From the course: Entrepreneurship Foundations

Pivot your plan

From the course: Entrepreneurship Foundations

Pivot your plan

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- In year three of my business, my co-founder and I made a giant oops. I mean a giant, costly, gave me night sweats, and to this day gives me nightmares. It was a $40,000 mistake. Let me explain. After a few clients had showed interest in augmented reality, we decided it would be a great idea to develop our very own app. It was sleek, modern, and, if I do say so myself, pretty cool. The only problem? Our clients didn't want to pay for it. Costly mistakes like this can ruin your business. But as you start to see things going south, you've got to pivot. I like to think of this as an emergency responder plan. And like any good medical professional, the first order of business is to stop the bleeding. Stop the bleeding in your marketing plan as much as you can. For example, ask if you can move to a month-to-month plan with any of your marketing initiatives. You might pay a bit more, but being flexible is key in these early stages. You don't want to lock yourself into a plan that doesn't work for your business. When we saw our app expenses rise, but no customers clamoring for it, I knew we had a problem. I called the app company and asked for the lowest possible plan to keep the app running, but lose all the bells and whistles. Once the bleeding has stopped, it's time to assess the problem. Take a deep dive into assessing your marketing strategy by talking to customers and referencing data and any analytics you may have from your website or social media channels. This information is key to getting a clear picture of what's happening. When we stopped paying for the app, I was finally able to assess the situation. The main problem I deduced was that while our customers liked having the app as an option, it wasn't something that they deemed necessary. It was a luxury. Once you know the problem and make a fix, it's time to continuously check up. When you begin to implement a fix to your marketing strategy, check in on it constantly to stay on top of what's going on. You always want to make sure that you're staying on the right track. When I realized our app was a nice to have and not a must have, I knew we most likely would end up sunsetting the entire initiative, which we ultimately did. It was better to use my time and energy on something that was going to work for our business instead of continuing to pour resources into something that just wasn't working. Mistakes are inevitable. And trust me, I am certainly not proud of my $40,000 oops. But they're part of starting a business. Don't be ashamed or fear them, but instead know that they're part of the process and be ready to fix them.

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