Are you going through a pivot phase in your business? 

If so, you most likely are experiencing all the feels.

Whether it is your offers, your audience or the whole business, it can be this mixed bag of emotions.

On one side of the coin is the excitement of going in a new direction and knowing that it’s exactly what you need to do. On the other side of the coin, you find yourself filled with fears around possibly making a huge mistake.

I know this because, after eight years in business and watching both myself and the business owners I have supported in the process, I can tell you that we all go through it.

That’s also why I’m going to share the top three lessons that I have seen, time and time again, that will not only allow your pivot to be a successful one but also brings more ease into the process.

Pivoting Your Business Lesson 1: Pay Attention to the Right Metrics

Right now, you have years worth of data behind you.

From past webinar conversions, to email open rates, to social engagement and everything else under the sun that you’ve been testing, tweaking and tracking along the way. (If you haven’t been doing this, I urge you to look into The Collective because we need to address this – stat!)

When you’re pivoting your business, the data for that area starts at zero again.

If you’re pivoting the topic of your opt-in, the sign-ups and conversion rates start back at 0.
If you’re pivoting your ideal client, the data for your discovery calls and conversions starts at 0.
If you’re pivoting your entire business to a different industry, everything starts at 0.

And, yes, I understand that’s not always easy to swallow.

When I made my very first business pivot from the health and wellness space to the social media space, I went from a following of 25k on Facebook and an email list of over 8,000 to… 70ish.

Yes, seventy-ish people who were interested in social media for online business owners.

Did it hurt my ego? Of course.

However, it would have hurt my growth a heck of a lot more if I was using my old numbers to determine if something was working or not.

One of the biggest mistakes I see when people are going through a pivot phase, is to compare everything against the previous way they were doing business. However, that’s comparing apples to oranges because what you’re doing right now is different.

By comparing your current business to your past business, you aren’t allowing your pivot the space and time it needs to happen.

Instead, embrace the fresh clean slate you have in front of you and use it to your advantage.

You’ll get much further, much faster, this way.

Pivoting Your Business Lesson 2: Give Yourself Grace

When you’re going through a pivot phase in your business, it’s very easy to question yourself about everything.

Why didn’t I make this pivot sooner?
Why didn’t I see the signs sooner?
Why didn’t I realize that, that wasn’t working for me?
Why, why, why, why, why?

You didn’t because there’s no way you could have possibly known any of that until you experienced it. This is why they say that hindsight is 2020.

You’re in this pivot now because you’re ready for it and willing to put in the work that’s needed – now.

Be willing to trust in that let go of perfection by giving yourself grace. Things happen at their own place and time and every change comes with the lessons of what happened previously.

If you’ve been around for some time, you may remember that this business was originally The Day Dream Achiever and a majority of my work was around helping people book out their business in a way that felt good for them and everyone they served.

What you probably don’t know was how much I put myself through when I realized that my real mission was in front of me the entire time. That a booked out business didn’t light me or the women I served anymore. We wanted the freedom we started our businesses to have. On both a personal and financial level.

Even better, I had the domain for Freedom Driven Success in my GoDaddy account for TWO YEARS already by the time I made the change.

Two years.

The reality was that I still was a daydream achiever at that point in my business and wasn’t at the point where I had fully embraced the core of what the Freedom Driven Success brand is today.

It was ready for me when I was ready for it.

The same will happen for many things in your own business.

Pivoting Your Business Lesson 3: Embrace the One Year Rule

For some, the thought of a pivot taking a year to fully unfold but I want you to hang with me here.

If you are making a pivot, and you want people to understand it and know everything that’s going on within the first week, you are going to find yourself frustrated because this takes time.

Successful and sustainable businesses focus on the long term.

You need time for the people to understand that you are making this shift. You also need time for you to make the adjustments into your systems, offerings and/or messaging that go with this pivot. 

The bigger the pivot, the more time it’s going to take to make all these changes in your business. 

In Clients to Courses®, we lean into the one year rule in creating highly profitable courses that generate predictable sales because 1) While your first sales can be coming in within a month, we aren’t looking to build one hit wonders, we’re looking to create massive and consistent impact and 2) I know that if the thought of one year is too much for a business owner to focus on something they are passionate about, there’s something bigger going on that needs to be addressed.

As mentioned in the first lesson, we are starting at zero so it will take time to get all of the new data we need and to refine it for the picot. A year gives you that space to do so profitably.

Are You Currently Going Through a Pivot in Your Business?

If so, I hope those three things were helpful for you to have. 

These are things that I wish somebody told me, so that I was not stressing myself out in the middle of a pivot, questioning everything, and instead was really seeing it for what it was. 

A way for my vision to step up to that next level.
A way for me to continuously grow and evolve as a business owner
A way for me to really see what was in front of me.

And the same thing goes for you.

If you are willing to trust this process, trust that you were put here for a reason, trust that your message needs to get out there to more people, and that this pivot is going to allow you to do so, then the rest of it becomes irrelevant.

You’ve got this.