107 - How to know when to PIVOT in your Career/Biz

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Summary

In this episode, we’re taking HOW to know when it may be time to PIVOT or switch gears in your career or business. I have some opinions on this one—that pretty wholely disagree with AI and the internet. We’ll talk what I believe are good reasons and bad reasons to pivot, identify some signs that indicate it's time to switch gears, and give you some solid examples of situations where pivoting has been the right move! Enjoy!

Takeaways

• Recognize the signs that indicate it's time to switch gears in your career or business.

• Assess the sustainability of your business and evaluate whether it's time to make changes.

• Pay attention to feelings of being stuck or stagnant and consider making subtle shifts to get back on track.

• Evaluate whether you want the lifestyle of those ahead of you and make decisions based on your own desires and values.

Chapters

• 00:00 Introduction

• 01:08 Different Perspectives on Career and Business

• 03:00 Invalid Reasons to Pivot

• 06:20 Reasons to Switch Gears

• 07:16 Realizing Your Business Isn't Sustainable

• 08:14 Feeling Stuck or Stagnant

• 16:49 Evaluating the Lifestyle

• 23:10 Cautionary Tale: Quitting vs Setting Boundaries

• 26:05 Conclusion

Resources

• Recent episodes navigating quitting:

  • 105 - A Power Question to Ask if you Want to Quit - Click Here

• On Passion: 091 - How PASSION Can Burn You Out - Click Here

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Drop a comment below…

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TRANSCRIPT:

Ellyn Schinke (00:10.146)

Hey there, Achiever, and welcome back to another episode of the Burnout Proof Podcast, where we're all about helping you build the mindsets, habits, and behaviors you need to burnout proof your life. My name is Ellen, and if you are a busy, overwhelmed, any a Grand 3 Achiever like I am, who's sick and tired of letting work run your life, you're in the right place. Here on Burnout Proof, I'm committed to giving you short, simple, no BS episodes that help you work less, live more, heal from your hustle.

and take back your life from burnout. Let's do this. Hello my friend and welcome back to another episode of the Burnout Proof Podcast. I am really excited today because I feel like I am wanting to talk about kind of a different take on career and on business. I feel like we've touched a lot recently on quitting and when we should quit and the questions we should ask ourselves before we quit. But I want to kind of come at it from a different perspective today. There are probably going to be some examples today that might...

resonate with people who are really, really contemplating a complete pivot in their career, maybe completely starting a new career or a new job. But what it also I think is worth talking about is when is it time to just switch gears, not necessarily up and quit, but just do something different, make some even subtle changes. What are the things that we should look for? What are the questions that we should ask ourselves when we're navigating this? Because sometimes when we are feeling burned out, one of the best things that we can do

is to literally just pivot. Sometimes that is exactly what it takes. Sometimes that subtle shift, that subtle deviation is all that we need to get ourselves back on track, to get ourselves unstuck, to get out of that feeling of being stagnant, to maybe even get out of burnout. I want to navigate this with some examples from my own story and also some client examples to really, really lock this in today.

So let's go ahead and dive into it. And actually where I want to start is I want to start by talking about what are some reasons not to like, what are some reasons that I don't necessarily think are valid, legit reasons to completely pivot, to completely switch gears in your business. And actually I want to start by talking about burnout. I will fully admit that sometimes I use a lot of AI in my content processes and

Ellyn Schinke (02:32.714)

I actually disagreed with a lot of the things that AI came up with when I asked it to generate some ideas for me. All of the ideas that we're going to talk about that are things that I believe help are completely my own ideas because I was really not into the options that AI, that chat GPT and that Notion AI gave me. But I want to share some of them with you because I think they're common misconceptions. The first thing that AI generated was that we have to recognize the signs of burnout. But if you ask me, burnout, depends on the type of burnout.

For the most part, burnout isn't necessarily a reason for us to switch gears in our business and on our career. We talk a lot about the signs of burnout in this podcast, just in the work I do in general. I'm not gonna necessarily talk about the signs of burnout here, but what I will quickly say is there's four different types of burnout from my experience and from what I see. There's physical burnout, which is kind of the energy side. There's overwhelmed burnout, which is like the productivity side. There's emotional burnout, and then there's boredom.

And if you ask me three or four of those, I actually don't think are a good reason to switch gears and to completely upend or pivot in your business or in your career. I don't think physical burnout is a reason to. I don't think overwhelmed burnout is a reason to, and I don't think boredom burnout is a reason to. I think those three are actually great examples of types of burnout where if we feel like we are experiencing those, quitting and pivoting and switching gears in our business might not actually help.

