MBA2045 Q&A Wednesday: Should I learn how to build my own app or should I hire someone?

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Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. The that gives you and your business a boost every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company. I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A Wednesdays, we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you got a question you want to ask, just go ahead and email me over at Omar MBA Net. Today's question is from Maggie and Maggie asks, I have an idea for a web app that I want to develop. I have an existing audience and the app would solve a problem for them. A problem that they have expressed to me on several occasions. The only issue is I don't know how to code. Should I learn how to build my own app or should I hire somebody else to build it for me? Great question by Maggie on today's Q and A Wednesday's question and I got answers. Building a software company is is a big endeavor. It doesn't matter how big or small the app is. Take it from me, I've been doing it for eight years and I've seen people build software companies by themselves successfully. And I've also seen people with a team of people building the app for them and having very little success. What's that all about? What are the deciding factors? What are some things that somebody like Maggie needs to look out for when they're making this choice? Should they learn how to build their own app or hire an agency or a developer to get it started? Let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to Manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll. ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people.

Now Maggie is looking to build her own web app. She's not sure if she should learn how to build it herself or hire somebody to build it for her. Now, I don't know the details of Maggie's app because not all software is created equal. Web apps will have different needs. Some are very, very simple. Some of them are quite complex. For example, a job board is a web app. Or a classified type of website like Craigslist, where people can have an account, post their actual ads, communicate with buyers, and formally make a transaction. Now, even if they're accepting payment, this is an application, and it's a simple application because there's not a lot of moving parts here. But even with a simple application, there are things to consider. Does this thing work on mobile devices? Which should. Because 60% of all web traffic is mobile. Now, do you have a way to administrate this site to protect it? To run things on the back end, security is a concern. What about things like password resets? You need to send them an email. How's that email going to get sent? Do you have a system for that? And I can go on and on and on. And this is a simple app. You know, I run a webinar software where people are running live events that get recorded. There's landing pages, there's emails that get sent out, there's embedded video, there's offers, there's polls, there's statistics. It's literally like seven or eight apps in one. So a business like mine, even at the minimal viable version of it, it's very hard to build something like that by yourself. You're going to need a really highly qualified engineer just to get us started and a team around that engineer to build and maintain it. Having said that, if you have a simple app, this may be something you want to consider if you have the time to learn. Learning how to be a coder, a developer is not impossible. A lot of people learn in a matter of months and start building. And there are so many resources out there that you can take on if you decide to build your own app. A lot of great courses and tutorials. There's also a lot of creators that run businesses by themselves and, and build their own things. Somebody that comes to mind is Peter Levels. You may want to look him up on Twitter and follow him, because he runs several businesses, like Remoteok IO, which is a job board for remote experts. He also runs the Nomad List, which is a very popular site for those who are looking to be digital nomads. But my guess is Peter is a pretty experienced engineer and took a good amount of years to get there. So if you're willing to invest the time to do this and build and learn as you go, this is definitely doable. Now, there are advantages and disadvantages of doing this. Building your own app. Number one, building our app means that you have total autonomy and you can build it the way you want to build it. It's going to be an adventure learning how to do this. And at any time, you can jump in and fix bugs, fix problems, improve the app. The problem with this is exactly that you are responsible for everything. If the app goes down or has some issues, you're going to need to jump in and do it, because, hey, you don't have anybody else to step in for on holiday. If you are enjoying your weekend, if you're sick, if you're ill, the whole business relies on you. Because when the app doesn't work, customers are not gonna be happy and it's gonna be hard for you to continue to grow your business. Now, this is not to say the apps don't go down, of course they do. But with a team, you can get it back up as soon as possible. When it's just you, yes, you can try to fix it, but you know the pressure's on and you have other things to do in the business other than what work on the app, like sales and marketing and finance and content, and I can go on and on and on. So what's my advice? If you enjoy the journey, if you enjoy the challenge, if you actually are interested in learning how to develop apps and you have the time and your business is successful right now and you have an audience and things are running smoothly and you have a bit of time to learn how to do this, and this is something you want to do for the long run. This is actually a pretty good investment to have. Even if you build a beta version and then you hire somebody and then at least you can know what is going on, right? You can actually coach or help the engineer that's working with you or engineers. The point here is that you're a cook that owns a restaurant. You know how to step into the kitchen and perfect the dish. But if you're already overloaded, if you got very minimal free time and your business is really demanding as it is and you don't really see this as a long term investment. Meaning if you're going to learn how to build apps, this is something you want to be able to use on and on throughout your career. If this is something is not your, you know, bread and butter, something that you want to continue to do for the long run and you have interests elsewhere, then this is probably not the best option. Even if you have a simple app, it's probably better for you to find somebody that you really enjoy working with that is creative, that is smart, that is experienced, that is that can help you build your dream or your dream app in this situation. Personally, I'll give you my decision. When we built Webinar Ninja, I worked on the beta version. I am a very amateur engineer developer. In fact, before we sold it, I had to get another engineer to help fix my mess because it was not ready for primetime. It wasn't ready for customers because I'm not that great of an engineer. And in that moment I could have said I'm going to dedicate time and learn and become a better software engineer. But I decided not to because I just don't want to spend time doing that. I enjoy the other things in business, like the marketing. I like the sales, like the content. I like to teach. I like to create great content for my audience. I like to be helpful. I like to empower other audience members to show them that, hey, you can do this too. That's what I enjoy. So I wanted to spend more time doing that. And I just didn't want to dedicate the time to learn how to build an app or become a sophisticated engineer so that I can grow with the company. I wanted to find somebody who is really good and that's what I did. I found somebody that can fulfill my vision so I can stick to doing the things I enjoy in my business.

ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people.

To wrap up today's Q and A Wednesday's question from Maggie. This is the joy of business. You get to choose what you want. It's all about what you want, how you want to spend your time. Because at the end of the day. That's your greatest asset. How are you going to spend your every day? Are you going to learn how to code and learn how to build apps? Is that something that excites you and you think is going to be fun for the long term? If you don't want to be spending your time doing that, then it's best you hire out for it. And listen, you don't need to commit long term. You can hire them for the project. You can hire them just for the minimal viable version of that software so that you can start getting some customers, getting some momentum, getting some feedback, and then iterate again and again until you have enough work for a single engineer to work with you on a regular basis to hire them full time. I hope that helps and I hope that answers your question. Maggie, if you got a question you want to ask here on Q and A Wednesday, just go ahead and email me over at omar@100mba.net or you can tweet at me over on Twitter. I'm the Omar Zenholm. Go ahead and follow me and ask away. I'm happy to help anybody out there looking for some answers as they're building their business. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. You got to be careful about the choices you make as you grow your business. How you basically carve out a job for yourself, how you make decisions on what you're going to work on, how you're going to spend your time because you might carve out a miserable life if you choose something that you think is a good idea. You think that, oh, this would be good for the business. But you're going to grunt it out and try to make it happen. You don't have to grunt it out. You can try to figure out other ways to do the work that you only enjoy. And when you do work that you feel good about and really like doing, it shows in the work and people really enjoy themselves. They enjoy consuming it and that results in happy customers that tell other people to come and check you out. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With usaa, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a'@usaa.com bundle restrictions apply.