by Ryan P. Desmond

Can you juggle? I cannot. I have toyed with the idea several times, but never committed to the learning process. Learning to juggle is not a lengthy commitment. From what I understand, it only takes about 15 minutes to learn. I guess learning never truly interested me.However, being a top-notch entrepreneur is important to me. If it is important to you, consider this piece of advice.

Entrepreneurship, like juggling, is a skill that takes time to learn.

When people learn to juggle, they start out slow. They juggle scarves at first, because they float through the air. This gives you time to develop your hand-eye coordination. It is possible to develop the same hand eye coordination with a ball, but it is a bit harder. The ball falls at a much faster rate, thus reducing the amount of time you have to react. Using the ball method may increase your learning time from 15 minutes to several hours.

Entrepreneurs may not have the luxury of a delayed learning curve, because the learning curve equates to revenue. Business markets can seem fickle. And consumer demand can change rapidly. You want to make money as fast as possible. That means the time from launch to revenue must be short.

Keep the time from launch to revenue short by staying focused. What do I mean? You have a ton of ideas for making money. That is part of what makes you an entrepreneur. However, having tons of ideas can be a bad thing. You have to take the necessary time to develop one idea before you move on to the next. Trust me on this.

Multi-tasking is the enemy of new entrepreneurs. It is very tempting to start every idea that you have, but that will leave you stuck in the beginning stages for all of your ideas. Keep in mind that you are building an empire. That takes time. So, be like the novice juggler. Put all the desire that you have to be successful into the first task. Use that energy to focus on making your initial idea successful. For the juggler, they keep 2 or 3 scarves floating. For the entrepreneur, develop ONE product and create multiple ways to it. That means you need to spend 80% of your time marketing that ONE product. How do you market? I’m glad that you asked.

Marketing is the process of getting your brand/product in front of the people that are most likely to buy. There are several different strategies available. Social media marketing seems to be a really popular one, in the current market. However, any marketing strategy can work if you stick to it. I recommend selecting a marketing strategy that fits your sales personality. Do not worry about how everyone else markets and sales their products and services. Their strengths may not be your strengths. In essence, selecting a marketing strategy that works for others may actually be the worst strategy for you. I read the book Strengths Based Selling about a year ago. It changed the way I approached sales.

I was already very successful at sales, and I had built multiple teams. The first team that I built went from $5,000 a month in sales to over $30,000 a month in just 4 months. I read Strengths Based Selling while building my second team. We were having similar success. In one month, we were able to recover $15,000 of lost revenue. We were on pace to double revenue the following month, but COVID put a halt to progress. I left the company after that to return to school. The moral of the story…I began to enjoy sales a great deal more. And I sold with more confidence. My team also sold with more confidence. Our marketing strategies were built on our sales techniques. Get the book. Learn your best ways to sale. Build your marketing strategies from your best sales techniques. And stay focused on marketing that product until you are able to generate revenue. This is the key to growing your empire.