Right as Rain: How to Creatively Pivot Your Business

This year I decided to go all in on my speaking career.

It has been a goal of mine to make it a significant part of my business and last year, I started carrying out the plans to make it happen.

I booked several keynotes and workshops and started gaining serious momentum.

On January 31st, I made my biggest investment towards this goal by enrolling in a 90 day course to more deeply understand the business side of speaking. A few days later, I knew I had made the right decision as I delivered a homerun of a keynote to 500 people for US Sailing.

My confidence was sky high.

Then, less than a month later, all speaking gigs and events were canceled.

I was disheartened and discouraged. Plus I had just spent a lot of money to pursue this.

Of course, I wasn’t the only person experiencing this sort of thing. Most people were and many had lost a significant amount, if not all, of their business.

The restaurant and catering industry got hit extremely hard, as their businesses were forced to shut down. My brother’s company, Beau Catering in Hillsborough, was one of these. All his weddings canceled, which meant virtually no revenue and that forced him to lay off employees.

I could hear the stress in his voice every time we talked.

While all of this was happening in March, I started to see many efforts to help those restaurant, food truck, and catering company owners.

One of the people who inspired me most was my friend Tom Ferguson, CEO of Rise Southern Biscuits & Righteous Chicken. Tom created a pop-up kitchen for those chefs that couldn’t offer pickup or delivery options from their locations.

But possibly even more effectively, he put out consistent content to help other business owners figure out how to navigate this crisis.

“If you’re a sit-down restaurant, go through your reservation list and call them all offering a pick up meal package. Get creative. If you’re a cook, find a way to cook!” he said in one post.

That last line stuck with me.

And I’m not sure if my brother heard it or got inspiration from elsewhere, but that’s exactly what he did. In just a month’s time, he pivoted from catering 100+ people events every weekend to providing 480 family dinners each week through a similar program, Carrboro United.

Carrboro United is a one-stop shop where people can order family dinners from local restaurants and chefs three days a week and my brother sells out his meals every time.

I started noticing these creative pivots in other businesses, too.

My friend who’s a custom upholsterer started creating PPE masks for nurses in short supply.

Another friend started creating these amazing 3-D virtual home tours for real estate agents and property managers to show potential buyers and tenants.

All of these people actually have more business now.

Then, I remembered what Denise Withers, a change strategist and expert storyteller told me on my podcast about a process called “story design.”

Story design is a combination of storytelling and design thinking (I had heard of design thinking before). It’s a way of using storytelling to play out different paths we could take our businesses, what potential roadblocks could prevent it from happening, and what the potential outcomes could be.

As I thought about that concept and my friend Tom’s words, I started searching my own business.

If I still wanted to be a speaker, I needed to find a way to speak!

So I reached out to all my clients and asked if there was a way I could help them virtually. Denise’s concept of story design allowed me to see how storytelling could be used right now and helpful for people, and storytelling is my specialty.

People needed what I could offer.

My first success in this new direction was from an existing client in the healthcare industry. I started hosting a weekly Facebook Live show for them, featuring a different doctor each week to talk about how patients could navigate this pandemic successfully.

Then, I started picking up more one-on-one coaching clients, as this could be done over video chat.

And finally, this Friday, I will lead a virtual presentation to US Sailing, the client for which I delivered my last keynote speech before this all happened.

I didn’t expect things to take this turn, but I did what I could (learning from other people) to hold onto my business and in a crazy way, it changed for the better.

I am able to help my clients more now, often in a deeper way.

You can, too.

It won’t be easy and you will be discouraged and disheartened a lot.

But if you’re a cook, you need to sit down and creatively think about how you can find a way to keep cooking. Because the world needs you.

 

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Rain Bennett is a two-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker, writer, and competitive storyteller with over a decade of experience producing documentary films that focus on health and wellness. His mission is simple: to make the world happier and healthier by sharing stories of change.

You can read the rest of “Right as Rain” here, and check back every Wednesday on Chapelboro for a new column! 

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