Doing It Yourself

UPSKILLING

One of the reasons I wish to get out of the corporate world of advertising, media & marketing is because of all the bullsh*t jargon and word twisting they use. Learning new stuff or finding out how to do something yourself is so much easier these days and if like me you're having to take a big drop in pay, doing it yourself not only means learning a new skill but importantly, not paying someone else saves you money too.

Trusting The Experts
There's a lot of information in the libraries, online ebooks and youtube videos, so why do people pay someone else? Very likely it's the time, inconvenience it takes to learn and do it yourself, possibly some fear of being a Frank Spencer type and of course the ease of passing it on to a 'pro'. Thing is, quite often the pros are trying to get a buck out of you and I, if we're gullible enough to let them. So, a quick example in point: the back break on my bike is jammed. I've spoken to mechanics in three different bike shops and enquired if they can fix it quickly. The result being, that they all said I'd need a new one (££ plus labour), yet, when I take the brake set off, clean it and simply put it back on... 20 minutes later, it's as good as new.

We're in a culture where replacing easily fixable parts for new is also something the so-called experts would rather do. So it stands to reason why we have a general laziness when it comes to fixing things if the so-called experts can't be bothered to give it a go. And why we'll have little confidence trying to fix something ourselves first.

Give It A Go
Take today as an example. I have potentially earned £20 because someone 'can't be bothered' to fit a light switch. Also, I spoke with a valet company about renovating the inside of my classic car. To clean the inside was £100 and it was suggested to replace the mats and recover the seats. So, I bought some leather food and carpet cleaner to spruce up the inside of the car myself instead. It's amazing what a bit of elbow grease can do and yet, I was very close to replacing the mats and getting the seats re-upholstered because I listened to bad advice.

All in, I've potentially saved/earned a few hundred pounds today, just by giving it a go myself. These aren't very time consuming tasks, they weren't even that highly skilled or difficult to learn - plus I've earned that cold pint of beer once again.