In this episode of the Babies and Business podcast, hosts Avram and Rachel discuss the nuances of deciding when to take on projects themselves versus hiring professionals, from home improvements to business tasks. They share personal experiences on what they choose to DIY versus outsource in both their household and their business, including insights on the importance of peace of mind and leveraging professional services like bookkeeping and payroll for better efficiency and results. The discussion emphasizes the critical evaluation of one’s ability, the costs involved, and the impact on time and mental energy.

Show Notes

[01:47] The 5 most important considerations for DIY vs Hire

[05:07] The fallacy of most conversations around ‘what your time is worth’

[15:28] Things around the house you should never DIY

[19:53] Should you hire a marketing agency or do it yourself?[20:43] Avram’s POV about the last thing you should give up as the business owner

Mentions & Resources

Bunny Kingdom – Board Game

Digital Harvest – Avram & Rachel’s Advertising Agency

Episode Transcription

Below you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

Avram Gonzales: We’re back again it’s Avram and Rachel here from Babies and Business Podcast. We are hanging out right now in the garage studio. What’s that like Rach.

Rachel Gonzales: It’s pretty small, but it’s great.

Avram Gonzales: Speaking of DIY, we actually had these racks. Well, let me back up.

We had these racks installed in our garage because we couldn’t figure out how to do it ourselves. Right. These overhead storage racks. And then we encased this area, this four by eight rack with painter’s canvas, right.

Rachel Gonzales: Yep.

Avram Gonzales: And I’ve been working out here uh, for a while now during the day when babies at home and you’re at home and there’s all this stuff going on, it’s like the quiet place.

This is your first time out here.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. Pretty much.

Avram Gonzales: And I think it’s a good setting for this discussion around when you should or shouldn’t DIY. I think a lot of people believe that DIY is a way to save money. And it certainly is in some cases, we’re going to make a case for both times when you probably should DIY it vs times that you wouldn’t. What are some of your initial thoughts on the topic matter? What we’re going to get into today?

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. You know, I, I just think that there are a couple of considerations you have to think about when you’re deciding whether you are going to do it yourself, or if you’re going to hire someone to do it. You know, I think about stuff like time um, is it something that you want done like with some kind of, um ease and

Avram Gonzales: urgency

Rachel Gonzales: time line. Yeah, like urgency and you have just a date that you just want it done and you really don’t want to be involved in it. And then money, is money and object. Is that something that would hold you back from getting it done in the timeframe that you’re looking at? Um, and then could you like work around that by making yourself available to do this thing?

Do you have the specialty to do it as well? Yeah. That’s know how to do that thing.

Avram Gonzales: That’s another consideration. Do you have any skillset? Is this something that you can YouTube?

Rachel Gonzales: Or, or is this something that you’re just being, you feel like you should do it yourself?

Avram Gonzales: I know if you think about business, there’s also the risk of doing it yourself.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, I think a bookkeeping.

Avram Gonzales: Okay.

Rachel Gonzales: You know on the business side? I think of, well, yeah, you can do it yourself. But it’s going to be done like really well. And are you gonna feel really count confident around tax time? Or is it just worth it to pay a bookkeeper. My opinion is pay the bookkeeper.

Avram Gonzales: You didn’t get into your business to run your books and do your payroll and stuff. Uh, you know, people, I think hold onto some of those things because of, I think control can be an issue.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: To relieve or release control, but I think the.

Rachel Gonzales: And I think also possibly visibility when we’re talking about bookkeeping, you know, they feel like if they touch every single transaction, that they’re more able to understand their books. But what I found is I had so much frustration around seeing everything and doing everything and like itemizing all the things. That when we had our, when we hired a book keeper, she was able to help guide us on knowing, no, it’s it’s really actually simple, we’re just going to track the things that matter to you and what are those things?

And then you just get to let them guide you. So, I wanted to put that in there too, because sometimes we feel like we know how to like, make sense of the things that we’re doing and bookkeeping as this example. Um, but hiring our bookkeeper has truly transformed what we do.

