261: Holly Worton ~ How to Pivot Into a New Phase of Your Business

Today’s Guest

Listen to this episode

    

What You’ll Learn

• How to know when you need to pivot into something new
• When to add the new idea to your existing business
• When to clear space and start something totally new
• How to communicate your business change to your community
• How to deal with your online presence, including your current email list and social media profiles

Things I Discussed

• RM Harrison, The Pivot Map
• RM Harrison on the podcast
• Cara Wilde’s guided journeys
• Business Intuition

Connect With Holly

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• Google+
• LinkedIn

 How to Subscribe

• Click here to subscribe via iTunes
• Click here to subscribe via RSS
• Click here to subscribe via Stitcher

Help Spread the Word

If you enjoyed this episode, please head on over to iTunes and kindly leave us a rating and a review! You can also subscribe, so you’ll never miss an episode.

Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Business Mindset Podcast, episode 261. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode.

Today, I am going to talk about changing business ideas / topics / focus and this is a topic that came from the Facebook group.

The question says:

“I would be interested in a discussion on moving onto something new and making the decision whether to continue with what you are already doing, for example make the new business some sort of addition to the present business; or whether to make really clear space for something entirely new.”

And I think this is a great topic because I think it is really important to be able to be flexible in our businesses and pivot when needed.

The Pivot Map

Now, before I get into my thoughts on this topic you may have noticed that I have shared in the past a book called The Pivot Map, written by RM Harrison, who was a guest on this podcast all the way back on episode 143. So, RM Harrison, in this book, has a really, really, great process where she walks you through thinking about whether you need to pivot, how to pivot, she has worksheets, and stuff you can download, it is on kindle, and I don’t know if it is also available in print, but it is called The Pivot Map, check it out online. I think it is really really useful to help you in a more in-depth way than I can here in a half-hour-or-so podcast. So, I am going to include that in the Show Notes in case you can’t remember it, or in case you are doing something and can’t write it down.

How to pivot into a new phase of your business?

This is a topic that is fairly easy for me to talk about, because I have done this with my business so many times. So, I have had two major phases of business, which you may know if you have listened to any of this podcast.

So, I had my first business, which I ran for ten years, just over ten years, from 1999 to about 2009, and that was a completely different business, it was a brick and mortar business I had Ecohotels and was involved in the online marketing and sales of those properties. Then, I took some time off, and tried to figure out what to do with my life and the skills that I had, and it took me a while to really get clear on that. Eventually, I ended up moving to the UK during this extended sabbatical that I was on, and training as a coach. And that was really kind of the start of my new business, and I started the blog and the website for that business, I think in January of 2011, it was very, very, early in the year. So, that started out as life-coaching, and my first kind of niche for that business was helping women define their life purpose, and my original url for my website was: HollyWorton.com, but then I felt like I needed to have a business name, so I rebranded myself as Ready2Bloom. And, again, helping women find their life purpose, because that was something that I had very recently struggled with, trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do with myself, and what I wanted to do, and what I felt like I was here to do. I thought I was here to do coaching women on their life purpose, I was wrong, but that’s were I was back in January 2011. Then from there, that was not working, mostly now I understand for mindset reasons, because I didn’t have the beliefs I needed to make my business work, but I didn’t know that about that time.

So, then I heeded the advice of the founder of my coaching school, who said: you know, you have got these practical business skills, why not just build your business around social media? So, I started out with a generic kind of social media coaching and consulting business, and that business was called SMC² (Social Media Coaching and Consulting) – ugh! Anyway, that brand did not last very long, because I kind of niched further, and I thought: I really want to get into social media for boutique hotels, because that’s where my specific experience lies, and I know that a lot of hotels, like small hotels, and small hospitality businesses, really don’t know much about the online world, so that’s where I want to help. So, I starred Tribal Hospitality, which was helping small hotels, boutique hotels, with their social media. However, I realised that I forgot another business that I had in between those two, which was helping charities and non-profits with their social media — I totally forgot about this! That did not last long because I really did not have the mindset, non-profits obviously have a budget, you might be able to work with their budget, you might not, but I did not have the guts to ask non-profits for money! So, even though I wanted to help non-profits (laughing) achieve their goals by using online marketing and social media, I could not ask for the money. So, there was that niche that went down the drain. So then, after that there was Tribal Hospitality.

