Pivot or push through? It is one of the toughest calls a business owner can make. In this week’s Let’s Talk, our experts share how to know the difference before it costs you.
Every business owner hits a wall at some point. Sales slow down, the market shifts, or the model that worked last year just stops making sense.
The hard part is knowing whether you need to push through or change direction entirely. Pivoting too early can mean giving up on something that just needed more time. Waiting too long can mean losing ground you will never get back. It is one of the most difficult calls in business, and there is rarely a clean answer.
In this week’s Let’s Talk, our experts weigh in on when it makes sense to pivot your business model and when you are better off staying the course.
Let’s Talk!
Shane Tyrrell, Advisory Director, Prosci ANZ
“Most business leaders frame this as a strategy question, pivot or persist? In my experience working with organisations across Australia and New Zealand, that’s is far too often the wrong starting point.
The real question is, was the change ever properly adopted in the first place?
Prosci research shows that 88% of initiatives with excellent change management meet or exceed their objectives. That number drops to 13% when change management is poor. The gap isn’t strategy, it’s people.
Many organisations that feel stuck haven’t failed because their direction was wrong. They’ve struggled because the change they envisaged was never fully absorbed. The vision was set, the investment was made, the roadmap was clear but the people weren’t brought along.
Before reaching for a pivot, leaders should honestly assess three things, 1) Do employees understand why this change matters? 2) Do teams have the skills and confidence to deliver on it? 3) Are leaders actively reinforcing it, visibly, consistently and every day?
If those foundations are missing, a pivot won’t fix what incomplete adoption created. You’ll simply be executing the next strategy just as poorly as the last one.
If those foundations are genuinely in place and the results still aren’t coming, then a pivot is worth serious consideration. But most rough patches are symptoms of incomplete change not evidence of a flawed strategy.
The organisations that win aren’t always the ones that pivot fastest. They’re the ones that build the capability to change and bring their people with them.”
Emma Boucher, Partner, McGrathNicol
“The critical test is whether performance indicators show sustained erosion, and when underlying economics or market fundamentals have structurally shifted rather than experiencing a cyclical downturn. Where declining margins, persistent customer loss, or structural cost disadvantages are evident, organisations need to act decisively. This may include exiting unviable segments or redefining their value proposition.
Where a business remains fundamentally viable however, the focus should be on disciplined cost optimisation and process efficiency programs: tightening the cost base, improving processes, and lifting productivity. Organisations that act early, either to pivot or drive performance, consistently deliver stronger outcomes. Our team provides support through data-led diagnostics, cost optimisation, and operating model redesign, paired with practical roadmaps that enable timely decisions and disciplined execution.
In deciding whether to pivot a business model, organisations should adopt scenario-based planning to define their limits under stress. Contingency plans must be practical and ready for execution.”
Kim Owen-Jones, General Manager Customer Acquisition, MYOB
For many SMEs, that’s one of the hardest calls to make. With customers spending more carefully and costs remaining high, it can be difficult to distinguish temporary pressure from a genuine shift in demand. MYOB’s latest Business Monitor shows 67% of SMEs expect economic conditions to soften over the next year, yet more than half still expect their own pipelines to remain stable or grow.
If you’re deciding whether to pivot or stay the course, three questions are worth asking. First, are customers simply behaving differently, or are their priorities changing? A rough patch may mean customers still value your offer but are spending less or delaying decisions. A pivot may be needed when customers consistently choose alternatives or place less importance on your solution.
Second, is the market tough, or is the business model itself under pressure? Softer demand happens, but ongoing margin compression, declining retention or an unviable revenue stream may signal a deeper issue.
Finally, are you reacting to short-term pressure or a consistent pattern? One difficult quarter doesn’t necessarily require a change in direction. The businesses that navigate uncertainty best are rarely the fastest to react, but the ones that diagnose the problem clearly first.
Katrina Pilcher, Chief Commercial Officer, Altis Consulting
“Not every difficult period means your business model needs reinvention. But when customer needs fundamentally shift, pushing through with the same approach becomes risky.
The clearest signal it’s time to pivot is when your offering no longer solves the problem customers actually need solved.
