“Hey, pilgrim! You forgot your pop-gun!” John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
I’m a sucker for old Westerns, especially when John Ford and John Wayne teamed up. Throw in Jimmy Steward and you can settle the west in 2 hours and 4 minutes…
But there’s something that always bothers me about western movies…
The bad guys have been terrorizing the town for years… but these townsfolk still appoint one bumbling sheriff after another.
These sheriffs are usually just ordinary citizens with no particular crime fighting experience. They give them a gun and a badge and are shocked when the outlaws easily gun them down in the street.
You know how they eventually kill the outlaws?
They hire John Wayne.
The duke always wins. He wins because he has the right tools, the right experience, and the balls to do what he needs to in order to win…
This is actually a lot like a problem I was facing with a project this month.
I was trying to do everything myself.
I’m a pretty sharp copywriter, and I have a big back of marketing know-how. Those are my strengths… but Web design? I’m somewhere between, “ehh,” and “what-on-earth-have-you-done!”
Too often, I still try to do it myself even though I know it’s never worked well in the past.
That’s exactly the mistake I just made again with a project I was working on…
So what did I do, I gave in (like the bumbling townsfolk) and finally hired John Wayne.
In this case, my John Wayne is James Chartrand and the team at Men With Pens.
(Ironically both John Wayne and James Chartrand are pen names that conceal a girly first name)
I gave them ideas that had about as much bang as a pop-gun and they delivered a Gatling gun design.
Which is a great reminder why you should always hire the pros…
They know more than you. If you don’t know the options, you can’t possibly get the best results. The pros have tricks up their sleeves that you’ve never even considered.
So my recommendation: If you have an outlaw design that’s pillaging your site and killing off your blog visitors… just cut to the chase. Hire John Wayne.
