twenty people to buy the same product and try to get a
group discount. Although this concept had been introduced
in the original business plan, when Lefkofsky brought it up
again more than a year later, Mason and the other team
members shot it down. This time, Lefkofksy wouldn’t let it
go. When the economy continued to spiral downward in late
2008 and the company was forced to lay people off, they
knew it was time for a change.^2 “There was this pressure
from the market crash [and] looking at our burn rate and
revenue—it was time for us to try something to scratch that
itch,” a source from the company told Business Insider.^3
And that’s how Groupon, a company valued at almost
thirteen billion dollars at the time of its IPO in 2011, was
born.^4 How did they do it? They certainly didn’t plan for
any of it at the start. They did something much more
effective. They pursued a strategy that has served
entrepreneurs well since the dawn of business. They
pivoted.
A pivot is powerful because it takes away all of your
excuses. It puts you back in control of the game you’re
playing. Pivoting isn’t plan B; it’s part of the process.
Unexpected things will happen; setbacks do occur. Whether
or not you’re prepared to pivot will affect how well you
weather those storms and find a way to survive.
We often look at successful people, hearing their stories
of failure, and think that they succeeded despite the fact that
they failed. But that’s not true. Successful people and