If you’re a business owner and you’ve been wondering, “Is it time to pivot… or do I just need to try harder?” this episode is for you.
In Episode 356 of the Superabound podcast, I am diving into tricky territory as we discuss something nearly every business owner has to face at least once.
If you have noticed your work days feel less alive and harder to sustain, it might not be that you need a better mindset. It might be that the business you built a few years ago is no longer aligned with your Vision or what your customers need.
We’ll talk about why seasoned, successful entrepreneurs often hold on too long (even when they can see the warning signs), and why pivoting doesn't have to be a dramatic reinvention but can start with a small, low risk experiment.
You’ll also hear about the intuitive nudge I look for in myself and my clients that it might be time to explore a pivot, and why it isn't always a number in a spreadsheet. If you have started to feel dread, resentment, or depletion in your business, this episode is worth listening to.
Here’s what you’ll walk away with:
If you’re in that in-between space where you can feel the world has changed, your market has changed, or you have changed, I hope this episode feels like the Thinking Partnership you need.
And at the very beginning, I’m sharing a limited-time, no-cost resource for the Superabound community: “5 Days to Superabound Success,” a short program with five of our most-used tools (including practices for protecting your time, your personal energy, and your Vision). If you want that support, you can find it here: besuperabound.com/success
And if you want to discuss your next pivot or anything else in your business, book a Superabound Start Session here.
Full transcript:
Welcome to the Superabound podcast where visionled entrepreneurs learn to build a generous business without sacrificing what matters most. You are listening to episode 356, knowing when to pivot. This episode today has been brought to you by my brand new program, 5 days to superabound success. And I want to start before we jump into the topic because I think this will be very helpful for you. I want to start with just sharing a little bit about this program because not only is it some of the greatest hits pieces of modules of lessons from some of our most popular superabound courses, but it will help you develop the relationship with yourself and your business that kind of gives you the answer to this whole episode. really knowing when it might be time to make a big change in your business, when to pivot, when to, you know, really deeply examine what's going on. For a limited time, I am offering this 5 days to superabound success as a free offering to the Superabound community. So, there is zero reason for you to not do this. It's like a really complicated way of saying it. Um, but if you head over to buperabound.com/success
for a short time, you can get all five days of this program absolutely free. You'll be able to test drive some of our favorite tools. And not just our favorite tools, not even just our most popular ones, but the ones that we also use most regularly. So things like protecting your personal energy, protecting your time, um your vision, learning how to know the difference between intuition and just fear. Some of these things are really important and they don't get taught a lot in other business classes. We're also have a meditation session in there for you. So, I think if you resonate with this podcast, you are going to love this fiveday compilation of some of our tools. So, please do when you can go over and do that. Obviously, if you're driving while listening, save it. But if you're just hanging out at home, take a second, hit pause, go sign up, and um start activating those five days for yourself. Okay, moving on. We're talking about something. And I feel like it's maybe a continuation of the last episode where we talked about revamping your sales process, but we're talking about knowing when to pivot in your business. This is something that I think is very tricky. I think it's something that is also very personal because there's not, despite what a lot of people on the internet say, there's not a one-sizefits-all formula for knowing when it's time to change things up in your business. Um, and interestingly, when I was I just got back from a walk, see walking hat and hair going on. Um, but I was thinking about this a lot on my walk. For many new entrepreneurs, for new business owners, the standard kind of advice is to stick with one idea, one offer, one product, one service. um and really build that out until you become successful. Um to do the mindset work that's needed to build success, to do some of the hardcore resilience that it takes to be rejected, to sometimes win, to sometimes not, to not rely on instant gratification. I think that there's a lot of merit to that sort of standard advice that you're going to hear all over the