Many years ago, within just a few weeks of buying my first car (an old-school Volkswagen Beetle) I walked out one morning and found that one of the front fenders was partially hanging off the car. I don’t remember how it happened, but I do remember the feeling of being young, having no experience dealing with this kind of thing or money to do it, and wanting to get it taken care of without my parents finding out . . . because they’d certainly have had opinions about how it had happened and I wasn’t likely to come out looking very good.
I drove until I found a local auto body shop, and an hour later and for very little money the shop had pop-riveted the fender back on. If you’ve ever looked at the way the old Volkswagen Beetles were constructed you might conclude that this treatment was in fact “good enough”.
But it wasn’t very professional. Or maybe it was, because it was good enough for me. My car was fixed as well as it needed to be, and I had gotten away inexpensively and quickly. The shop, which I later learned was not inexpensive on a good day and was known for inflating their prices on a bad one, got a few dollars from me under circumstances that dictated doing things that way.
Today I came across a post at smallbiztechnology.com that reminded me of that incident and also of what we (sometimes) do here at Answer Guy Central.
What the author describes SOUNDS like a dissertation on something usually-but-not-always “shadowy”, but in truth it’s becoming a more and more important part of the (world) economy.
Let’s call it “Virtual Assistant Services” for simplicity and when taken out of the realm of things like car repair, shall we?
Virtual VIP takes care of “the stuff you need done”. And we’re cheaper than hiring so-called “experts” (who often aren’t actually that at all and would have been overkill if they were). Oh and by the way: we’re good . . . plenty good . . . at the things we do, or I wouldn’t let the work go out the door.
PC-VIP works the same way. Very few of PC-VIP’s “Trust Missionaries” are heavy-duty computer geeks, but we do a better job taking care of you than most people who are allegedly experts ever would . . . or even could, in many cases. We see what you need, and we fix it. Period.
And that’s what “good enough” can mean. When it really is good enough, good enough is like buying generic ibuprofen rather than Tylenol, It’s 1/3 the price and does the job. It’s Good Enough. And that’s real business change.
