When not to pivot in your business — Quietly Extraordinary

I recently ran a project collating stories of business pivots and it got me thinking about when not to do a pivot in your business.

The generic advice is to just go for it. For those of us who tend to overthink things, this can be good advice. To stop trying to pick the best time or when we are most ready or when we have all our plans nailed down.

But for me there are three circumstances where I don’t think this is always the best advice.

01. Big life events

The first is when there is other big life stuff going on that makes it difficult to make good decisions. I know for me, when my Dad was seriously ill, I made a decision to pivot. I was not enjoying my business at all and what was going on with my Dad just made all those emotions even more heightened.

But when I look back now I can see that I made decisions in a rush. Which is very unlike me! If I had been in a better frame of mind I would have tried other things and sought advice from others to make the business work better for me. I was running Facebook ads at the time and if I had spoke to a few other ad managers I would have realized that a big part of the problem was the clients I was taking on (lovely clients but probably not ready for ads). I also wasn’t great at writing the copy — I’ve since seen other successful ad managers share that they get clients to write the copy.

In the long run, Facebook ads management as a business wasn’t right for me. But I think the transition from running Facebook ads to something else could have gone a lot smoother.

02. Money feels scarce

The second circumstance is when money is really tight. I felt this when I stopped offering Facebook ads. I was trying to work out what I was going to pivot to and felt quite desperate for money at the time. I told myself I was experimenting when I took on new things but in reality I took on things that would pay me rather than intentionally working out what I wanted to do next. Some of it was ok and some of it led to burnout.

The best decision I made during this time was to go and get a job. It gave me the breathing space to take the time to work out what is next. I know there is a lot of shame in the online business world about doing this but for me it was the best decision.

You need to be careful with the job you take — I didn’t want one that expected me to work crazy hours. I wanted the space to slowly pivot to a new business. They are out there and yes looking takes time away from working on your business. But the space it gives you to then relax and think can be worth that slow down in developing your business.

03. When a small change could make a world of difference

Particularly when we are exhausted or feeling out of alignment, it can be tempting to make big changes. But often a small change can make a big difference and be so much easier to implement. It could be as simple as putting a clause in a contract about when you are contactable if you are struggling with clients who are expecting you to be available 24/7 and then putting on out of office messages in your email and social media messaging. Sure you may lose some clients but that is going to happen as well if you decide to shut down your current offer to come up with something entirely new that doesn’t have that one-to-one element.

But there is never an ideal time to pivot

There is always the situation where big life events force you to make changes. Or as we’ve seen recently where a lot of business owners are finding people aren’t buying as much. In those circumstances, you have to do the best you can with the decisions you are making, knowing very rarely is a decision a forever decision.

Even if there is nothing big that has happened, it’s unlikely that everything is going perfectly when you decide to pivot. Often we pivot because we feel like we’ve got a pebble in our shoe. We can still walk and sometimes the pebble moves into a spot in your shoe where it isn’t as annoying. But it is that irritation that gets us thinking that something needs to change, to want more.

That small pebble is sending you a wonderful message to think about what needs to change (big or small) before something big happens like burnout.

I always recommend journaling as a starting point when thinking about a pivot. Taking the time to sit down and think about what you want your business to look like, what you enjoy about what you do now and what you don’t and seeing where the brain dump on paper takes you.

And if you want support in working out what that could look like then book in for a Thoughtful Business Pause and we can work through your challenges and ideas together.

Originally published at https://quietlyextraordinary.com on April 14, 2024.