Like we have cut services based off of what we track because it just doesn’t, it’s never led to more money and it’s not really a ton of money. And it’s really a pain in the butt to render these services sometimes because they’re super simple and you just get people that want this small service, but we don’t really want to be doing th ose one off services.

So one of the things that comes from that.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. A lot of different considerations. I think we’ll talk about some of them and maybe share some stories on the household side is one thing that comes to mind very quickly.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: Um, the business side is one, of course that we play in frequently. And as entrepreneurial parents who are, you know, building a family and raising a business.

Yes. I said that that way on purpose. You know, your time is stretched. So there’s not a lot of it. And your resources get stretched too. You know, you’re accustomed to a particular way of life before. When it’s just you and your spouse before adding a new addition. And so your, your money can be constrained a bit.

And then your time you. You’re not going to get more time as things go forward. So you have to really consider, quote, what is my time worth?

Rachel Gonzales: Right. And that’s not necessarily monetary.

Avram Gonzales: No. And I think that’s a slippery slope that people get into. Let’s talk about that.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. Well, I just think like for me, um, what is peace of mind worth for me? Oh a lot. Peace of mind is, uh, is actually paramount for me in a lot of different things when it comes to family considerations.

Avram Gonzales: Okay.

Rachel Gonzales: Um, I just want to know, like for instance, like hiring a nanny. I want to know that Lincoln’s going to have fun, that he’s going to feel loved, that he’s going to feel like he is the amazing person that he is in the care of somebody else. So that’s my consideration and sometimes you have to pay for that.

Avram Gonzales: It’s true.

Rachel Gonzales: It’s actually pretty common that you have to pay for that.

I mean, family is going to love them. I hope. But some of us have families that we don’t really actually want around her children on a one-on-one setting. So those are considerations too. Um, but yeah. Well, I think peace of mind is really for me.

Avram Gonzales: I think one of the things that, especially in the entrepreneurial world that people get caught up on is, okay, so what is the value of your time? What is your hourly rate? So let’s say your hourly rate is like comes out to being like 35 bucks an hour. Let’s just say.

Rachel Gonzales: Sure.

Avram Gonzales: Um, You know, people will say, well, if it takes you you know, longer than an hour and the task cost you this much, you should just pay somebody for it.

Rachel Gonzales: Sure.

Avram Gonzales: There’s a lot of fallacies in that.

Rachel Gonzales: Well, I think that’s, I mean, I think that that, that can come into play in some times. But it’s not always like really accurate. I just think about, okay. So if I wanted to, um, do something around my house, like replace my garage door, I think that’s a really terrible idea for me to do. I am six months along pregnant.

That’s so silly. I don’t know how to do it. There’s a lot of things involved. There are springs involved in garage doors. Like that to me is an example of something that I absolutely would not do. I do not have specialty in it. I am going to pay somebody to do it, but it is worth it. Um, because for so many reasons, you use your garage.

Avram Gonzales: Not to mention electrical.

I’m not touching plumbing. It’s not going to happen.

Rachel Gonzales: And you use your garage multiple times a day, if you go anywhere at all. So, you know, if you go in and walk, you take your dog on a walk and you out your garage. You’ve got that opening and closing. And so, um, those kinds of things, I just think about less about what is my time worth as far as like the monetary value.

If I’m working in my business, But like if I’m able to work more in my business, because this task was done in a day, as opposed to this task taking three months and taking up some of my mental energy. I think it’s very much more worth my time to pay some money and pay that monetary cost as opposed to all the other things like looking at.

Avram Gonzales: Looking at the worth your time and, and looking at, you know, maybe my time is better spent working in or on the business. Sure the answer is yes, even though it’s not always linear.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: I think the other things you have to look at are, you know, Well, let’s say let’s take like mowing the lawn, for example.

Rachel Gonzales: Sure.

Avram Gonzales: You know, somebody like, yeah, somebody mowed came over, mowed the lawn for me because it’s worth my time is better used working on the business or making sales or whatever, but what they forget is that would you be mowing the lawn in the middle of the workweek? No, or. Okay. So if you’re mowing the lawn on the weekend, You know, and that’s how you do it.