Then, I kind of got…someone pivoted me, it wasn’t really my own…it didn’t come from within it came from without, but God it was the best pivot I could have done, I changed my business to working with authors and helping authors use social media and online marketing to connect with their readers and sell more books, and that led to Tribal Publishing. And, that was a great business because I learned a lot about self-publishing and I learned a lot about traditional publishing, and I leaned a lot about using social media to sell your books and connect with your readers and that kind of thing which is something that still serves me today.

However, about five years ago, at the end of July 2013, I trained in PSYCH-K® and as you may have heard me say before my life is before and after PSYCH-K®. And that was where I learned how to work with my mindset to completely change my beliefs and reprogram my beliefs. And about that time, my business had pivoted again, so I was still doing some work with authors, but I decided that what I really wanted to do was to work with holistic practitioners, and therapists, and other coaches and help them use social media to market their businesses. And so that business, Tribal Publishing, evolved into Socially Holistic. So, at that time that I was training in PSYCH-K®, I was working with holistic business owners and this happened as a results of running my first online course in the previous year and noticing that I had very few authors on that course – I had a lot of therapists. And this was basically as a result of how I had marketed this course, because I had done a speaking engagement at a friend’s group that was made up of mostly coaches and holistic therapists, so it kind of made sense that those were the kind of people that were on the course and those were the kind of people that I knew in life anyway.

So, Tribal Publishing evolved into Socially Holistic. But, I noticed that a lot of the problems that the women I had, that I worked with, were not just related to not knowing how to use social media technically, it was related to fears of visibility, feeling stuck and scared, and playing small, and not having the confidence and self-esteem and not valuing themselves. And, with my new-found knowledge about mindset, and how easy it was to change beliefs, I simply added that kind of belief work using PSYCH-K®, into my social holistically business. And, I used to say that I helped women with social media, from the inside and the out, because I helped them with the practical side of social media, but also with the mindset side. And when it comes to marketing I think a lot of us need more help with the mindset stuff, than with the practical action stuff. Or, we struggle with the practical action stuff, not because we don’t know what to do, but because mindset is not supporting us.

So, that was that. I had Socially Holistic working with people on social media from the inside and out, but then after a few months of doing that, I realised that what I really liked was doing the mindset stuff. I didn’t enjoy the social media stuff as much, because I felt like it wasn’t making as much of an impact as the mindset stuff. So, I let go of the social media, and I rebranded (again!) went back to my old Ready2Bloom brand, to help women entrepreneurs, particularly holistic practitioners, coaches, therapists, get the mindset they needed to build the business they wanted. And, that was all fine and dandy until a couple of years ago, when I decided to rebrand as myself and my name. And this came as kind of a result of an intuitive nudge, where I felt like I had been hiding behind a business brand, and a business name, and really my business was all about me, it was all about me and how I helped people, and my background, and my knowledge and my skills, and why did I need a business name: Ready2Bloom, or otherwise, to sell my business when it was really me?

So, did that a couple of years ago, rebranded, and that’s what I have been using ever since. It is funny because I have kind of come full rile in a way, because my very first coaching website was hosted, or was living at the domain: HollyWorton.com and now I am back to HollyWorton.com. So, kind of come full circle. However, I am doing very different work, and serving a very different client base, because I am working with very specific business owners. Now, I do occasionally get clients that aren’t business owners and I do get clients who are business owners, but want to work on personal stuff, so I do all kinds of mindset work, but the bulk of my work and the bulk of my focus is on women entrepreneurs, mostly coaches, therapists, holistic practitioners, wanting to get the mindset they need, to take the actions they need to build their business, and that’s what’s I write my books about, so here we are. So those are all the different phases of my business, and I actually might have left some out, just like I had forgotten about SMC squared. God, knowing me now, if you have listened to any episodes of this podcast, what a weird brand for me! What a weird brand for me, I don’t know what was going on there with that, I think maybe it sounded technical and math-y, I don’t know, so not really me!

