046. The Confident Pivot: Reinventing Without Burning It Down

Hey, you're listening to Agency darlings, where your host, Melissa and Meredith. This is your insider's guide to the agency world. We're agency consultants who bring a fresh take and women's perspective to growing and scaling your business to seven and eight figures. We're so glad you're here for today's episode. Let's jump in. This is the year that you navigate your finances with confidence and ease, and you do it in style. As an Apple Design Awards finalist, Copilot Money gives you a beautifully designed intuitive view of your spending budgets and saving schools all in one place. With native apps on iOS, iPad, Mac and Web, your money stays organized wherever you are. And the best part, darlings get two months free with code darlings. All right, well, today's topic, I think is a really good topic around pivoting because I was reflecting. I don't think there's one client I'm working with that isn't in the middle of a pivot right now or has not pivoted in the past year. I think we're in a particular moment of needing to pivot, right? Like just given what's happening in the world. Pivots are needed. Wait, you mean that most people that you know are have not pivoted or they were going through a pivot. They're going through a pivot or have pivoted in the past year in terms of like shifting their agency. And that could be like big or small. Sometimes it's a small pivot. Like I'm just going to narrow down what I'm offering. And some of them are like rebranding, completely changing. Some of them coming up with a new name. Some of them releasing their team and scaling back. You sent me something a few weeks ago and it was like 2025 was the year of kind of like the kind of like rebuilding. Yes, the year of the snake and the and 2026. I forget what animal it is. I think it's like a year of like re you know, it kind of like invigorating or like change and like things truly germinate. Yeah. And I totally think that that's on par with like A, what you're saying, but B, what I'm seeing as well with which is like it's definitely 2025 was kind of like a real awakening in a way being like, oh my god, like I need to change things up. And in 2026 is kind of seeing that in in in real life. Like seeing that kind of come to life. Yeah. I didn't even make that connection, but that was such a good post. And I feel like it's true for us to like we pivoted. I pivoted wavily this year. You pivoted like shy. We pivoted agency darlings. There's a lot of pivoting this year or I should say last year 2025. But I want to talk about pivoting because I might be someone who's like very comfortable with pivoting for whatever reason. Like I don't hold true to anything in my business. If it's not working, I move on. But I come across a lot of founders and anything particularly the ones that have been in business, I would say like more than eight years that really like grip on to their business. And they don't want to change things for fear of there's good reason. Like like this is what got me here. Why would I change that? But we're also the world has changed a lot since you started your business. And sometimes the pivot is necessary and it could be your biggest path to growth. The thing that you're like avoiding so hard could be your biggest on law. And usually is the thing you're like afraid to do. And I tell that to my client like if you're really afraid, it's probably a good thing to do. So let's like go through that together and it does help to like have someone to hold your hand through. But once the test I want to share is according to the 2025 agency growth benchmark report over 60% of agencies between 500 came 3 million and 3 million in revenue undergo a positioning offer reset every two to four years. And that's not surprising because agencies in the stage are needing to you know you're in growth stage you need to level up every time you get to a new threshold. Now there's different conditions. There's different expectations. There's different needs. And I don't think pivoting needs to be a sign of failure or like it's something wrong so I have to change it. It's just to sign of outgrowing something in my mind like okay this worked for a while not working anymore. Let's change it. And I think we just have to like make it less emotional and more just part of doing business. Yeah, totally. No, I completely agree. I just looked it up. So the year of the snake transitions into the year of the horse in 2026. But it starts February 17th, 2026. So when this happens I think that it's like it will be a week after. So get ready for the year and it's not only the year of the horse. It's the year of the fire horse. And so the dynamic year of the fire horse which is starting February 17th, 2026 brings fast courageous energy after the snake's reflective period with double fire meaning significant transformation which is good for snakes ready to embrace change. And so from the snake to the horse the introspective wise snake year gives gives way to the horse's energetic freedom loving fast-paced nature encouraging bold fire horse which is a powerful combination of the horse sign with the fire element signifies powerful change ambition and opportunity especially for those who embrace risk. So I mean, I think the snake is very wise and it's like thinking about it's reflective. It's really thinking about the changes that it wants to make. And in 2026 it's all about taking all of those those changes that you've been thinking about and putting the energy behind it. I love it. So honestly the majority of my clients as you said earlier like my clients went through a huge pivot last year in 2025 and so I completely agree with you. I