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Should a project be installed do-it-yourself or pro? Check out this video on making the right decision for your boat. Whether you need a remote consultation design or perhaps inviting us aboard your boat, Pacific Yacht Systems is here to help. Check out the links in the description below. Hey everyone, Jeff Cote here with Pacific Yacht Systems. Uh we've got another installment of Tech Talk. We've got a question from Henry. Henry asked a good question. He's asked, "Uh Jeff, what sort of projects should I tackle on myself versus potentially delegating to a professional and what are the benefits of sort of doing either?" I think this is something, to be honest, that many of us boat owners have and a lot of us do, for sure, for reasons, for many reasons, either to get to know your boat better, for financial reasons, also because we love it. There's many reasons to do work on your own boat. I, too, actually work on my own boat and I would say that many, many owners do that. But the question is, where are your skill sets and where are you comfortable in doing something and where maybe you're not as comfortable, then maybe you want to consider delegating. But I'll get into all of it. So, I agree and I get this all the time. Uh I think it's in an ideal world, all of us would know everything and we would be able we would have endless time and there's a huge benefit, for sure, in doing the work on our boat ourselves. No doubt. Of course, there has to be. And there's merit for that, for sure. Now, that's in an ideal world and as we know, we don't live in one. And so, the reality is more like, okay, do what you can on your boat with a high level of confidence that it's going to actually be great. So, that's sort of like another benchmark. The other thing, too, that I always tell is that the less integration required, the easier it is. So, for instance, if you're I don't know, maybe replacing a fan or replacing like one item, right? Or installing one item, and you educate, and you find out the details and where the connections should be, and how to do it, and fusing, and choosing the right wire size, and all that stuff, the level the barriers of entry of doing that right, if you do what you're doing right now, which is educating yourself and going on this channel and other channels and reading books and forums and whatnot, and that confidence, depending on your skill set and your manual skill set, and your ability to digest information and to get it right, is definitely higher. I think where it gets a little bit trickier is when you're installing systems that require integration between different components that aren't built from the same manufacturer, and I'll give you an example on my own boat. Now, I might understand the concepts, and I definitely get to see the troubleshooting, and I geek out, but there is just simply no replacement for having seen all the permutations of install problems, because I'm not in the field as much as I used to, but I do like working on my boat. So, if I install something on my boat, and I've done it only once, I'm not aware of all the gotchas that come in, especially on the big like systems on the integration. So, for instance, when I installed a lithium battery system on board with Wake Speed, and I installed it connected to my Servo, which connected to my inverter, I got it most of the way, because I might understand all the concepts, but it took a technician from my team to like dial it in and bring it to 100, because I wasn't aware of certain things that I was doing wrong or that weren't working, and yet when a technician from our team came on board, they knew right away. And that's the difference between practice and concepts. And so, I would advise that if you're going to tackle a complicated system, either you need to give yourself a lot of time, right? And you need to be very curious and really thorough on your testing because the integration is where things generally fail. And that's something that you want to spend a lot of like give yourself a lot of time to do that. Alternatively, some owners are going to say, "Okay, I have X amount of free time to work on my boat. I'll work on all the things that I can do easily that I feel comfortable with that aren't too complicated." And then what they end up doing is they're saying, "Okay, I can't do it all anyways." And so on certain aspects, I might delegate certain responsibilities to other people to help me on those issues. So, now some of us, you know, it's really life is really a a balance between time and money, right? So, obviously, I'm not saying that everyone has a lot of money and can just throw it at it. But, if you don't have a lot of money and you're going to do it yourself, then you need a lot of time. And having no time and no money for complicated installs is going to potentially be frustrating. Or, worse, it's going to not really work the way you hoped or intended, and you are not going to know why. So, if you're going to tackle complicated things, do so with time if you don't have a lot of money, right? Give yourself more time just to work out the details and be curious and making sure and don't assume that what you did is right. You really need to vet it out and test it out in all these different permutations to make sure that it's done right. And so that would be my general advice uh for tackling stuff yourself or delegating it to others. Is tackle the things you know really well, things that are not integration, you can probably do on your own if you educate. But, once it gets to complex systems and integration between different manufacturers, if you don't have the ability to delegate, then you definitely need the time to do it properly. There's just no way around it. It's just going to be tedious and I'm a perfect example. I I on my own boat, even with what I know, I wasn't able to bring it to completion. I thought I did and it took one of my technicians to bring it to completion. Why? Because if you do it every day and you're doing it like for 10 years or 15 years and that's all you do every day, you get really damn good at what you're doing. Not because they're smarter than all of us, it's just there's just no replacement for practice. There just is no replacement for practice and that on integration is really valuable and that's where I think considering an outside expert is worth contemplating. So, great question. Uh it's someone It's a question that many of us have to ask ourselves and answer. And again, thank you for watching. Please subscribe. It helps us grow the channel and reach out fellow boaters and help them on their journey of maintenance and making their boats safer and more reliable. We're going to have links in the description below on some of further things you can read about and we'll see you in the next one. Hey, fellow boaters. We're going to be doing a lot more tech talk videos. If you've got any suggestions for future videos, leave them in the comments below. Once again, thank you for watching.