Let’s talk about pivoting! Today we’re breaking down the four major pivots in my business so far, what holds you back from pivoting your business, and why it can skyrocket your business.

Making decisions as an entrepreneur

I feel that there’s this notion out there that as an entrepreneur you need to always make the *right* decision to see results and to be successful. You want to do things right and avoid messing up.

Your business is your baby, your pride, your passion—and let’s be honest—most of us want to do this long-term.

If we ever had a traditional 9-5 (a traditional career), we don’t want to go back to that so we put this pressure on ourselves to do everything right. But what I want to point out is that things don’t have to be perfect, especially because they can be changed.

Now that we are finally in charge, we’re making our own decisions. We’re running our own business, we’re deciding what offers we create, what we sell, how we sell it… 

We get to decide who we want to work with, in what manner, what that actually looks like—and through that—each little decision we make we get to adjust and refine based on the experiences we have in order to make it better, in order to make sure it feels good and it allows us to grow in the direction that we want to grow.

All to say, when you’re making a decision inside your business, for the most part it doesn’t matter how small or how big that decision is—you can’t go wrong. 

You can test, you can try things out, and you can pivot!

Pivoting your decision-making in business

Literally every time that I think of the word pivot all that I can think of is that scene on Friends. The one where they’re going up the stairs and they hit a turn, the couch gets stuck, and Ross is like, PIVOT, PIVOT, PIVOT! 

And that’s exactly what I envision: the couch *can* go up the stairs, but it’s stuck—stuck in inaction.

You’re not currently moving forward because you’re trying so damn hard to make the perfect decision because you don’t want to mess it up, you don’t want to get the couch stuck.

But by doing so you get stuck in inaction and you don’t move forward.

Whereas if you were to pivot—if you were to just adjust and make a decision—something that feels good to you regardless of if it feels a bit scary or daunting, you’d finally move past that block.

As we grow, challenges are always going to come up. Things are going to be a little bit scary and that’s okay, that’s where we grow.

Finding a deeper meaning in your business

When you are pivoting your business or when you go ahead and make that little shift—that little action—the couch pushes through and everything starts to flow. Things fall into place, you start landing clients, growing your business, making money, feeling even better about all of the decisions that you’ve made.

And through that pivot essentially what you’re doing is you’re finding deeper meaning in your business, you’re finding a stronger alignment to the decisions that you’re making, to the things that you’re doing—and in turn—you’re finding your most authentic self.  

As we grow our business, as we make these decisions—and make these changes—you learn, you grow, you fail, you tumble, you succeed and through that, you’re learning so much about yourself that it allows you to adjust in ways that better suit your personality, that are going to make you happier, and that are going to help you thrive in a much stronger way. 

My experience pivoting in business

Personally, I have gone through so many pivots and it all started when I was in my corporate job. It was probably the first time I pivoted and went in an entirely different direction.

Since then—since going full-time in my business—I have continued to shift ever so slightly (or drastically) my business in order to find a more aligned way of running that business, something that brought me even more happiness and more excitement.

What’s funny is that a lot of these pivots were actually a long time coming and I didn’t even notice.

Quitting my 9-5 and taking my business full-time

I was in the corporate world for six and a half years (it was a long time!) but towards the end of that—probably the last 2-years—I was finding myself a little stuck.

I wasn’t happy anymore and I was feeling a little bit overwhelmed and burnt out. There was just too much going on and it wasn’t fulfilling anymore.

I was no longer seeing it as 100% of a career choice that was a good fit for me.

So that disconnect led me to at a minimum try and find an outlet—a different hobby. Something to bring back some balance into my life so I wasn’t just overworking myself 9-5—when it actually felt like 24/7—and I could reinject a little bit more fun in my day-to-day life so I could then go to sleep, start again, and not be completely drained. 

Through that is how I uncovered my first passion—my hobby at the time—designing.

That’s exactly how I first started my business (although I didn’t know it at the time!).

I took a  bunch of courses both in design, in photography, and in tech-related stuff. I tried almost everything under the sun until I realized that design had potential not only for me to fully enjoy it, but had the potential to be a business. An actual business that brought in clients and got me paid.

That’s when I decided to launch my very own brand design business.

I niched down to brand design in particular because I didn’t want to be a graphic designer. Nor did I want to be a web designer. I strictly wanted to design brands (logos, fonts, colours, all that stuff!).

So I went ahead and created my packages. I did all the things you need to do in order to have your business ready to go. With that plan, I then started to market myself and land clients.

That was probably my “first pivot” which at the end of the day is really just starting a business.

So it depends on how you want to look at it, I may not have been pivoting my business, but I pivoted my life!

With time, I grew my design business, went full-time, and started to become more successful. That’s where I started to get closer to my first “official” pivot.

Pivoting my business from designer to brand strategist

Through design, I uncovered that there was so much power in kicking off a client project with brand strategy first.

That way we could build a solid foundation. Everything from their goals, their values, and narrowing down their ideal clients/who they were going to target. To how they were going to serve them through their packages and their pricing. All the way to the messaging (the voice, the unique positioning, etc.).

All the stuff that at the end of the day provided that foundation. One that would set the direction for me to be able to successfully design a visual identity. One that would represent the strategy—and by doing so—would attract the right types of clients. It would allow them to scale their business further.

