PIVOT
Find your way forward when the life you built no longer fits
Imagine getting to the point you thought you were working towards.
The business is built. The team is there. Momentum is moving. There’s an offer on the table.
From the outside, it looks like everything has clicked into place.
Then you realise…
It doesn’t feel right anymore.
That was me.
I’d built a £24M agency and was deep in an exit process. On paper, I was exactly where I was meant to be. In reality, something felt off and I couldn’t ignore it. Becoming a mum shifted how I thought about time. Going through private equity changed how I saw the business. Watching it become more transactional made me question what I’d actually built. Then, for the first time in years, I had space.
Which sounds like a good thing, until you realise space brings up all the questions you’ve been too busy to ask.
What do I actually want now?
Do I even want to keep building this?
What does the next version of my life look like?
P - Pause
Stop reacting long enough to hear yourself think
Taking a breather can feel wildly unproductive when you’re used to operating at speed. You want to fix it. Decide. Move. Do something. But when I stepped back from the day-to-day, I didn’t immediately feel calm. I felt noisy. My brain jumped between ideas, possibilities and expectations. Everything felt urgent at once. So I had to deliberately create space to think without reacting. Just long enough to hear myself properly.
Where am I right now, not where I think I should be?
What feels heavy that I keep pushing through anyway?
What still gives me energy without forcing it?
PIVOT: What gets louder when you stop being busy?
I - Identity
Stop making decisions for a version of you that no longer exists
Okay, we’re going to get slightly more uncomfortable. A shift in identity can be fucking brutal. For a long time, I was very clearly the founder. That label shaped how I worked, what I prioritised and what I thought success was supposed to look like. Then life changed. I became a mum. My time looked different. My energy looked different. What I wanted looked different. The mistake would have been trying to force myself back into an identity that no longer fit. So the question became less about what I had built and more about who I was becoming. Not what people expected. Not what looked impressive. What actually fit the life I was living now? When who you were and who you’re becoming fall out of sync, you feel it.
What identity am I still carrying because it used to fit?
Who am I becoming now?
What would I choose if I had nothing to prove?
PIVOT: What version of yourself have you outgrown?
V - Values
Get honest about what matters now
Once you’re honest about who you are now, your priorities start to shift too. Before kids, I valued growth above almost everything. Speed. Scale. Building something big, quickly. That worked for that phase of my life. Now, ambition is still very much there. If you know me at all, you’ll know it didn’t die in the delivery room but it now sits alongside other things that matter just as much. Time. Energy. Being present. Flexibility that works in real life. That changed the question I was asking.
What matters more to me now than it did three years ago?
What matters less?
Does the life I’m building reflect either of those things?
PIVOT: What are your three non-negotiables going forward?
O - Opportunity
Look at what’s already there differently
We’re not going to overcomplicate this part. A pivot doesn’t mean starting from zero. When I stepped back, I realised I wasn’t reinventing myself. I was looking at what I already knew how to do in a different way. Consultancy. Advisory. Speaking. Investments. None of those opportunities came out of nowhere. They had been there the whole time. I just hadn’t had the headspace to see them properly. That’s usually the case. Opportunities don’t always suddenly appear. Sometimes they become visible when you finally create the space to notice them. If you’re not sure where to look, pay attention to what people already come to you for. The thing you’re unusually good at. The idea you keep circling back to. The opportunity you keep saying one day to. That’s usually your starting point.
What do people already come to me for?
What am I unusually good at?
What opportunity do I keep circling back to but not acting on?
PIVOT: What’s already in front of you that you haven’t taken seriously yet?
T - Timing
Turn the pivot into a sequence
This is where it becomes real. Getting clear on your PIVO (lol) is useful. It also changes absolutely nothing unless you act on it. That doesn’t mean blowing everything up overnight. It means deciding what moves first, what follows and what can wait. For me, the pivot wasn’t one giant leap. It was a sequence. First: Consultancy Then: Advisory Next: Speaking and mentoring Longer term: investments. Each move gave me information. Each one created the next opportunity. Each one made the bigger pivot feel less chaotic. You don’t need to know exactly how the whole thing plays out. You need to know what moves first.