Depending on how the last year or so has treated you, you might be considering some very drastic changes to your business. As you review (and review, and review) your learnings from the past, using that information to determine what to do in the future, you are likely asking yourself a few questions:

• Are your revenues healthy, and - more importantly - your profits healthy?

• Do your costs make sense, and are they affordable?

• How is your industry doing - really? Is the outlook good for growth or are things starting to fail?

• Is business moving in the door or out the door?

• Do you have the team you need? Do you know how to manage them? Are they happy in their jobs or having difficulties adjusting?

  Last but never, ever least:

• Is this working for YOU? Is it the way you want to work and to live? Is your quality of life where you want it to be?

If the answer to these questions - any of them - is no, you may want to consider a pivot.

What is a Pivot?

A pivot just means a change in your business, whether to new markets or new business models. It means thinking differently, and taking different actions than you’d originally intended.

You could require a massive pivot, such as changing your entire delivery model, product, service, or market.

Alternatively, what you might need are a few tweaks - small changes that lift the pressure. As Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, once said:

A pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision.

How Do I Know if I Need to Pivot?

Assess (with Help)

It’s hard to assess where your business is and what it needs all by yourself. Yes, even if you’re a solo entrepreneur or the final decision-maker in your business, a second set of eyes paired with a really good business brain is going to help you out quite a bit. It can be really difficult to think rationally and creatively about your situation from the inside.

Get some help from the outside, whether that’s a business mentor, coach, or peer, to talk through the hard bits - including the ones below.

Understand your Strengths (and, Yes, Weaknesses)

We tend to get really focused on the technical aspects of our businesses, and think that our true strengths lie there. But having a degree or experience in your field isn’t all that unusual (sorry!). Your secret sauce is something else, in addition to that expertise - something that is unique to you, and the team you support.

What is it that you and your business are really, really good at? Go back to the drawing board, and remind yourself why you’re here. Why did you think this particular thing with this particular group of cool people would work?

Try to separate this unique thing that is all yours from the more technical aspects of your business. Remember when sales coaches wanted us to deliver an “elevator pitch”? The idea was to focus not on what we do (we sell widgets) but on the problems we solve (saving you time, energy, or money).

While we might think elevator pitches are kind of weird (who is pitching people in elevators? Who even likes being pitched?), we like the shift in perspective from what you do to how you help.

Knowing what you’re really great at, at the core of your business will help you understand where you can hone in on your strengths, and then focus on how you can use them to effectively help your market.

Knowing what you’re mediocre or even bad at will help a lot too. Sometimes it’s even easier to itemize these, to help you understand where you absolutely do not want to go.

Understand your Environment

You and your business do not live in a vacuum. While many business owners have said, “This business would be great if it weren’t for all the people,” the reality is that a business needs to achieve success externally - out there in the world.

Where is business coming from now? Where might it come from in the future? Is it the business you want? Is it a growing line of business or is it starting to shift?

How is technology impacting your business? It is impacting it - never forget that - but how? Where is technology taking your industry?

Who is out there doing what you do? Everyone has competition, even if they’re nowhere near as good as you are (yet). What are the barriers to entry in your industry? How are other people hurdling those barriers? Are they catching up with you? Are you falling behind?

What do you need to know about… everything? The economic situation you are living in now and where it’s going in the future… your industry and how it’s growing, shrinking, or just changing… your competitors and strategic partners… the group of people or businesses you serve and what’s changing in their lives… tax changes and government regulations…

There is a lot to know.

If a Pivot is Necessary...Where do you Start?

You can pivot your business in numerous ways and they’ll all be unique to you and your business. At the same time, it pays to borrow from other people who have taken a few twists and turns along the way. Here are some ideas we’ve seen work:

Reduce your Scope

You know that you can’t be all things to all people, but gosh darn it: you’ve been trying. If you find yourself at the end of your rope, working too hard, not making enough money - but customers are beating down your door with demand… you might just need to make this small pivot.

You could kill yourself and everyone you work with trying to make everybody happy but as you very well know, no one will end up happy - least of all your customers. Try focusing on the most popular, most lucrative aspect of your business.

Remember: Scarcity creates demand. If you’re in this situation, you’re not going to run out of business by making room for the right kind.

Rethink your Target Market

You might be in the above situation, or you may be having a hard time finding all the right customers for you. Maybe the people you thought were the right ones for your products or service actually aren’t. Remember, Viagra started out as a blood pressure drug.

Your product or service might be exactly what someone you hadn’t considered before desperately desires.

Change up your Business Model

You’ve got the right customers and the right business. But the way you make money isn’t… making you money. It might be switching from a one-time payment structure to a monthly subscription service. You might be moving from being the provider of your thing to teaching other people how to provide your thing.

It might be streamlining by creating a “base model” version of what you do, which attracts more customers who want to buy it. It might be taking one component of the thing you do and making it the main thing you do. Slack, the software giant, started as one small piece of a video game that never really took off.

You’re great at what you do. Maybe the way you do it needs a tweak.

Get Smaller - and Smarter

Bigger isn’t always better, and leading a team full of people is, quite frankly, hard work with many logistical and legal challenges. You may want to do the thing you do exceptionally well, but maybe you don’t want to lead, coach, coordinate, hire, fire, and manage people. You may want to streamline your business so you can focus on the one thing you do exceptionally well.

Oh wait, but what about that operational stuff that has to happen, no matter what the business? Not to worry: we do that.