241: Thinking About a Pivot in 2026? Here’s Exactly What I’d Do

Foreign welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of Digital Product Entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks. I hope you enjoy our episode today. Hi there, Dr. Destiny Kopp here. And today's episode is going to be so good. And I'm going to be talking about a question that I have been getting over and over again in emails and in DMs and from clients too. And it goes something like this. Destiny, I think I need to pivot, but I don't even know where to start. I get it, because 2025 feels different. The easy wins are gone. The strategies that worked a few years ago during COVID don't seem to work anymore. The entire business world is maturing, especially with AI. And I do think that means that we are all being asked to make smarter decisions, to evolve faster, and to be brutally honest with ourselves about what is actually working. So whether you're a course creator, you're a coach, or maybe you have a suite of digital products, there comes a moment when you feel that little pull, that uneasy feeling that something in your business just isn't clicking the way it used to. Maybe your sales have gone flat, maybe your audience isn't engaging the way they used to, or maybe you have changed, but your brand hasn't caught up yet. Whatever the reason, burning it all down is almost never the answer. So today I want to walk you through the exact process I would follow if I were pivoting my business in the upcoming year. I want to walk you through the step by step way I approach things, from what questions to ask myself to what data I look at and how to rebuild momentum without starting from scratch. So let's dive in. The first question that I ask myself is simple, but it is one that most people skip. And that is, do I still want to help the the people I'm serving today? Because everything flows from that. Your offers, your content, your energy. And if you have fallen out of love with your audience, there is no marketing tactic out there, no funnel tweak. None of that's going to fix that. And when I'm coaching business owners through a pivot, I always ask them to describe their favorite client. Not in demographics, but how do they feel working with them. I ask them, who do you look forward to helping? Who gets results from your work? Who's easy to talk to? And a lot of times the truth is, you may have outgrown the people you you started with. And that has happened to me in the past. So when I first started out, I was helping people launch the first digital products. But over time, I realized that my best clients, the ones I was able to help get results, they weren't beginners anymore. They already had the courses, the memberships, the digital product portfolio. They didn't need help starting. They needed help building systems and creating rinse and repeat processes that gave them predictable revenue. So I changed. I refined the messaging, I updated the positioning and started focusing on seasoned business owners who had already built something real and wanted to scale it. Everything shifted for me. The energy, the conversations, and the results I was able to help people get. So sometimes a pivot isn't about completely changing your business. It's about finally getting honest about who you want to serve. Now the next step is to diagnose what's actually not working. And most business owners assume that their niche is broken, and it's usually not. What it usually is, or what may be broken is the connection between what you are offering and what your market wants right now. So before you make any big moves in your business, I want you to dig into your data and there's four questions I want you to ask yourself. Number one, where is your revenue actually coming from? Number two, what is happening in your engagement metrics? So look at your open rates, your click rates, your unsubscribes. Number three is what are your customers telling you in your own words? And you may need to go do some voice of the customer research to really find out what's going on here. And number four, ask yourself, did your audience stop growing because you stopped showing up or because the platform has changed? Think about what's happened with Instagram, or is it something else entirely? And the first, the fourth one here, a lot of times surprises people because once you have looked at the numbers and really dug into them, it's time to look inward into yourself and ask yourself, why do you really feel the need to pivot? Are you reacting? Are you looking at the data? Or is it just discomfort? Are you truly stuck? You don't know what to do next? Or are you just bored? Because sometimes we call it a pivot when what we actually need is just a refresh or some tweaks here and there. Or maybe we even need a break from our business and that's okay. Sometimes we see other people chasing trends, like, for instance, what's going on with AI in the world right now, or maybe they were chasing short form video, like what's on TikTok or whatever's hot out there. And sometimes we assume that we need to change, too. And that's how a lot of people end up with businesses that look nothing like the ones that they actually wanted to run. When I started incorporating AI into my work, it wasn't because I was chasing a trend. It was because my audience started asking about it. I was naturally curious myself, but my audience started asking about it, too, and they were asking about how can I use AI to grow my newsletter? How can I automate without losing my personal touch? So that feedback is what led me to pull AI into everything that I was doing in my business. And that's the difference between pivoting with a purpose and know, okay, this is exactly why I'm doing this versus throwing spaghetti at the wall. Now, let's talk