Architects and Plumbers

I’m sitting in the Atlanta airport after a week of meetings with clients and a potential client.  I’m admittedly a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk.  Some of the talks he gave play an important role in my determination to “go it alone” instead of going to work for someone else.  I take some time each week to listen to his recaps and in one of them he talked about “architects and plumbers.”  I instantly got where he was going and I truly appreciate those moments in which I feel some sense of validation.

A quick explanation is that the architect is the strategic thinker.  The one who lays out the plan and sees the possibilities that lay ahead.  The plumber is the person that gets the job done.  They execute on the strategy that the architect laid out.

What did Gary say that gave me some sense of validation?  “Be Both!”  If you’re an architect, you better know how to do the plumbing…or learn to do it!  I readily admit that in certain areas I scratch the surface.  What do I do?  I google! (Google being a verb in this instance).  I research and read and learn and don’t stop until I can be the plumber as much as I’m the architect.

I signed a new client this week after doing an analysis of his law firm’s digital marketing strategy.  In that meeting, I brought him ideas and strategy (architect) and supported it with statistics and data that I had pulled from a crime database (plumber).

Be Both!  Don’t be afraid to Google (or Bing if that’s your thing).  In matter of fact, how much credibility do you gain by actually knowing the “plumber” work.  If not to your clients, but to yourself!  It’s a great confidence booster, give it a try!