How to know when to change your business

So, getting on to you. First of all, I think the first thing we need to talk about, now that you have heard my extended story, is how do you know when you need to pivot in your business? So, I think there are a number of ways. If you go online and search you will find blog posts like: Has your business growth plateaued, or, is your business not growing? Lots of business things, but I think it all boils down to a couple of things:

First, have you fallen out of love with your business? Do you not enjoy your business anymore? Do you come to Monday, or whenever it is that your work week starts, and you think: oh god, and you dread to look at your calendar, and you dread to look at your appointments, and you dread to look at all the stuff that you have to do in your business? And you hate the marketing and you hate the emails and you hate everything that you have to do, and you don’t like your clients and you don’t like what you do, and ugh! and it is just awful. Do you hate your business? Are you feeling just dread when you think about your business work, your work week? I would say that’s a pretty good sign that you need to do something about your business. And, I don’t know if I ever got to that phase in any of my previous business incarnations, I think it was more like, a couple of things, either they weren’t working, or I was getting an intuitive nudge to change.

Wrong mindset or wrong business?

So, that brings me to the next two signs that you have as to whether or not you need to pivot: it’s not working. Maybe you are not getting clients, maybe you are struggling to get clients, maybe it is such hard work, it is like you are pushing a boulder uphill and you are still not getting clients, or you are not paying the bills, or you can’t survive financially, you don’t have enough money to live your life. Now, it might be that your business is not working because you are not taking the right actions, it might be because you don’t have the right mindset and that was the case for me in many of my previous business incarnations. I just didn’t have the self-confidence, self-esteem, to take the actions that I needed to take. So, that’s an absolute possibility. But, if your business isn’t working, then it is also possible that it is not the right business for you, maybe you are doing what you are doing, because you think that’s what you should be doing, so like me with my social media, that was my background. I owned Ecohotels in my first business, but my background was specifically in online marketing and sales of that business.

So, I thought that I needed to be doing online marketing and social media, even though I was not really in love with it, I understood it and it came easy to me, and I loved researching it, but I didn’t love it. I really loved the mindset stuff, and it was once I started doing the mindset stuff that I realised how great it felt to be doing something that I loved. So, again, look at your business and think: if it is not working: why? What’s going on? And you really need to be honest about this. Are you not taking the actions that you need to take, or is it that you don’t have the beliefs that you need to have? Or is it that you don’t like your client base? What’s going on, why is it not working? And, might it be that you are just not doing the thing that you love doing, that you are here to do, that you are meant to do, whatever.

Intuition

Next, another way that you might need to know that you need to change your business, is your intuition. So, when I switched from Tribal Publishing to Socially Holistic, so working with authors to working with holistic practitioners. That came to me several times, during the night, after listening to these guided meditations, guided journeys, that my friend Cara Wilde did. I will put a link to her meditations and I think she still has these available to download. And I think the one in particular that triggered was called: Spiritual Sun Vortex, it is all about rebirth and stepping into something new, and what kept coming with me was: you have got to work with holistic practitioners, you have got to work with therapists, you have got to work with coaches. And, I really resisted that because I thought: I have shifted my business so many times, I went from the Ready2Bloom life purpose things, I went to the SM² social media thing, I went to Tribal Hospitality, I went to Tribal Publishing, I can’t change again, no one is going to take me seriously. And I resisted it and it kept coming back, and I resisted it, and finally I just did it, and of course it was fine, and no one said to me: what are you doing changing your business again? And that was how I knew that I needed to shift the group of people that I was working with.

