Hey there, good to see you again.

Come on in.

Grab a cup of coffee and have a seat.

I've got a story about a project that was going along pretty well.

Right up until I started thinking about it.

That seems to happen a lot around here.

I've been working on a new mobile display for Dwolfdragon Designs. Something I can take to craft shows, set up to display products, and then pack up and bring

home without spending half the day loading and unloading everything.

At least that's the idea.

I've been thinking about this display for a while. Drawing it out, figuring out how I wanted it to work, and trying to come up with something useful that wouldn't become another headache every time we do a show.

Eventually, I got to the point where I needed to stop thinking about it and

actually build something.

So I did.

Well, sort of.

I started building a prototype.

Not a finished product, just enough to see whether the idea would work the way I pictured it.

And you know what?

It did.

The parts I was testing worked pretty much the way I wanted them to. There were still things to figure out, but I was pleased with the progress.

Then I got in the truck to go to work.

Now, I don't know about you, but my brain has a habit of working on things when I'm supposed to be doing something else.

Apparently, driving to the Have To job is a perfectly good time to review the engineering decisions I made while working on the Want To.

And somewhere along that drive, a thought occurred to me.

How am I going to get this thing through a door?

Oh.

Well, that's a problem.

Not a little problem, either.

You see, I'd spent all that time thinking about how the display would work when it was set up and how it would pack away for transport.

I even planned what I thought was an ingenious design to really make it simple to move from the truck to the booth.

What I hadn't properly considered was the rather important part between those two things.

Sometimes there are doors.

It's a mobile display.

Being able to move it around seems like something that probably ought to be included in the design.

So I naturally designed in wheels.

The prototype was only partially built, just enough to check a couple of the things I wanted to test.

I hadn't even gotten to installing the wheels yet.

So at least I hadn't finished the whole thing before figuring this out.

But still.

I had drawings. I had measurements. I had a plan.

And apparently, I had forgotten that buildings have doors.

Now, the project isn't dead. It just needs some changes.

That's part of building things. Sometimes you find out something doesn't work when you try it.

Sometimes you find out while you're standing in the shop looking at it.

And sometimes you figure it out while driving to work, with the unfinished project sitting at home waiting for you.

But this whole project has brought up another question I've been thinking about.

Who should actually build the finished display?

I can do woodworking.

Well, let me qualify that.

I can do my kind of woodworking.

I've got a table saw, a miter saw, hand tools, and enough experience doing home repairs and building things to get myself into trouble.

If something needs fixing around the house, there's a pretty good chance I'll at least take a look at doing it myself.

And I can build this display.

I'm reasonably confident of that.

But there's a difference between being able to build something and being able to build it well.

I'm a handyman when it comes to woodworking. I'm not a professional woodworker.

I know how to use the tools I have. I can measure, cut, assemble, and make things functional.

What I don't have is the equipment, experience, or developed skills of someone who does that kind of work every day.

It's a little like the difference between painting by numbers and being an artist.

Both people can put paint on a canvas. Both might even end up with something that looks pretty good.

But an artist brings something to the work that goes beyond knowing where to put the paint.

I've seen that firsthand with Vickie and the things she paints for Dwolfdragon Designs.

I can cut the pieces. I can figure out how they fit together. I can make the

design.

Then she picks up a paintbrush and does things I wouldn't have thought to do.

That's her skill.

And I think the same thing applies here.

I can design what I want this display to do. I can work through the problems and build prototypes to test my ideas.

But when it comes time to make the finished version, I think I'd be happier with the result if I found someone who has the woodworking skills I don't.

Someone who can take the design and turn it into something that looks as good as I want it to work.

And the more I think about that, the more I realize this isn't just about woodworking.

It's something I run into with Dwolfdragon Designs all the time.

I'm the person designing products, running the lasers and printers, preparing inventory, working on the website, taking pictures, figuring out packaging, and getting ready for shows.

With a lot of help and input from Vickie.

Some of those things I'm pretty good at.

Some I'm learning.

And some I do because, well, somebody has to do them.

When you're running a small business, especially one you're building around a full-time job, doing things yourself is often the only practical option.

Hiring somebody for every task isn't exactly in the budget.

But doing everything yourself has a cost, too.

Time, for one thing.

And sometimes the finished result.

I can spend hours figuring out how to do something that a person with the right experience could probably handle much better.

That doesn't mean I shouldn't learn new things. Half the fun of Dwolfdragon Designs is learning how to do something I couldn't do before.

But I'm starting to wonder whether there's a difference between learning something because I want to and learning something because I've convinced myself I have to do everything.

I don't have an answer to that yet.

I'm certainly not about to start hiring people to do every job around the shop.

But maybe part of building a business is recognizing which things I need to do myself and which things might turn out better if I let someone else do them.

Of course, none of that changes the immediate problem.

Before I find a professional to build the display, I still have to fix the design.

There's more prototyping ahead, and probably a few more things I'll discover along the way.

Hopefully none of them involve forgetting another basic feature of buildings.

But I wouldn't bet on it.

For now, I've got a partially built prototype, a design that needs revising, and another question to add to the growing list of things I'm figuring out as I build this business.

Just because I can do something myself, does that mean I should?

I'll think about that while I redesign the display.

Preferably one that fits through a door.

See you next time.