The physics of getting expert help for your small business and for yourself

English: Schrödinger equation of quantum mecha...

Schrödinger equation of quantum mechanics (1927) by Yassine Mrabet. Image via Wikipedia

I have a confession. I like to know how everything works. I like to know how my cameras work, ancient though several are. I like to know how the universe works so I buy and try to read the books about quantum physics and string theory. That is why I recently purchased, upon recommendation by a friend, How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog (not an affiliate link).

I have a general idea of how my car works. I have a manual for it. However, if anything goes wrong with it I wouldn’t have the first idea how to fix it other than changing a headlight bulb. Even that is really difficult with my car, just getting access past the air-con on one side and the water pump on the other.

So I have a guy who is a great mechanic. He knows how to fix cars. He has all the manuals. He has the computer and the software, and most of all he has the experience. That is worth a lot more than reading all the manuals. He is used to dealing with almost any problem and even if it is one he has never encountered in practice he will know where to look for guidance or who to talk to. He knows what he is doing whereas I couldn’t even start to fix my car.

Many of you may know I work with tax issues for businesses and in other areas as well as helping businesses with other problems they may have. Recently I was contacted via email by someone who had converted his private house into two flats or apartments he was selling and he was building two other flats in the garden, also to sell on. He wanted to know his tax situation.

In UK terms, this sounds a lot like property-developing liable to income tax on the profits, and I told him so, and offered my services.

He replied “What a load of old tosh! I can deal with HMRC myself thanx, thought you might know the answer.

By your account anyone who improves their own property could be treated as self-employed
property developers, what planet are you on? (Well, yes, if they do it with a view to short term profit)

I’ve worked out the answer for my self from the gov (Government) web site.”

I was polite in the face of this and suggested that even if he did not want to engage my services he needed to do some more research. He responded by suggesting that I was only after his money and was out to mislead him. He ended by calling me “Jonny Boy” which was no doubt supposed to be a put-down, though it was not an effective one to someone who was used to being called Jon-Boy in his youth after John-Boy in The Waltons.

If I started to take my car apart to find a problem I would soon get into trouble. If I tried to design a new brochure for my business I would make a mess of it because I haven’t the skill, the experience or the knowledge. If I tried to write my own tax compliance software or build my own website from scratch without having the right tools I would fail.

At a certain point there is no substitute for paid professional advice. We could read all the manuals in the world but without hands-on experience and good tutoring we will make a mess of things. Reading A Brief History of Time didn’t make me a cosmologist or astrophysicist and much of what I read in that book was very difficult to grasp.

I am still working on learning quantum physics as I mentioned. In the meantime I will leave the difficult stuff in my business that I can’t do for the specialists I bring in. Do you know when it is time to “phone a friend”?

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