094: Your Business Doesn’t Need a Pivot, It Needs Your Attention

“Selling courses would be so much easier”, so we all think. Whether it’s courses or some other way of doing business, don’t be swayed by what may look easier to do. Every business faces its difficult moments, but that’s not the time to jump ship or make a dramatic change.

By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:

• How small misalignments end up creating big problems and how to course correct
• The levers you can focus on to bring more success to your business
• The truth about the difficulties of business

Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, let me show you how to make the right intentional shifts in your business. 

Enjoy!

Business Boardroom applications are open, to secure your seat visit → shannonstone.com.au/boardroom

Let's Connect on LinkedIn!

If you’d like to work together, book your Complimentary Consultation here.

Transcript

$3M in advisory → courses

Levers to consider

Closing thoughts

Action step → Strategic Insight Series

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Have you noticed so much business and marketing content out there is so abstract and airy fairy? Like what they're saying sounds good, but what do you actually need to do? That's where the Good Marketing Good Business Podcast comes in. This is where I share practical strategies to help you grow your service-based business. And in case we haven't met yet, I'm Shannon Stone, award-winning business and marketing consultant, and for the last decade or so, I've been diving in deep with small business owners, helping them to make more sales and get more done in less time. And today's episode is no different. Enjoy. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited for this episode here. Today, we are talking about the fact that your business doesn't need a pivot, it needs your attention. So I'm really excited for this episode. It's going to be an organized conversation. As you know, if you've listened for a while, I do put, I would say, a significant amount of preparation into the episodes. I'm not one of those people who not that I can't just kind of riff off a topic, but I really want to be intentional, purposeful, and really mindful of people's time when they listen. So I really like to map out what I want to talk about and make sure it's something really valuable for you. And I think one of the benefits to a podcast, at least the way I do mine, I find that it's you know structured and intentional, but because of the format of podcasting, you can kind of provide that extra nuance and I would say like productive riffs that happen along the way. And then obviously, there's like the benefit of an audio version and listening to something on the go, or if you like me and a few of my friends will listen and read something at the same time. So there is a companion article because what it does, it kind of really ingrains that knowledge. But I do always do a companion article with the episode. It's not verbatim. I'm not reading off the script of the article, but it's there if a different format or you like things in both formats. Someone said to me they love the episodes, but if I had it written down, it would be so helpful. And I did have the transcript, which you can also find as well. But yeah, nice, clean, tidy article hanging out there on LinkedIn. So just find me on LinkedIn and you'll find the article. It's always titled the exact same as the episode. Okay, so let's get into today's episode. So I think this is relevant for more businesses than you might imagine, or in more instances than you might think. So when we think of a pivot for your business, you might think about a really big change, which that's like the obvious ones, right? So it's like, okay, well, we know this conversation would be relevant there, but I think it's also relevant in the like in the subtleties that we don't realize are actually quite pivotal changes. And I'll share some examples in this, but one of the examples is like an advisory business wanting to move into an educational course-based model where they're selling courses to the exact same market, so we can kind of justify and we'll talk about it. How you know what that's not a big change. I can see why this is like a really great smart idea to do, and we give ourselves all the reasons for doing it and things like that, but generally they are pivots, and I want to bring you back to why it might be a bad idea or a bad decision and where to channel that attention that your business needs because often people will want to pivot in their business when things are hard, when shit hits the fan, maybe a significant client leaves or a team member resigns, or things are just not working out in your business. It's like, you know, people are not really looking to pivot when things are going really well. Actually, I did that now that I think back, but I very different scenario. I obviously have to share it with you now that I've brought it up. But when I first started in business, I took on clients really quickly, created an agency because I was so busy and I hired a team to help support the growth and everything. So things were looking well from that side of things, but I was not loving it all the time. I'm not someone who can sit by behind a computer all day. And so I think it's worth sharing that story that yeah, sometimes even when things are good, I guess I was able to make more of an informed decision about the direction I wanted to go in, which led me into consulting. Whereas when things are going bad, I think we're not making as much of an informed decision. That's probably the differentiator there. Okay, so sometimes when people start thinking of making these, you know, drastic changes or these pivots, or just those like they seem like they're small changes, but actually they're not. You know, sometimes we just like wrap it up in a bow. You know, they might want to scale down their team or their business. I've seen that a lot where people will scale down their team members, or they will, you know, they might have things. Another one I talk about is that, you know, taking things in-house. Maybe you've got contractors or an external provider supporting with different things, and you start bringing those things in-house, maybe for more control or for cost reasons. People might change business models, or they might cull their services, like things are going bad, the key client left. Well, we did this particular service, now we don't have them for that service. We might as well just shut down that service and focus on these things. So they're just a couple of the examples that happen when people are making those more dramatic changes, and sometimes these are