View your work and your life through a strategic lens, make smart decisions based on your insight and your intelligence, and implement those decisions.

Let’s first consider some common myths about business roles:

[extracted from E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber]

• The Entrepreneur works on the business; devising and implementing functions that include marketing, planning, building, and reviewing revenue and profit. He/she is the dreamer, lives in the future, thrives on change, and craves control.

• The Manager focuses on hiring, training, mentoring, and growing talent. He/she is the thinker, tends to live in the past, clings to the status quo, and craves order.

• The Technician works in the business. He/she is the doer, loves to tinker, and lives in the present.

In reality, as an owner or principal of an organization, particularly an entrepreneurial one, it is imperative that you work at the best and highest use of your time, typically in the role of the entrepreneur and manager more than the technician. The problem is that most of us start our businesses and prefer to work in the technician role. That’s the fatal flaw.

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Disaster… maybe not in the Hurricane Katrina sort of way, but for me – a business owner launching a new company name, brand, and website – well, for me, that disaster came in the form of a broken email link … on the day of the launch. So all of you who immediately sent notes of congratulations received a response saying there was a fatal permanent error in my new email address.

Yes. Just like that, my euphoria over the launch and everything that it stood for dissipated in a matter of seconds. But I have to tell you that unlike in years past, my panicked reaction to this disaster lasted only minutes, instead of days. I said a silent prayer that you all would understand that sometimes, no matter how many times technology is tested (and believe me, we tested it A LOT), *&it happens!

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This quote by Gail Sheehy perfectly fits advice offered by a mentor…that in life, career, or business, change is necessary for growth (and vice versa). Without it, we wither and die. We must constantly evaluate, dream, and reach so that we may achieve our potential, and more!

After 11 years owning and growing The Career Group, LLC – a company I started to focus primarily on career coaching – I felt deeply that a big change was needed. I just didn’t know what that change would be, or how and when it would occur.

I spend my days coaching my clients on all facets of business – from strategy to leadership; communication to conflict; from hiring the best people, to firing the toxic ones when necessary. The more I thought about my business, the more I realized that I had turned into the proverbial shoe cobbler – crafting beautiful shoes that all my clients could wear, while my children went barefoot.

This revelation, while painful, led me to apply to the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business program. The intensive, 13-week program helps entrepreneurs like me create jobs and economic opportunity by providing greater access to education, capital, and business support services. It gave me the boost I needed to change what had become comfortable.

During and after the Goldman Sachs program, I began strategizing with my business and marketing advisors, and through this process, Pivot Growth Partners emerged. A name and a company that was more comprehensive, more focused, and more descriptive of the work that we actually do. Let me tell you more about the name.

The noun ‘PIVOT’ is defined as “a pin, point, or short shaft on the end of which something rests and turns, or upon and about which something rotates or oscillates.” The verb ‘pivot’ is defined as “to turn on or as on a pivot.”

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