When you learn to juggle you start with 1 ball and get comfortable with it. Then you add a 2nd and then a 3rd…
I dabbled with juggling in my teens but never got good at using 2 balls even. I’ve been thinking about juggling more and more lately as I think about my business.
Getting Started
When I started my business my big ball to juggle was getting a productive day in. I revealed my typical schedule when I started and it was terrible.
I wasn’t thinking about long term marketing. I wasn’t thinking about a client vetting process. Save money for taxes…yeah right just barely.
The only ball I could handle was my schedule. Once I had a few months under my belt I could pick up another ball and start to really be intentional about finding clients that were good.
Products
When I launched my first book Becoming a WordPress Development Professional I had to learn a new eCommerce system (Easy Digital Downloads which is great) and how to get a book in to ePub, mobi and PDF formats. I had to deal with marketing, email lists, forum management…
Lots of new balls to juggle.
Now that I’ve launched a second book I had the selling system down (WooCommerce this time which I’ve used a bunch) and I knew how to get the books in to the formats.
That meant I could really dig in to the marketing aspect and try to do it ‘right’. Going forward I have to pick up a weekly newsletter. That’s a ball I haven’t juggled before.
Just because you see someone else handling marketing and email and products and a newsletter doesn’t mean you need to be doing the same thing.
We are all learning and we all pick up more balls as things become routine. Pick up the ones you can and do your best. Then next week try picking up another one.
Sticking around for the long haul is the way to really learn to juggle your business. You won’t learn it overnight. Intentional practice is what will help you succeed.