Ep 260 | What's Your Pivot?

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today we're going to get better at business, and we're going to do so by examining some big pivots that were made within a number of companies that we all probably know. Pivots, meaning that they were going down a certain path, maybe pursuing a certain product line or a certain service. And for whatever reason, maybe it was market conditions, maybe it was something legal, maybe it was just pure competition, or it was a discovery around a different path. Whatever the reason, they pivoted their model. And this pivot made for maybe the success that company has had, maybe all the success that company's had. Today. Now, what got me thinking about this? There is a great book, a business book called Rework, that was written by the founders of a company called Basecamp, which is a project management software. And in Rework, there's a chapter in there where the founders of Basecamp are talking about sawdust. They're talking about sawdust. And why were they talking about sawdust? I believe they were using an example of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company and how Ford took the sawdust that was a byproduct from the vehicles that they were making. They took that sawdust and they actually created charcoal. That charcoal, what was it, Kingsford Charcoal? I hope I don't butcher that, became the most popular selling charcoal. As a result, again, of the byproduct, the sawdust that was created from building of cars. Now, that wasn't exactly a pivot in the way I'm about to start talking about it, because they still continued down, you know, the line of building out Ford, you know, as a car company. But there are many stories like that, where a byproduct came about, like sawdust, and company abandoned its original path and pursued the sawdust and, and built a massive company out of it. I'll give you some examples, right? There's a couple things, uh, let's talk about some byproducts, famous examples of byproducts that turned into successful moneymakers. Good examples: Post-it notes. Post-its were invented by, by 3M in the late '60s, and 3M, the scientists at 3M that created Post-it notes, was trying to create a strong adhesive, but instead he accidentally created a pretty weak adhesive that could be easily removed. Now, this scientist's colleague recognized the potential for this adhesive to create sticky notes, and that led to 3M creating the Post-it Note, which is one of its most successful products ever. Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is a good example. Coca-Cola was originally created as a medicine by John Pemberton in the late 19th century. Now the intended purpose was medicinal, but it eventually, as we all know, became the most popular soft drink to ever sell. And it's the cornerstone of Coca-Cola's business still today. Play-Doh. Play-Doh was actually created as a wallpaper cleaner in the 1930s. However, it wasn't until the '50s that it was repurposed as a children's toy. And we all know the story of Play-Doh, right? We've all probably played with Play-Doh. Now, those are companies that maybe had different, you know, byproducts or whatever it may be, and they pivoted those things into new products and new services. But let's talk about companies that completely changed their path as a result of a discovery made. So some famous business pivots that led to success of companies that were not initially planned for but became the focus product or service. Instagram's a great one. Instagram was actually developed as a location-based check-in app. I think it was called Burbn, was its original name. However, the founders of Instagram realized that the photo sharing feature of the original company Burbn, the original product Burbn, was the most popular aspect. So the founders decided to completely pivot the entire focus of the app to photo sharing, which led to the creation of Instagram, which we probably know by now, uh, was acquired by Facebook for a few bucks. Twitter, uh, has a somewhat similar story in that it began as a side project within a podcasting company. The initial idea behind Twitter was a platform for employees to communicate internally. However, the company saw this growing interest in the platform and the founders pivoted, and, and Twitter became a standalone product for microblogging or whatever you want to call it today. Twitter has a similar story, uh, or I should say Slack has a similar story to Twitter. Slack was originally intended as an internal communication tool for this game development company. This game development company was trying to build out an online game that continued to fail over and over again. And the team that was building this game had this internal communication tool. That they developed to work, like the engineers, so they could communicate with one another. Fast forward, that internal communication tool was more popular than the game ever became. So the company pivoted its focus to developing this communication tool as a standalone product. And that became Slack, a multi-billion dollar company. YouTube, it was actually conceived as a video dating site called TuneIn HookUp. TuneIn HookUp was the original video dating site that was created by the founders, and they noticed that users were more interested in sharing and watching videos than they were trying to find a date. So they pivoted the platform to focus on user-generated video content, which led to its incredible popularity and its acquisition by Google. Right, so I'm sharing these examples, right, of companies that have gone down a certain path, but because, you know, maybe their original product was not as hot as they hoped it would be, or maybe competition was fierce, or maybe there was something, you know, legal or economically that forced them to go a direction. But these are major, major companies that set off down a path. They're major companies today. That made a pivot and their previous, like their initial focus is not even, you know, on the radar. Most of us don't even know about them. You know, so many others we could point to, well-known pivots driven by changes in market conditions or driven by the economy. Netflix. What was Netflix? DVD rental, mail order DVD. Got into streaming because that's what the market called for. Amazon, online bookstore. But Bezos realized the potential of e-commerce beyond books. Competition called for it to go that direction. Airbnb, we were just renting out mattresses and saw how big it could become. Even, even PayPal, right, which was just a mobile cryptography company that pivoted to online payments in response to growing demand for online transactions. The list goes on and on and on. So where am I going with this? Why am I talking about this? It's to serve as a bit of inspiration for you. Because so many of us right now, we're building businesses and probably don't realize that whatever you may think is the big thing that's going to put you on the map, the big thing, the big focus that's going to make the break— breakthrough, the thing that's going to take your company to the next level, there's a really good chance that what you're doing right now is not what gets you to where you want to go. There's a really good chance the market or competition or something legal or something out of your control is going to force you to pivot. And you're going to use all the knowledge that you've accumulated going down this current path that you're on, and you will pivot. And whatever you pivot to is actually what you're going to end up being known for. It's just comical in a way to think about that, but there's so many listening to the podcast right now. That where whatever's going to put you to the level you want to be, I bet you it's not what you're doing right now. So the focusing question for everybody today, you know, you look at your business right now, are there byproducts? Are there things being created within your business that you've paid less attention to because they're not your core product, your core service, but there may be opportunity there? Is there something sitting right in front of you, but you're blind because it's not a focus at this moment, but you've got a Slack being created within your company. You've got an Instagram being created within your company, or maybe you're a Netflix that's selling, or that's mailing DVDs right now, but your real opportunity is online streaming. I don't know what it is for you, but I think all of us as business owners need to have our head on a swivel and need to be not quite as attached to the path we're on knowing that there are countless stories of companies who made their real fortune in a pivot or two to a new product or a new service. That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.