Like if it's physical burnout, that's just a sign that you need more self-care in your life. It's an overwhelmed burnout. That's just a sign you need more systems in your business and in your life. If it's boredom burnout, that's just a sign you need to maybe like do something a little bit different, maybe get out of your comfort zone a little bit, push yourself to the point where you're getting a little bit more novelty and a little bit more challenge in your business. It might even not even be your business when it comes to the boredom side of things. It might actually be your, it might be your personal life.

I actually think emotional burnout is probably the only one that's kind of a legitimate reason to maybe completely pivot and switch gears and maybe even quit your job. I actually found that was something that AI generated that I don't agree with. Even the lack of fulfillment one. Lack of fulfillment is actually something that I would say is most closely related to emotional burnout. AI said, if the work no longer aligns with your passion or your purpose, it might be time to consider a change. I would say yes and no.

Ellyn Schinke (04:55.406)

to that one. I think sometimes we can get a little bit too caught up in making our work the ultimate in our passion and our purpose in life. Don't get me wrong. I think that's great for your career and your work to be aligned with your purpose and your passion, but actually sometimes that can backfire. I shared an episode a while ago, which I'll go ahead and share in the show notes as well. Again, head to CoachEllen, ELLYN.com, slash podcast to check out those show notes. I shared a podcast a while ago where I was kind of getting on Gary Vee a little bit because

passion doesn't prevent burnout. And I think sometimes people think that, if they're passionate about their work, if their work is very, excuse me, very aligned with their purpose, that that's gonna be the end all be all, and it's gonna prevent everything in their business. Every negative thing in their business is what I'm saying. And I feel like that's not necessarily how it plays out. And when we have that expectation, it can really set us up for failure.

Sometimes being really, really passionate and feeling very purpose-driven in your business can backfire because you don't know how to turn off. You don't know how to rest. You don't know how to take breaks. Feeling overwhelmed. Like I said, I don't feel like that's necessarily a good reason to switch gears and pivot and try something completely different in your career. These are all examples of things that I don't think are necessarily good reasons. I don't even think work-life balance or work-life imbalance is a reason to switch gears in your work. What are some reasons?

why we might want to switch gears in our work, why we might want to pivot and do something different. I think one of the things that is a big sign to look out for is when you realize your business isn't sustainable anymore. Financially, mentally, emotionally, from a time perspective, when you realize your business isn't sustainable anymore and the amount that you are pouring into your business just isn't kind of panning out with what you're getting back out of your business.

That is really a situation where we have to kind of ask ourselves, is my business truly sustainable? Is my career truly sustainable anymore? And I want to give you some examples of what this might look like from some clients that I've worked with. So I had one client who was a coach in the coaching space, had her own business, had her own business for a very long time, longer than I've actually been in business. And I usually work with people who are a little bit earlier in their careers are kind of getting, you know, they're just starting to

Ellyn Schinke (07:16.238)

thrive in their careers. Actually, I don't even know why I just said that because that's not true. I work with people who have all lengths of time in their career. But this one client in particular, we'd been doing all of this work on her business. And then suddenly we were talking about her values one day. We were talking about her business systems and her values. And she had this massive aha about the reason why she'd been feeling the way she'd been feeling. We thought it was boredom in her business. We thought it was all of these things in her business.

But really what it came down to is her business didn't feel sustainable anymore. For an exceptionally long time in her business, she was not able to make ends meet. She wasn't able to pay herself. She wasn't able to put money away in savings. The financial instability of her business had been unsustainable for so long that it frankly was creating some resentment in how she was feeling about her business. And that was a massive aha for her.

of why her business wasn't working. It wasn't systems, it wasn't boredom with her offers. There was the elements of that in there, but really fundamentally when it came down to it from a mental, emotional, and financial perspective, her business was not sustainable. That is what led her to have a serious aha. In her situation, what she ended up doing as a result of that was she actually decided she was going to step away from her business because we brainstormed all sorts of things to do. Well, what if you do this?

And frankly, and I actually resonate a lot with her saying this, and I said this in the last podcast episode, I'm the type of person that I need a lot of data. I need a lot of evidence. I need past results to reinforce some of the things that I'm doing. And if I don't have that, it's really, really hard for me to buy in and believe and think it's going to work out, like if I don't have that evidence. So it's 100% really hard for me to do something for the first time.

And it takes a lot of momentum for me to get to that place. And I think it was the same thing with this client is every new idea we would throw out, well, what about trying this? Well, what about trying this? She just could feel herself. It just wasn't enough and it wasn't getting her excited. So what she actually ended up doing is she went back to, she used to work in kind of government nonprofits and she went back to doing that work because she was realizing she needed a pause button.

