Tag Archives: pivot

The Pivoting Entrepreneur

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Have you ever found yourself pursuing an idea or an initiative only to discover you have reached a dead end? Often people give up and move on to something else. Why waste any more time on something that is not going to work is conventional thinking. But what if this is an entrepreneurial endeavor in which we invested serious money as well as time and energy? Walking away is not so easy. In fact, there may be a tendency to stubbornly throw good money (and time and energy) after bad.

There is a way to turn some dead ends into cul-de-sacs. This is done through a process called pivoting. Very simply, a pivot is a change of direction. I remember playing high school basketball and having the ball thrown to me close to the basket. Usually there was a defender trying to stop me from scoring which required me to pivot or change direction to get a better unobstructed shot. Sometimes I was so hell-bent on bulling my way to the basket that my shot would be blocked, or the ball would be stripped away. Frustrating? You bet. But it was my failure to finesse the situation and pivot that resulted in my failure to score.

While pivoting seems like an easy and obvious course of action, it is not. We entrepreneurs tend to be a proud lot. We often think we have the best ideas since sliced bread. We also believe we can make anything work with discipline and perseverance along with our charm and good looks. We may not even realize we are headed down a dead-end street. How can we become more objective on our journey? Setting milestones at the beginning of the process can be very helpful. This is accomplished by establishing measurable performance indicators that enable us to know if we are progressing toward our end goal or not. By keeping track of our milestones, it becomes easier for us to see when we need to make a course correction.

There are numerous examples of pivots in American business that resulted in extraordinary products and companies. The likes of Pay Pal, Groupon, Starbucks, Nokia, Flickr, Hewlett-Packard, Nintendo, Instagram, Wrigley, Avon, Pinterest and Suzuki are all case studies. An article in Forbes Magazine dated October 8, 2014, by Jason Nazar and Rochelle Bailis chronicles one of the most famous pivots of the modern era – Twitter, now known as X.

“The most legendary pivot in social media history is the transformation of Odeo into Twitter. Odeo began as a network where people could find and subscribe to podcasts, but the founders feared the company’s demise when iTunes began taking over the podcast niche. After giving the employees two weeks to come up with new ideas, the company decided to make a drastic change and run with the idea of a status-updating micro-blogging platform conceived by Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone.”  

Keeping an open mind; avoiding being married to an idea; setting and watching milestones; collaborating with others and maintaining an environment for innovation is the perfect recipe for discovering when and how to pivot. Sometimes multiple pivots may occur before we nail it. Smart entrepreneurs are always on the lookout for pivots that will deliver the results they are seeking.

A pivot may actually bring about an even more exciting product or service (or company) than originally intended. The process of pivoting will also help to minimize or eliminate the incidences of dead ends.

This blog is being written in tandem with my book, “An Entrepreneur’s Words to Live By,” available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle (My Book), as well as being available in all of the other major eBook formats.

The Moon Shot

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Question: It seems like everything is always in a state of change. This can be disconcerting at times. How do I keep up?

Answer: Entrepreneurs embrace change. We’re sort of like scientists in a sense. A scientist who is looking to discover a cure for a disease runs countless experiments. With some experiments the cure formula is changed incrementally. In other experiments it’s changed dramatically. Regardless, the formula keeps changing until the solution is found.

For us change is exhilarating. Why? Because it’s a way to make things better. It’s a way to find out what works and what doesn’t work. If we view change with trepidation or fear it will be difficult for good things to come about. But if we see change as a golden opportunity we can meet and exceed our goals. I love change from a business perspective because it creates inefficiencies in the marketplace. The opportunity I see is to react to such inefficiencies in a profitable way. Look at the companies that figured out how to successfully adapt to changing conditions in our society. Xerox got its start selling photography paper. Tiffany’s was a purveyor of stationery before it became world famous for jewelry. LG sold cosmetics before the days of flat screen televisions. Now look at companies that failed to change – Eastman Kodak recently filed for bankruptcy as did Borders Books and Blockbuster Video.

A key to understanding change is the word “pivot.” I played basketball as a kid. Our coaches taught us how to pivot in every practice. We would keep one foot anchored to the floor and rotate our body around that foot in different directions. In business as well as our lives, we should always be on the lookout for opportunities to pivot. Perhaps a slight change in direction will yield better results. But remember, a pivot should be undertaken with a clear objective in mind. In basketball the objective was to pivot into a position to score or to pass the ball to someone else who could score. If we just pivot around and around with no objective it’s likely that we won’t score.

One final thought on change. I have found that to be able to thrive on change as an entrepreneur, I need certain constants in my life. Remember that pivot foot in basketball stays anchored to the floor until I dribble, pass or shoot. I’ve been fortunate and blessed to be with the same wonderful woman for more than 41 years; be with the same company for more than 37 years, and live in the same house for 34 years. Look for something in your life that is a constant or a positive anchor – faith, family, friendships – and then shoot for the moon where change is concerned. Happy flying!

This blog is being written in tandem with my book, An Entrepreneur’s Words to Live By, available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle (My Book), as well as being available in all of the other major eBook formats.