DISCLAIMER: As you probably already know, this page may contain affiliate links. If you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. Thanks!
Pivoting is a term that gets thrown around a lot in the business world, but what does it actually mean?
Put simply, pivoting means making a change in your business strategy in order to better achieve your goals. This could be anything from changing your target market to altering your product offering, or even changing the way you operate your business. Some companies even take an ever bigger risk — by changing their entire business model.
I know what you’re thinking –
Making even the smallest of changes to your business can be daunting – frightening, even. After all, you’ve put blood, sweat, and tears into building up your brand to its current state, so why would you want to change anything?
Unfortunately, nothing in this world is as constant as change. And in the business world, change is happening faster than ever before. In order to stay ahead of the curve and still be relevant, you need to be prepared to pivot when necessary.
The important thing to remember is that a pivot should never be made lightly – it should only be done if you have a clear reason for doing so, and you are confident that it will help you achieve your goals.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. How do you know when it’s time to pivot? And how do you go about making such a big change?
If you’re asking the same questions, don’t worry. I got you. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about pivoting your business for success.
📄 Video Transcription:
Hey, Hey everybody, today’s gonna be a little bit, a different episode. If you ask me Pete, for the live recording, you might have realized this morning that the title changed and the description changed and even the thumbnail changed. And what happened is, as you probably know, if you are new to this episode and you’re just discovering Boss Your Business, I am recording this podcast live.
It’s getting multi streamed to multiple platforms, then to StreamYard. And that means my guests are coming on the show live. It’s not prescheduled and we are recording and then editing. Now we are going live and then turning that into a podcast. Now what happened this morning is I woke up to a message that today’s guest, Janka, that was supposed to be here, woke up with a fever.
Now that’s the downside of recording a podcast live stuff like this can happen, but stuff like this can also happen in your business, which is why I decided to change the topic of today’s episode to Pivoting: What, Why and How? Because I had a decision to make this morning, waking up to this message of, hey, I am down with a fever.
Got the bug. We all heard that for the last two years, more than we wanted to, right? I had to make a decision. What am I gonna do? Am I, uh, just going to cancel the show? I have more than enough reasons between dental issues, frozen shoulder. I woke up this morning at 3:00 AM with some tooth ache, didn’t sleep well, all the thing, I had all the reasons to say, I’m not doing the episode recording today. No podcast. This time, we’re just skipping it. How often does that happen to our business? It’s not just something quote, small as recording a podcast episode, right? That also can be a client. You are not working well with a offer, or you are deciding that the thing that’s making you money, might not be the thing you wanna do anymore. You’ve outgrown it. You wanna change. And that’s why I decided first of all. I made it promise to myself that this is going to be a habit. This is happening no matter what. This is how I give back to myself, too. I did this, even though life happened again, I pivoted, I came up with a different solution.
We changed and we are still doing this, but also because I promised you this is going to happen. This is the time slot, where we are recording these episodes where you get to join in. So I pivoted and that’s pretty much what pivoting is. It’s just a fancy word of saying change directions. And if you an entrepreneur, or if you have a life, if you have a pulse, chances are, somewhere in your life, you had to pivot, you had to change course. Something happened that wasn’t planned and you just had to come up with something else. Right? And like with all the guests that we had so far, there was always a part in their story where they changed something, they adjusted something, they went somewhere else.
They went a different way than was originally planned. So on the first question of what is pivoting? Pivoting is a fancy word for changing directions for listening in your business, it could be listening to the market. It, they might not want the offer delivered as you have it delivered right now. And it’s just not clicking right. Maybe the message isn’t clicking right. Something. And you look at the data in front of you and you are pivoting. You are changing your direction. You were adjusting. It also could be pivoting as in, you don’t wanna do the offer anymore. When I changed from web design because everybody’s mother, brother, uncle, son, and daughter knows how to build websites.
They don’t necessarily how to do it right. But you know what I mean. Everybody nowadays knows how to build the website. Nobody wants to pay for it. And I also didn’t wanna just build websites and sit in front of the computer and do all of that. So I pivoted. I’ve looked at what I had in front of me. What was the data telling me?
