Have you ever faced the daunting task of steering your business in a new direction? Join Mark and I as we bare our souls, recounting the rollercoaster of emotions and strategic decisions that came with introducing a new brain to our team, a shift that took our project down an unforeseen path. We're serving up an honest discourse on the critical moments that shape a company's evolution, sharing the gritty details of the mistakes made and the wisdom gained from our own pivot story.
Strap in for a tactical deep-dive into timing the perfect business pivot, where we juxtapose the theoretical with the practical by drawing parallels to a fictitious protein powder company. This episode isn't just about change; it's about smart change. Learn from our candid conversation on how to harness customer feedback and sales data to realign your business compass, ensuring every maneuver keeps you true to your core mission and values.
To cap it all off, we dissect the art of understanding your target audience, underlining the significance of zeroing in on their needs to drive your marketing and product innovation. We'll reveal how homing in on specific niches, like the unsung heroes in engineering, can open up new realms of opportunity. Plus, get a peek behind the curtain of our guerrilla marketing exploits and the wisdom behind knowing when to make a swift market exit. This episode is one for the books, loaded with anecdotes and insights that might just be the catalyst for your business's next great leap forward.
Have you ever faced the daunting task of steering your business in a new direction? Join Mark and I as we bare our souls, recounting the rollercoaster of emotions and strategic decisions that came with introducing a new brain to our team, a shift that took our project down an unforeseen path. We're serving up an honest discourse on the critical moments that shape a company's evolution, sharing the gritty details of the mistakes made and the wisdom gained from our own pivot story.
Strap in for a tactical deep-dive into timing the perfect business pivot, where we juxtapose the theoretical with the practical by drawing parallels to a fictitious protein powder company. This episode isn't just about change; it's about smart change. Learn from our candid conversation on how to harness customer feedback and sales data to realign your business compass, ensuring every maneuver keeps you true to your core mission and values.
To cap it all off, we dissect the art of understanding your target audience, underlining the significance of zeroing in on their needs to drive your marketing and product innovation. We'll reveal how homing in on specific niches, like the unsung heroes in engineering, can open up new realms of opportunity. Plus, get a peek behind the curtain of our guerrilla marketing exploits and the wisdom behind knowing when to make a swift market exit. This episode is one for the books, loaded with anecdotes and insights that might just be the catalyst for your business's next great leap forward.
Check us out and send us a message on our instagram, Tik Tok and Youtube platforms @the.needle.movers www.theneedlemovers.xyz
Speaker 1:
Richard Spectris is funny. Right? Because we we had something that we thought was useful. We thought that we didn't have the skill set. We need we thought we needed somewhere somewhere with a more of a h sharp background. And then we decided, hey, let's approach another friend, I. E. Person number four that is really part of number one, and let's try to get their help.
Speaker 2:
Do you remember if when we did this, we had the intention of bringing them on board or if we just wanted them as like a consultant capacity. Do
Speaker 1:
you do you know what's funny? I think I think we wanted them to come in as then kind of giving us direction to tell us we are on the right path and somehow they kind of talk themselves in.
Speaker 2:
I'm like, yes. Let's do it. Yeah. Don't let me for it. That's another one for us. If only we had one more person, We we honestly thought that the power was in numbers. So what was it if you recall? I'm I'm asking because my memory is surely. But what was the main reason that we were like, oh, we need to pit No. No. I think I know this. The so the question I was gonna ask was why did we think we need to pivot? I think the pivot came after their, like, information. If their input and them joining the team. Right? So we were still all set on it being Charles Young. We knew we needed some inputs from someone who was, let's say, in the industry.
Speaker 1:
When you're waited then your name.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. A new name. But then the, like, the twist where we was like, actually, this needs a whole direction. Was from I think that additional, that external turned internal input, as I remember.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. And I I think something that we were all kinda looking for was that gonna call it that confirmation, but we wanted that insight knowledge that what we were on was the right track, but also we wanted the the insight knowledge to help us build the tools. Yeah. Because, again, we were product focused as opposed to market focused.