think if we think about it it's because we had time to reflect. Like a lot of us were not as busy as we thought that we would be. A lot of us were kind of hitting the pavement and maybe not necessarily getting as many yeses as we are used to. And so you were kind of faced with the need to change and the need to make transitions. So I definitely think that you know as we're thinking about it more so from a need to pivot and the desire to get there we shouldn't be thinking about it as a need to burn everything down and like starting completely over. I think a lot of it is kind of like going back to baking. It's like use what the ingredients that you have and figure out which ingredients you should be taking to your next dish. Because some things working clearly you've been in business for for several years but just as people need to change and transition into new chapters. Businesses do too and so that's not failure. Changing your your offerings or changing who you're serving. Etc. So in my mind like it's not a panic move like you're not panicking. You're controlling the change and you're controlling your evolution as a business. Yep. So this episode is for you if you feel stuck and maybe you've been making like really small changes but it's not changing the end result and you need to do something a little more foundational. If you feel like the only way for you to make more money is to work more hours. If your business is no longer lighting you up and you feel like you work for your business as opposed to your business working for you. And if you want to reinvent without risking the revenue you've worked so hard to build. So we're going to kind of cover how to approach that and we both do this with our clients and hopefully can help anyone who needs to reinvent this year or or this month. How to approach that in a sort of systematic and objective way to do what's best for you and the business. And our quote for today, Brunei Brown. You can choose courage or you can choose comfort but you cannot have both back. It's kind of similar. I feel like it was similar to our quote from last week, which I can't remember at this point. But but yeah, I mean, you're you're not going to change if you're in a comfortable place like change feels uncomfortable and that's for a reason. I don't know if you can run a business from a comfortable place frankly. Yeah. Very temporarily, but you're always going to be put in a place of discomfort. And I think what I've learned is about just getting used to the discomfort versus trying to keep comfort because I mean, it's like life. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. like yours being a human. Yeah. Do you want to run us through some stats before we get out? So the first one's from McKinsey in 2024. And it says 70% of companies that achieve sustained growth through a port making a meaningful strategic pivot within prior three years. So that kind of mirrors the stat we started with that every two to three years. Agencies are kind of making these strategic pivots. And I think that mirrors the pace of the market. The market's changing every few years. So if you're not changing, you're out of date. Like your clients needs are changing. Exactly. Your clients, like the clients that you're working with are very likely changing. Like I don't. Some people might be evolving in terms of maybe rather than working with series A companies are working with series C. So and you might at first be offering those series C companies the same thing. But their needs are different. And sometimes like when you're so close to it, you don't realize like it's kind of hard to to really put that hat on and realize, oh, wait a second. I need to listen to people and really listen to what they're they're needing. Totally. And then secondly, the harvest harvest. What? Harvard business review with all respect. Leaders who proactively redesigned their business before crisis hits outperform reactive leaders by 3X in long term profitability. So for the case for looking ahead and seeing, OK, I'm seeing some early signs of this thing that working and making a proactive change as opposed to waiting until it's been a year, it hasn't worked. Now you're in crisis mode. Now you have to like really major changes or laid people off. So I think this goes back to a lot of what we talk about like knowing your numbers and being proactive when it comes to sales and business. So when you're in it, when you're in in that mode of like really taking ownership of your business, I think you can see early signs. And this is also a case. I know like sometimes we disagree on this, but for businesses at this size, this is why I think founders need to be involved in sales calls because you know what's going on with your clients when you're talking to them all the time. And when you're removed from that, you're missing signals that this thing is no longer resonating with them. Their business has changed. They no longer, you know, they have different goals than I think you can be super proactive in making changes so that you never end up in crisis mode if you're staying connected, closely connected to your customer. I totally agree with that. I think like I think at the very least, if you're if you're no longer in a founder, led sales organization, maybe you set up some sort of a function so that you're getting like an AI review of what's going on, like having having AI getting a weekly review of that or having, you know, creating some sort of smart process so that you're very much so in tune with what's going on. But that's actually. Yeah, I was smart. I think that actually even like if you are on those calls, you maybe should do that too. I certainly haven't done