Who is better off???

[Scott Ames]

I found a local air conditioning guy through a friend. This guy has his own business, works alone, only works on referrals, and is swamped with work. The reason he is swamped is that his is very good and takes pride in a job well done. All of his customers get top notch work when he installs an air conditioning unit.
I asked him why he doesn't expand and get people to help, but he doesn't trust anyone else to do the same job he would do for people.

The good news for him is that because of his ethics and values he has all the business he can handle and more. The bad news is that he is a one guy shop and if he stops working his income stops.

The local Big Guy airconditioning company owner on the other hand has a fleet of vehicles and lots of employees. They don't do as good a job but they do an "ok" job. That owner can vacation in Fiji and still make money. His manager keeps the employees in line, the sales people keep the business coming in, and he drives to the bank in his Mercedes and deposits money.

I know who I would want to install my air conditioning, but I know who I would rather be if I were in that business.

The same goes for info products. The craftsman researcher and writer produces accurate and solid information but it takes him/her months. The big guy marketer hires teams of writers etc to produce a work that is usually ok, but has outstanding marketing, sales letters, graphics, etc. One outsells the other by a large number. One of them scapes by or hardly sells much, the other drives to the bank in his/her Mercedes and deposits money.

A big generalization to be sure. I'll bet there are some outstanding products produced by teams that just rock.

[Ankesh Kothari]

Thanks Scott.

I have a similar outlook. Building systems in your business is the way to go.

That is - if you enjoy running a business. Most folks don't.

One note: there are many ways of leveraging. The local ac guy could earmark a part of his income - and instead of using that income to expand - he could use that income to invest (angel investing / real estate / stocks / etc).

With the investment egg growing - he can take vacations whenever he wants. And doesn't have to expand if he thinks he'll never be able to find folks as good as him.

[Sumit Menon]

But... there's absolutely no way to find them.

[CurtisN]

I don't know who's better off, but I know whose customers are getting the better deal

[BIG Mike]

Sometimes things are not always as they seem on the surface. In the various trades out there, you don't find many really astute business people to begin with. Their real skills are their trade and the business world is a constant mystery.

But if he's smart enough to save and invest, chances are he makes a great living anyways - probably a lot better than you might realize.

I owned my own mobile Locksmith business years ago (while going to university) and encountered this all the time. In a way, it was lot like IM - a lot of young and older guys chasing the dream of being wealthy by owning their own businesses.

And reality soon kicks in, because, while they may be exceptional at their trade, they're lost when it comes to running a business much beyond the day-to-day stuff. And it's really difficult to get them to change - they can't seem to catch the vision of it.

My first year I started from scratch, grossed $200K and had 2 full-time employees, 3 vans and a ton of equipment/stock. I worked hard, took a lot of calculated risks and focused on growth. I also worked a lot of 20 hour days and considered dropping out of school entirely - I often wonder what would have happened if I did.

Incidentally, finding the smaller mom and pop trade outfits is still a great way to take IM offline - a lot of these folks need someone to show them how to really make money.

[la dominatrix]

Originally Posted by Scott Ames

The same goes for info products. The craftsman researcher and writer produces accurate and solid information but it takes him/her months. The big guy marketer hires teams of writers etc to produce a work that is usually ok, but has outstanding marketing, sales letters, graphics, etc. One outsells the other by a large number. One of them scapes by or hardly sells much, the other drives to the bank in his/her Mercedes and deposits money.

A big generalization to be sure. I'll bet there are some outstanding products produced by teams that just rock.

I take about three months to write an ebook or an information product, even in niches in which I write a lot, some niches I have written five or six ebooks on, but they still take a long time because they are and must remain essentially different. I would never ever in a million years outsource my writing of ebooks and research.

However I would buy the best sales writer I could afford, because that is the difference I am confidant in one style of writing and take great pride in it, but could not write a sales page or a squeeze page if my life depended on it.

I have had and still have several ebooks which are the top sellers on clickbank, but now I am starting to write for my self and am in the process of launching my own info product, but when I do someone who is a copywriter, rather than a ghost writer will write my sales page. In fact if anyone who has track record of good sales copy wants to volunteer please pm me!

A classic example about three years ago I wrote a hundred and fifty page ebook for someone else in a niche with huge potential for massive sales, yet as far as i can see the guy I wrote it for still has not sold fifty copies, because he failed to market it correctly. I sweated blood on that ebook and read over five hundred medical reports and came up with a large amount of unprinted material and it has totally goen to waste.

Ps
If you find an info product from a team that rocks please share.

La Dominatrix

[clbeav]

I would rather be the guy with others working for him.

I've witnessed this first hand within my own family.

My dad is like the first guy you described. He's a hard working individual who has his own business, has a couple of employees, but most go out and work each and every day. He gets a lot of his business from referrals, and stays busy, but he has to put a lot of hours in the business to make a good income. My dad makes a good living with his business, but he'll never be able to obtain a substantial income (200+ thousand a year) without changing his business model.

His twin brother on the other hand owns a motor repair company and while he put in a lot of hard hours (and still does at times) in the beginning, he's enjoying the benefits now. He has others working for him, and while that employees are tough to maintain in their own right, he has the luxury of being wealthy and being able to do what he wants to when he wants to. If he wishes to take a vacation, he can, if he wishes to show up late, he can.

So basically my uncle doesn't have to work as hard, yet he makes probably triple or quadruple of what my dad makes.

That's the difference, when you have others working for you and a large operation, you get the perks. Like I said though, running a business is tough in its own right, and maintaining a large operation takes skill and has its stresses.

Of course, you can tell which business I'd rather be running.

[SullyUI]

I've noticed that people afraid to trust outsourcing are generally more stressed out by their businesses and sometimes become very bitter because of having to do way more work than they would have had to do if they were working in a job.

Then a few don't mind doing the menial tasks that could easily be outsourced...

It's amazing how people will push themselves to succeed, which is fine, but don't get the point that outsourcing will help them so much.

If they spent all that effort on the stuff they should be outsourcing on marketing, then the revenue potential goes way way up.

[Dan Riffle]

It depends on what you want. The first guy might not want the extra responsibilities that come with running a larger business. The second guy might not be fulfilled running the smaller operation and he also might not want to do all the work that comes with running a one man operation.

There's more to wealth in terms of deciding who's better off. That being said, I, personally, have great respect for business owners who refuse the extra wealth that may come along with allowing quality to decrease. I can also understand the power of leveraging the work of others. Personally, I fall somewhere in between.

[Istvan Horvath]

Originally Posted by BIG Mike

Sometimes things are not always as they seem on the surface. In the various trades out there, you don't find many really astute business people to begin with. Their real skills are their trade and the business world is a constant mystery.

I think BIG Mike nailed it!
It is mainly about the different skill sets needed as a tradesman or a businessman.

Years ago I have worked for a business consulting company, it was supposed to help small business owners to get more efficient... I didn't like how it was run but that's a different story.
During that time I have met a lot of restaurant owners who were struggling to make their place profitable.

As it turned out, about 3 in 4 were formerly very successful cooks, who decided that they should prepare all those excellent meals for their own restaurant not for someone else... You can guess the rest: while they still were very good cooks they failed miserably as businesspeople. End of story.