Speaker 2:
We stayed for that focus the whole way. And I think maybe from my side where once we were including them, it was We should give this person a name. Let's call them a. But once we added a to the team, a team, we like, for me, I was like, now I can take my eye off that ball. Okay. Now it's being covered by this individual.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. Because I feel the same. I was like, oh, I don't need to do as much research because now we go, a on board, and a can help us with all this.
Speaker 2:
It was a which is okay. If anyone doesn't notice, that's red flag for us. It's like we just hey, let's just drop this ball that we hadn't really even picked up. We, like, noticed the gap. Clubbed the person into it and said, that's close the gap now. Let's keep it pushing. Have we mentioned the name and we went towards and why? I think me and yourself came up with it. It was you. Right?
Speaker 1:
Oh, I I come up with lots of good nails done. I
Speaker 3:
I remember us going through
Speaker 2:
the whole journey of how and why and what to make the name. And all I'll I'll say is it was green, but you could tell the story where how that switch came from about
Speaker 1:
hello, and welcome to a new episode of the nibble nibble over sports cast. Nibble. Nibble noise. Nibble over sports cast. Well, we continue on the story of our little adventure that we set it off right outside the university. And as always, with you to day. I'm joined by my cohost, Mark Jason's Hello, Mark.
Speaker 2:
Hello, and let's keep going down the rabbit hole that was a car crash of of child young, but which had many, many lessons along the way. I have to emphasize this. That's why
Speaker 1:
I got to check here. Did I introduce myself? Did that say my name?
Speaker 2:
No. No. No. But I I'm all the who matters, by the way. So
Speaker 1:
I'm I'm learning that great day people. Yeah. My name is Valerica Mussel, and I am one of the core hosts I think.
Speaker 2:
You think it I hope so. Yeah. But, yeah, let's keep it going. So we're talking about pivoting. Right?
Speaker 1:
We're talking about pivoting. And what you heard just a little bit earlier is someone like some of the retrospectively inside that we had a little bit of a conversation. But People think is interesting. I think there is two ways of approaching people think. You either see it as a failure of achieving your first objective or you see it as an opportunity to pivot, for lack of better words, towards something that might give you more success. And that's exactly what we did. Right? We thought we were pivoting something towards them to give us more success. Did that work out, Mark?
Speaker 2:
Did it work out? So this is gonna I hope we are able to expand on the requirements or the things to consider when pivoting. Because to answer the question, though, of did it work out necessarily because we kept all the mistakes. We knew we had to change, I'd say, but then we didn't address all the mistakes or Look. And I say we kept them. We didn't really review. Like you do the review, you do the plan, and then you decide the best way to pivot. And then you follow a different plan to get there. What we did was say, hey, oh, here's one thing that's gonna let us insert. Change and pivot and then follow that path without doing the milestones or anything to that liking, which kinda didn't like this. I said pan out the same. The one thing that makes me which I find interesting about pivoting when it comes to this, like we talk about in business. You pivot but this happens in life as well where if you're at work and suddenly you're at London, you can either be like, what was me or you pivot if you're I don't know, if you have to stop talking to certain family members or in relationships, there's a lot of times where you have to pivot and I wonder if people address it same or similar ways because anyone who's been through a breakup has had to pivot their life plans potentially and still the way they went about it, would if they've just been, like, gone home, here we go, anyone will tell you, hey, man. It's probably it's probably not gonna work for the long term. And so when it comes to companies, it's especially in our case, I'd say, it's it was really clear in hindsight and maybe during the time that we should have done things, I'd say, with intention. Right? Dumb things clearly. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
But let me just start off with a definition.
Speaker 2:
Mhmm.
Speaker 1:
What's beautiful? So reading off Forbes, believe it or not, I can read. A pivot means fundamentally changing the direction of a business when you realize the current products or services aren't meeting the needs of the market. And the main goal of a pivot is to help a company improve revenue or survive in the market. But the way you pivot your business can make all the difference.