that and I showed, but but yeah, I think that I feel like for the most part, everybody that's listening is certainly founder of that and like not necessarily at a stage where they're fully having somebody else take on sales. So for sure, I think it's it's something that we all need to be better about. And maybe it is like a reminder, like, you know, we we've talked about this season. Changing your rates and making sure that you kind of almost have that on a schedule. And maybe it's like every six months, you're thinking about changing your rates, but you're also thinking about do I need to pivot something? And and and I think that the big thing here is and like maybe pivots the wrong word. It's almost like, you know, like you're like going. Yeah, like do I need to evolve this offering? I was just about to rather than pivot, it's like veering to the left. Like you're, you know, you're not like at a stop sign, deciding to go like left or right. You're kind of your the road is kind of splitting and you're kind of deciding to like veer one way. That is a good analogy because you're not like usually when you're pivoting, you're not like stopped motion. Like you're still driving. Yeah, you're having to make a quick decision while you're still going. Mm hmm. Yeah. So I like everybody needs to pivot. Everybody needs to kind of like veer off of their, the, the current road that they're on. But that doesn't mean that you have to just like, low it all up and start over. I think really it's using those same ingredients and and making sure that what you're offering in like the clear two, three things that you're offering are very much so in line with your team's ability and skill sets, but then also what your clients really need at that moment. Agreed. I also one thing that I think helps my clients is no decision is permanent. So if we end up doing something and you don't like it, we can go back with like the same thing with your driving, you make a right, you can always end up back on the path that it didn't work out. And I think just being open to those other. This is really important because what if it does triple your business? Totally. I think one thing or somebody that does this really well is Dylan Bernard. He is an old client of mine. Um, I think that he's a listener of the podcast. So hey, Dylan. Yeah. Um, he works. He's and he works primarily with nonprofits as like coms brand strategy and something that I found that he's done really well as a pivot to the need of the industry in the moment. A lot of times he'll be working with like political leaning organizations. And so obviously like every two, three years, there's, there's going to be a different need a different conversation that's happening in that moment. Another thing that he does really well and I think that that we should at least mention it during this call is like pivoting can also look like changing how your team is organized. And yeah, I think a lot of times people they'll think, okay, like I, you know, I must continue with this exact team. I, I need to completely, you know, evolve and continue to offer everybody full time and benefits and all of these things. But I think that the best businesses and the best business owners also evolve their team with the current moment that they're at with about necessarily feeling and getting emotional about it. Like, it's a business. And your team is going to evolve with the needs of frankly your clients and like what your clients need. And I think they need different skill sets. You might need an AI, someone who can code and that was never a role you needed on your team before and totally give yourself that freedom. One thing you were saying about sales calls that just reminded me of something I did today that I actually think could be a good hack for other people listening. I was going to write a follow up call to a lead that you and I spoke to last week. And I uploaded our call transcript into chat GPT and I said give me like an assessment of that's called like how did it go? What were the big takeaways? What was the leads like temperament? What are you thinking is going to happen next? And it was actually so interesting. And I also said like do you have any advice for me on like, I could do on my next conversation with her? And I just feel like we should like that's a great because it's like an objective perspective that can read between the lines of like, well, do you also remember when we used I like went back and read through a transcript of a very awkward call that the two of us were on together. And chat GPT or not chat GPT. I used fireflies mostly because fireflies just like, I don't know, it made sure that like one time it was a client was using it and then it basically just like implanted itself into my business and it's like, oh, this is yours now. This is what you're using. And I just still to this day use it. So good job, fireflies. So like fireflies had no idea that it was an awkward call. Like they were, it was just like, it was like, oh, this was a conversation. Like it was, I don't know, I just thought that it was so funny. I know exactly what fireflies are talking about. That's so funny. of our carefully chosen brand partners who make all of this possible. See you in a hot sec. Does anyone else feel like you spend so much time thinking about your business revenue and margins that your personal finances get a little neglected? Copilot money was built for the darlings. It's a beautifully designed app that lets you track every card, account, budget, investment, and net worth trend in one place. Their whole mission is to help you navigate your finances with confidence. For us, that means you get to scale your agency with clarity