Case Study: The Juggler

“I have a ton of great ideas, but I never get anything done!”

 

Dallas is a polypreneur. At least, he’d like to be. He’d like to start five companies, but operate none of them.

 

“I launched my gym first,” he told me. “I wanted to sell t-shirts to my clients, but couldn’t find a vendor. So I ordered some locally, and then had the idea to sell my designs online.”

 

So he spent a few months building an online store, seeking out funny slogans and designing graphics. The t-shirt business consumed a lot of Dallas’ attention: he’d often scribble ideas on paper while coaching clients in his gym. Eventually, he sold a few shirts to his gym clients, and started posting about his t-shirt company on his Facebook profile.

 

Then another opportunity struck: a local cheesemaker saw his new website and asked who built it. “I did!” said Dallas, and offered to build one for the cheesemaker. He came up with a third brand, and dove into web design: creating his own new logo, and then one for his client. For several months, Dallas learned the web trade between training his clients. His online shirt store was all but forgotten, and he considered taking a partner to run the online business.

 

Dallas is a very smart guy. And these are very real opportunities, with clients willing to pay for them. How can he capitalize?

 

“I figure it will all tie together, you know?” he told me. “I just need someone to run with these ideas after I have them.”

 

Here are Dallas’ real problems:

He’s constantly sacrificing one business for another
He’s distracted by novelty instead of capitalizing on any one idea
No one wants to follow him around and implement his ideas in exchange for “shares” without value
He believes that businesses are made by ideas, not action.

 

Dallas is stuck the Founder Phase, and every time he brings an idea close to the Farmer Phase, he starts fresh with a new one. I’ve never met an entrepreneur who didn’t have at least three great ideas. Dallas was being pulled in every direction and making progress in none. This was partly due to the distraction of novelty, and partly due to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). He admitted to worrying that “someone else will do this if I don’t.”

Here’s what we did.

 

First, I had Dallas calculate his Effective Hourly Rate (EHR) for each company separately. Of course, his EHR was very low for all three ideas, but it was slightly higher for his gym, because the gym actually had some clients.

 

Next, Dallas and I performed a test for low-hanging fruit. We identified which opportunities were easiest to capitalize on NOW. I showed him that 1 new gym client was worth 13 t-shirt sales per month, and 1 new website every two months. Since it took Dallas more than two months to build a website, and he doesn’t sell 13 shirts every month, he concluded it was easier to focus on building his gym…for now. But he was unwilling to give up on the shirt company and the web company completely, which I fully understand.

 

“I get that we don’t have to do those things right now,” he said. “But WHEN?”

 

Rather than choose an arbitrary start date, or a target like “we’ll do them in the third quarter,” I prefer to have a financial goal. We recommend entrepreneurs in the Farmer Phase reach a 33% gross profit margin in their FIRST company before launching their second company. We also ask the owners to run a vacation test: they must take a full two weeks away from their first company, without phone or email contact, before they know it’s safe to start the second.

 

Outcome:

Dallas agreed to put his shirt company on hold until he reached a 33% profit margin in his gym. He was committed to finishing the website for his cheesemaker client, but agreed to have the site hosted and maintained by someone else at the client’s expense. He still owns the URLs for each, and can come back to them anytime–if he doesn’t have another big idea first. With all of his attention focused on his gym, Dallas is building that business with the goal of having someone else run it. Because he’s not going to run out of ideas.

 

As an entrepreneur, your options are infinite. When you have the entrepreneurial skillset, you can do anything. But you can’t do everything–at least, not right now.

 

To satisfy your urges toward novelty, and assuage your FOMO, I suggest you register the URL for your idea but go no further. This places an external “thumbtack” in the idea, and–unless you have a better idea in the meantime–you can come back to it later. My GoDaddy account shows 71 registered domains, including book titles that I’ll never write and businesses I’ll never launch. It’s my way of “putting a pin” in an idea, getting it out of my head, and clearing my mind to build the companies I already own.