So, intuition, pay attention to it, it has important stuff to tell you and if you are the kind of person who really struggles to listen to your intuition, then I highly recommend that you check out my book: Business Intuition, which teaches you ways to connect with your intuition, kind of dial up the volume and really pay attention to it so that you can get the wisdom that your intuition has for you.

So, is your gut telling you: something is wrong with your business, that you need to change it, that you need to do something differently? Pay attention to that, write it down, journal about it, get it out of your head and onto something concrete like paper where you can see it and make it real. And then you can plan and see what you are going to do with it but give it a chance. If your intuition is telling you something, give it a chance, think about it, don’t let your limiting beliefs shut it down. Again, this could be a mindset thing, your intuition could be saying, you need to do x, and your mindset goes: oh no, you can’t possibly do that, you are not good enough, what are people going to think, you are a fraud, all that crap. So, intuition, pay attention to it.

I think those are the three signs that can let you know that you need to pivot in your business, now a lot of that again, comes from within, did you fall out of love with your business? That comes from within. Intuition, that’s you. If it is not working, now that could be an external thing, like you are just not taking the actions, or your client base has changed, or your client base won’t pay for the things that you want to sell, or offer, at the price that you are offering, there are so many things that could be going on there, but if your business is not working then it is worth looking at how you can pivot.

So, that’s how you know if you might need to pivot.

When to add a new business idea to an existing business

Next, how to know whether you should add something to your existing business, or whether you need to just scrap what you have got and clear space for something new. So, I think that when it is a natural transition, you can add the new thing to your existing business. So, if you look at my business socially holistic, when I added the mindset stuff to it, it was a very natural addition, because like I said, I was not any longer helping people with the technical side of social media, I was also helping them with the mindset side. So, it was a very, very, logical addition and eventually ended up being a very logical transition because I had the social media, I added the mindset and then I eventually let go of the social media and just kept going with the mindset stuff. So, I didn’t know this at the time, but it was actually transition more than an addition. So, I think when it is a transition or a natural transition, add the new thing to your current business. So, if you are going to be serving the same client basis, helping them with similar kinds of things, go for it, add it to your existing business. You might find that’s where the money starts coming in. If it is a good addition to the services, like adding the mindset stuff to help people through marketing, that made sense, it was logical, it was something that was needed, and I didn’t see anyone doing both of those things: both the mindset and the practical stuff, because they are two very different skillsets. So, I think, when it feels like something that you can coherently add to your current business then yeah, it makes sense to add it. And again, that might be the start of a transition into something new.

When to clear space and scrap entire business

So, when should you clear space and just scrap your entire business and get ready for something new. I think, that if it is a totally different idea, totally different service, totally different client base, totally different offering, and you can’t logically add it to what you have already got, then it is time to start something new and that’s possibly a whole other conversation in and of itself, because what are you going to do for money? Are you going to have a transition business? Are you going to have a transition job? Are you just going to quit what you are doing or are you going to run the two businesses alongside each other? There are many, many, options there and you need to figure out what’s right for you. So, for example, when I switched from helping women with life purpose, with my original Ready2Bloom business and I switched to the social media stuff, I just kind of scrapped that, or put it offline and started fresh with something new, because that was a totally different thing, not the same client base at all. So, it made sense to get rid of the current business and start something new.

Communication

So, whether you decide to add something new or clear the space for something new, you need to figure out how to communicate this change to your clients, to your community, to your friends, family, people that you know and the easiest way to do that, is through your content. So, through your blog, your podcast, your videos, your emails, talk about what is going on, so once you have got it clear in your mind, and you know what is going on for you then you can tell the story of what the change is. So, you can either say: I noticed that there is a need for this kind of mindset work, and I have noticed that when I work with women on their social media, that really a lot of them are struggling with low self-esteem, low self-confidence, and I have recently trained in something that has made major changing in my life, so now I am adding it to my business, so I can help women with social media from the inside and out. That’s coherent, that makes sense, that is kind of it in a nutshell. You can elaborate on whatever your story is, but you need to tell the story of: why are you changing? How are you changing? What does this mean for your current clients? What does it mean for future clients? What will you be offering? And this is true whether you start something completely new, or whether you are adding something to your existing business. I think it is really important to just be open, and transparent, and communicate this change.

