Summary
Are you feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or fatigued in your business and life? Maybe you’re experiencing a lack of growth or momentum and wondering if it’s time for a change. In this eye-opening episode, I share my insights on how to recognize when something needs to change, and how to create a truly sustainable and equitable business that brings you joy and fulfillment.
Discover how to find balance and harmony between building and growing your business, and how the process can be both nourishing and enjoyable. Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, learn the signs that signal it may be time to pivot or make a change in your business. Plus, I reveal my thoughts on shifting our mindset around marketing and sales, and how truly knowing ourselves and what we enjoy can play a significant role in our success.
Making a big shift in your business can be both exciting and daunting, but it’s crucial to listen to what’s truly right for you in this season of your life. In this episode, I discuss how to handle the grief of leaving something behind and how to transition into something new that feels true and nourishing. Tune in to gain valuable wisdom on how to seek out something truly phenomenal and embrace the fear and joy of the process.
NAVIGATING UNEXPECTED CHALLENGES THAT CAUSE UNCERTAINTY
The thought of pivoting your online business tends to come up in one of two major cases:
- You can’t seem to get the business to work the way that you want it to or things were working at one point, and lately you can’t seem to figure out how to get them to work the same way anymore.
- Internally you feel uneasy, bored, unsatisfied, frustrated, or no longer connected or excited about what you’re actually doing, even if it’s working and making money OR if it’s stopped making money
If your coaching business isthe main source of income for you, considering a major brand pivot is a really big and often terrifying decision to come face to face with, especially if what you’ve been doing HAS worked in the past.
So the question becomes, how do you know when to pivot your coaching business?
The answer to that question i different for every person, but what’s most important is discerning for yourself IF the thing you’re currently doing in your business IS what you actually want to be doing and want to continue building.
WHEN DO YOU PIVOT, REST OR QUIT?
The answer to this lies within your own individual goals. It’s essential to pause and consider what you really want from this business, long-term.
Can I manage the energy and time currently required for me to continue building and scaling the business I already have?
If the answer to that question is NO, then we know we need to make some changes.
1. Take Accountability for where you are BEFORE going in a new direction
Before diving into any major changes in your business, it’s important to acknowledge where you’re at and what you can do to make a shift.
We want to take the time to reflect on our current situation and understand how we’re feeling and WHY we’re feeling that way.
We want to ensure we’re not making big decisions about the long term direction of our business based solely on short term emotional states.
We want to take note of what we’re feeling and how we’re feeling AND we want to continue tracking to see if those feelings and thoughts are consistently there over an extended period of time.
The quote, “It’s not a bad life, it’s just a bad moment” really hits home here. It may just be a tough week for a number of reasons, but that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong business for you.
Additionally, we want to assess HOW you’re feeling in your personal life and what you need to focus on to get the support you need before you decide which direction to take and IF you should pivot.
1.1 ARE YOU HAPPY IN YOUR LIFE AND DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOUR NEEDS ARE BEING MET?
Before we start looking at the business as a whole, we want to explore what’s happening for us on a personal level and if this is a business problem or a personal problem we’re trying to resolve through our businesses.
HERE ARE A FEW SIGNS THAT MAY HELP YOU IDENTIFY WHETHER THIS IS AN INTERNAL EMOTIONAL STATE OR IF IT’S SOMETHING THAT NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED WITHIN YOUR COACHING BUSINESS:
- You feel like you constantly need to achieve new things to feel like you matter and don’t feel happy when you’re not working
- You feel disconnected from friends or family and only have social interactions with your team
- Your mental, emotional or physcial health hasn’t felt great and you often find yourself feeling down, frustrated, anxious or unmotivated regardless of how good things are in the business
If you’re experiencing any of these signs or symptoms, it may be indicative of something going on internally that theeds to shift rather than making a big pivot in your business.
2. Re-evaluate Your Current Offerings
The first thing we want to consider is what type of products and services you’re currently providing. Are they still aligned with your mission and core values? Are there any shifts you need to make in order to serve your customers better?
It’s also important to ask yourself if these offers are still relevant and necessary for your audience or if there is something else that would be more beneficial for them.
2.1 DO YOU ENJOY THE PROCESS OF DELIVERING THE PRODUCT TO YOUR CLIENTS?
Most coaches will find themselves taking on generic business models for the sake of growth but don’t actually enjoy the way they’re running their business.
So we have to explore, does this feel more like a job that you don’t actually want to be doing OR do you find real joy in the delivery of the offer that makes you excited as a coach or other service provider?