Ellyn Schinke (09:39.138)

she needed a pause button from entrepreneurship and the pressure of entrepreneurship for her to get to the point where she could start to really kind of fall in love with being her own boss again and fall in love with having a business again. And that pause button was really, really important for her to be able to reevaluate what it was and was not and what she did and did not want in her business. So that I think is a...

big aspect of this. When you realize your business isn't sustainable anymore, that might be a time to switch gears or to do something different. For me in my business, what I started to realize wasn't sustainable anymore is I had been operating low ticket for about a year, year and a half. I kind of was almost running an experiment in my business to see how did I like being more of a low ticket coach, like having low ticket price points on basically all of my offers.

Similarly, what I started to find is the sheer amount of hours that I would have to put in to support myself and support my life and to pay my bills and to be able to have the kind of lifestyle that I wanted to the amount that I would have to work to do that by charging low ticket prices was not sustainable. That was ultimately what made me reevaluate my price structure. Some of my offers in my business was me realizing that

this was not a sustainable amount of time that I was having to work. And financially, it wasn't sustainable in my business either. So it might look like that. Maybe it's not a, you know, you've become so jaded by the ability of your business to support yourself. Maybe it's more so you realize that the sheer amount you're gonna have to work to be able to make ends meet and to have a comfortable, happy lifestyle, given the work that you're doing and how much you're charging or how much, maybe even just how much you're making in your corporate job, maybe that's what makes you realize.

it's time to switch gears and do something different. That would be the first kind of sign to look for. That would be the first thing to assess in terms of how to know if it's time to switch gears in your business or career. The second is when you're feeling stuck or stagnant and you have for a while and making changes isn't fixing it. That actually I think also dovetails back to this client that I mentioned before, this client that I mentioned before who'd been

Ellyn Schinke (11:55.65)

trying new things and doing things different. I think the one thing, there are a few things that I think she hadn't tried yet, but she felt like she'd been trying for so long to make it work, and yet nothing was seemingly working. That's when she started to feel really, really stuck and really, really stagnant in your business. And that's, I think, why I'm so passionate about and why the program that I'm kind of creating and working toward is called Burnout Proof Business, because I think there's some things that we need to think about almost from the get-go in our business.

to not get to that point, to not be two, three, four, maybe even five years in to running our businesses and realize, I can't make it work. It's not sustainable. And to realize I feel stuck in stagma because I've been tweaking and trying things for forever and it's just not working. That's why I'm so passionate about the idea of creating a burnout per business from the get go so that we can think about what is sustainable? What do I need to charge to make ends meet? What are...

being more strategic almost about the things that we're trying so that we don't get years down the line and realize, oh my God, I am just stuck, I'm stagnant, and I just feel jaded by this. So if you've been feeling that stuck, stagnant, I've been making changes, things just aren't working and aren't fixing it, that might be another sign that you need to make changes. And actually, I think an even more specific example of that, as I've shared, I have had a side hustle since.

2014. As I record this, I'm coming up on 10 years of having a side hustle. My business is not a side hustle anymore, fortunately, but I'm coming up on 10 years of having a side hustle. I've been in business, like it has an LLC for over five years now, but my realization of feeling stuck in stagment was in my early years of business, I really didn't have a lot of clarity on what I did, the kind of work I did, who I supported. I didn't have a lot of clarity on that.

I'll be completely honest about that. I think I started off as a very generically a life coach. I think that is a, in a lot of respects, the cliches are true. I don't want to say it because I feel for the people who are life coaches, and I know sometimes they just want the ability to help people with a lot of different things. But I remember when I was a life coach, I didn't have a lot of clarity on what I did and how I supported people. I would have these vague platitudes that

Ellyn Schinke (14:17.538)

take back your life and all of this stuff that I used to say. But the fact of the matter is, I think I wasn't attracting the kind of client I wanted to work with or I wasn't attracting clients, period, frankly, for extended times early on in my business because I was unclear on who I helped. So how the hell could other people be clear on who I helped? But maybe even from a corporate perspective, maybe you're in an entry-level job or maybe you're...

in this kind of similar job where it feels very vague. Like what you do, you kind of just like support 80 bajillion people and there's not a lot of clarity in your career and your career path. That also I think can make you feel very, very stuck and very stagnant. So for me and my business, what I needed to do was create that clarity. And perhaps one of the biggest things that I had to do to get there was I had to stop listening to other people. I actually think one of the best things I ever did for myself in business, and actually I found burnout coming out of the season.

is I realized that I had been in back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back group coaching programs for a year and a half. It suddenly dawned on me that I was more confused than clear, that I was getting input from all of these different coaches that I'd been working with, from all of these different people and all of these different programs that I'd been in about what I should do and the kind of business I could create. None of it resonated. None of it was self-generated.