And I realized clients came to me for web design yet they left with full on business coaching. Yeah. And that’s when I pivoted. Now on the question of why pivoting? The easy answer is you don’t wanna be the next Blockbuster, do you? Little joke aside, but pivoting allows us to change. It allows us to adjust to life and the market.
So specifically in business, when we talk about pivoting and changing direction, it usually comes to your office. What is the focus of your office? What are you doing and how are you delivering them? And when you pivot with that big pivot in, in my business, that’s happening right now is I am going to be focusing more on a one-to-many offer because first of all, I’m 40 living in San Diego that means the idea of wanting something that is more self-sustainable than straight up one-on-one is becoming more and more important to me. At some point I want to at least semi-retire right, but also being able to help more people. One-on-one takes a lot of time. And I also believe that being in a, he mind meaning in a group in a one to many situation, we can bounce ideas off of each other.
I am best when people come to me with questions, things they want to accomplish, things they want to fix. I am better reacting to their needs than just here is this, and here is that, and do this and do that just because of… so with that, there’s multiple different reasons why I’ve decided to pivot from a lot of one-on-one work to one-to-many.
And with that, that’s where, where the, why pivoting comes in. Looking again, you, if you know me, I am based in data. Numbers is the only thing that gives you clear information, that’s not just a gut reaction. Meaning, oh my God, this is not working. And then you look at the numbers and actually it is. Actually my clients have results.
Actually, I am paying the bills. Does this working, even though my gut is like, this is not working. Oh my God. Everything is off. Numbers is the only thing that really can give us data so when you are looking at pivoting, when you are looking at changing something, look at the data. First of all, what does it do for you?
How much time are you spending with that product, with that service offering right now? Does that align with where you wanna be? What are your values? What are your goals? What is the plan with all of this? Do these align? If they don’t align, how can you make them align? In my case, changing from one on one to one to many others might be courses, others might be, rather than focusing on teaching a specific tool, you can teach a framework, giving yourself that room of speaking to multiple tools. There are so many ways of what pivoting could be in the big sense of your business, but also in the small sense of, cool, my live guest is sick. What am I gonna pivoting now to? Am I just going to leave it be, or am I recording a podcast by myself? Now, we already started to look at the how pivoting. Now in the sense of the big picture of your business. And if we are thinking about offerings and the, the thought of what you are doing and how you are delivering it to your client, pivoting can be really, really, oh my God, you want me to do this? It can be frightening.
It can feel like a lot. Chances are, when you are pivoting in the big sense of your business, you are not gonna completely pivoting from, I don’t know, being an electrician to, um, I don’t, I can’t even think, making sugar. You are not, chances are, you are not completely changing your offering. You just see something where there is a bigger need in what you already have done.
And how I have pivoted in the past because looking at how my business has been happening, evolving and growing and doing, I’ve constantly pivoted. No matter if that is the, from web design to business, um, coaching simply because I saw that people literally love business coaching rather than a website.
It was already happening. It was already there, then switching from just business consulting to doing the ClickUp on my YouTube channel and just adding things to it. So when you look at the history of my business, you see that even though I pivoted, it wasn’t necessarily a full on pivot. it was an adjustment.
It was a tweak. It was a polishing. So when you look at it that way, pivoting really is not that frightening anymore because it’s not a full on change. You are not changing 180 degrees. You are just adjusting and polishing. When you look at businesses, when COVID hit, that was the biggest, the biggest example of businesses pivoting big time. Even with pivots that big, we had to adjust.
Not we, a lot of us are digital entrepreneurs where we had a little bit polishing, but there were a lot of businesses that had to pivot big time, that had to change their thinking about how they’re running their business, how they’re making this work, how they’re adjusting accordingly. But when you look at it, it wasn’t a full-on hundred and 80 degree change. Restaurants still cooked and were open, but they did curbside pickup. They didn’t have people in their restaurants. Once at least in San Diego, we were lucky enough. They opened up the streets for outside seating. They did the outside seating. It was little adjustments and not that they changed a restaurant into, I don’t know, an office building.
