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FOREWORD

  In this day and age, technology has never moved faster, and as ever, computer-based technology is at the forefront.

Hardly a day goes by without some new development which will supposedly help us do it quicker, cheaper or better – or heaven forbid, all of those things all at once.

For most of us handyman types, quietly going about the business of getting obscenely rich beyond our wildest dreams, it’s an exciting time. But it can also be a frightening and costly one.

And the main fear is this… that we’re getting left behind. And our competition will leave us for dead.

This fear is excellent news for all the computer, tools and app industries, because we’re all too happy to spend a small fortune on new ‘tooling, systems and software packages’ just to make ourselves feel better… and then wonder what the hell to do with it all when we get it back home, or to the office. 

To paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill, “Never has so little been done, by so many with so much!”

Most of our ‘This will be so good for my business’ toys, are chronically under-utilised, and yet our totally unfounded fears constantly make us go out and buy more and more of the same.

And they’re usually paid for through back-breaking monthly subscriptions that will never ever go away.

It’s like buying a ten-ton truck and then using it just to bring home the shopping from Woollies! (The only guy I’ve actually seen do this by the way is ex-boxer Chris Eubank, which sort of speaks for itself).

There’s more spare capacity or redundancy in what we saddle ourselves with these days, than we can ever use, and it’s quite often, not even the best tool for the job.

In my own humble little business (talking software now) …

I’ve been known to process an average of 8 individual business-related tasks each day. Probably managing book-keeping, invoices, quotes, & estimates etc.

Some days it can be as many as 20. And yet it’s all being done with software and tooling that’s well over (in my case) thirty years old…

And in computer terms alone… that’s prehistoric!

But I’ll let you into a little secret now – the computer system I have at home which is used for, erm… facebook and playing games on, is far more advanced than the one I use to control my $100,000 annual turnover business on!

‘Experts’ often look at what I use and laugh.

But here’s the interesting thing… it works, the job gets done, and not one of these experts has been able to put forward an alternative which, on closer examination, provides many measurable benefits in excess of the inevitable problems and disruption which an upgrade or even change would undoubtedly cause.

Not that the ‘experts’ see it that way. You see, they’re in love with the technology and they’re in absolute awe of what it can all do.

But as people concerned with making money with the technology and tools that we buy; we need to look at the real benefits behind them… While the so-called experts (who have nothing to do with actually running a handyman business), are happy to concern themselves more with the available features.

But how we can turn all those lovely product features into a profit?

Some entrepreneurs will always immerse themselves in the technology itself, rather than the real and tangible profit-making benefits it can bring to the enterprise. And good luck to them if they can afford to do that.

They’re usually the same people who buy a hi-fi system with 1001 buttons, knobs and dials… and spend hours painstakingly adjusting each and every one of them before carefully inserting their Motorhead CD… << Oh, the irony!! >>

But it’s a completely counterproductive and time-wasting approach for those who are just starting out and wondering where the next coin is coming from.

For the most part, it seems that any ‘new’ software and hardware advances create solutions to problems which simply don’t exist, or aren’t really that important to us, or central to our day-to-day business success.

As the saying goes:

“If you’ve got a pile of crap to shift… you won’t do it any better or quicker with a silver-plated shovel.”

So, what I’m suggesting is before you go saddling yourself in unnecessary debt for your whizz bang, up to the minute ‘business toys’, you look carefully at your business problems first.

If there are piles of ‘crap’ to be moved, think very carefully about whether that new shovel (yes, I know it’s got some nice fancy engraving on the handle) is really worth the additional investment.

Will it pay for itself, or would your old shovel have done the job just as well?

My second suggestion is that you take a fresh look at the tools you already have and your existing computer hardware and software. Because I know that when you do, you’ll often discover some unknown features and applications which you didn’t even know were there.

I was recently surprised to find a number of features on my MS Excel programme (the one I’ve been using for the last 30 years!) which I didn’t even know about.

I was even more surprised to find that with just a little more effort on my part, I can work miracles in tailoring business solutions that simply work the way that I want them to. After all, I already have this software, which also incorporates perfectly acceptable book-keeping functions. And I was lucky enough to learn that before I’d happily run out and buy a standalone something or other new for that specific purpose.

So, in conclusion…

Because I have known MS Excel, either through MS Works or MS Office, since my very first computer experience, I thought why not give it a proper go? And quite frankly, I’ve found life to be a whole lot easier creating the tools that I want, to my own spec through Excel, than it is trying to make other more costly, so called ‘purpose-built apps’ fit my own requirements.

I mean, at the end of the day, all of our new ‘shineys’ should only be the tools we need to help us make more money, and our lives a little easier… Nothing more and nothing less…

And moving forward, I finally suggest, that if you look at each apparent new ‘upgrade’ in those simple, no nonsense and clinical terms, you’ll save yourself a whole lot of time, a great deal of money, and a complete barrow-load of stress in moving your own business forward.

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