If there are certain componentsabout the way you deliver the offer that don’t feel good for you OR aren’t working to get your clients thre results they want, it’s time to assess what your clients are actually needing to get better results in a way that will be more enjoyable for you.
2.2 ARE YOU TIRED OF WORKING WITH YOUR CURRENT CLIENT BASE AND WANT TO ATTRACT CLIENTS?
when coaches first start their online coaching businesses, it tends to be baed on where they were at the beginning of the career and often, the longer you’ve been in the online space running your business, the more you grow and evolvewhich can cause a feeling of dissonence between your service, the ideal client it was originally created for, and the type of client you would most enjoy working with now.
It’s OKAY to acknowledge that you may no longer feel called to serve the ame audience in the same way and want to pivot in your coaching to attract potential clients that feel more exciting for you.
There IS a market for every niche and as cliche as it may be, it’s curcial that you feel a real sense of connection to your clients and the audience you’re choosing to serve.
2.3 BREAKING UP WITH COACHING INDUSTRY GENERIC BUSINESS MODELS
Though there are plenty of coaches in the online space with a multitude of different successful models, we want to take the time to find what coaching process and business model is going to work best for YOU.
That may mean creating a new offering that goes against the grain of the coaching industry, shifting out of doing group programs and pivoting into one on one sessions that you offer at an ad hoc rate or creating online courses that you sell for low ticket.
The key to finding the right business model for you, is finding one that you as the coach will enjoy selling and delivering on a regular basis and works foryour life.
If you don’t want to be on group coaching calls every single week with a huge team to manage, do NOT try to force yourself into the coaching box that tells you a group coaching program or online courses is the only way to be successful.
3. Evaluate how you market and how to make it more enjoyable
The biggest issue most coaches have in the online space tends to center around the marketing required on social media platforms like instagram, facebook and tiktok.
Often coaches will get into the market full of energy and ready to create as much content as they need to make their busienss a success but what’s not talked about is the massive level of burnout and exhaustion that comes from always needing to be posting and sharing online.
You have to ask yourself how you see your future in business and if you want to continue running the same process to sell online or if it’s time to come up with a new solution for driving traffic to your offers and attracting new clients online.
3.1 THE SOCIAL MEDIA TRAP
The most taught strategy for any coach in the online space is to create content on a daily basis through platforms like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok to reach new clients.
These strategies DO result in short term growth which is part of what can feel confusing or frustrating for any new coach who doesn’t have proper guidance on how to grow their business off of social media.
If your entire business strategy revolves around you constantly needing to create new content, make new posts, share new stories, and always be online trying to compete with other coaches, you ahve to start asking yourself IF this is something you want to contineu doing for the next 3-5 years OR if you’re ready to make a big pivot and start to explore new ways to grow online.
HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF ONE OF OUR FAVORITE WAYS TO MARKET THAT DOESN’T REQUIRE TYOU TO RELY SOLELY ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
- Develop a podcast WITH an SEO optimized blog that runs free traffic to your website on a regular basis, we talk about this in our free training, Scaling without social media, here.
- Develop a YouTube channel that also leverages the pwoer of SEO to drive free traffic to your coaching business
- Leverage Pinterest to drive more traffic to your blog posts, podcast episodes, Youtube videos OR your coaching offers that also leverage the power of SEO
If the conversation of SEO is something you may be interested in but don’t have any knowledge about, we highly encourage checking out the free training we did that covers tons of value on the basics of SEO Marketing and how to become Social Media Optional, here.
If you haven’t built any evergreen SEO strategies into the way you market your business, it may be time to create your basic email opt in campaign and start building your email list.
4.Create A Plan to Move Forward and Pivot Your Coaching Service
By now you should have an idea of at least one thing you can tweak in your coaching busines to create something that you’d feel good about growing IF the problem is simply one of the small pieces of how your current business is running.
But what if you’re just tired ofbeing a coach and don’t value running your business the same way you used to?
Then it may be time to pivot.
When it comes to pivoting, the biggest factor you should look at is understanding what your WHYs are for starting and running a business in the first place. When you take time to think through why this pivot feels necessary, start to become clear on what the next steps could be.If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the idea of making a big switch or don’t know where to start with creating an entirely new business model, this is when it’s time to REST and recover your energy so you can gain clarity on your next steps.
Episode Keywords
Entrepreneurial Journey, Pivoting, Sustainability, Equity, Mindset, Marketing, Sales, Fear, Joy, Recognizing Change, Nourishment, Fulfillment, Balance, Harmony, Grief, Phenomenal, Appreciation, Encouragement, Listener Support