necessary. Like that is a fact of the matter. But often when people are making these changes out of, you know, off the back of something terrible happening, maybe out of spite or urgency, or because like another option seems easier, it's very rare that things will work out. Like when I had my marketing agency, we did a lot of white labeling for other marketing agencies, and for one of them in particular, they wanted to take all their stuff back in-house so they weren't, you know, subcontracting out to other people, which is obviously in their their right, they're allowed to do that. And a week later, like I don't even think it was a week, I think it was like five days. Five days later, they send us a message and said, We acted too quickly. Can you please take back on everything you were doing for us? And so it's like moments like that. Um, we can tell ourselves it's the right thing to do when it's necessary. But if you've if you're particularly doing it off the back of something negative happening, it's like when we'll talk about it, we kind of need to ride the wave a little bit more, be a bit more resilient for that particular season, and way easier said than done, especially when it comes to things like your cash flow and really important factors of your business and your operations. So I share all of this so that we are more mindful of the decisions that we make, and I guess kind of like high level of this. How can we get you back to a really successful operating business, your attention in the right areas where you're not having to make these big dramatic changes? Sometimes you do have to make, you know, rein things in for a period of time, and that is not only okay, but it's advised, but it's all got to be done right. That's where the the strategic part of me I find really flourishes in a business is bringing that strategy to things. And I'll talk about I've got something for you, it's completely free, but it's to help on that strategic side of things. Okay, I want to share a story about business that was doing three million a year in advisory services, and they stopped growing. They stopped growing, and things just felt really hard in the business. And the business owner, she basically said she wants to start selling courses, like wants to go from advisory to courses and selling courses to the exact same people, the exact same market. So, this is where we can get a little bit kind of caught where it's like, okay, I can build a successful business to three million a year. I've got this great market of people, and imagine if I could sell courses to those exact same people, whether it's those exact same clients or just that same type of segment of the market. There's two really important things I want to highlight here because I'm sure for, and I'm very sure because I've had this type of conversation with many of my clients over the years where things are feeling really hard and they want to make some dramatic pivot. Firstly, and people always end up like entertaining courses and programs and that education market, which like no shade to it, because it is there's a lot of factors that can be really enticing, especially when you're in a client-heavy type business model. But the first thing I wanted to highlight on this is that the market who buy advisory services, so those type of people and clients who are buying advisory services, and you might offer something advisory like some B2B type thing. People who are buying those type of services for whatever solution they need, they're not buying courses. And I'm always very careful, like I I would like to think I don't like to I don't stereotype and I don't like to put people and things in boxes, but this is one of those things that if someone wants your particular advice and they want your support with it, they want you to come into their business in this example, help with those things, there's like high touch points and things, like it's not gonna work that they're gonna start buying courses from you. It's such a different solution altogether, and this is why I highlight this because it can be easy to say, well, I'll just sell courses to the exact same people, exact same type of them uh part of the market, but they're very different. There's a lot of it's those small, subtle things that get people caught out, and these are the things that end up bringing people back to what they were doing in the first place. So that was the first thing. The second thing I wanted to highlight on I guess this person, and she's not alone. There's so many people with the same type of mentality at times, myself definitely included as well, is that course and education businesses are also hard, even though it's leaner on the client delivery, like they're definitely making up for it. Course-based businesses on the sales and marketing side of things. Like, if you've seen inside course-based businesses, successful ones, it's not easy. It's not easy, it can be very it takes a lot of building, it takes a lot of investing in marketing, time, effort, and resources, including financial, and so it's a very different game to play. There's a really good book, The Richest Man in Babylon, and it's one of the very highly recommended books, and one of the things that the author says in there is basically he says stick to what you know. When and it's a financial-based book, and so he's talking about, and you know, business mirrors financial to a degree. If you're going to invest in something, invest in something that you know, and the same goes like that parallel is to business. It's like you've already developed so much insight about this particular thing, and I I intentionally use the word thing, like great word, but whether it's the thing that you sell, your type of business model, your particular market, you have so much insight about that more than anything else. And so, what might seem like a nice smooth sidestep to something like courses or whatever it else, whatever else you're kind of entertaining, that sidestep is not as seamless as you might think. And these are the things which I think is why this episode, this conversation is really important and really helpful for someone to almost like save them in the like where they're at their crossroad of like, should I do this or should I do that? So hopefully I've caught you in time. But there's a couple of things I wanted to mention on that story of someone, you know, got a great successful business, but wanting to make quite a shift because things feel hard. And that's a really important thing to highlight whenever I work with my clients and I love and encourage, like I've seen my clients' faces when they've got some idea and and like they're like, I don't know if I should tell Shannon, but they feel