and know that your personal financial house is in order. Head to copilot.money and use code darlings to try copilot money free for two months. Go ahead and get yourself set up for the next level of personal growth. One other takeaway from that call that I was talking about was it said something about you that I was like, I need to send this to Meredith. It said something like Meredith is the secret weapon. She came in at the end. You know the moment I'm talking about when you said like, you said your fractional CFO. Yeah. And then you think that that was the secret weapon? Yeah. It said like it was so smart that you guys had that saved that for the end. Which is so funny because it wasn't even intention. It wasn't planned but it was like that was brilliant. Thank you. What's amazing strategy. Thanks, Fixer. I need to do this more often upload my get some feedback on our stuff. I need you to. This is a reminder. Should we talk about, yeah, should we talk about like a few signs in terms of if you're ready for a pivot or a veer off course? Yeah. Why don't you take those? Okay. So one is capacity strain. So if you're super busy but you're not feeling like you're growing. I also, again, I think that that comes that goes back to team and you can really think about the the team and how you want to structure that team to best suit where you're going to best suit the future. Just like friendships or relationships. If a certain friend is holding you back from being your best self, like you're not going to continue having that friend in the future. So I think it's just like team oriented stuff. It's also thinking about clients and the quality of your clients. So thinking about, again, similarly, like, do you want is this type of client, the type of client that you want to be serving next year, the year following, or do you have a different vision in mind as to who would be the right fit for you guys? And then also it comes down to finances. And if I don't know, sometimes I have mixed feelings about like a plateau and revenue. Like sometimes having a you know where you need to be. Like you don't always need to be growing your revenue. You can be doing things in a far more efficient way to achieve that same amount of money so that then you are becoming more profitable. But I think the big thing here, and I feel like I keep kind of keep bringing this back to team. But I think it's important. Because you know, obviously we depend on our teams, but they also depend on us. And it's really thinking about how to keep the stability in your business while not necessarily destabilizing your team. Yeah, I think everything you said is right. And it's not just one thing. It's got to be in context of what you're trying to achieve. If you're trying to achieve something and your stuff. Because of team capacity or you have the wrong talent mix or you have that you've been taking on the wrong clients or you outgrew the clients used to work with or you feel like your revenue stuff but you're trying to actively trying to like increase it. But I think overall it's a feeling of like stuckness, a feeling of like burnout, like I'm trying so hard, nothing's changing. And maybe just like a feeling of like staleness. Like I'm I don't my business is not exciting me anymore. I think those are all kind of like signals that it's time. And we want to go through like there's different kinds of pivots small to large that you can make. And a lot of them we like touch on in pretty much every episode. But the first is a positioning pivot. So that's a pretty common one. When you're shifting, it could be a shift from generalist to specialist. It could be also a strategic positioning like you went from working with a lot of industries to really focusing on a core set of industries or like an umbrella industry that you know you have a special position in. It's a general like we go from being one of many to one of one. So it's like a choice. It's definitely a risk. But there's high reward on the other side. It's hard to do, but it's so worth doing. And truly I've never seen an agency scale and succeed to a million dollars without doing a positioning pivot. So it's kind of a necessary one. Another one is an offer pivot. So we've talked about this a lot like carrying down your services, shifting them to outcomes based problem solving solution, premiumizing and just doing less like simplifying the offering that you're doing. No more cheesecake factory list of things you do. The third is a client pivot. This one's hard to your point like it can be emotional. But this is usually involving releasing legacy clients and intentionally moving to you know a different clientele that's maybe higher ticket or puts higher value behind what you do. And then the last one's a model pivot. And this is really shifting from like a founder doer to more of a CEO, which requires a new staffing structure, new pricing model to allow you to be removed from the work than a new delivery model. You need a system that gives you the confidence that you don't need to be involved in every little thing. You can do these individually and you can layer them over time if you're on the path to growth. But they're all hard. I'm not going to say like one's easier than another and you kind of need to do them as you're ready for them. I think that one of the things that a lot of people and business owners, the reason that they don't pivot is because all of these are like they're they impact the other right. So you feel like okay from a brand positioning standpoint, wait a second, if I change my positioning then I have to change my website then I have to change my offerings and I have to change my team and it feels very overwhelming. But