internet. However, as a coach who works with business owners who, you know, are at a certain level of success, sometimes I think that they are hearing a lot of um advice. They're getting a lot of maybe unasked for coaching from the business world that says, "Hey, if you are not successful, something must be wrong with the way you're thinking." Maybe you've lost some belief in your product. Maybe you've become complacent or uninterested. And I actually think that for seasoned business owners, hearing that people should just stick it out and try different strategies often gets them into trouble. Um, you've probably heard of the idea of the sunk cost bias. But for someone who has achieved a certain level of success, they found, you know, a product that works, they found clients who are the right fit for what they do. They have had a lot of sales, a lot of customers. When that starts to change, the impulse and and rightfully so is like, oh, there must be something happening in the world outside that has changed my market. So, maybe we need to start investing more in ads. Maybe we need to try the latest marketing trend. Um, there's a lot that kind of goes into patching up the parts of the business that don't seem to be working anymore. And I think what's hard is that if it was working for a time, you know, there was a time in the coaching industry where Facebook ads were very cheap and they sent a lot of people your way. Um, and then now ads are more expensive across the board and regardless of what platform you use, um, a lot of people are still relying on techniques and tools that worked seven years ago that really are totally irrelevant for most businesses today. It's not to say that Facebook ads don't work for some programs and some products and for some people. It's just that the way it used to work has changed and yet a lot of the standard advice has not caught up to what's actually true in the experience of most people. So I'm not I'm not saying ads don't work for people. Absolutely advertising works. Um I don't use paid advertising very much unless I have something like lower cost to sell. So, just like full disclosure, I don't use paid ads really. Um, never really found them to bring me the most aligned customers and it just for me seemed like a waste of money. I am, for anyone who's listened for a long time, I am much more interested in investing in relationshipbased sales, which take longer for most of us. Um, but I want to know that when somebody comes to a starter session with me that they are invested and then if that helps them, if it seems like this would be a good relationship for them to have on their team, if I'm the support person for them, they can feel really good about that decision rather than me kind of trying to fasttrack people through some kind of 2017 funnel. So, I just first want to say um it is trickier I think for the seasoned business owner to really know when it's time to pivot because a lot of things were working. But if they've suddenly stopped working, the impulse is to usually say, "What's wrong with the world? What's wrong with the market? what's happened out there, which for many people feels very powerless. Like when I hear somebody say, "Oh, well, customers just aren't spending money anymore." I'm just like, "Well, how are you going to fix that?" If that's the mindset, it might be something you have evidence to support, but it's probably not the story I am going to want people to, my clients at least, I'm not going to want them to tell themselves that story because then they have no power in that relationship. They're just like, "Oh, my whole demographic is no longer spending money and I don't know why." That can be so disheartening. And I think another tricky thing for a seasoned business owner is that person probably has a team. They have people they have to pay. They have a lot um going on where if they just decided to quit and close their door, that would impact people that they care about. It would impact their customers obviously as well. um there's sometimes more at stake and so there's sometimes even more of a resistance to the potential of making a big shift in the business because it does feel riskier than maybe when you started out and it was just you and you. So all of this to say I understand that it's not oneizefits-all. I can't tell you in a podcast episode whether it is time for you in your business to pivot, but I will share some of my own experience and the signs that kind of are personally meaningful to me or the things I look for in my clients. So the very first thing that gets my spidey senses tingling is when the founder, the person who's doing the most marketing, the person who is delivering the product, the service starts to lose their emotional connection to what they are doing. So if I have a client who says, "Hey, I've taught this program for 10 years and honestly when I see that I have a class to teach, I dread it."
