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I learned how to juggle during the summer I turned 13.

My older brother gave me a book on how to do it, and I spent several weeks trying to figure it out.

It wasn’t just juggling balls, either.

The author also showed how to juggle clubs, which at the time necessitated making them yourself out of sawed-off broom handles and empty Clorox bottles. (Yes, as a matter of fact, I did grow up in a log cabin during the Colonial Period.)

And by the way, if you think knowing how to juggle as a 13-year-old boy has no impact on your popularity with 13-year-old girls, you are mistaken. It has a huge impact.

Unfortunately, the impact is decidedly negative.

I got pretty good at it and over the next several years, I taught dozens of people how to juggle, especially in college. (19-year-old college girls are even less impressed than are their 13-year-old counterparts. I know, I couldn’t believe it either.)

But that’s about as far as it went. Until… my son Evan (I’ve taught all three of my kids how to juggle) showed up having learned to juggle five balls.

Wow. Very impressive. I decided right then and there I needed to learn as well.

This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you about my five-ball juggling success. But it hasn’t happened yet.

However… I think I may have had a breakthrough.

That’s because I realized (yesterday) that learning to juggle five balls is not just “two balls more than three.” It’s a different problem entirely.

Here’s why…

Three balls – where everyone begins – is mostly about understanding how to juggle. Yes, you need to throw and catch them correctly. But in all the times I’ve shown someone how to do it, physical skill has never been the limiting factor.

For the most part, it’s about understanding the throwing pattern and learning to feel the timing. Once you get that, like riding a bicycle, you never forget.

That’s not the five-ball problem. Five balls is about physical skill. You have to throw much faster and much higher, which makes throwing accurately much harder.

My mistake is that I’ve spent the past several weeks focusing on how to juggle. I should have been practicing how to throw faster, higher, and more accurately.

Two “problems” that seem the same… but that require completely different fixes.

The same distinction applies when trying to grow your business. Where you are in its evolution has a lot to do with what you should be working on.

Because while being in business five months may have a lot in common with being in business five years, the problems and associated solutions are completely different.

With that in mind, here are some recommendations.

If You Are at the “Three-Ball” (Beginner) Stage…
 

Experiment.

That applies to your audience, your marketing, your offerings, your pricing … pretty much everything.

You don’t know where the traction is going to come from. It’s not something you can figure out “academically” by sitting in your office, reading books, or asking the opinion of one more friend. (Hint: Ignore any and all advice from your brother-in-law.)

At this stage, you want to develop the habit of saying “yes” to nearly everything; motion leads to good things.

Go to events, offer to speak for free, meet people for coffee, get involved in industry happenings.

You are in the exploration stage, so expect some false starts. Stay flexible and be willing to change direction when new things come to light.

Make money.

I know, this should be obvious and it certainly applies at any stage of your business.

But until you’ve worked for yourself a while – and gotten used to the fact there is no paycheck coming – the rock-solid connection between “what I did today” and where the money comes from may not be fully formed.

And if you can’t find a way to make enough money to keep things rolling, everything will come to a grinding halt.

Your main priority is to figure out how to solve problems that other people are willing to pay for. Everything else is just details.

If You Are at the “Five-Ball” (Advanced) Stage…
 

Get better clients.

Now that you’ve got some breathing room, you can be more selective.

I can honestly say that I don’t have a single client I wouldn’t be just as happy to have dinner with as work on their newsletter. (Not so much the married clients. I’m kidding.)

Not only are great clients easier and more enjoyable to work with, they are more profitable. They pay on time, they don’t try to nickel and dime you, they refer you to their friends.

But it doesn’t just happen. There’s a really tricky process you need to put in place; let me see if I can explain it: Stop working with crappy clients.

Whether you are already working together or tempted to start, you need to get rid of them.

Tell them you are at capacity. Tell them you are a bad match. Tell them anything you like … just don’t work with them.

As one of my old bosses used to say, it’s the people you don’t fire who drive you crazy.

Stop charging for your time.

Even before AI started messing with the concept of pay for effort, charging on a flat fee or project basis has always been better – for both you and your clients. (Here are 29 newsletters that go into detail about why.)

The problem at the three-ball stage, is you don’t yet know enough about the ins and outs of the work to do this. So hourly pricing is often your only option.

But now, as you start doing the same kinds of things over and over for different clients, you know how long it takes and what can go wrong. Most of all, you’ve seen what it’s worth to the people who buy it.

This approach doesn’t need to encompass everything you do. Start by chipping off clearly defined chunks and attach prices to those. Your clients and bank account will thank you.

Never stop marketing.

At some point, you may have all the work you can handle, whether that’s one big client/project or several little ones. That’s when the urge to stop marketing will hit.

After all, who’s got time to write a newsletter, attend a networking meeting, or have coffee with some guy who named his company after a flightless aquatic bird? Not a busy person like you.

But in the word-of-mouth world people like us live in, you can’t just flip a switch to turn the marketing back on when you need it six months down the road.

Like exercise, eating right, and yelling at children, the only way to make it work is to keep doing it, all the time, no matter what. Figure out what your approach is and commit to it.

Here’s the Bottom Line

As your business changes, so do the things that matter most. Matching the right solution to the right problem is always worth thinking about.

I’ll let you know how the juggling goes. Let’s just hope the 65-year-old women are impressed.

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