The businesses that adapt early are usually the ones most connected to their customers. In consulting, that means not just understanding what clients are asking for today, but identifying the pressures and challenges emerging underneath the surface.
That’s why it’s so important to go beyond transactional relationships and take the time to deeply understand the pressures clients are facing, the workarounds they’re creating and where their priorities are heading next.
Successful businesses don’t wait for a drop in revenue to make changes. They evolve early, based on what they’re hearing and seeing in the market.
Businesses that stay close to their customers are far more likely to anticipate change before the market shifts around them.”
Brad Eisenhuth, CEO, The Outperformer
“Deciding whether to push through an economic rough patch or execute a strategic pivot is one of the most critical decisions a leader will face. The fundamental error many business owners make is treating a pivot as a transactional escape route from short-term friction. Instead, it must be approached as a clinical evaluation of your business architecture.
To determine the right path, you must diagnose whether the resistance you are experiencing is a feature or a bug.
A feature is a natural, predictable challenge inherent to your chosen business model.
A bug is an anomaly – an external market shift or internal structural failure that is actively disrupting performance.
Before shifting lanes, you must objectively calculate the rate of return on fixing your current model versus the hypothesised return of the pivot.
If the current friction is simply an emotional reaction to operational frustration, that same psychological stress will inevitably reappear in the new model.
A successful pivot requires a clear understanding of the baseline outcomes you are chasing – whether that is financial stability, predictability, or lifestyle.
Treat the challenges of the pivot as strategic opportunities to design around, ensuring you build for any weaknesses that play against your strengths.”
Michael McRae, Co-founder, Two Dudes
“Most founders confuse a rough patch with needing to pivot away from a broken model. They’re not the same thing.
In my experience, a rough patch is usually beyond your control: production mishaps, a bad quarter, or distribution headaches. But pivoting away from a broken model is what you need to do when “having grit” doesn’t fix your problem.
At Two Dudes, we’ve had both. Early on, we needed to pivot in retail. We tried selling through barbershops because that’s where we thought we’d get cut through with dudes. Sales were flat. We could have doubled down on trade spend with barbers and hoped sales increased. Instead, we pivoted and doubled down on direct-to-consumer to build proof points, then re-entered retail from a position of strength and scale: pharmacies and supermarkets.
That wasn’t a pivot in the “burn it down and start again” sense – but a pivot from a sales channel lens.
My rule of thumb: if you’re getting traction but something within your control is bad, push through and fix it as you go. If customers aren’t engaging at all – no word of mouth, no repeat purchases, no organic interest – that’s a signal worth taking seriously.
Grit matters in a rough patch. But having grit and applying it to a broken business model is just expensive stubbornness.”
Joe McCord, Head of Growth and Customer Success, Pinch Payments
“The key question is whether the challenge is temporary, or whether the business can no longer move forward in its current form. If you’re going through a rough patch, the first step should be seeking expert advice to properly assess the situation. Often, founders are too close to the problem to diagnose it objectively themselves.
From there, you generally have two options. The first is to get the house in order – identify the operational, financial, or strategic issues and work through them. The second is to bring in professional support, whether that’s a systems and operations specialist, solutions consultant, accountant, or another expert relevant to the challenge.
If you’ve genuinely explored both paths and the business still can’t solve the problem – either because the issues are fundamentally unsolvable or the business can’t sustainably support the required changes – then it’s likely time to pivot. At that point, pivoting isn’t failure; it’s a strategic decision to adapt rather than continue forcing a model that no longer works.”
Chris Taylor, General Manager, Excite Media
“A rough patch and a changing market are two very different things, and I think a lot of businesses confuse the two.
Every business will face difficult periods where the answer could simply be better execution, exercising patience, or perhaps stronger leadership. But there are also moments where customer expectations, technology, or market behaviour could start shifting underneath you. It’s that moment when it becomes important to step back and reassess whether your model still fits where the market is heading.
For us, that assessment comes from paying close attention to the signals around the business. Sales conversations, lead quality, client churn, pricing pressure, and the rapid rise of AI all provide insight into how the market is evolving. When multiple indicators consistently point in the same direction, ignoring them can become the bigger risk.
I’ve become increasingly convinced that the best time to evolve a business is before you absolutely have to. The strongest pivots are usually proactive, not reactive.
