I was lucky enough to get to attend the recent Seth Godin Q&A run by MLC, courtesy of a client of mine (thanks Matt!) who was kind enough to invite me.
Seth even answered a question I posted #starstruck.
Shortly afterwards, I received an email from another client, also called Matt.
(This story is full of Matts…)
It said…
“In the Seth Godin MLC session he had a juggling analogy where he talked about perfecting and measuring the “throw”, not the “catch”.
What do you reckon the “throw” is for us?
Do you reckon it is the client engagement process? Or is it different for everyone?”
The analogy works like this (direct quote from Seth)
“Juggling is about throwing, not catching That’s why it’s so difficult to learn how to juggle. We’re conditioned to make the catch, to hurdle whatever is in our way to save the day, to—no matter what—not drop the ball. If you spend your time and energy and focus on catching, it’s inevitable that your throws will suffer.”
I gave it a couple of days’ thought. Was there even a throw? Is it the same? Does the analogy even work?
But then it came to me.
Being a good adviser is about giving advice. That’s the catch.
But growing an advice business to the point where you can grow it into a true business (aka no longer dependent on the Founder) is about mastering how to market advice. That’s the throw.
I think this is probably true for most advice firms and probably a vast majority of service-type businesses.
What do you think?
