You Can’t Hit What You Can’t See: Business, Baseball, and Curveballs

In baseball, no pitch is more notorious than the curveball. It looks good—right up until it isn’t. You think you’ve got it lined up, and then it drops out of the strike zone like it’s punishing you for your confidence.  

Business is no different. 

Curveballs in business aren’t just unpredictable—they’re invisible until they hit you in the face. A key client leaves. A top performer quits. Growth outpaces your capacity. You wake up excited, and by lunch, you’re questioning your life choices. If you’ve never felt that gut-punch, trust me: it’s coming. And when it does, it’s not a sign you’ve failed. It’s a sign you’re in the game. 

Here’s the catch: if you want to revel in the highs, you’ve got to experience the lows. Otherwise, what are you even celebrating? If you win every inning, you stop appreciating the scoreboard. If every quarter is better than the last, you lose the hunger, the caution, and the humility that keep you grounded. 

Let me tell you about a client—anonymous by necessity, but unforgettable in every other way. 

They were a healthcare services firm riding a high: 400% growth in revenue, 250% in staff. The market couldn’t get enough of them. They were solving real problems for real people and doing it well. But inside, their foundation was cracking. 

They started losing money—$300,000 the first year, then $500,000, and were on track to lose $800,000 the third year. That’s when they brought me in. 

It wasn’t fraud. It wasn’t incompetence. It was unchecked growth. They were saying yes to everyone and everything—because saying no felt wrong. But they were trying to do too much with too little structure. They had the heart, but not the muscle. They wanted to serve, but didn’t have the capacity. And that good intention almost killed them. 

Saying no felt like betrayal—until they realized that going broke would be the real betrayal. They had to grow up, fast. Get real about their limits. Stop confusing “more” with “better.” 

Another client, a tech company scaling fast, learned the same lesson the hard way. One morning, their CEO walked into the office feeling unstoppable. Four hours later, he was drowning in problems: a longtime employee furious about new communication protocols, a $10 million deal lost due to backlogged installations, and a PR disaster brewing from his own expense report. All avoidable. All preventable. All curveballs. 

The CEO had grown the company from a scrappy startup to a $30 million success. But he forgot something crucial: the bigger you get, the more your decisions ripple. You can’t just react. You have to anticipate. Think long and hard before every policy, every promise, every hire. 

That morning, the curveballs came fast and tight. And that’s when it hit him: the business he loved had outgrown his instincts. If he didn’t evolve, he’d sabotage the very thing he built. 

These aren’t cautionary tales. They’re necessary rites of passage. Because here’s the truth: without the hard stuff, you don’t grow. Without curveballs, you never learn to swing smarter. Without setbacks, you don’t appreciate success. 

If business was easy, everyone would be doing it well. 

So the next time you’re knocked down by something you didn’t see coming, don’t curse the pitch. Learn to read it. Adjust your stance. And when you connect—when you finally crack that curveball down the line—you’ll know it wasn’t luck.

It was earned. 

Curveballs aren’t just setbacks—they’re signs you’re playing at a higher level. If your business is growing, your systems, people, and decisions need to grow with it. That’s where most companies stumble—and where smart leadership steps in. 

If you’re facing your own version of a curveball—or want to build a team that can anticipate and handle them before they drop—we can help.