I don't I can't say like what you should or shouldn't believe in but for me personally my personal belief and you don't have to share it at all is that if you are coming to if you're in a service- based business and your energy isn't there because you're not inspired you're bored of the topic you know you're sick of answering the same question you know whatever kind of the inner frustrations that you have about what you are delivering. Maybe that is usually a time where I will say to my clients like do we want to figure out a different way of supporting your people, getting them what they need, helping your customers, can we take an online live program and turn it into something that is evergreen? If you don't want to be the person marketing the product anymore, if you don't want to do live interviews anymore, if you don't want to be the person giving keynote talks anymore, how can we make sure that your customers get what they need, your clients get what they need without you having to extend yourself beyond where you want to go anymore. Because the people who don't, the people who keep pushing and don't find a way to create something so that their customers get what they need
without their personal energy being the vehicle for that. They become resentful and usually their business peters out um on its own. they either burn out and shut everything down or they have to take really long breaks. Uh they have to, you know, cancel pro. They just sort of be they come to this place of being um I I guess the only way to say it is kind of like untrustworthy with their people because then now they're delivering inconsistent experiences based on their internal fluctuations of their own energy. Um, if you've ever been a customer in someone's program and they are like selling and they're verbose and they're excited and then you get into their class and they are lackluster, they're showing up five minutes late. They're like, "Oh, I'm so tired today." You know that, oh, that sales cycle took it out of me. Finally, we can just let our hair like if they give if they present something in the sales part and then something much less in the delivery. Um, that's a problem. those businesses don't last and I would never want that for you because not only you know that doesn't feel good for the person who gets in that situation as a business owner but it also I think degrades the whole industry that you're in. I can speak for myself here um for like the coaching industry. There's a lot of people who sell in a very polished way and then deliver inconsistently because they're not taking, you know, on launch weeks they're taking care of themselves, but in their regular life they're just like kind of cranking and not really doing the self-investment work that needs to be done. Um, it's why when I'm working with especially with service providers, why we talk so much and we coach so much on the idea of self-investing, the sustaining rituals, the personal filter, the visionary practice, the things where you are pouring in so that your energy is excellent for your business, consistent for your customers, and you're not just flopping over at the end of the workday and not being present for your life. Because that's another thing. Some people can kind of hold it together in the workday, but then their personal life just feels like catchup. Like every day is just recovering on the couch after working too much or too hard. So to me, if your business relies on you and you feel like you are kind of the bottleneck or you've had someone you trust very respectfully point that out to you and you think that you know maybe they are on to something that is an issue. Um, it's usually a sign that there may be some pivoting that is necessary and um, not to just self-promote here, but I will say this is why you need a coach. Um, doesn't have to be me. I can only work with a couple people at a time, but you do need someone who can help you make that internal discovery. Not someone just to tell you that you're doing it, but someone that can say like, "If you had to step away for a month or two, could your business make money without you?" If the answer is no, that is uh kind of a scary place to be for most of us. And I speak honestly from this is not me like judging other business owners. I run a business where my time with my clients is how the business makes money, but we have other avenues for revenue. I have another coach. If I needed to step away for an extended period of time, I have other people that could step in seamlessly with most of my clients and it wouldn't be a huge problem. I could make it happen. Um, but if it feels like every decision goes through you, every um, everything, you know, needs you and your energy over time, that's going to be an issue. And it may not be a client-f facing pivot, but it might be time to really reexamine your backend, your systems, um, how things are divided amongst your team. And that is something that I you can't I guess you could do it on your own. it's probably more worth your time to do it with a person like a coach or a mentor of some kind or consultant. So that would be kind of my first when is it time to pivot when your energy is the only thing making the business go in short and you don't have that much energy for what you're doing anymore. you know, if it's not inspiring to you, you can't have a lot of energy about something you're not inspired by. You can't have energy around something that's not actually vision aligned. Um, that's probably number one. The other thing that personally for me is often a sign that it's time to pivot is your stats, statistics, the revenue, the leads, um how many satisfied customers do you have, how many recurring customers do you have? If your business is like something where people can buy from you again, uh if you are feel like you're constantly cranking along to
