that and PayPal invoicing (which is cheaper than Freshbooks). Quicken doesn’t prepare my Schedule C – Outright does. And it’s free.
Spot on about the outsourcing part mentioned in first few paragraphs.
I’ve learnt server management, HTML/CSS, a bit of Photoshop/PHP/WordPress theming/hacking all for the sake of maintaining and optimizing my websites. Looking back, it’d have been a lot better not to learn any of them, focus my time and energy on what I do best (umm….creating content?
) and hire freelancers to do the other work.
*Hint* for others in the position I was in at the beginning (ie. considering learning bits of everything to maintain your core interests).
This is always a pet peeve with me – I agree with all your points. Many people I know who feel they’re saving money downplay all the time and effort – not to mention mistakes – that go with their experiments. And as freelancers who have the potential to make money in that available time, doing those things ourselves is a huge opportunity loss.
I recently hired a developer to help me with a site I’m building for a new business venture of my own. This was serious coding, database integration, user account information – months of work for a small team. I told a friend of mine that I was doing this, and he asked, “Isn’t that something you can just learn to do yourself?”
I find that mindset difficult to deal with – I explained to him that if I took the next year to devote to learning those skills, it would never work. The team I hired knew what needed to be done – and it was still a challenge. I told my friend that would be like me deciding to build my own FedEx, so I could save on shipping charges – or learning to build my own digital camera so I didn’t have to pay for one.
Most people who aren’t freelancers/entrepreneurs have what I think of as a “consumer mindset” when it comes to this – save money at any cost. But especially when it comes to the examples you give – accountants and lawyers especially – you’ll only set yourself back in the long run, when you try to avoid paying for services like those by doing things yourself.
In regards to the first few paragraphs, there is a deeper problem with the economies of DIY.
I need to do wiring in my house, so instead of hiring an electrician at a cost of $500, I spend 2 hours learning how to do it myself and another 3 getting it done. Let’s say that I can work for $100/hour.
Now obviously I’ve missed out on the potential $500 from working those 5 hours instead, but on top of that, the electrician is also out my $500. Just by learning to do the wiring in my house, I’ve destroyed $1000 of wealth in a day… not bad for a days work, but I’d rather it be in my pocket
I love your description of a personal coach. It is right on target. We are not “yes” people. Instead, we are a combination cheerleader and drill instructor.
When looking for a coach, I would suggest finding someone who is or has been coached. It’s tough to be a good coach if you’ve never experienced one.