Sometimes “pushing through” is resilience, but sometimes it’s denial. The challenge for business owners is having the self-awareness to know the difference.”
Yifei Wang, CEO & Co-founder, AIBUILD
“A rough patch doesn’t always mean the business model is broken. It’s often a sign that things need to be reassessed or realigned with the core mission. For founders, in this case, the key is to distinguish between temporary friction and structural misalignment.”
“If the problem is short-term, such as slower sales, funding pressure, or a challenging market cycle, it may be worth pushing through and staying close and present to customers, while tightening operations internally. But if customer behaviour, market demand, or the core value proposition has shifted, then a pivot becomes necessary.”
“At AIBUILD, we have seen this through our own journey. So to restrategise; rather than simply delivering one-off technology projects to varied industries, we evolved our model toward building AI-driven solutions around real industry problems; working closely with partners across sectors where our solutions fix industry pain-points, in sectors such as retail, supply chain, aged care, infrastructure, and education.”
“That shift allowed us to move from being a service provider to becoming a long-term innovation partner that specialises in real-world industry problems.”
“A good pivot is not about abandoning the mission, but finding a stronger, more sustainable path to achieving it, whilst growing at every stage.”
Morgan Wilson, Founder and Director, creditte accountants and advisors
“Most founders treat a rough patch and a broken model the same way. They are not.
A rough patch is temporary pressure on a fundamentally sound business. Revenue is down, a key client left, or the market shifted. The underlying mechanics still work. Push through, tighten cash flow, and the business recovers.
A broken model is different. The economics no longer make sense. You are working harder to make less. Margins are compressing, not because of a bad quarter, but because the structure is wrong. Pivoting is not giving up. It is responding to evidence.
The question I ask clients is simple: if nothing changes externally, does this business work? If the honest answer is no, pushing through just delays a harder decision and burns more cash getting there.
A rough patch needs resilience. A broken model needs a decision. Knowing which one you are facing is the most important call you will make as a business owner.”
Nadine Connell, Co-Founder, Director & Commercial Finance Expert, Smart Business Plans
“Owners treat this as a strategy question. It’s not. From where I sit financing them, it is almost always a cashflow question wearing a strategy costume.
Here is the pattern I see again and again: businesses pivot when they actually had a temporary timing problem, and push through when they were structurally finished. They get the diagnosis backwards because they read the symptom, falling revenue, not the cause.
The honest test is runway. Pushing through only works if you can fund the wait. A genuine pivot is even more expensive, because reinvention costs money at the precise moment cash is tightest. The cruel irony is that owners reach for a pivot when they can least afford to fund one.
So before deciding which fight you are in, look at the numbers, not the mood. If the business is viable but cash is just slow, push through and fund the gap. If the model itself is broken, pivot, but only if you have the runway to land it.”
Troy Fazakerley, Founder, Business Alchemy Australia
“Most founders frame this as a confidence question – push through, or give up. It’s actually a diagnostic one.
A rough patch is a working model under temporary load: demand softens, a big client leaves, and costs spike. The mechanism that produces value still works; it’s just being squeezed. You push through that.
A pivot is required when the model itself has stopped producing value. When the thing customers used to pay for no longer commands the price, or the cost to deliver it has risen structurally and won’t come back down.
The test I give founders: strip out the noise of the bad quarter and look at the unit economics of your ten best customers. If the core transaction is still profitable and repeatable, you have a rough patch – fix execution and hold the model. If your best customers are barely profitable, no amount of effort fixes that. That’s a broken model wearing a rough-patch costume.
Push through execution problems. Pivot pattern problems. Founders often confuse the two concepts and waste eighteen months pushing harder on something that should have changed.”
Rebbecca Davis, Founder & CEO, Zephyr Agency
“First it depends on whether the friction you’re feeling is external or internal.
If the market has shifted, your audience has moved on or the model no longer fits the space you’re in, that’s a signal worth listening to. Pushing through makes sense when your fundamentals are sound and what you’re navigating is temporary pressure. Structural misalignment on the other hand can often signal a need for change.