A lot of it was conflicting and I really, really struggled to have a clear path forward. Finally, what I did is I told myself, you cannot join any other group programs. You cannot join any other coaching programs for the next year. Actually, I think I made it six months into that when I found burnout and I realized, holy crap, this is what I should be doing. This is where everything I've ever wanted and everything I've ever done comes together. It's under the umbrella of burnout stress management.

And that came out of me realizing I'm stuck, I'm stagnant, I'm confused. What I've been doing to try to find clarity is not working, which what I've been doing is basically looking to other people to create that clarity in my business and my career. I need to take some space and just find the clarity on my own and look inward because it's always better when it's self-generated. So that's one thing you can do is realize when your business isn't sustainable anymore. The second thing you can look at is realize if you've been feeling stuck or stagnant and you've been feeling that way for a while.

Ellyn Schinke (16:41.61)

and making changes and whatever you've been doing just hasn't been fixing it, that's another sign that it might be time to switch gears and do something different. The third idea though, this actually throws it back to grad school for me, and it's something that I've realized in grad school, and I have talked about this on the podcast before, but not necessarily in this context. When you look up the ladder and you realize you don't want the lives of the people that are ahead of you, that is another sign that it might be time to switch gears.

in your business or in your career. I think this is something that applies in the entrepreneurial context and it's also something that applies in the corporate context. The first time I had this aha was when I was in graduate school. I just said, get my PhD, going to be Dr. Ellen, all the things. So exciting, right? I had an aha about probably a few months before I finally left my PhD of looking up the ladder

looking at the people around me, the graduate students who were ahead of me in the graduate program. But not even just that, I was looking at the postdocs in my lab and in the other labs. I was looking at the principal investigators, the PIs, the people who led the labs at my institution that I was at, looking at my mentor. I loved my mentor. I said it multiple times while I was in graduate school and I would still stand by this. She was...

superwoman. I was like, if I want to be anybody in this whole program, it's her because she just is a badass mom. She's just an awesome human and she's successful. She was an M.D. PhD. She was just like a badass. I loved my mentor. But that being said, I looked at her life. I looked at her schedule. I looked at even just the culture of

constantly needing to get new grants and constantly kind of feeling the financial pressures of being in science, I looked at that and I was like, I don't want that. I don't want that life. I don't kind of have to deal with that. And I think that was the first time I let myself look at the lifestyle of the career path I was headed down and evaluate whether I wanted that lifestyle. Like I think that's actually something that sometimes we get too caught up in.

Ellyn Schinke (18:56.546)

as entrepreneurs or as corporate professionals or as academics or scientists serve, maybe you're in STEM, like whatever the hell it might be. I think sometimes we get too caught up in how that path looks, how people will look at us. Like Dr. Ellen still sounds awesome. I wish I was Dr. Ellen, right? I'd love to be able to be like, PhD, after my name. Like that sounds awesome. But the fact of the matter is,

I wanted the results. I didn't want the process. And I didn't want the lifestyle that would come with the result. How many corporate professionals or people who work at these big shot Fortune 100, Fortune 500 companies?

How often do we get so caught up in the money that we're making or being able to say, we work for Amazon or insert company here? How often do we get caught up in the accolades and not the lifestyle that those accolades create? It's really easy, I think, to get distracted by the accolades and the things that are so validating.

about pursuing a career path and not the lifestyle. I think entrepreneurs do it too. I actually saw somebody post on threads, I'm on threads now, and actually this was a post on threads that made me be like, oh, I needed to be here. These are my people. Because somebody posted something along the lines of what if I don't want 10K months or 50K months or a seven figure business? What if I just want a business that allows me to have freedom that pays for my life?

And that allows me to shut off on the weekends. What if I want that? You know, and I think it's the same thing with entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs can get so caught up in being the next Jenna Kutcher or the next Rachel Hollis or the next Brendan Burchard or having the next like five, six figure launch that we sometimes I think don't ask ourselves, do I want the lifestyle that having those results requires?

Ellyn Schinke (21:12.862)

Oh, that's a good question actually. Do I want the lifestyle that getting those results and those accolades requires?