attract new people and everything is I have to take a cold lead and turn them into a paying client every month. That's tough. And I mean some businesses totally thrive in that world. Um but when it also feels like ooh is the market changing? Are my clients changing? Um that is a really scary place to be because now you are doing the double work of trying to figure out maybe new messaging and a new uh products or offers and take people through this process when things are maybe not clear. It's the scariest. This is why people don't pivot. I'm telling you the scary part. Um because usually you need some kind of a a a buffer of of money, of resources, of your own coaching support so that you can move through these times if you are going to try new things and create different offers. And that sunk cost bias comes into play because if something's working, I mean of course we want to hope that we just have to retweak here and retweak there and do this. But then if over time you're losing revenue, if you know things are not consistent, that can get really scary because now that runway to making a shift is getting shorter and shorter and it feels like the business can be in big trouble. So I get that that's very emotional and that's really hard. Um, again, I don't have a one-sizefits-all moment for that. But what I will say is that usually newer business owners tend to, not in every case, but they tend to pivot too quickly. They're like, "No one liked my Instagram post today. I better change my whole business." Oh, I worked on um I tried a funnel for a month. Didn't work. I've got to change my niche. That's obviously going to be an issue. We know that. But for established people, I find they tend to hold on to something that's not working for too long. They resist changing some fabric of their program or their product uh because they think, "Oh, well, it's just it's got to get better or there's going to be a change in like again, it's kind of a powerless thing. It's like I'm waiting waiting on the world to change to quote that song. We're waiting for something to happen out there so that the program will become a match for our ideal customers again or the product will suddenly be spotted somewhere really important and all of our best amazing customers are going to see it and they're going to buy it and we're going to be overrun with orders. It's very powerless to think that way actually. Um, as lovely as that is, when that happens, often I think it's time for a pivot, it's probably going to be sooner than you want it to be for an established successful person. And I say that with the assumption that that is not true in every case. that the more you just want things to work as they are, the more kind of resistance you feel to tweaking anything in your business, I would take that and say, "Okay, this is some static. Of course, I don't want to change because this is going to be uncomfortable and we're going to test something potentially new and that could feel risky and that could take resources." I think really taking a good hard look at how much you don't want to try something else is important and being really honest with yourself if you tend to be um I think all entrepreneurs have to be a little stubborn. I think it's a good quality for the most part for most of us. But if you are in if you are consistently seeing something not working in your business and it is affecting the revenue, the team morale, your own energy, it might be time for a beta test of something completely different. It might be time to test. Well, okay, if we have something that our clients love, can we focus on maybe a mini offer just to the people who already really love us? Can we try something that's just for them and just for those people who already love us rather than turning the whole wheel of taking a totally cold lead and turning them into a customer in an uncertain time where we don't know where we want to land. I speak from experience on this part too. Um, most of you who've listened for long enough know that this podcast has gone through a number of iterations kind of following the progression and the shifts in my own business. Um, at some point my relationship coaching business was actually successful, which is probably why I did not want to pivot for a long time. I kind of waited again too long to make a shift because I liked that it was working but less and less. I did I didn't want to be kind of doing the type of coaching I was doing in the way I was doing it. And so my first mini test was to say, okay, could I teach this in another way? Could I make an evergreen relationship course? Can I do a membership where I'm only coaching on this a couple times a month and then start to shift into something that I have a lot more energy for that I'm really interested in? Um, I love working with business owners because not only do they have lots of really juicy stuff that we can coach on and strategic things we can work on together, but then they also have human lives that need to be supported. And it feels good for me to help someone successful enjoy their success and make sure that it's in the long term very sustainable. I've never gotten bored of that. I don't think I ever could. This business is such a good fit. But it doesn't mean that my current programs are going to have a 20-year lifespan. We're going to have to reinvent. We're going to have to uh find other ways of supporting our people in time. Some people will always love one-on-one sessions because it's going to be whatever they need to bring and that's always going to be fascinating for me, but it's always going to be exactly what they need because it's just me and them. I know so many business owners who decided that the next evolution of their business was to never work with someone one-on-one, to only do groups, only do masterminds, only do programs. And that's amazing for you if that's what you really want and it works and it's paying your bills. But for many people, there's a dance that I think we got to talk about. Maybe this will kind of be our last thing for today. There's a dance that every business owner who wants to be successful, not just in the short term, but in the long term, I think has to do. And that dance is between confidence and I don't love the word humility because I think it has a lot of connotations that I don't resonate with. Um, but open curiosity. If you like humility, that's what you can call it, but I'm going to call it open curiosity. You have to to be a successful business owner, you have to be able to take an idea that doesn't exist in the world and believe in it so much that you are willing to put in effort, time, money, resources or your belief into something long before anyone else acknowledges it. Long before anybody else buys anything from you, you have to do a lot of mindset work. I think it's I think business is a spiritual practice and this is part of the work. At the same time, a lot of people place confidence as like the most important skill of a business owner forgetting that you also actually have to be open and curious. Because if all you have is confidence, that's great. But when things aren't going well, in a tough moment, when the economy does what it does, when your market does what it does, you're going to blame the market. You're going to blame the economy. You're going to blame your customers, your team. Like, you're going to make it, it must be someone else's problem. And if only they didn't have this problem, my business could still go. Wouldn't be so frustrating.