What I’ve learned after two decades in the marketing and communications industry is that the brands and businesses that pivot successfully don’t do it reactively. They do it from a position of self-awareness. They’ve been watching the signals, testing the waters and preparing for when the right moment comes. I have worked with businesses from all industries and across the board I have found that change made from clarity always lands better than change made from fear.
Know your numbers, know your market and know your why. The rest tends to follow.”
Suzanne Rath, High Performance Leadership Speaker & Coach, Suzanne Rath High Performance Speaking & Consulting
“In business and life, often the gold you seek is on the other side of hard… but not always.
In my clinical business, I did the early start up phase and the hustle to achieve my big vision- but I’ve also ditched goals and pivoted many time. 2020- embracing Telehealth as a viable option. 2026- cutting an outreach clinic that expanded our reach, but was ultimately diluting our core capabilities for minimal profit.
These are 3 questions I ask to aid my decision making:
- Is this costing too much of something else that’s important? (this might be a business metric, or my time, health, or energy)- PIVOT
- Am I doing this because it aligns with my big-picture vision, or is it a goal I inherited from somewhere else?- PIVOT
- Am I choosing not to push through because of confidence, difficulty, or uncertainty? (and if those barriers were removed, is the end goal meaningful to me?) – PUSH
Ultimately, there’s a difference between: a goal that’s no longer aligned, or a model that’s no longer functioning- versus a climb that’s simply feeling hard right now.
Your role as a strategic leader is to decide which one you’re dealing with.”
David Caruso, Multinational Business Owner, BuyFactory.direct
“After 30+ years in business, here’s my test: if the fundamentals of your market have changed permanently, pivot. If you’re just experiencing temporary resistance, push through.
I burnt out running a Sydney business for 20 years because I kept pushing through what was actually a fundamental problem, my entire approach to work was unsustainable.
When I started again at 49 in Thailand, I pivoted the model completely: systems over heroics, delegation over control, sustainable growth over grinding harder.
The distinction: rough patches are cyclical (seasonal slowdowns, economic dips, temporary competition).
Fundamental shifts are structural (customer behaviour has changed permanently, your value proposition no longer solves the problem, technology has made your method obsolete).
Ask yourself: if I execute perfectly for 12 months, does this business model still work? If yes, push through and fix execution. If no, pivot before you waste more time defending a position that no longer exists.
Pivoting isn’t admitting failure. It’s recognising reality faster than your competitors.”
Muthukumar T, Partner, Befree
“The hardest part of this question isn’t the decision itself but knowing whether what you’re facing is a temporary headwind or a structural problem.
A few questions worth sitting with:
Is the core problem internal or external? If market conditions are difficult but your fundamentals are sound, pushing through often makes sense. If the model itself is producing friction in the form of margin pressure, unsustainable overheads, or capacity ceilings, it’s a different conversation.
What is your data telling you? Gut feel has its place, but a pivot decision made without clean financial visibility is a gamble. Cash flow trends, cost-per-output, and profitability by service line should be driving the conversation, not just revenue.
Are you pushing through, or just deferring? There’s a difference between resilience and avoidance. If the same pressure keeps returning each quarter, the model may need rethinking.
Sometimes a pivot need not be about what you sell or do, but about how you operate. Restructuring how work gets done, where capacity sits, and what your team focuses on can provide meaningful headroom without changing your market position entirely. It’s an operational shift many SMEs overlook until the pressure becomes unavoidable. Befree works with business owners navigating exactly that transition.”
Maria Kathopoulis, CEO & Chief Marketing Officer, UNTMD
“Founders often romanticise pivoting because it sounds strategic, when sometimes they’re just uncomfortable.
There’s a real difference between a broken business model and a business under operational pressure. I look at three things first: are customers still buying, are they staying, and do the numbers work if execution improves? If yes, it’s a push-through moment, not a pivot moment.
We’ve worked with businesses where CAC jumped 25-30% temporarily, but the underlying economics were sound. Once positioning and sales processes improved, growth returned.
On the other hand, if churn is climbing, margins are shrinking, referrals are drying up, and customers no longer see the value, that’s the market telling you something. CB Insights puts 35-38% of startup failures down to no market need or running out of cash. Those two issues are usually connected.