I just did mind blown for those of you who are listening. Mind blown emoji. Insert mind blown emoji because I feel like that's the question that we're not asking. That's what I mean when I say when you look up the ladder, do you want the lives that those people have? The senior level executives, the CEOs or the badass entrepreneur that you follow on Instagram? You might like the highlight reel.

of what their lives look like, but do you actually want the day to day?

because that was what made me realize, nope, I do not want to get my PhD. Dr. Ellen sounds awesome, but I don't want to get my PhD. And frankly, I don't even know that I want some of the entrepreneurial lifestyles that I see. I don't want a team. I've been a manager. I don't want to manage. I don't want like this.

No, I saw Amy Porterfield after her last launch. She took her team on a, you know, this big vacation, which, you know, vacation looked awesome. And, you know, it looked fun to go party with all of her people on her team. Like, that looked fun. But do I want the lifestyle of having to manage all of these people?

Ellyn Schinke (22:40.75)

Do I want the lifestyle of that kind of a launch that she did? Because I actually like did some of the free stuff that led to her launch. Do I want that? And the answer is no, I don't. So that is also a really important question for us to ask. And if we realize we don't want that, we realize that we don't want that life, we don't want that lifestyle, that's another sign that we should switch gears. And the very, very last one, and this is gonna be a relatively quick one, is I wanna tell you a story of a client that did it right.

but this also comes with a cautionary tale. I actually just started working with a client and in our very, very first call, oh my God, this is so funny, this was actually yesterday, in our very, very first call, she rolls into the call, gives me her little life update, and then she goes, oh, by the way, I quit. Literally goes, by the way, I quit my job, and I'm sitting there going, what? You quit your job? Does that change what we're doing together and what I'm coaching you on? But she told me, she's like, yep, I quit my job.

It was a little bit of a rage quitting situation, I feel, but I think it was also about her doing these three things, realizing her work wasn't sustainable anymore, how she was feeling stuck and stagnant and repeating the same patterns over and over again and making changes, but it wasn't fixing things. And I think she was also looking at the other people that she worked with and the people who were above her and realizing that she didn't want their lives. I think she did all three of these things, but she said something that I think is a little bit of a cautionary tale for us.

She said something along the lines of, it's easier for me to quit than it is for me to set the boundaries that I need to set. And that I actually think harkens back to last week's episode. Is the reason you want to quit because it would be easier than setting the boundaries that you need to set. So I feel like these two, you know, I guess it wasn't last episode, it would have been two episodes ago. These two episodes, today's episode, which I think is episode number 107 and episode number 105 about like something that you need to ask yourself before you quit. Those are really, really related.

Because sometimes we can make a pivot, we can make a change, we can switch gears, but we can do it for the wrong reasons. We can do it because we're not being honest with ourselves about the fact that we might need to set some boundaries. We're not being honest with ourselves about the fact that we might need to do something different. Whether it's again, systems, boundaries, our mindset, you know, how we're taking care of ourselves. Pivoting and switching gears isn't necessarily going to fix

Ellyn Schinke (25:09.666)

something that is a you thing. That's why I say so often, yes, like becoming burned out sucks and we don't want it, but staying burned out is a choice. When burnout repeats in our lives, that's about the choices we are making. And so that is, though that client did it right and asked ourselves all the right questions, there's a cautionary tale there that we've got to make sure that we are not quitting as like the first fix to the problem, that we are not quitting

because we think that is going to fix our lives and our lifestyle, because it's not. We've got to ask ourselves and be intentional about the things that we can take responsibility for, the things that we need to do different to have the kind of lifestyle we want. So these are some of the pointers. How to know when you switch gears or pivot in your business or career.

When you realize it's not sustainable anymore, when you're feeling stuck or stagnant, you have for a while, but you're realizing making changes isn't fixing it. When you look up the ladder and see lifestyles that you don't want, but also realize that we've got to take accountability for the things that we can do differently. So that is it. That is all I have for you today. I hope you enjoyed this episode, but before you go, I just want to thank you again so much for spending some time with me today. My goal, the whole reason I started this podcast is to put the things I'm learning, the ah-hahs I'm having in the hands.

of any gram three achievers like me who really, really need them because I know I'm not the only one who's sick of the cookie cutter BS, sleep more, quit your job tips, right? Like that's why I really want to hear what you took from today's episode. So go ahead, head on over to Instagram, shoot me a DM or take a screenshot of the episode. Tag me. I'm at coach Ellen again, E L Y N. And if you haven't already, I would really appreciate if you take a moment.

to subscribe to this podcast, follow us on Spotify, leave us a rating and or a review, depends on where you're listening. But definitely, not least, I know that we all know someone who is struggling with chronic stress and burnout. And if this podcast is helping you, it very well might help that person too. So if you've got a friend or a loved one in mind, I'm sure they would appreciate you sharing this podcast with them. So thank you for being here. I appreciate you so much, my friend, and I'll see you next time.