Don't Quit, Just Pivot

My first cycle ran from age 13 to 16. 13 is young to get started but my memory of back then was the abundance of time I had. I didn't live close to my friends so ended up being glued to the computer from a young age. It started with selling random bits around the house on eBay, which led to dropshipping, then wholesaling, then selling bootleg DVDs, the DVD9 kind, where you needed a jailbreak player because of region blocking.

I was importing them from Asia with the latest films and TV series, selling them on eBay, until Warner Bros sued me. That pushed me into selling information products and eBooks, and eventually all roads led to affiliate marketing, where I actually made decent money. A few hundred pounds a week doesn't sound like a lot, but as a 16 year old it was extremely significant.

At 16 I moved to a new sixth form college and found that spending that money on my social life was far more entertaining…

My second cycle ran from around 21 to 30, a solid nine years. It started in my second year of uni, when I co-founded a what's on guide and student discount card for Manchester students. It went nowhere, but introduced me to some interesting people. That led me to co-found a student notice board in my third year, that also didn't quite go as planned, but taught me an enormous amount. My business partners at the time were building Facebook pages to promote the site, and we gradually realised that's where the real opportunity was. This was around 2013.

That realisation led me to Jungle Creations. It started with a website called Viral Thread (now VT), where I was writing viral articles and publishing them across meme pages we owned on Facebook. I built my own collection of pages, and that became Jungle Creations and the portfolio of brands it holds today. The first real taste of success came in the summer of 2014 at the age of 24 when some of our articles went particularly viral and revenue went from a few hundred to £15k a month. Three years in and the breakthrough had finally arrived. It was another 7 years until we sold a majority stake to private equity, the end to a brilliant chapter. In August 2021, we sold Jungle Creations to Private Equity.

Now I'm three years into my third cycle, and I still haven't quite figured it out, though I believe we're on the precipice. In early 2022, I fully committed to Packchat, a private social network. We got 50,000 people on the waitlist and onboarded a good chunk of them, but I fell out of love with the business model and pivoted toward more revenue-generating apps. That pivot is still unfolding.

What's funny is that most people who know of me know me through Jungle Creations. And you'd probably assume that after selling that business, I'd be able to start something new and find success quickly, or at least not have to wait years for it. But regardless of your previous wins, you have to figure everything out again. You have to pivot until you succeed.

So what's the point of all this?

In a world where AI is changing things daily, where new businesses are launching and dying because Claude dropped a new feature, the need to pivot has never been greater. And this isn't just for business owners. It applies to anyone trying to build something, gain traction, or simply do great work in whatever role they're in.

But pivoting takes a huge emotional toll and I want to talk about that because it's very real. I was explaining it recently to a colleague who's been part of this journey with me for the last three years. He asked how it felt, knowing we hadn't yet found success.

I explained the kind of torturous self-motivation cycle I've been stuck in for as long as I can remember. I do the research and get excited about something new,  genuinely excited. The opportunity is clear and I rally everyone behind that direction, and pour myself and everyone's energy into it. And then it ends up not working out the way I'd planned. The morale you built through conviction and energy flatlines into frustration and doubt. The rallying cry didn't bear fruit.

And then you have to do it all over again. Research. Find the new angle. Get everyone energised. Say, "This time it's going to be different, I promise." Of course, it actually is different because each failure is just brilliant data that lays the foundation for what’s next. 

That takes a lot. Every single time, the self-doubt creeps back in. That voice in your head, the one telling you you're a failure, that you just got lucky before, gets louder. And it's amplified tenfold when you have a team looking to you for answers, because you start to wonder if they're beginning to doubt you too.

What does this mean for Marketers?

Whilst these lessons are hopefully applicable to all, I want to emphasise this is the exact same loop every marketer is living through right now. The channel that worked six months ago stops performing. The strategy you built your Q1 plan around gets disrupted by a platform update or a new AI tool. The client CEO wants to go all in on AI.

Us Marketers get the instinct to keep pushing the thing that used to work because you've already invested in it, because you sold it internally, because pivoting feels like admitting failure.

There’s this constant hesitance around AI, it’s palpable. Is this a phase? Is it the next shiny thing that never quite delivered on its promise like crypto? But this is different, I promise (famous last words). 

Think of AI not as artificial intelligence but collective intelligence. Centuries of discoveries condensed into one thing that can help you in whatever problem your solving. 

Now, more than ever, is the time to pivot. Use that collective intelligence to try something new, something different. Were all passengers in this societal pivot, the worst thing to do is quit or ignore it. It’s going to take the world a few years to figure this all out, you might as well go exploring with it.

As for my journey, it might be the standard three year wait until it clicks but I’m prepared for it to be longer. I believe there is a fact of life, nature maybe. If you refuse to quit and continue to pivot, you can guarantee success. Somehow I have to find this twisted joy and excitement in each pivot. Everything that didn't quite get there was all designed to fuel this moment that's bestowed upon us. What fortune to not have been gifted premature success so you could truly revel in the soon to be, long overdue, fruits of your well earned labour. What other choice is there?

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