Are you, are you going to be working instead of mowing the lawn? Right. It’s not this direct trade. Correct? Correct. I think that’s the biggest fallacy about it. And it comes down more to some of these considerations that you talked about. Peace of mind. You might need some expertise to do that thing that you want to do.

You might want it done in a more timely manner.

Rachel Gonzales: Well, I just think about. All the time.

When my father. I wanted to do something by himself like he was the king of do it yourself. And he would do that, he would attempt to do something. And it would kind of get done. And then someone would have to come in and fix his work. And to me, I just don’t think it’s worth it to have the headache. You actually do both. You do it yourself and then you pay somebody. But you go through the trouble of having done it wrong. So if it’s plumbing, you got water going places.

Um, And so, you know, If you don’t know. I think also kind of the consideration is if you don’t like it, like if you don’t. I enjoy doing projects around the house. Like, I enjoy building things or, um, organizing things.

Avram Gonzales: You and my dad ended up doing most of this little pathway next to the house. I installed a new pathway that pea gravel, exactly whatever it’s called.

Rachel Gonzales: So you, your father and I, we get along really well when we do projects, you know, Uh, we tease that you and Wanda just sit and laugh at us and talk while we’re they’re busy, you know, painting or something wherever that is. Um, but we wanted to put up a f ence in our backyard and we wanted to make sure that Lincoln didn’t get hurt.

And I didn’t really want to pay somebody to come out and do it. Because I also knew how to do that. I grew up doing stuff like that. So fence putting some fencing up. Really not a big deal.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. There are some things that you and I enjoy doing together the fence was one of those that once we got the materials and stuff for it, it was like, yeah, we knocked it out very quickly.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah,

Avram Gonzales: I think,

Rachel Gonzales: well, and then we have another project coming up. We’d love to play board games. And we’ve found with a little one.

Board game pieces. They don’t mix very well right now.

Avram Gonzales: Very attractive for little minds.

Rachel Gonzales: Yes. Lincoln is sub two years old and he loves, oh gosh, we have a bunny bunny kingdom. He loves the bunnies. We have other ones that have all these other animals. He just loves animals.

Avram Gonzales: So these are colorful.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

They’re colorful and they’re small and all the reasons why a little kid would love that. So we’ve and yourselves not playing our board games. So we’re going to build a board game table. You can buy board game tables but one, they’re either very expensive. Or they’re kind of overkill like way more than what you want. Um, but they have this like, there are two layers to it. There’s the board game level where it’s lower and then there’s like a lip on the sides. And then you put the table actual table parts on top kind of like leaves on a table to make it extend. But it kind of looks like that. Um, I love to build stuff and I’m perfectly capable.

I can use a circular saw, I can use a drill. I can help you to help me. And we can do something like that. So that’s a project that we enjoy.

Avram Gonzales: Well, it’s like, what is, you know, what is that worth to you? There are some of these tables that we looked at, some of them are starting at like $3,000. And it’s like, look, we are not in a place right now where we want to spend credits, double our mortgage on a board game table, right? Right. So like, those are considerations that come in.

It’s like, well, we want some of the elements of that that game table that we desire.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: But we are not at this point willing to give up some of our resources to that.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Avram Gonzales: When we’re already have a plan to use them in other ways.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. And, and also, I just love, I do, I love doing stuff like that.

Avram Gonzales: I’m

Rachel Gonzales: perfectly capable of that. And I love to sew, um, and building stuff with wood can also kind of scratch that itch because it’s measuring and calculating and putting things together. So that’s another thing that I enjoy doing. So why would I do that? I enjoy doing it. Does it save me money? Well, maybe, I don’t know. I don’t know how much the supplies are going to cost. It probably will. But I just think that’s a good example of my main consideration is do I like doing this? And do I want to do it?

Avram Gonzales: Yeah.

Rachel Gonzales: Are we under a time crunch?

Avram Gonzales: I just thought of something else. I thought of like the reason I don’t change my oil anymore. Well, the reason I stopped changing my oil. Okay. It was because the last car that we had, the one that we just sold, the Honda, last year, it was very difficult to get to the spot where you would change the oil. And not only that, it would make a huge mess.