Now, if you are in a specific situation and think there is no way you can do that, I can’t be open and honest about this, email me and I will see if I can help you with that. I kind of feel that for most cases it is good to be open and transparent about the change that you are going to be experiencing with your business.

Community

Another question that you might have is how to deal with your current community, so how to deal with your email lists, your social media profiles, all that stuff?

I kept the same email list throughout all of this, so for my social media days all the way through into my mindset days, I kept the same list. And I warned them about what I was doing, and I said: look my business is changing in this way, I am going to be talking about these things from now on, if you would like to keep on hearing from me, stay on the list, if not, here is your little button, if not, click on that and unsubscribe. Now, I was actually really shocked at how many people stayed with me through all these different business incarnations. A lot of people that were from my old Tribal Publishing days stayed on. Then again, I was really clear about what I was doing and how I was changing. However, you know that not everyone reads every single email that you write, so there were, I don’t know a few people that wrote me angry email, saying: “I don’t know who you are, and how I got on this list, but please remove me”, and I would usually write back and explain to them…this is what happened I have clicked the unsubscribe button for you.

There are always people who are going to be annoyed at some kind of change – especially if they didn’t open any of those emails where you talked about your transition, but forget about them, they are angry, and they will be angry about anything you do. I do think that if people like you they will stay on your list, if obviously the new thing that you are doing is also of interest to them. So, I think, rather than scrapping your email list and going for something new, keep the existing one and just inform people about how your changing. So, that is my recommendation. I would say: inform them of the changes, encourage them to unsubscribe if they are not interested in your new business and that’s that.

With your social media profiles, you can either, start new ones or change the name on your existing ones. I am a big fan of using your own name, mainly because as you can see, my business has gone through so many different brands over the years, and I wish I had just kept my name throughout all of that. On my Twitter account, I always used my name, Facebook, I had to change Facebook pages. So, when I switched from social media to the mindset stuff, I did create a new Facebook page for that. And then when I did the re-brand from Ready2Bloom to Holly Worton, I did that by changing the name on the Facebook page from Ready2Bloom with Holly Worton, and then a few weeks later I changed it from Ready2Bloom with Holly Worton, to just Holly Worton, because I think that helped show Facebook that it was natural transition, I think it would have been too much if I had tried to just go from Ready2Bloom to Holly Worton, because they needed to be a logical change, so they want to change that you are not completely changing the game on the people who liked your page for its original thing. But, every social network is different. So, if you can, and if it is relevant, and makes sense for your business, use your name. A lot of times, I will be following people on social media and it is a business name, and I think: who the heck is this person? And the I kind of click on, and dig in, and I am reminded of who it is. But, it is so much easier to remember someone’s name and what they do, rather than a business name, I just feel that it is so much more personal. So, if it is relevant, I am a big fan for using your name, but do whatever is right for you.

So, I hope this has been helpful and if you are thinking about pivoting into a new phase of your business, adding something to your existing business, clearing space for something new, or changing your business in some way, hope you have found this useful. If you have any questions about this, please let me know, you can email me at: [email protected] or you can pop into the Facebook group: Business Mindset Alchemists, if you head over to: https://www.hollyworton.com/group, that will redirect to the Facebook group and you can ask me your question in there. And that is everything for today. Thank you so much for listening, if you enjoyed this episode please leave a quick review on iTunes, or Apple podcasts, and that’s it for today and remember to tune in again for next week.

And remember to visit hollyworton.com/261 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you so much for listening.