Should You Pivot?
I love starting projects, and websites, and new businesses. At the beginning everything is so new and you see endless possibilities and opportunities ahead. This project, this website, this business, will be THE ONE that changes the world.
Then reality hits. Starting something new requires a lot of work, a lot of work that is really pretty boring. So you find yourself, alone at your computer, slogging away at things that are not really very interesting, and NO ONE is paying attention.
No one cares about your project, your website isn’t getting any visitors, and your new business is burning through money and doesn’t have any customers. So what do you do?
Time To Focus?
Do you hunker down, sharpen your focus, DO THE WORK? Put in the time. Bring on your hustle. After all, quitters never win and winners never quit. Right? Focus on what you are doing and ignore the shiny baubles of other new projects waiting to come alive.
Time To Quit?
Or do you decide that this particular project, this business, is just not viable. You’ve been working on it for a while. You’ve learned new information. This project, this website, this new business is just not going to cut it. It is not worth the time and the money and the effort to get it off the ground. Cut your losses and don’t throw good money after bad. Go ahead and grab that shiny bauble over there and see if you can make magic with something different.
Should you double down and work harder, or should you quit? I don’t know. It depends on the project, it depends upon you. How dedicated are you? Did you crunch the numbers? Have you looked at all of your options?
If, after putting in the work, you see that things are not working out as planned. If, while pushing through and doing the hustle, you come across new information that makes you see things just a little bit differently, maybe what you need to do is PIVOT.
What Is A Pivot?
In the Start Up World, to Pivot is to change your strategy. Maybe you change your customer base from consumer to business. Or maybe it is just a subtle change, a fine tuning, a realignment of your values. Maybe you have new information and see new opportunities.
My 30 Day Blogging Challenge
So what brings all of this up? About a week ago, I decided to do a 30 day blogging challenge. I saw it as a way to get a bunch of posts on my blog and to get it the habit of writing every day. As you can see from my 30 day challenge post, I made it a pretty easy challenge. I had no requirements as to the quality of the posts I would write, just that I write, post and promote every day. (Except for weekends, because I like my weekends!)
I’ve been doing well with my challenge. As long as I post and promote this post before the end of the day, I will have completed 7 days of my 30 day challenge. But I have decided that I need to make a PIVOT. For a couple of reasons.
The idea of pivoting came to me after Paul @SideGains (@gains_side) responded to one of my tweets (@weirdtrep) with a link to his blog post on How To Write A Blog Post Every Day
Paul had done his own 30 day blogging challenge, but he had set the bar a lot higher for himself. Not only was he not taking weekends off, but he was writing quality posts. Posts that had minimum word counts and required research! Posts that would do well in search engines and increase the quality of his blog. My personal blogging challenge was beginning to look a little weak.
Posting every day was also just not working for me. I have a lot of other things going on. Mostly taking care of my current clients and long walks on the beach. I have a couple of other business ideas that I would like to develop and see if they take off. For me to write a quality post every day would mean that all I was doing was writing. I am just not prepared to make that commitment right now.
Quality Is Important
So this is why I decided to pivot. I decided that if I am going to take the time to write a blog post, I will take the time to write a good blog post. One that I can be proud of, one that will provide value to my readers. (All none of them at this moment, but that will change!) I don’t want to be looking back next year at my posts and going “Oh, this is horrid, the only thing to do it delete it!”
New Blogging Challenge!
Edit: You may have notice that there hasn’t been a blog post a week. I decided to take a step back, and work on a different project. Not much is happening on this blog, but lots is happening in the background. I am super excited about my new launch! However, if I was continuing my blog challenge, I would definitely go with the following revised challenge.
So I am revising my challenge. I’m not quitting. I am pivoting. Here are my new rules. The biggest change is that I won’t be posting every day. Right now I just don’t think I can write a quality post in a day, so one post a week. To make it challenging I will do this for a full year!
- I will write, post and promote at least one blog post each week.
- This challenge will last for 52 weeks, so that is one blog post a week for a whole year!
- Each post will need to be at least 800 words, extra credit if I write 1,000 words.
That’s it, just 3 rules.
By the end of this challenge, I will
- Have 52 quality posts on my blog.
- Have readers who are engaged and come back for more.
- Be a better writer.
I am going to give myself a little bit of a headstart. The other 6 posts I wrote for this blogging challenge will count for one post, and this post that you are reading right now will be also count as one post. So I have just 50 more blog posts to write!
Extra credit for me if I finish the 50 posts in less than a year.
Extra Extra credit if I actually have over 100 blog posts by July 1, 2021.
Have you ever done a Pivot in your business? How did that work? Would it have been better to keep pushing through? Would it have been better to quit? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter!