To write the check or do it yourself?
Well, not quite as profound as, “to be or not to be,” I admit.
Yet it probably will have a much bigger impact on your life.
Both methods work.
However, the question isn’t absolute, is it? It’s about realizing when to do one over the other. Or more likely, some combination of the two.
Wake Up Call…
You can’t gather gravity in new areas without doing one or the other.
If you need to gather gravity (i.e., don’t yet have the knowledge, capabilities or skills to manifest the results you want) sometimes DIY (do it yourself) is the right call…
…and other times you should leverage other’s experiences.
However, make no mistake about it, there’s a cost —a price— you will have to pay whichever path you take.
Depending on your strengths and talents and the nature of what you’re creating, it can cost less to write the check to collapse learning curves than the cost of gathering gravity by trial ’n error.
Now, my personal opinion and business philosophy is that any time you can buy leverage (that you’ll actually implement, that is) instead of DIY’ing it, 9 times out of 10 that’s the better path, the right path to take.
If you own my N-POD System then you’ve heard me talk about the magic of compounding and the power of a doubling a penny a day for 31 days and having it turn into almost $11 million dollars.
Well, if you ever hope to put the power of compounding to work for you, you need to be mentally prepared to spend the money. If you have a direct response business model, for example, then generally speaking, you can get to the point where every dollar you spend on advertising returns to you 2, 4 or even 5+ dollars back.
So here’s a tough question, if you knew with a high level of certainty that for every $1 you spent, you’d get $3 back in return, how big a check would you write, and how often?
Under those circumstances, you’d look forward to writing bigger and bigger checks, would you not?
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that you just spend money for the sake of spending it willy-nilly.
Nope. I’m conservative and very discriminating about where my money goes, and for what.
Here’s the point: Get clear about the results you want and what achieving them is worth to you, then, if you have the financial ability and if based on your due diligence, you believe writing the check is cheaper than the payoff/result you want…
…then write that check because the faster you do, the faster you get that compounding effect working for you, right?
Personally, I do this all the time. I have spent over a million bucks on my education and personal development.
And, to be clear, that doesn’t include the money I’ve invested to explore and grow my entrepreneurial pursuits. In business, if I have advertising that’s working, I push as much money as I possibly can into it (I’ve even borrowed money I didn’t have when my marketing was working strong and I wanted to get the maximum leverage possible)…
If I’m convinced that a marketing approach is worth testing and could possibly turn into the next home-run I’m looking for, I’ll do small $1,000 advertising tests all day…
If there’s a home study course or training seminar I can buy that gives me just one new (or hybrid) idea, I consider it money well spent (even if it’s one of those $25,000 mastermind dealios) because just one new idea (or a variation on an old one that I already know about) can make me hundreds of thousands (and possibly even millions) of dollars…
If there is an expert I can hire to do it for me and I believe they’ll do the job and produce the result, then I pay them to produce the result…
You know what?
I’ve even committed over 6 figures to hire an expert to do something that I, myself, am actually an expert at too.
Why in the world would I do that?
Simply because I believed that the 6 figures I spend there will make me over 7 figures in return… and even if I’m wrong, and it only makes me a fraction of what I’m expecting, I still consider it money well spent because all any of us ever gets is 168 hours in a week.
Warren Buffet doesn’t get a minute extra.
Neither does Oprah Winfrey, does she?
Now, obviously, I wouldn’t buy something with an unrealistic return.
Nor would I commit to any amount of money without doing my homework… or without safeguards in place to give me an out if I think things go sour because there’s nothing worse than throwing good money after bad (but I never let a bad past decision keep me from trying something else again in the future).
You can start small and shield your exposure so you don’t have a lot to lose. Generally speaking, as a business beginner just getting your feet wet, even after you do your due diligence, I would keep the checks you write under a thousand bucks until you get a feel for the expenditure and what it will bring you back in return.
That way you can’t get hurt too bad (not like when we sunk over $100,000 on a marketing campaign and lost it all in the matter of a few days… that really hurts).
For the record, before we close this subject, you should know that you will make mistakes and write checks for things don’t pay off.
That’s part of the deal… it’s part of the cost of being the boss and the reality of walking the path of freedom you’ve chosen. If you’re unwilling to risk making mistakes, then it’s probably time for you to stop fooling yourself and buckle up: Because chances are damn near 100% you’re gonna stay stuck in pretty much the same situation, getting the same results as you’ve been getting.
Hard to hear?
Maybe so, but vital to breaking through to the success you seek.
Just know this: Every time you make a mistake of spending money on something that doesn’t produce the immediate return for you wanted, you have the opportunity to learn from that experience…
…if you evaluate and consciously search for the lesson in it. It’s the old saying about,
success comes from wisdom…. wisdom comes from experience… experience comes from bad decisions that you learn and grow from.
See, if you get in the game and just start, you’ll learn as you go and you’ll find that your hit ratio gets better and better as you learn and get experience and wisdom.
Get in the game.
Pay the cost and be the boss.
You’ll be glad you did. Because, after all, you don’t want a lifetime of could’v, would’v, should’v regrets, do you?