like it's a safe space and that they totally can. And I hear lots of different ideas and things that can come across as dramatic changes, and some of them are, but I always ask, like, why do you want to do that? What's the reason for doing that? And if someone says it's big like this example, oh, because it's hard, this business is feeling really hard. There's other things to tackle first than just stepping out, looking at other things. It's like, you know, this business owner's looking over the fence, seeing how green the grass is over there. And in this case, you know, she's not having to deal with all the client stuff, all the hard stuff that she's currently enduring. It's like she's got, you know, retention good and the marketing going good, but to then shift gears, you you're starting at it like you're starting at the starting point more than you actually realize. And I think final bit on this part of this episode and the story is that you know what, just ask a course-based business, they will tell you all about the hardships they face, also. They're a business at the end of the day, and while client delivery might be leaner, they really do have to double down on sales and marketing. And depending on what that looks like, if they're doing funnels and ads and things like this, yeah, that's not that that's not the easiest thing because you're dealing with third parties like Meta or Facebook, and so things can get really difficult in those scenarios as well. It's not to say for anyone not to do it, it's being aware that what hard you're experiencing here is there's gonna be a same level, if not harder, level of hard over there as well. So that is that. So, in saying all that, so if a pivot isn't the right option for you in your business, then what actually is? And I want to come back to really the title of the episode. It's that your business doesn't need a pivot, it needs your attention. Not only attention, because we can stare at our business all day, we can be working on it, you know, 50, 60, 70 hours a week, you know, you're giving it a lot of attention, but it needs the right attention in the right areas. And I've got a really good analogy that articulates this really well. So if there was, this is the analogy, a plane taking off from say Brisbane to the UK. So the pilot plugs in their air destination, they put in their coordinates and everything, and they set sail. They take off and they're aiming for, you know, the UK that I haven't been to the UK, which I would definitely love to, so I can't even give you an airport, but they're heading to the UK, one specific spot there. And if they were to set the coordinates, and this is a fact, just two millimeters off from their final destination. So while they're in Brisbane, they you know, for whatever reason, it's misinputted two millimeters to the left or right, it doesn't matter. When they take off, and for a long while, it's gonna look like they're moving in the right direction, which they will be, they are going in the right direction, but the closer they get to the UK, and that's if they even get there, but just that two millimeters degree of separation, it's actually gonna send them thousands of miles away, probably off into cold water. And this is the same for business, it's why people often find themselves questioning about how business looks and operates currently. It's you know, they're thinking they're going in one particular direction, but when you've got, and this is why strategy is that secret weapon. If you've got just something slightly off, at first it might look like the right direction, you've justified why this is the right thing to do, or whatever it is. We'll talk about some examples, but you end up in the wrong place, and that's because the starting point was miscalculated or misdecided. So we have to realign your business back onto a successful path. So some of those things that could be just slightly off, it could be, and these are you know, could be why you're considering a pivot. It could be your offer, it could be your model, your business model, it could be who you're targeting, could be your pricing, which can play to who you're targeting as well. Could be your marketing, could be your selling, it could be how you're innovating. There's lots of factors and levers for you to consider that require the right amount of attention, the right attention and the right amount of attention for you. And these are the things that can realign your business back onto a successful path. Just a very small example. I had a client who created a lead magnet. She put it up, I think she got about 20 opt-ins, which was like, it was like okay. We then changed the headline, and within a couple of days, she had about 700 opt-ins for the lead magnet, all for changing the title of the lead magnet, nothing else. I even had another client she was hiring, wasn't getting any traction with the hiring. We revisited the ad, changed the just a couple of things in the copy, and then I think it was by the end of the next day, found the person that she went and hired who I think this is like three years on, that same person is still with her. So just I highlight these things because it can be those small, subtle things that make a really big difference. And that's why I always ask clients, like, what is your reasoning for this? What's the reason you've got this amazing creative but dramatic idea or change you want to make in your business? Because we could funnel that same energy into some of the other levers that are actually going to show them what they're actually looking for in their business. One last thing I want to share on this before starting to wrap up is that I don't want you to mistake change conditions for failure. Failure of you, failure of the business, because conditions change, markets change, inputs and outputs change in business. And like people are saying now in 2026, business is harder than what it was in COVID when there was a whole pandemic going. And I think that speaks volumes, right? And so try not to take things as personally, but also know you're in the driver's seat. Like, I think this conversation is like one of those that you can't un unknow these things now that we've spoken about them. So just okay, don't take it personally, but what can we change? Because things are changing. There's a really good book that I'll recommend, Who Move My Cheese by Dr. Spencer Johnson. Exactly. Like if you're loving this conversation or you're like, okay, this is exactly maybe not loving, like, oh my god, that's some real honest truth. If it's resonating, I would definitely suggest the book Who Move My Cheese by Dr. Spencer Johnson. But I do want you to know as well that any experienced business owner, yourself, definitely