Founders also underestimate how messy growth looks before momentum compounds. Some of the best businesses spend years looking unstable while infrastructure catches up to ambition.
The real question isn’t whether business feels hard. It’s whether the model still has leverage if you execute properly. If it does, keep going. If it doesn’t, pivot before ego turns into debt.”
Michael Russell, Managing Director, Finwave Finance
“Most business owners ask this question too late, when they are exhausted and the decision is already being made for them. The better time to think about it is before you are in survival mode.
Pushing through makes sense when the core problem is timing or external conditions rather than structural. If your market still exists, your margins are intact at normal revenue, and customers are not leaving with a consistent reason, the issue is probably cyclical. Discipline and cash reserves are your tools, not reinvention.
A pivot makes sense when the evidence keeps pointing the same direction regardless of how long you wait. Declining conversion on an unchanged offer. Customers consistently choosing a competitor for a reason you cannot match. A cost structure that only works at a volume you cannot sustain. These are not rough patches. These are signals.
The mistake most owners make is treating a pivot as an admission of failure rather than a strategic response to new information. The market does not reward stubbornness. It rewards adaptation.
One practical test: if your current model worked perfectly for the next twelve months, would the business be where you actually want it? If the honest answer is no, that is worth sitting with before assuming more time is the solution.”
Aaron Tsamasiros, Co-founder & Operations Director, COCO HIT
“There’s an important distinction between pivoting your business model and refining how you execute on your original vision.
When we launched COCO HIT and it started to grow in the coconut water space in Australia, we had multiple new distributors reach out to accelerate growth faster. However, we wanted to stay committed to working exclusively with our selected distribution partners in each state; building stronger long-term relationships that will hold us in good stead for the future, while maintaining steady strength in the market. This was also something that aligned with our initial strategy from the early days.”
“Our cocktail-inspired naming; Lychee Marg, Watermelon Mojito, French Martini, all went through the same test. There was real internal debate about whether it would land or alienate. We backed our instinct, and consumers responded. That way we had our answer, and we felt confident to proceed with building these flavours out as legitimate product offerings.”
“A genuine pivot makes sense when the market tells you your fundamental premise isn’t working. But a rough patch is different. If customer feedback still aligns with your product and vision, the answer is usually to tighten execution and push through, in our opinion, not abandon the strategy too early. The hardest part is knowing which situation you’re actually in and acting on that instinct.”
Scott Capelin, Founder, inLIFE Wellness
“A business rarely fails in a single moment. More often, it drifts into tension. Revenue stalls, energy dips or the market starts answering a different question to the one you’re asking. The real skill isn’t just building a model, but knowing when to stay in the lane and when to change the road entirely.
Pushing through a rough patch makes sense when the fundamentals still hold: customers want what you offer, they’re willing to pay for it and the issue is execution rather than demand. In those moments, the smartest move is usually refinement, not reinvention. Tighten delivery, sharpen messaging, improve conversion and let time compound small gains.
Pivoting becomes rational when the pattern is structural, not situational. If acquisition costs keep rising while lifetime value stays flat, or if your best customers are using your product in a way you didn’t design for, the market may be signalling a different opportunity. A pivot isn’t a retreat; it’s re-aiming your effort where gravity already exists.
For a founder juggling multiple geographies, partnerships, or franchise-style growth, the danger is over-attributing friction to “temporary difficulty”. The better question is: are you trying harder, or are you trying in the right direction? One builds resilience. The other builds relevance.”
Heather Marano, Director, AwardGenie
“Pushing through a rough patch makes sense if a market dip is temporary, but when structural disruption hits, you must anticipate market movements and adapt before it’s too late. This is especially true for businesses currently navigating the rapid rise of AI.
Last year, after running my awards consultancy, Green Door Co, for over a decade, demand for our premium awards copywriting service began to dip, particularly among budget-conscious SMEs, as a result of AI adoption.
Instead of waiting out a permanent market shift, we used our industry expertise to launch a secondary, AI-powered awards writing and management platform, AwardGenie. This has allowed us to keep looking after our high-touch clients while opening up an affordable, self-service option for others.
Real agility isn’t about waiting for things to go back to normal. It’s about recognising a market shift early and pivoting or expanding your model to meet customers exactly where they are.”
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