Speaker 2:
Does it go into act the way you should pivot your businesses? Because
Speaker 1:
Pardon me, you ask. Pardon me, you ask. So there is some some great tips on this article. And the question that the this particular section of the article is answering is when is it the the right time to pivot? And I think that's a good question because, you know, the concept of pivot tag, I think it's quite straightforward. You change the direction of the business. You match your product. You match your services. Which is all well and great. But I think what's tricky to understand is when is it the right time to pivot? And they think that the things that I've read in this article may come across as obvious, but I think they're also quite useful. So for example, If you can't see much progress even when you're putting in a tremendous amount of money resources at work, that might be a good time to pivot. If there is just too much competition, so you know, the market is saturated for one reason or the other, that could be a good time. The company's progress perhaps has plateaued. So that means that, you know, you might have had a lot of work to start with, but now you're not seeing a lot of belleads come to fruition, and you're not getting as much revenue used to have. That's an indication that perhaps you have plateaued. Or perhaps only one of your company's features or services is getting traction and everything else isn't. So for instance, if you sell protein powders and as an addition to protein powder, you're also selling garments, you're selling protein bottles, etcetera. But only one of those things is selling, perhaps that's an indication. Or the customers are not responding to your products like you thought that they would. Those are all potential reasons as to why you may want to go back and think about pivoting.
Speaker 2:
So using the protein powder example, I like that because people who say a company selling protein powders, and then they find that of all the things that's selling the most, it's not their shakers, it's not their protein powders, it's the bottles they make. And then their pivot might be to just sell bottles instead. And so they previously were a protein powder company, but now they just sell bottles because they're that was what the, like, users told them that's what increased their revenue. And I think that's a nice example of when to pivot and how it looks like. And the funny thing about that is it might and this is a decision, I guess, for everyone including ourselves we had to make because does it align with your passion or what you wanted to do. Because if you were a protein powder company, you're like, but no, it does so plastic. Oh, god. So depending on how you are, it might not be the direction you want to go or it suits well in, but just I'm keen to make a business and that that's the the solution that became available. And I think in our case, even with, like, okay, if I was to go through the list revenue. Yeah. We needed that. Like, progress traction. What customers? But I think it was clear that part of our passion was to follow the original idea. Like, there was basically providing the service of help to recent graduates to develop in their careers and to take them from a place where they're able to progress So we kept the, like, I guess, the core of what the company was about and wanted to pivot around that. So let's keep core that, like, the fixed point So where everything else would would move, that was where we pivoted around. And I think that's I don't think that was a hindrance so much. Is it just something that I'm aware that we did.
Speaker 1:
Before we move forward on, I I quite like the example that you were making about the protein bottle proteins bottles and people taking around that. So I think there is different ways also in which you can action your pivot. It could be a pivot around your product, but it could also be a pivot around your marketing. So for example, if your protein bottle is a best seller, perhaps you can change your marketing and the way you bundle your products away your private products. In such a way that you are giving an advantage or porting some of your other less selling product in spotlights. So for example, if the bottles are selling really really well, perhaps you can give a free bottle away. When also selling the protein powder. That suddenly becomes a bundle. But in doing that, then it also forces your customer to buy the protein And if you're really believing your product being good, they get an opportunity to try it and also get what they want in the bottle. But there is different ways in which I think he can do that pivot thing. And a lot I think sometimes, especially especially myself when I think about pivot thing, the first thing that comes to mind is product. Or service. Mhmm. But sometimes you can achieve your goals just by pivoting other elements of of that business and could be your marketing. It could be your pricing. Yes. It could be the product and services. It could be even perhaps the the way that you run your operation.
Speaker 2:
The fact that you said the marketing is so funny because we didn't even have that as a word. Back then. And it's so, like, clear, of course. Why don't you just pick it pivot your marketing? The reason why I don't think we did is because we were not marketing.
Speaker 3:
We didn't do a second of marketing. We didn't even consider that. We were just like
Speaker 2:
the company needs to search this. So I I
Speaker 1:
think I think just to provide context. Right? So just as a reminder, in Charles Young, our beautiful beautiful name company, what we were hoping to achieve was to provide assessment center simulations for every student and every student because we did not manage. And then we decided that we will pivot, taking on board an extra person, which we'll cover in a minute. Mhmm. And we thought that really what we needed to do to be successful was not to provide assessment and a story one. But instead, we could provide an Taylor coaching to university students so that they will be more successful in their delivery of applications, assessment centers, etcetera. So we move from one to many kind of interaction to a one to one interaction thinking that it would be much easier and more effective to manage that as a product or as a service, I should say.
