Doing it yourself: Is the hard way the way through?

As soloists or small business owners, we often take on more than we can bite off, let alone chew. For one soloist, it gave them a deeper appreciation of what other soloists can do for their business – and with savings in time and money, Tom Valcanis writes.

No one is an island – unless you’re in the bath. As a soloist myself, there is a yearning for controlling everything – anything less feels like a can of worms spilling everywhere. I’m sure you’re familiar with the feeling: you want to work on the business, in the business, and spruik the business to the outside world. But there are only so many hours in the day – and stepping up to the plate and doing it yourself can be a double-edged sword.

Last month, Dan Ahchow, entrepreneur and Director of Eaco Systems, a business management platform for cleaning and facility managers, put out a big post on LinkedIn ahead of his website’s relaunch.

“Big Shoutout to My Mates in Design, Marketing, and Copywriting,” it read. “I now understand the true value of what you do. Two months ago, we thought building a simple 3-page website for our software company would be a walk in the park. Dead wrong! It turned into an epic mission, mate. We ended up needing a full rebrand, a new look, a fresh mission, and vision. Turns out, creating a website is like wrestling a croc: you start off thinking it’s manageable, then you’re knee-deep in chaos.”

What on Earth compelled him to strike out on his own?

“I’ve been deep in the property maintenance world, my parents were in the cleaning business,” Dan says. “So, I’ve learned how to be very, very articulate in this process. I knew the Eaco guys have been developing this system for a couple of years and it was ready for prime time. Okay, well let’s tell the world, let’s shout it from the rooftops that this is available! So, what’s the first step? Let’s go and get some quotes from website developers. And the quotes were coming in at $15,000, $20,000. I was like, ‘What am I really getting for that money?’ You can use Squarespace or Wix for $10 a month!

“I thought I was doing was taking the easy way out and hired a designer to work with me directly. I thought to myself, ‘we’ll design it rather than outsource it to an agency and build something together.’ That process probably took two or three times longer than I expected, and rightfully so.”

Taking the easy way was actually the hard way – but it did afford him a valuable lesson.

“I guess every step of the way, I realised exactly what each of these consultants and freelancers and experts in their field actually do and actually value the value they provide,” he says. “So even though I had a designer to work with, I really had to learn the skills of branding, the skills of communicating, the skills of content writing – more particularly copywriting – and realising that there’s a really big difference between putting any old words on a page and putting content on a page that’s compelling and enticing.”

It almost feels natural when you’re a soloist – well, I can do X so well I can live off it, why not take a crack at Y? That’s exactly the reason why Dan took on the communications aspect of the Eaco website. It couldn’t be that hard, surely?

“As a business owner, you do get very used to being a jack of all trades and a master of none,” he laughs. “You are constantly put in situations where you have to learn a new skill. So, you get very, very used to being presented with challenges and one by one overcoming those challenges. Building a new website seemed like, ‘ah, that’s just another feather in the cap.’ But there was a bit more to it. I think that the more experience or the more experts that you have in a space, the better you can guide others or the more that you understand where you have the skills and where you’re lacking skills.”

It’s another expression of the old joke where a mechanic looks at a broken-down car, taps on a little spot on the engine and all of a sudden, it roars back into life. The mechanic says that’ll be $500. “What?” the customer scoffs, “That took you all of two minutes!” Yes, the mechanic says. But knowing where the exact spot was? That took 20 years of experience. If a piece of dynamite explodes a thousand times, how much is that worth to an excavator? If a piece of copy sells a thousand units, how much is that worth to a retailer?

“ChatGPT can put words on a webpage. They sound like a robot wrote them, because a robot did write them. You can do that, but why would you?” Dan says. “Those words need to be designed to take the users or the prospects or the customers on the right journey, take them from a point of ignorance and not knowing anything about you to intrigue, to interest, to actually wanting to find out more and learn who you are. I’ve learned the hard way, that’s quite an art. I probably spent a month of this year just learning the value of different copywriters and creatives learning to respect what they actually do. The right marketing opens up the doors, gets the dynamite exploding a thousand times, as you said. That’s the secret sauce.

“When business owners fail to look at the bottom line, they fail to see that it’s an investment, not a cost.”

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