Thinking of Doing it Yourself – Redux

A couple days ago, my friend and client Jay Steinfeld, CEO and founder of Blinds.com posted a “tweet” on Twitter (Jay is @BlindscomCEO) that read: “If you think hiring an expert is expensive, just try an amateur!”

I found myself laughing in that “I get it but it’s really not very funny” way because it’s so true. Just that day I had had two experiences with people that were trying to do it themselves and ended up calling me hoping to get some technical support. One was a junior high-school teacher who was asked by the class parents to create a video with all the special photos to commemorate the past year. One of the parents made a recommendation of some software and the teacher graciously took on this task which was really over her head.

By the time she called me, she was in tears on the phone as she explained that she had spent every spare moment of the past week working on this video and didn’t know how to get it ‘authored’ to a DVD. The software (which will remain unnamed) is an inexpensive program that bills itself as ‘easy to use’. There is also no technical support for the program unless you want to try to get Microsoft on the phone. Good luck with that.

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