Speaker 2:
Had I done that we were So it was going beyond assessment settings at this point. Right? Like, the first two years of their own work as well. Yeah. And yeah. And so, yeah, we we took this as the new direction, let's say. And again, Finally enough, we all agreed. We Like, it was very clear. This is the way to go. And I don't say that to say it was a bad decision. It was just a when it came to this switch, we basically brought in a person who seemed like they covered the the gap we identified at that point in time. Which really was we weren't in the industry. We didn't have the any experience. I think we talked earlier about an impostor syndrome where we we don't have the experience or the seniority when it comes to doing these things. So then we are able to pull someone in who we see as someone who does. But who also gets the bigger picture and what we're trying to deliver, and then that would cover that gap. And so I guess when that person, when became, we asked for them in a consultant capacity what can we do? How can we improve? What would you suggest? Like, which ways can we amend it? And when they wanted to come on board, it was like an ultimate win because then that way it was as if our name had much more merit to it. We'll talk about the name change. But But at some point, we're just like, there we get more merit because now this person's onboard, we're able to say from these specific backgrounds beyond just free engineers and different capacities who work for whatever companies at this point in time. It really made that difference. But I think what you'll notice and hearing is a lot of the differences that we wanted were more internal. Like, the company needed certain things, but it was our own Oh, the way I look at it is our own what's that word? I I should know this word where your You don't feel adequate. What is it? Not in a billion. Not even in poster syndrome, but, you know, insecurities. Earlier insecurities, that we're driving our decisions. And that's what also would mean, okay, this feels that insecurity. Okay. It's
Speaker 1:
There you go. I'm gonna go. I was
Speaker 2:
just gonna say funny enough. I don't remember. I think we might have been. They might have answered, but I don't remember the response where we're, like, do you think us being the people would be an impact or a detriment to, you know, pulling in our market? And If anyone said no, I'm sure we were just like, well, they have a difference of a bigger business.
Speaker 1:
So I I I like the fact that you touched on insecurity because I feel like sometimes looking back, we try to take on, like, you know, this additional personal board, but not so much to address the gap in your need. But it was more like to address the insecurities that we had about ourselves and what we thought that we couldn't deliver we thought that this person could deliver.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
And as a consequence of that, I was like, you know, cow cow cow cow and join us. Please. Please. Be your fourth person. We'll we'll change name and everything.
Speaker 3:
We'll adapt to you, whatever you need.
Speaker 2:
But then that way, we've come yeah. It was It was like a one piece that solves everything mentality we had back then. And so understanding why companies pivot and we have many examples of when they do it correctly. I'm pretty sure Twitch was one. And, like, red, they start on one thing and just address like a need. But then one thing that I think I hinted towards as well was the way we were going about it with Charles Young in general wasn't really as you should do a business like you need clear milestones, you need goals, you need things like traction, what's the deliverables even if you just went the agile way where you had a sprint and you delivered things. And it wasn't just making a goddamn business plan. You have a longer than making a material by addressing the market. We I think we still went about it similar. We'd maybe added more milestones, but we didn't really, like, fill to plan, plan to fill. We just planned, I guess, every meeting we'd meet up in person, planned something, and then meet up again and say, we two of us have done some things. How's the rest of us getting along? And that was really how it would go. And I think that's a clear indication of something that needs to change, but we didn't even consider that being part of why we should pivot or how we can take that and improve it.