about the type of pivot you are facing. There are four of them. The first is a messaging pivot, and that is where your audience and offer stay the same, but your language changes. The next is an offer pivot, and that is where the audience stays but the product or the delivery involves. The third is an audience pivot, and that's where the offer stays. But you shift who you're talking to. You may do a little bit of an offer shift there, too, but you shift primarily who you're going after and who you want to invite into your world. And then you might have a model pivot, and that is basically where you're completely going after a different audience and maybe even different offers. That's where the entire structure may be changing. And I would say when I turned the Digital Product Growth lab into the Creators MBA Lab this year, it was both, I think partly an offer pivot, but also a messaging pivot. The core promise stayed the same. I was helping creators grow revenue, but I reframed everything around these rinse and repeat systems. I added the private coaching. I shifted or tweaked the delivery model. So it wasn't a complete reinvention. It was the minor shifts here and there. And I think, honestly, that's where most people get it wrong. They think that pivot means to start over, and it doesn't. It means to tweak it or optimize what's already working. Now, here's the part that I think most people skip, and that is the testing. I call this the MVP or your minimum viable pivot. And when I started pitching hobby school's corporate wellness program, I did not spend months building a fancy funnel. I made a simple PDF kit outlining the workshops, we put together a short LinkedIn connection DM sequence that the VA could use. I put together a basic information page for our 2026 workshops and also included a booking link for the discovery calls. That's it. And then my LinkedIn VA started reaching out and every touch point in that scenario becomes a data point. We start getting data. Are they interested in this? What kind of questions do they have? Are they saying, okay, this isn't me, but somebody else on my team may be interested in this. You can go connect with them. Are they booking calls? Are they asking about budget or timing? So after a few weeks, we're starting to get that data there and we can start refining our message. And I think you can do this minimum viable pivot in any business. You can start small, you can send it to 10 people, collect some real feedback from them, and then you can refine before you scale. I think the key lesson here is to launch the hypothesis. So for instance, in hobby school, my hypothesis was that, okay, we have these corporate wellness or these virtual summits that we're running every single month. This B2B market out there would be interested in having or purchasing seats for their employees where they can tap into these creative wellness workshops. That was my hypothesis. So you want to test and launch the hypothesis. Okay, so now pivots take time, and most of mine have taken a full year to fully stabilize. When I say that the Creator's MBA lab took me 14 months to feel right. Me saying that, okay, now I've hit the nail on the head. That's not being dramatic. That is the truth here. So I do think that a full year gives you space to test, refine and rebuild. So I want you to give yourself grace as you move into this next step in your business, like for instance, with these corporate wellness niche, this pivot that I'm doing here, I have given myself until December 2026 to say, okay, this is working or this is not working, because I know that this is going to take some time. So Q1 is where you're going to test and learn. And then in Q2, you can refine and then make some tweaks, and then you can relaunch. And then in Q3, you can systematize what is working. And then in Q4, you scale it, or maybe you shut it down and sunset it if it's not working. So if you are just a few weeks into your pivot or your tweak or whatever you're doing there and you're questioning yourself, I would say that's completely normal. Just realize that you are just in process. Nobody gets it right on the first try. I've never seen anybody get it right on the first try. And the people who make it are simply the ones who keep showing up. So if you're listening to this and you feel that tug, that quiet voice saying something that your business needs to change, I want you to take a deep breath and let you know. Let yourself know that you're not failing. You are evolving. And a pivot isn't a panic. It's just feedback. It's your business telling you that it's ready for the next version of you. So I want you to start small, have a few real conversations, pull the data, look at what lights you up and what drains you. That's very important. Also remember that clarity doesn't come first. Action does, and you move, then you understand. So, like for instance, this corporate wellness thing that I'm doing, I gotta do it first. Once I get the data, that will tell me, okay, yes, Destiny, you're on the right track, or no, this market or this niche doesn't want what you have to offer. And I will know that as I go through this process, as I take those actions. And I hope this episode gives you permission to slow down, listen to yourself and helps you build the next phase of your business with more clarity and confidence, confidence than you have ever had before. And if you are listening to this and you're like, destiny, I think I may need to pivot, but I need help. I want to invite you inside of the Creators MBA Lab. In this program, you get my personalized help in creating your growth flywheel for your next step in your business. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Creators MBA podcast. Bye for now. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.