Rachel Gonzales: Yes.

Avram Gonzales: Every single time. And you talked to the guys at Honda, they’re like, yeah, I was just kinda like the nature of this beast. So we just started paying somebody to do it and deal with all the mess. Well, it’s been almost a year since we sold that car. We got a new one and guess what we’re not doing. We’re not changing our oil. And part of that is it’s not about the monetary value. Right. Or that we think that our time is worth more. Um, per productively, I think that our leisure time is worth more to us than taking the 30 minutes to 45 minutes to change the oil.

Rachel Gonzales: Absolutely. I would rather take Lincoln into the park for 30 minutes as opposed to change the oil on a car. Um, you know, what is your time worth?

Like it it’s worth for me. Yeah. My time is way more worth it to spend with Lincoln as opposed to doing something like that when it’s so unnecessary.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah.

Rachel Gonzales: People can do it and they do a better job, I think.

Avram Gonzales: Very cliche, but you can’t put a monetary value on that kind of time.

Rachel Gonzales: No, and they’re only going to be tiny for a little while.

You know, why do we keep track of babies ages and months?

It’s because every single month is almost like a year or five years in our time.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah.

Rachel Gonzales: Because so many significant things happen. You know.

Avram Gonzales: So what are some things that you would never DIY. Or attempt in our house.

Rachel Gonzales: Garage door. I would never attempt to do that.

Avram Gonzales: Mostly safety. Yep.

Rachel Gonzales: Mostly safety, but also expertise.

I really, ah, I want it to work better. When we’re done. Then before. And I am not positive. Yeah, that would be the case. So I would hire a professional for that.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. Me personally, I’m not going to try to troubleshoot an air conditioning or furnace issue. Like, you know, if, if I read the little lights on there and I YouTube it to figure out what it is, and it seems like something I can do, like, I’ll go that far. But more than that, if it starts to seem like it has a level of complexity, I don’t want to mess anything up.

Rachel Gonzales: Exactly me too.

Avram Gonzales: Anything else? You wouldn’t do. Just wouldn’t do on the house.

The well plumbing, anything regarding plumbing?

There’s no, I have zero interest in that.

What if we had like a, like a leak in the roof, would you try to fix it?

Rachel Gonzales: Nope.

No. You know, I just think that it’s so important to be willing to say. There are things that I just simply won’t do and being willing to call that person that professional.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. And then there’s things that are like, you know, I just, I can’t bring myself to, to pay that amount of money for that thing that I like I think about the backyard, we’re going to put some, um, sod and stuff back there. And, uh, we just decided, like it’s not worth it to us to have it totally perfectly pristine. Lincoln loves being outside. So we’re going to be doing this project with him while he’s playing around in the dirt. And we’re just going to make an afternoon of it.

Probably call some friends and then just get it done.

Rachel Gonzales: Well, we have a consideration to. No big machinery can go into our backyard. Yeah. Some people’s backyards, you know, they have the big gates in the, like the block walls and stuff. Ours is unique. It only has gates that people can go through and then there’s some levels different levels to it.

So, um, it actually costs more to have someone come in and do that. So, but it does really matter, like in that consideration, do we want it done quickly? Do we have a timeline? Do we want it to look a certain way?  Or is this something that we enjoy doing? Lincoln loves being outside so when he’s outside, I’ll move some dirt or I’ll do this or that.

And then I’m busy while he’s playing and it just seems fun.

Avram Gonzales: And we like being out there in the sunshine. I know in the business, there’s a couple of things that we just refused to do ourselves bookkeeping we mentioned.

Rachel Gonzales: Taxes.

Avram Gonzales: Taxes. No way. There’s no way we’re messing with that.

Rachel Gonzales: Well, I mean, when we hired our new tax professionals, this last year they actually found that we had, there was something about our business organization for the S-Corp when we elected to be an S-Corp that was done wrong. They are the professionals and I thought, oh gosh, this is amazing. Then we had another tax thing come up and I just didn’t want to deal with what code it was like all these different things that came up about that situation. And I was able to just contact my contact there and they’re able to just deal with it.