Speaker 1:
So on on the topic and research of the topic I should say on pivoting, there is, I think, five or six things that kind of stood out as elements about pivoting. So I'm gonna read the headline, but then I'm just gonna talk about the one that think really talks more closely to me as a person and from what I learned. So typically speaking when pivoting, there is a few things that can be considered. One of them could be to focus on a feature instead of an entire solution. So, like, you know, when you go into into the pivoting phase, don't think about, like, you know, reinvent in the whole wheel. Perhaps it's the one element of what you're doing, which is a pivot. Another thing that the red above was big goals that are aligned with your business. And I think going back to also what you were seeing earlier, Mark, is also make sure that your self aligns with with the business that you're portraying because then if there is that that division between your own self belief and and the business that it makes really really hard to to move forward. The third thing I read was understand your target audience and their problem. The fourth was analyze what your competitors are doing. And I and I think we did this quite a lot to be fair. Mhmm. So I was surprised to see that I was like, yes, huge check. We did something right. The other one was speak the language of your audience, and the last four strategized before you make a move. Now out of all these elements that are read that are fundamentally important in in pivoting or in considering pivoting, the one I think that really spoke to my heart was understand your target audience and their numbers. Because to me to me that translates to what are the pain points of the people that you're trying to help? And how do you work backwards from it to put together a solution in your business that can cater to that? And I know that it's product product focused, but the reason why this spoke to me quite a lot is because If you work with a customer in mind and work backwards from them, then the marketing is so much easy to do because then you can talk in your marketing about pinpoints. You can talk about solutions as a as a resolution of those pinpoints. And the whole idea of going to market to address those pain points becomes a lot easier and possibly even more successful.
Speaker 2:
Do you think we even tried working backwards back then?
Speaker 1:
Oh, no. I think we walked way forward.
Speaker 2:
I didn't think Yeah. We were in the lateral direction there. It was
Speaker 1:
We we weren't. I I think in my mind, we weren't. This is a great idea. How can we go to market with it? And we didn't think about those are all the problems that that we're saying, how do we work backwards from it? Because if we've done that, even like, you know, even considering Charles Yang, what we might have figured out is Oh, actually, we could probably start off just with a SHL numerical and verbal test, not even those three, maybe just numerical test. Work back from it, put some workshops together, and then expand the offering if we work backwards. Whereas we go forward, we don't really get now Yeah. Try to achieve everything in one girl and then we lost fruit.
Speaker 2:
I like the iceberg and then we got screwed. When you were like, we did market research, I was almost like, did we when we pivoted, but I think we did. Because I know when it came to the assessment days period is a Charles Young. We did a lot of it, and we were like, no one's offering this. This is the reason we exist. And then when we move to the one to one, that also I I remember that, like, if there was a chart to peak when we had Implus syndrome, it was knowing that old, but for specific universities of higher standards, they most likely already have these things. They already have, like, the availability or the understanding of both assessment days and all the things going on. So now we have to stick to this reduced audience And so that's why I think was a higher raise in, like, concern when it comes to, oh, plus the syndrome, how are we gonna break the market? It it kinda slowed us down even further in a way, but not really. Because I know that's when we actually made moves. That's when we actually reached out. But it took, let's say, a much more not like actually turbulent, but I'd say mentally turbulent journey to get there. If it makes sense.
Speaker 1:
And I think on that, right? So you were just mentioning about we wanted to help the individual people in our pivot to try and help them in their successful employment career as graduates. And again, if we had thought about it in kind of working backwards and thinking a little bit bigger to some extent, we would probably study from the employer. We would have looked at, okay, out of all the engineering employers, and now I'm talking about like a mission down. Mhmm. What is like one of the key challenges that they're facing when it comes to gradual recruitment. Well, they are flooded. There is not enough representations both from ethnic minorities as well as women in engineering. Oh, okay. So we've got this very very niche market. Why don't we work backwards from there and actually help those groups to try and succeed in their in their endeavors. And suddenly then you have a really good business proposition, not just for the people that you're helping, but also for the people that are paying to hire them.
Speaker 2:
We did consider that. I'm pretty sure because that was like when we were looking at our revenue models, that was the where it would be the companies. Like, if we gave them talent of a a level, that would be where the revenue would come in.
Speaker 1:
So you can we consider that at a high level, but not to the point of thinking about which specific niches are the pinpoints.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So don't get it twisted. We weren't stupid. We were just dumb. But okay. I asked and we've been keeping them at bay the name, the new name and why. You'd have to tell.
Speaker 1:
It was a current name. I I actually do I do really like that name. I I would say. So Changshan is a bit stupid as a name. We had some science behind it from a lot of things that were right. So the new name, we thought that we'd we'd be a little bit more forward thinking, a little bit start up here, let's call it. And we wanted to be around this year of growth. And I remember this very very vividly. There was four of us on a whiteboard at your place mark when you sleep in Shepard's booj. Yep. With a bunch of, like, brainstorming ideas on this whiteboard, I run a number of different names remember that one of the names was just a tip.