trying to do it as you're saying one at a time is important but also really being very thoughtful and critical about the fact that yes like it is going to change your team. It is going to change the type of clients that you that you work with and therefore it's going to change the type of offer. So you want to do it slowly so that you're not as you're always responding in real time. Like you don't have to do it all at once and you don't necessarily need to make like a huge splash either. I think that these pivots from your positioning from the type of client and the niche that you're working with from the different offerings that you're that you're you know sharing with clients. All of those things transition. It's not like it's not a pivot. It's a transition to something over time because we're continually testing what's working and I don't know that's why I'm I feel like pivoting is is wrong because it's like you're kind of always you're always evolving you're always changing and I think that a lot of that is really it's listening and and that's like the the most important part is that we're listening to clients we're listening to leads and we're really doing our best like research in the industry to really respond in a strategic way. Totally agree. There's a good stat here from Accenture that says a change in business models increased 33% year over year. This is from 2023 so I wonder if even more so now but meaning pivots are the norm not the exception exactly what you're saying like there's just constant it's almost like sometimes there is I think these like moments of pivot and then other times it's like it's happening in real time you're just making like micro shifts all the time to better to be better to run a better business but let's get into how to approach a pivot and the tactical steps you can take and I think we can both reflect on things that have worked well with agencies we've worked with. I think a lot of times were too close to our business to see it clearly. And I really try to start by helping my clients take a complete step back from their business because you can't see the forest through the trees. They're so in it that they know there's problems and they can give me a laundry list of things that are frustrating them, but they're not able to have clear perspective on what needs to happen. So the first exercise I do is like, let's imagine you don't have a business and you're starting from day one and you're building this business, not like an entirely different business, but you're building this business and exactly what you were saying earlier. Like there's no contingencies. You don't have to keep these people on your team. You don't have to keep these clients 'cause that's where I think we limit our growth and it like shrinks our options. And I just start with like, let's rebuild fill in the blank agency as if there were no limitations. How would that look like? If you, like what kinds of clients would you work with? What kind of work would you be doing? What would your image of your company look like? What would your founder brand feel like? And I try to help them like paint that picture that's slightly removed from their business today. Sometimes we find it's like pretty much the business they have, just some tweaks and sometimes it's like totally different. And I think either way, it's like illuminating to do that exercise. And I try to do this for myself around the end of each year to just reflect on like, is this still serving me and where I'm at as a person? Is this still what I want? What do I want to do differently going into a new year? And just giving yourself that freedom to be open to like creating a new vision without feeling stuck with what you have. - I love that. And remember, I'm a daffodil. So I like to do that in February, March. - Yeah. - But yeah, I mean, I think too. Oftentimes we're doing this almost too late. And the best business leader is able to have a really good ear to the ground and feeling on the pulse to determine. And like just even test things out. I think that's another thing that's important here. You don't have to pivot. You don't have to completely change course or totally change up your website and do this, do that, do whatever. Test things out. So test it out on a sales call. Test it out with clients to be like, hey, do you feel like this is something that would be helpful before even having, before even changing your deck, before changing your website, before changing everything to really get a good understanding as to what the market would sense. And like start-ups do this all the time, right? Like you're thinking about just market testing and how to really respond to the different challenges that you're seeing. I think it's really hard to do it as a business owner because you are so close to everything. So working with somebody like you like me or even having a good friend in the space to kind of just shoot the shit with and talk about things as to where you should go next or what you could test out next. And again, we're with AI. Talk about it. Yeah, we're with AI. But I think a human to human approach is also, like I think using AI is good, but also still remembering that we can leverage human but not leverage, that's what the right word, but interact with humans. But yeah, I don't know. I think that it's one of the hardest things that you can do as a founder, but I think that we need to not be overwhelmed by it. It doesn't need to be an overwhelming thing. You can kind of, you can talk to your team about it, see what's working, what's clicking, what's not tracking and kind of slowly make a turn in the radius, rather than it feeling like it needs to be an all-in-approach on