Entrepreneur Mindset Frank Ross on 06 Nov 2006 08:46 am
When money saving doesn’t really save money
This past weekend, I was working with an entrepreneur friend of mine who was setting up a small office. One of our tasks was to install Ethernet cabling. I don’t know where he got it from, but he had a large spool of raw Ethernet cabling - perhaps several hundred feet - that didn’t have ends on it. More than enough for the 4 stations we needed to cable.
His ‘money saving’ idea - Buy a cable punch tool and some Ethernet cable ends and make the cable ourselves. “Have you ever put ends on Ethernet cable?” I asked. He had not.
That particular task is very detailed work and not something most people can just do right out of the starting gate. You must cleanly snip the cable, remove a half inch or so of the cable coating, and feed each of the 6 wires into a specific slot in the end. And they must terminate in the cable end a certain way or they won’t work. It’s delicate work and takes some practice to master.
I know this because I’ve tried to do them before. This is why we have cabling specialists. Once I pointed this out to him and pointed out there was a Circuit City a mile away which sold ready-to-use Ethernet cable, I think he got the point. We would have spent much more money (in time) than we would have saved by attaching those cable ends ourselves. And we might have ended up with some poor quality cable.
Sometimes, as entrepreneurs we want to do everything ourselves. But sometimes, it just doesn’t make sense.