Speaker 2:
Just a tip. Of course.
Speaker 1:
That's not the name we went for. But we were trying to really, like, capitalize on that growth, capitalizing on the idea of us sprouting. And then there was, like, this is a bit of a bit of a moment where when we realized, oh, what about Sprout as a name? But it wasn't just Sprout because you obviously printer sticking because it's a noun and, you know, someone has really bought it and probably has some sort of a farming company that relies on that name. We decided to spell it as s p r w t, very start a,
Speaker 2:
which the let's say a, was very quick to call
Speaker 3:
Spruit and never changed from calling it Spruit.
Speaker 2:
And we were like, you can't do this.
Speaker 3:
See, you're one of the founders. If you changed the name, then no one will go in his rug.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
But it it was a good name in my opinion. But I can't bloody help. It's for like a day just on the name.
Speaker 2:
We really did focus on the important things. We trend up as a regular name. Yeah. And we I think I remember a separate session where me and yourself would by figuring out the design, and that's why we drew leaves or something to to, like, say, it's Sprouts because they're growing in it. I think you did this. I'm I'm saying I was just there. But we was like, yeah. It's Sprout. Brussels sprouts who knows. But, yeah, it was to suit the new way. And so where we had Charles Young based on, you know, the a strong name and then your target audience, and then we have sprout. He was like, yeah. So we've redesigned the pivot in. This is new goal. This is the new agenda. And these are the new mistakes that seem very very similar to the old thing. It seems insane. Yeah. But with that, I think we took it we took a new direction. And so okay. We've talked about the downsides or what we did wrong. What we did right, I would I I do think there were certain things we did right. So we addressed a need. And by that, we addressed the need in the company. We saw that there was something missing And then we didn't go with the mindset of this person who'll fix it. Yes, we fell into that trap. But we did look for, hey, we need feedback. And one thing we mentioned before was we weren't trying to get that feedback. Right? We went and found specific feedback in the areas we thought work outs to try and get feedback. Now the problem was the person he chose happens to be my friend. At that time, he goes with friends with them. But are these friends of all of us? So at that point, it was already a red flag in the sense that there was a high likelihood if I was to think of it. And someone I was super cool would be like, hey, man, can I join him? I'll just be like, yeah, you're cool dude. Especially because they fit in what we were delivering. But in terms of, like, if we just went for external, I mean, complete strangers who were in the industry who could give us feedback. That would have been as valuable, more valuable because then we don't have the time and we just take information objectively and say that's it. Right? And it could help. But it's not to say, I'm I'm going back on the bad It's still good, I think, in terms of us addressing. And then actioning, we we we brought them onboard. We did assign actions. We did assign milestones. Maybe we didn't stick to them And we did, like, a different rename and re strategize and go a whole different route. Now I'm aware that Again, if you notice, we've already talked about in a previous episode where we're looking at what do people actually want to deliver? What do they want to do? What's their goals? We didn't do any of that. We just brought him in. It was like, now you're always invested in this as us by default. And that's a learning, of course.
Speaker 1:
But more importantly, I think you forgot one big thing.
Speaker 2:
Go ahead.
Speaker 1:
We went to market.
Speaker 2:
Yes. Yes. Up until that point, we hadn't we'd looked at offices. Multiple and not gone to market at all. But with this way yeah. With this pivot, we actually did. But that should be our next episode. Right?
Speaker 1:
And that will be our next episode. Can you even talk a little bit about some of the gorilla marketing that we did? Because we also did a little bit of marketing. And then speak about how we went to market and also maybe left the market just as quickly as we enter.
Speaker 2:
I know even due to well, maybe due to the market, but we'll see. Yeah. That's for next episode. But if you've enjoyed, give our previous episodes a listen. Next one will be next Wednesday. They're always on Wednesday's similar time, five PM UK. I've been one of your hosts, Mark Jason's joined by my cohost.
Speaker 1:
That I remember to actually introduce himself on the way out.
Speaker 2:
I gave you the chance.
Speaker 1:
You gave me the chance. Thanks for that. I gave you the chance. Didn't give myself the chance. Mhmm. As always, till next time.