completely changing all of your decks and everything. Like it can just be a talking point. Totally, I think the ideal place to be in is that this is just part of your DNA. I do think that's easier to do when you're newer and you're like, you have the energy to kind of be changing all the time. And I think from what I see is like the longer you've been in business, I think you become a little more like, okay, can this just be a thing that I'm not changing all the time? That's kind of like generally what I see from the founders who've been in business for a longer period of time. But I think just like if you don't go to the gym frequently, the first time you go back is gonna be like really hard and you're gonna be sore and there's more work you have to put in to like get back to feeling like fit or you know, in shape. I feel like this kind of stuff is similar. Like if you're not making these like changes and staying attuned, you, you're gonna have to make a bigger change and it's gonna be more painful. So I think your point is right, but I also wanna say for anyone that hasn't been doing pivots and now you need to and you have to go through that pivot, that painful pivot, like that's okay too. Like it's okay and it yeah, I work with someone who can help you get there, but at the end of the day, it's better to embrace that pivot and not change to have a business that aligns with you and that's gonna allow you as a person to flourish and to you know, fuel growth, then to stay stuck in something that's just not working anymore. Like it's yeah, you're not gonna serve yourself or anyone else. So kind of staying connected to a vision for what you're building, being honest with yourself is this aligned with what I have today and then reflecting on your current business, simply doing like a keep stop evolved. Like what would I keep about this business that like is working with this vision? What would I stop? What would I change and evolve? And what would I start doing differently? And I think it's a really simple exercise that doesn't always require drastic reinvention, but it might just mean like, maybe I need to stop being on every client call 'cause that's actually not adding value. Now that these team members have been here for two years, like they can run these calls without me. Like it's just a moment of reflection. And if what comes out of it is some changes, then like great, make those changes. Once you kind of have that, I think then you have to work through like a transition plan depending on how big the changes are. So you know, like with that stop, start, keep, when you're charting that, I think it's making a list of priorities. Like what's gonna make, what's the easiest to execute and is gonna like impact the business in a positive way, start with those, 'cause if you're starting with something that's like a 12 month transition, like we need a new project management system and you have to train everyone like, don't start with that. That's gonna like actually stop you from making other changes. So start with the changes that are easy to make, but also have like a decent impact on the business and then kind of like get your work your way through the shifts that need to happen till you get to a place where you can take on some of the bigger changes. - Yeah, no, I think obviously depends on how big your team is, too, like if you have a co-founder, if you have a COO or whatever, that's gonna be very dependent on when you're involving people in this, right? So I think that the biggest takeaway from today, at least that I would wanna drive home, is that it can be gradual, it should be gradual, it doesn't need to be an all in approach and it doesn't need to feel overwhelming. Just start somewhere and see what's clicking, what's tracking with clients and what's not. - And then I think the last thing is once you have clarity on where you're going, sharing that with your team and making sure that at least the people that are gonna fit the vision you're going into and kind of sharing context around that so they can be part of that change with you and helping implement it. And also people just wanna be part of a vision and knowing what you're building and if you've lost track of that for a while and you've been an autopilot, it's a really good moment to say, like, hey, I reconnected to what I wanna build, I doubled down on it and this is where I'm going and I'd love for you to be part of it is just a way to reignite them as well. 'Cause whatever's happening with you, you said this earlier, but whatever's happening with you as the founders probably happening with the business too, it's impossible to, even if you feel like no one notices that you're burned out and you're disengaged a little bit, they feel it. I've worked for founders, it's like you just feel it, there's an energy you feel a shift and most people working for founders are get motivated by founder energy. - Totally. - Yeah, I mean, you want everybody to be behind it, right? You want everybody to be behind that excitement and behind that new offer or behind your new positioning And I think I hope that this is going to be a great deal. psych instills a lot of excitement about potentially changing just one thing in your business and really leveraging what is at the year of the force to really ignite some fire and some energy into a lot of the thought and wisdom and you know underlying strategy that you had coming in to 2026 from last year. I love it. Well thank you guys for listening and we'll see you next time darling. If you are inspired and empowered to grow your business share this episode with an agency friend or aspiring founder. Thanks again for joining. We'll see you next time. [MUSIC]