included, they'll tell you that business isn't stock standard year round for most businesses. Like I remember a client, and not that it's not possible, because you can engineer your Business in this way, but then there's also the real world that happens. But she said, if I can have X number of clients start with me in January and they work with me all the way through to the very end, and then I've just got this like stock standard, consistent, you know, clientele on the books every year, like it's all set in stone kind of thing. That would make me really happy. And I think it would make a lot of people really happy because it's not only the client delivery is kind of slick and organized, it's like the marketing as well. We don't have to think about marketing, you know, every single month. But it's not always like that. You're not always going to have the exact same amount of clients or revenue or team members or be without fires to put out. I'm like literally recommending all the books today. The next one that's come to mind is The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. And basically in there he talks about how so many businesses, you know, go into business because they love doing the thing. So in his book, it's a a baker. She wanted, she loved baking, so she started a bakery. But then she found baking was the last thing she ever did all day because she was too busy, you know, doing the books and doing the marketing and doing the management and doing all these things in business. And, you know, I'm I generally talk to like mature business owners, like in the sense that you didn't start yesterday, you don't have to be a mature person, but you know that business is more than just about, you know, creating a website or you know, the thing that you create with your hands, there is much more to it than just that. So understand business isn't stock standard, there's a lot of things going on, it's almost a whole different conversation if you want to be that person who's always on the tools or more on the tools than you are. But you know, don't let the difficult moments catch you in a moment of weakness because sometimes that's when we can make these somewhat irreversible decisions or decisions that will set you back. And that degree of setback is like a whole spectrum. You know, people, it's worth you listening to this for 20 minutes than changing your business and then coming back to right where you started. It's like, okay, you invested 20 minutes, but actually you saved yourself the potential path of changing your business, making a dramatic decision. One thing I have been doing a lot of lately, and you know, I'm a business owner just like everyone else as well. So one thing I've been doing is I'll reflect back on like my own behaviors in business. What have been the good things that I've done? But what have been the things that have really set me back? What are the decisions that have just not helped me? And so when I'm making my next decisions, I'm like, have I made this decision before? How did I approach it? Did it work out? So something to think about. Okay, final stretch on this podcast. The book I mentioned, Who Moved My Cheese. I often do come back to this, and in it, the characters who struggle, and it's like a very small hundred-page type book, can read it in an hour. The ones who struggle aren't the ones facing hard conditions. So think about that as a business owner. You know, the ones who aren't struggling aren't the ones who are facing hard conditions. The ones struggling are the ones who mistake the change conditions for failed ones. They keep returning where the cheese used to be and then they're confused it's gone. It's like if you just operate your business blindly without looking up, the best way to look up is to look at your customer, not just the industry and everything happening around you. Be aware of those things, but it's really your customer that dictates what actually changes. So it's the ones who get curious, adapt, are aware. They're the ones who find out where things have shifted, and that's what's going to help you to keep moving forward without making those pivots. So before you blow up what you've built, ask yourself honestly have you given your business your full strategic attention? Not just showing up and doing the work because I know, like, even to listen to a podcast episode, you're doing the work, like you're listening to this when you don't have to. You could listen to music, you could scroll on your social media, like you could do all sorts of things, but you're definitely a hard worker. But I want you to think about where is that two millimeters, and is that the thing that is seems like you were going in the right direction, but actually it kind of ended you like quite off course. So that's really what I have for you for this episode here today. If you are not sure where to start, or you'd like kind of like what comes after this, you know, this episode is really about that awareness to kind of save you in a moment of making those changes that might be somewhat irreversible or just set you back way more than you'd want to be. I've created a free six-part strategic insight series. It's for service-based business owners who've built something good but they know it should be performing better. So it's delivered over email, so you'll get one insight every day for six days, and it covers the decisions that separate businesses that plateau from the ones that scale. I created it very intentionally around what are those patterns that I see with my clients and what are the insights that would be really helpful to share with more people. That's what this series is. So if you want that, just visit shannonstone.com.au forward slash strategic insights. There'll be a link to that also in the show notes, or you know, definitely check out the companion article on LinkedIn. That is what I have for you today. I hope you found this useful. I would love to know your thoughts always. So feel free to connect with me or let me know how this landed for you. You can leave comments on the article on LinkedIn as well, or just send me a message. You'll always find me as Shannon Stone. Anyway, I hope you have an amazing day, amazing week, and I'll chat to you real soon. Hey, thanks for listening. If you found this episode useful, I'd love for you to send it to a friend. The best podcasts I have found have all been recommended to me. If you can spread the word by sharing this episode, I can spend more time helping you by creating episodes just like this one. Send it, text it, tell somebody about it, whatever you need to do. The more you spread the word, the more I can focus on creating needle moving episodes to help you and your friends.