I don’t know that wasn’t allowed in COVID either. So. But you see where I’m going with this pivot doesn’t mean it’s a complete change. It just means you are adjusting to the market. And this is why being open to pivoting and adjusting your business is so important when you build your business, because it gives you that sturdy and strong foundation in your business that allows you to change things up, that allows you to adjust to life. Because the only constant we have is that there is no constant. Things will change, especially for us digital entrepreneurs. Technology will change. People will be sick. Stuff won’t work. If you are not able to pivot and just adjust, your business can’t either, which then means your business cannot support you through the ever changing life of lives of life of life. And it’s not even just for entrepreneurs, even if you are an employee, downsizing, company buys another company. And now suddenly, what you thought is a steady job, it’s not there anymore, or you need to switch in a different position because the positions have changed.
It is life. And if you are not able to adjust, if your business is not able to adjust, we come back around to the example of Blockbuster. I feel like I’m repeating myself right now, but I am. Um, if we are not able to adjust, we are just gonna be eliminated. That’s just what it is. So coming back around to how all of this started this morning, we always have reasons. You always can find a reason to not change.
To not pivot in your business. I could have this morning. Again, I have more than enough reasons. With an inflamed tooth and tooth ache and, and frozen shoulder. And I’m tired as hell, but do you really want that? I am the first one. Disclaimer, I am the first one that will speak up for a mental health day that will say go vetch on the couch.
And there’s actually a video coming up on my YouTube channel here pretty soon where I’m talking about this. I am the first one to say, take a day off. Don’t worry about the live show morning. No need to pivot with the topic. No need to do anything about it. Take the day off, you have struggled enough and you are the only one that can make this decision if you want to do this pivot or not. That’s the moment where you need to step back and you need to put your ego aside and be like, okay. In my case, I was, yeah, I do just wanna go on the couch and take a freaking nap. But I know that recording this episode, see you live in the comment section, even if I might not give you a shout shall as well as Dr. Elo in there, simply because this is a podcast recording and we answer questions at the end. This is giving me energy. I know, first of all, my makeup and face is all cute. Now I can record my couple YouTube videos that I’m behind on right after this, it is fueling me right now. So I did not give into any and all of the reasons that told me this morning to just cancel this episode. Do the same in your business.
Step back when you are faced with that decision. Okay, am I gonna change something or am I not gonna change something? Step back put the ego aside and I’m not telling, I’m not saying the ego of, oh my God, I have to do this. Now just the ego of our inner voice that is trying to protect us. That voice often enough is a little bit overprotective.
Put that, put that voice, put that ego aside and then ask yourself, am I just finding a reason because ego is trying to protect me? Or is there actually something to be said about making this change? If I step into this future pivot, if I step into that change that I’m considering doing, how does that make me feel?
Am I getting excited and do not mix up fear with excitement? It feels the same in your body. It literally, physically shows up the same way we make the decision. If this is anxiety and fear, or if it’s excitement. So be careful with trusting your gut on that one, listen really deep on it. And then really step into that situation of, maybe it actually fuels me. Maybe I’m actually excited, even just sitting here talking to the microphone and the camera by myself, knowing that the moment I hit that end broadcast button, I’m gonna be proud of myself that I did it, even though I had all the reasons not to pivot and change it up. Or, is it really a moment of, okay, I am using all the reasons and I’m just taking a day off. And with that, I’ll leave you to your decision if you are pivoting in your future, come pop into the community. I always love to hear how this resonates with you. If this triggers something in you, if you have a story around pivoting in your business, come join, AskYvi.tips/community and pop in.
Let me know or join us live the next time I record the next podcast episode, which always happens right now, Thursday mornings at 10:00 AM. And I’ll see you there. Happy pivoting, honestly, in the community. Bye, everybody.
