Its Ok To Pivot More Than Once

When you are building a business, sometimes the path feels clear and sometimes it feels cloudy. Or it feels clear for a little while, and then it doesn’t.

For those of us who grew up in corporate environments, we are used to working inside a relatively solid framework. Timelines, budgets, past results all act as natural constraints and guardrails to keep a project or initiative on track.

When you start your own thing, the guardrails feel a little more fluid? Wobbly? Optional?

When I started Digital Mom Media, it was a Substack called Thoughts From A Digital Mom. My plan was simple: write what I knew, get subscribers, figure out how to get them to upgrade to paid, get money.

But pretty quickly after I started, my phone started ringing from school administrators and community groups asking if I would do presentations.

I could’ve kept the blinders on and just focused on writing but I realized that speaking events would allow me to spread the word about the newsletters AND ALSO test my material and get real time feedback from my target audience.

So the business became a Substack and speaking events.

And that worked for a while.

But the paid subscription thing wasn’t growing as quickly as I thought it would and when I did the math on the speaking events, I realized that my time wouldn’t convert into the revenue stream I needed.

So I decided I needed to pivot my strategy and try a few new things:

1. I started pitching consulting gigs.

2. I converted my speaking topics into online courses.

And that worked for a little while.

Consulting helped alot with revenue and online courses gave me something to upsell to my event attendees and my subscribers.

But it’s not growing fast enough.

So I will pivot again. This pivot will likely be focused around the top of my funnel.

And I’m really excited. But I can’t say anymore than that just yet.

So stay tuned!

Love,

Sarah + Erin