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Key Takeaways
- Every entrepreneur eventually faces the moment when a once-reliable strategy suddenly stops performing, and the real differentiator becomes how quickly you can diagnose and adapt to the shift.
- When your strategy stops working, you need to assess what has changed, determine the real cause, and make controlled pivots so you can rebuild without blowing up what is already working.
Growth as an entrepreneur depends on how quickly you adapt, not on how long you last. Every entrepreneur eventually comes to this moment when a strategy, offer, funnel or marketing channel that has been rock solid for months or even years suddenly comes to a standstill. One day you’re sitting there refreshing your dashboards and thinking, wait, what just happened?
The truth is that nothing in business works forever, so the true test of leadership is how quickly you diagnose change and take action. Seeing business teams working in a fast, agile way 30% better results – and who doesn’t want that for their company?
If this sounds familiar, here’s how to break down what’s happening, figure out the cause, pivot, and rebuild without burning everything down in the process.
Related: Getting My Startup Running Saved It From Failing—Here’s How It Can Help Yours Too
First, slow down and evaluate instead of spiraling
The instinct when something stops working is to panic, double down harder, or just freeze from the stress. These are all very common and natural reactions, but they are not effective.
Instead, start by acknowledging that one of these feelings is what you’re going through. Then zoom out to look at the bigger picture and contextualize the change.
When something works for so long, we assume that the strategy itself was the magic, and not the ecosystem around it. The truth is, it’s the combination of everything – the strategy, the offering, the economics, consumer behavior and sentiment, and even your priorities as a business owner – that makes something work.
Diagnose the core problem with data, not vibrations
Most sudden dips are the result of one or more of these factors:
- The market changed: Perhaps new competitors emerged, purchasing habits changed, or economic shifts changed purchasing timelines. Ecosystems are constantly changing, so this is common!
Your offer is no longer tailored: Even great deals need refreshment. Sometimes your product solves a problem that people no longer prioritize, or the value proposition has changed due to the arrival of a new innovation on the market. This is what Blockbuster experienced when Netflix came on the scene: their offering just wasn’t right anymore.
Your system worked, but it reached its ceiling: This often happens because you have maxed out your capacity and your next level of scale has disrupted your existing delivery process. It may be time to take your team to the next level or redo your processes to get out of this stuck situation.
You made internal changes that unintentionally disrupted performance: As you change things in your business, internal changes can break what worked before. It makes sense: you’re disrupting the status quo, and that can actually be a very good thing. But of course every change you make affects other things, and you will have to keep evolving.
Instead of assuming the whole thing fails, isolate the exact point of pressure. Keep track of where the drop-off started and what happened around that time. This may be the first stop in finding the cause.
Related: 3 Things You Need to Know About Adaptation to Succeed in the Business World
Map out where you are actually trying to go
Once you have identified the problem, you need to gain clarity about the future state you are working towards. What are you actually aiming for with your company at the moment? What do you want to be known for, and how does that relate to the root cause you’ve identified?
For example, if you notice that your digital offering is not doing so well right now, but you want to continue working fewer hours in the way that the digital offering allows, you may not want to launch a deeply operational business line.
A lot of entrepreneurs try to ‘fix’ what is broken, without wondering whether they want to keep doing what they are fixing. This just takes you back into aimless territory, wasting time and money.
Make a controlled turn
When something stops working, the worst thing you can do is commit the entire company to massive, dramatic change, because it’s impossible to determine which changes work and which don’t.
Instead, start small, with just one change at a time. Test a variation on your offering or a new marketing channel. Collect data quickly, evaluate it and either stop or continue doubling down. This way you can quickly test changes without destabilizing your entire business.
If you really want to speed up the process, talk to someone outside your brain. One of the hardest things about diagnosing a service is being too close to the problem to see it clearly. An outside consultant, strategist, or fractional COO can see patterns that you can’t see because you’re emotionally attached to what used to work, and they can help you evaluate the data to determine next steps.
Related: If You Don’t Learn How to Pivot Your Business, You’ll Watch It Go Under – This is What a Successful Pivot Looks Like.
Leave out the nostalgia
The truth is, when something that has always worked stops working, it doesn’t come back the way it was. It’s a skill to be able to appreciate what worked and be ready to move on to the next iteration without heartbreak.
Every year you have to continue to improve your business, so the longer you try to cling to the past, the more you will be disappointed and, quite frankly, waste time.
To make your business sustainable, you must be willing to develop your business and yourself in a systematic way as the rest of the world around you changes.