Discovering my love for coaching

After having several clients actually go through that brand strategy framework, I discovered coaching. And let me tell you… It only took two seconds to fall in LOVE!

At the time, I wasn’t even calling myself a brand coach. I just called myself a brand strategist. But I was in reality going very in depth and was full-on coaching my clients.

We would have multiple hour-long sessions where we would go deep into their brand strategy. This would help them uncover a vision that was aligned to how they wanted to grow their business.

These were not just assumptions we made. They were deep-rooted answers relating to how they wanted to grow their business. This ensured that both the strategy and the design was a perfect match for them. The designs were then more powerful and had a longer shelf life. They would be able to grow for years and years to come with that new brand strategy.

They were able to do all this without feeling a disconnect, without having to update and tweak their messaging constantly because it no longer was aligned with their current vision. 

I loved being able to just sit on a call and ask questions and challenge my clients in order to come up with something that felt real. Not just something superficial like, “I want to target female entrepreneurs that want to travel.” 

That’s great—don’t get me wrong—it’s a good start to get down to the demographics of it.

But to dig deeper and figure out:

• Is there a reason you want to offer these things?
• Why do you want to price them this way?
• Why do you want to cater to these people?
• What does this all mean to you?

This exercise ensured they’d feel more aligned to their business as well as have a deeper purpose. A purpose which gives them a reason to wake up every single day and try their hardest at whatever it is that they’re doing; promoting, selling, and overall working behind the scenes in order to see results.

That alignment allows them to actually see more success and stop second-guessing every single move they make.            

That was my second time pivoting my business.

I pivoted from being a brand designer to being a brand designer and brand coach/brand strategist. The title was still a work in progress at that point lol.

Pivoting from designer to business coach

The more that I offered brand strategy, the more I realized that coaching was a higher calling for me.

It was where I thrived the most. It’s where I started to not necessarily get bored with design, but noticed that I was being pickier. I wanted to work with even more specific people.

That’s when I started cutting out a lot of my offerings because I realized I was only offering them because other people were offering them and not because I genuinely wanted to have those packages in place.

I ended up realizing and coming to that moment in time where I said “You know what? As much as I love design, this isn’t what I’m meant to be doing”.

So there I found myself pivoting my business again. I let go of design and officially started calling myself a brand coach. I started helping people to really uncover every little bit and piece that would form the foundation of their business so they could grow it with much more confidence. 

Fast forward I don’t know how long—maybe a couple of months/almost a year—and I uncovered another desire of mine.

I’ll probably explain this in much more detail at another time because I feel like it’s a much more powerful lesson in itself of how I went to uncover my next pivot and my next niche so-to-speak.

Uncovering my true zone of genius

What ended up happening is I realized I had a knack for leveraging connections and real relationships (not just superficial level relationships) in order to gain more visibility and attract more clients. All without going deep into the hustle mentality and without having to work 24/7 in order to scour and find more clients. 

Instead, through this new visibility framework that I had developed inside of my business (the one that had gained me the most success for me and my clients), I realized that this pivot was perfect for me. Not only is it working for me and my clients, but this is an actual goldmine.

There are so many people busting their asses trying to find clients, and what works the best for me is something that can be re-engineered and implemented in a way that works and allows you to have more balance so that either you can create more things and take on more clients, or just live your life (relax and do whatever it is that you prefer to do other than just working and hustling). 

That is when I decided…

The fourth pivot in my business

“Let’s pivot again!

I’m ready for this. It’s exciting, it’s amazing, it’s a goldmine. It’s got so much potential and people are going to go crazy over this. They are going to eat this up because it’s literally what it takes to attract clients easily and have them slide into your DM’s inquiring about your offers…

And it’s what it takes to scale past 6-figures and gain massive visibility.

Instead of selling 20 courses here and there, you can multiply that to 100, 200, etc. because you have so many eyes on your stuff. You’re being seen as a leader and go-to person who’s widely known in the online space.

It’s that difference. It’s that shifting point that allows you to scale in such a massive way.”

So I pivoted—again.

I started to call myself a leadership and visibility coach, and that’s where I am now! And honestly, it’s so much fun!

I feel beyond aligned. I feel that every piece of content that I come up with for the most part is brilliant. It’s exactly what people want to hear and every offer that I come up with just makes sense.

Even when I went ahead and decided to create this podcast, I was like “Yes, visibility, leadership, like everything is coming together”. It’s the perfect fit to the puzzle in the way that I want to grow my business, in the way that I want to serve people, in the way that I want to help and create a greater impact.  

In closing

So pivoting…

Honestly, whenever you feel that little itch, that feeling in your gut that you like something, that you love something that you’re good at, that makes a difference, that matters… That’s probably a good sign that there’s something waiting for you on the other side. All you’ve got to do is shift (and maybe even consider pivoting your business!) so everything can start flowing and coming to you.

That’s pretty much how I live my life and how I try to make business decisions. 

Instead of getting stuck in inaction and second-guessing every single little move that I make, I try my hardest to step back and ask:

• Do I want this?
• Is it going to bring me happiness?
• Is it going to light me up?
• Will I want to do this day in and day out?
• Is it going to make a difference? 

And when the answers start rolling in like: “yes, yes, yes, this feels amazing, it feels aligned, it feels right”, then I just go for it!

Listen to the full episode on our podcast.