Catching A Crab
Back in college, I was on the rowing team. If you’ve never seen the sport of collegiate rowing, let me tell you a little bit about it.
Rowing is a racing sport where teams of rowers compete in specially designed boats. The boats are long and thin. They seat 4 or 8 rowers and a coxswain, all positioned one in front of another. The coxswain (pronounced COX’N) is like the captain of the boat and he sits in the very back, facing forward. He handles the rudder to steer the boat and also calls the stroke pace, telling the rowers to speed up or slow down as the race demands. All of the rowers sit facing the back of the boat and each handle one oar going out to the right (starboard) or left (port) side of the boat.
In order for the boat to move, all of the oarsmen have to be rowing at exactly the same speed and exactly the same power. Starting with his knees up on his chest and his arms extended fully out in front of him holding the oar handle, a rower dips his oar blade into the water and then drives with his legs to move the oar through the water. Once his legs are fully extended, he continues the stroke with his arms, pulling the oar handle in towards his chest. Then comes the hard part.
Right at the instant that the oar handle is about to come in contact with his chest, the rower must lift the blade out of the water, twist the oar handle so that the blade is parallel to the water’s surface and then reverse direction with his hands, pushing the oar handle back out in front of him and drawing up his legs to get ready for the next stroke. This all must happen in a split second and all the rowers must be perfectly synchronized or bad things happen.
For an experienced crew this is not much of a problem. Each rower is able to perform without really thinking about the individual steps in each stroke. After a while, it’s like second nature and all the rower has to think about is following the directions of the coxswain and staying in time with the other rowers in his boat.
But, every once in a while, an oarsman will make a mistake at the end of the stroke and be unable to get the blade of his oar out of the water. When this happens, the momentum of the boat and the drag of the water on the oar pulls the oar blade towards the back of the boat and drives the oar handle into the rower’s body, forcing the rower to lean back while the rower behind him is moving forward. CRASH!
Rowers call this “catching a crab” and it disrupts every rower on the boat. The only way to correct is for all the rowers to stop rowing while the rower who “caught the crab” wrestles his oar blade out of the water. Then all of the rowers reset and start all over again, essentially from a dead stop. The boat has lost momentum and it will take several strokes to get back up to speed.
It’s been a long time since I’ve caught a crab. I haven’t been back on the water as an oarsman since my college days. But last week, I did the equivalent with my online business…not once, but twice! First, I managed to mess up the timing of my emails announcing new blog posts, which caused the traffic those emails generated to be diffused and not count as highly towards my Alexa score. And, second, I broke the cardinal rule and made an offer to my subscribers that they weren’t interested in.
Both of these actions combined have led to a loss of momentum for my business. And like a boat with an oarsman who’s caught a crab, I’ve stopped rowing and I’m reseting to begin again. It will take a while to regain the momentum I enjoyed at the beginning of last week, but I’m confident that I will be back up to speed very soon.
So what’s the lesson here? Why am I telling you all this? It’s simple. Unless you have been in this business for a very long time, you WILL eventually “catch a crab.” And with the pace that the technology is changing all around us, even seasoned veterans will occasionally make a mistake, too. But, when you do, it is important to recognize and acknowledge the mistake and then take corrective action as quickly as possible. It is equally important to learn from your mistake and make changes to your business to prevent it from happening again.
In my case, I am clearing my schedule everyday at the same time to make sure that the following day’s blog post is completed and the email announcement scheduled in my autoresponder. I’m also going to do a better job of market research before I make my next offer to ensure that what I’m presenting to you is really something you’re going to want.
What about you? Have you recently made a mistake in your online business that you had to stop everything to correct? What was it and what did you do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?
- Daniel Joseph Moran
