When DIY Becomes A Liability
I recently moved from a small downtown office into a small house that I’m using as a studio for StevieSnacks. My wife repeatedly told me “You shouldn’t move your own stuff”. And while it made sense when she said it, I ignored her advice and moved everything except the furniture myself.
I recently moved from a small downtown office into a small house that I’m using as a studio for StevieSnacks. My wife repeatedly told me “You shouldn’t move your own stuff”. And while it made sense when she said it, I ignored her advice and moved everything except the furniture myself.
Today some movers are coming to get the rest of the stuff, but to prepare, I filled up my jeep with a lot of the smaller stuff to bring over. As I walked an entire block to and from my car, no less than 6 times. I asked myself two questions:
- Why is nobody helping me?
- Why am I moving this stuff at all?
The answer to both of these questions is that I am a chronic, but recovering do-it-yourselfer.
When I started StevieSnacks I had to do everything myself. It wasn’t generating any income at the time, and I had all the skills I needed to make it go. At that point, DIY was an asset. I developed a strong appreciation for efficiency and quality by doing everything myself.
During the past two years I have offloaded several of my responsibilities:
- First-line customer support
- Premium lesson video editing and DVD creation
- DVD order fulfillment
- Free-lesson editing and publishing
I cannot imagine doing those things myself again. I have accepted that paying someone to do those things is part of my business. I am free from the feeling that I have to do them myself.
Why is it then, that when faced with something as large as a complete office move, my first reaction was to move most of the stuff over a period of weeks, one agonizing trip to the car at a time, in freezing temperatures, by myself?
Because I am a do-it-yourselfer, and that mentality has become a liability.
The movers that are coming today were available three weeks ago when this process started. Had I called at that time, they could have moved everything in a period of hours on the same day without my help.
I could have saved two or three work days by making one phone call and writing one check. I am recovering, but not there yet.
Unlinking Your YouTube And Google Accounts
Part of growing a business is delegating responsibility. I'm in the process of teaching Kevin how to publish free lessons for StevieSnacks. The critical step in that process is accessing my YouTube Channel.
Here's where it gets tricky. That YouTube channel has been linked to my personal Google/Gmail account for the past 5 years. No one, and I mean no one, has had access to it except for me. It is the source of most of my non-direct traffic, the place where StevieSnacks got it's start, and where my only marketing happens today.
Part of growing a business is delegating responsibility. I'm in the process of teaching Kevin how to publish free lessons for StevieSnacks. The critical step in that process is accessing my YouTube Channel.
Here's where it gets tricky. That YouTube channel has been linked to my personal Google/Gmail account for the past 5 years. No one, and I mean no one, has had access to it except for me. It is the source of most of my non-direct traffic, the place where StevieSnacks got it's start, and where my only marketing happens today.
So it is not a small thing to hand over access to such a critical part of the business. Not to mention that doing so would give him access to my personal email through my Google account. There had to be a better way.
Luckily my YouTube channel was created before May 2009. Because of that, I had the option to unlink my personal Google account and my YouTube Account. The process is described here: http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=183819.
YouTube was not always owned by Google. Therefore, not all YouTube accounts started as Google accounts. After Google bought YouTube, they added the ability to link existing YouTube accounts to Google accounts. So now your Gmail login was your YouTube login was your Google Docs login. Big improvement at the time. Eventually, signing up for a YouTube account became synonymous with signing up for a Google Account.
My account was old enough that I was permitted to decouple it from my personal Google Account. Unlinking the accounts was simple enough, but you can't leave a YouTube account in limbo, it must be relinked to another Google account as soon as it's unlinked from the first.
I remembered an old gmail account I used to use for email backup purposes. I logged into that account, cleared out all the old email, reset the password, and then began the account unlinking/relinking process.
Now I have a dedicated Google account for my YouTube channel, separate from my personal Google account. This allows me to completely hand off the free lesson publishing process to Kevin without providing access to my personal email, etc..