you're not maybe gonna hear some of the feedback that would actually make your business stronger. If you're not open, if you're not curious, if if a if a launch goes wrong, if your response to that is, well, everybody [ __ ] it up, every all the customers suck, um you know, people aren't buying anymore. And because you're so confident that like my program is amazing so or my class is amazing, my product is amazing. I don't know why everyone doesn't want this. I think we need a healthy dose of that to keep going. But we also have to be able to ask the spiritual questions and say, "What could I learn from this going wrong? What could I have missed?" And the most successful people that I work with are the ones who can even in a raw moment where they're feeling disappointed, they're feeling anxious, they're feeling scared about the future, they can say, "Let's imagine for a second that this going wrong was a gift to me. What would be the thing I I learned?" I call it the $10,000 learnings. We've done episodes about this concept before, but if this failure was worth at least $10,000, $10,000 over and over again, how would I see this as a very valuable experience? What would I extract? It is easier said than done. Again, it's why we need a coach. This is not something that most people can just do on their own and get real clarity from um just because the emotions will be raw. But I think when you do the opposite of that, when you try to make yourself feel better, skimp over it, give your power away to blame the world or the people or the things and you don't say what what gift is in this for me and how will I receive that gift and take some kind of uh steps towards making it better next time. I've learned so much from my flops. I learned so much from my failures. Um, but it took a number of years for me to stop just sweeping those under the rug because I felt bad or embarrassed or um like a failure or I was worried that if I thought about it too much I would just quit. Um, those are risks. Those are I mean I'm not going to tell you that that has not happened to people. Those are risks that we have to kind of face. And it's why I spend so much time talking here and in my coaching practice about vision and values because if those things are not clear to you, if you don't have a topofthe- mountain vision that is supporting you through these tough moments, you won't pivot in time. you won't feel good about where you're at. You'll just keep like patching holes instead of saying maybe this is a structural thing that we need to look at. I know we're so scared to look at the structural stuff because we've done so much to build it. And I'm not downplaying how hard that is. And I really want to stress that this is why this is why even if you know you're not looking for a coach, you just want to have a session with someone to deconstruct this to really look at it to have someone who can hold you through that storm. That's why I have starter sessions which you can learn about over at buperabound.com/cconultation.
Um I don't think you should do it alone. I don't do this alone. I always bring this kind of these pivots, these structural
not even structural changes, but just when I'm like, okay, I'm open to talking about the fact that something is not working. If this program hasn't sold a single spot in months, I'm not doing something well. I'm not articulating it well. The my ideal clients are not interested in it. like I have to get real about what's going on and look at that and not just say I'm going to just try pouring more ad dollars at it. That maybe works for some people and I'm not going to say you shouldn't try that if you want to. But um sometimes it's taking a deeper look and for that you have to have the skill of open curiosity to say that I might not like the to-do list on the other side of this examination of this session of really looking at the structure of my business. It's probably going to leave me with work I don't want to do. It's probably going to open things up I don't really want to look at. But if the vision's important enough to you, I do think it's important to do those things when you're getting warning signs. Don't wait. Don't wait too long to pivot till you're out of resources and you're out of patience and you're not sleeping and you're on the board of burnout. Don't wait if you need me. That's what I'm here for, quite literally. Um, and I hope that this has given you something to consider if things are not going in the direction you want them to in your business. I am here for you. That's why I exist. That's why my business exists. And um, I hope this has given you something to to to chew on gently. All right. I'll talk to you again soon.