 At the beginning, I talked about peace of mind. I have so much peace of mind knowing that money is done the right way, taxes done the right way, bookkeeping. Things around the house that could cause some serious damage, are done right. You know, peace of mind is really worth it.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. We’ve retained lawyers over the years for all kinds of different things, whether it’s like contract review or you know, even like a domestic dispute. Like my past relationship, there were some things that, you know, what the split, even though we weren’t married, there could be some different like tax implications and stuff.

And so we hired counsel with a CPA and a lawyer to look over all that, to be able to tell us, like, you have nothing to worry about, just move forward as you are. There’s no recourse here and. Blah, blah, blah.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. And, you know, another thing in our business that we do that we just don’t want to do ourselves as payroll.

There’s so much about payroll. We have our payroll company and it is so worth that fee that we pay them every single month. Because we know that it’s done, right and that’s, that’s really all that we need to know is how the competence that we’re running our business, the way that it needs to be run.

And we get to work on making our products, our service offerings, all those things better. And, uh, serving our clients at the highest level. That is our most important task in our business.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah.

Rachel Gonzales: And if there are other professionals taking care of the other things, then we can really rest at ease and do those things really, really, really, really well.

Avram Gonzales: Last thing I want to share about this with, you know, hiring the expert, DIY versus hiring the expert, you know, marketing. We’re a marketing agency, Digital Harvest that’s you know, our business and we help people get found on Google.

And you know, if somebody asks me, should I do it myself or hired the expert. I would really say it depends. You know, firstly, do you have the money? Are you in an appropriate position to expend the money, to bring it back in? That’s really going to be the, one of the biggest cases for, do you do it yourself or do you hire somebody?

If you can’t afford to lose it, maybe don’t hire that, that company to do your marketing. Now, the thing that I think about is, you know, folks will hire somebody to come in and run sales for their organization. Right. Maybe they don’t like the sales a lot. They want to maybe do more stuff in the business or whatever.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: And my thought is that’s going to be like the last thing that I give up in our business ’cause like the last role.

Rachel Gonzales: Sure.

Avram Gonzales: You know? Because it’s important that we have the first touch conversation right now with other business owners, and we learn a lot from that.

Rachel Gonzales: Sure.

Avram Gonzales: It’s a valuable thing to do ourselves.

Yeah, we could. Hire a sales person pay them a commission. They could probably bang out a bunch of deals. But it doesn’t work for us right now.

Rachel Gonzales: Right. And that’s the specific consideration that we’ve made.

Avram Gonzales: Any last thoughts from, from you before we close it out?

Rachel Gonzales: I just think, before you endeavor to do something yourself, just think about the implications. You know, time, money and your expertise. And if that, if it doesn’t fall within the money that you have, the time that you have the expertise that you have, like if you don’t have the money for it, you got to find a way to make it happen with, an expert that can come in and help support you. Um, and we’re going to talk more about that in other episodes, I’m sure about how our business is starting to actually kind of grow because of some of the changes that we’ve made.

Um, even though maybe we didn’t feel like we had the resources for it but having that consideration of, we just have to have more time. We need more time and we need to pay. And we’ll have that more time. We have to buy that time.

Avram Gonzales: Maybe that’s where we, where we leave it. Right.

That at the end of the day, you can’t like. Get back more time.

Rachel Gonzales: No.

Avram Gonzales: But you can certainly use money to get more leverage for your time.

Rachel Gonzales: Right? Absolutely. And that’s kind of what we’re doing right now. So, uh, in future episodes, we’ll talk about that because it’s constantly a shift, I think, in what is needed.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah.

So I’d love to hear from you, Mr. Or Mrs. Listener. What is that one thing that you or your spouse. Refuses to pay a professional for and why I’d love to hear everybody’s got their different thing or like the, like the father-in-law or whatever. You know, That’s the DIY champ let’s hear about it. Hit us up on social media @babiesandbizpod. And we’re still looking for those five star reviews on Apple Podcast.

Leave us a little comment on there so that other potential viewers might see it and be encouraged to listen to new episodes. We appreciate you so much for listening in.

Rachel Gonzales: Bye for now.