It’s January, the time of year where it really sinks in how much our lives can change in a short amount of time. Because we are starting with a clean slate this first month, anything feels possible and we are taken over with that “can do attitude.’’ The truth is, our goals are always possible no matter the time of year and you can always change your mind and start over, or like the icon Madonna, you can always pivot.

The ability to pivot and knowing when to pivot is a skill in itself. I’m using Madonna as an example because she recently celebrated 40 years in the music business, and that is no easy feat. She has given us era’s that Taylor Swift and Beyonce have been inspired by. She has given us Material girl! Blonde ambition! Erotica! Ray of Light! Confessions of a dance floor.  Most importantly she has been able to pivot and adapt with the times. It was reported that she hired people to work with trend-setters to know when to drop music before it came into the mainstream, to always be one step ahead. She also launched her business, Maverick, in 1992.  She was able to pivot from one era,  one type of music to another and a variety of businesses, and through that she still remains the biggest-selling female recording artist of all time.

In Joanne Lipman’s book Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work she describes women who pivot as: “necessity entrepreneurs.” Research shows that women, along with people of colour and others in underrepresented groups, don’t have the same access to mentoring and opportunities, they’re usually paid less, and they’re promoted at lower rates. When they do manage to rise to the top, they often get the job only when a company is in dire straits. Then, when they fail, they get the blame and are marched right off the dreaded “glass cliff.” These barriers, plus inflexible working conditions, that often make it virtually impossible to balance work with family responsibilities, have forced women to become champions of reinvention. Lipman also mentions in the book that “somehow along the road to adulthood, we lose the power to reimagine different futures.” 

Pivoting can be seen as job hopping, but to me it's about building on top of what you have already created or what you are currently doing, that may be very different to what people recognise you for. The fear that people know you for a particular role means it can be scary to pivot into something else, because firstly you might not want to alienate an audience you’ve built or turn your back on a career trajectory you’ve put so much into. Secondly,there is a fear of people thinking: What on earth is she doing? Also known as the fear of being seen trying. I have many friends who are plagued with the ‘’But what if I lose xyz’’ if they opt for something different? 

When faced with these questions, it’s important to bear in mind that pivoting should centre around your principles. It's important to have key messages in what we want to put out in the world, so everything can fall under our mission. For example, ‘empowerment’ as a key message in someone's work could mean anything from being a life model at 9pm at night to being a life coach in the day.

Most importantly, I am a firm believer that people buy into you, more than whatever you are selling or the job role you are in. If you are a creator or have your own business, just like musicians, you can have a core ‘fan base’ but also cater to ‘casual fans’ who may follow you for the new thing you’ve created rather than the thing that put you into the zeitgeist in the first place. We all follow or engage with different people’s brands for different reasons, I may engage with Dolly Parton on instagram for her outfits, yet someone might follow her because they have a strong allegiance with Dollywood. If you are in a corporate role it is your characteristics that make you someone people want to follow, rather than the job title. It is when we are able to let go of these notions that we are able to pivot into something new. 

Recently I made the decision to pivot. As someone who is primarily known for talking about body image, I developed and presented a brand new documentary for Channel 4 about therapy. I am fascinated about therapy, but it isn’t something my audience were aware of or something you would have ever associated me with. There was a slight fear in whether this would ‘make sense’ to my brand, but it meant expanding my range, and also reaching a different set of people, and it worked. I had many messages from people within my audience who told me it resonated with them. This documentary was also part of my key theme in my work: to uplift.

Claire, 49, a music manager from London, who went from managing songwriters to creating her own festivals around the world says “I don’t think a lot of people believed I could do it, and some of my clients did question the audacity of me to make a key change at the age of [nearly] 50. I remember taking the idea to partners and they immediately said “No.”’ [They said] if I had more experience they would have seen it as a great opportunity, so I decided to do something different and do it by myself and I haven’t looked back since.”

Seda, 26, is Head of Operations for an architecture studio in London and decided she wanted to fulfil her five year old Kylie Minogue dreams of being a DJ, but feared she would be queried or judged for her decision, which was such a stark difference to her day job. This fed into her imposter syndrome but she wanted to push herself and venture out and go after that ambition. Nonetheless she has since played a few times at one turntable bar and says “the response has been amazing, and being able to pivot a side interest into another unique job is so heartwarming and exciting, and I have paid DJ gigs coming up this 2024. Who says you can’t do both?’’

There are so many fluctuating tides of life, and perhaps one of the most exciting elements is adapting, seeing where that wave takes you and start doing what your heart really wants you to be doing, rather than what fear tells us we should be doing. I’ll leave you with these words, as Madonna famously said “’I would rather live a year as a tiger than 1000 years as a sheep.”

Rightfully said Madge!