Today’s post contains information from my weekly podcast and talk show, We Gotta Talk. To close out the year, I’m highlighting awesome advice from some of the amazing experts and storytellers I’ve interviewed.

Subscribe to the show here to listen to these interviews and conversations in full! Here’s the link to today’s expert, Sam Jayanti, founder of Ideamix.

We all hit the point in our jobs or careers where we ask ourselves, “Is this it for the rest of my life?”

Whether in our personal habits or our professional journeys, it can be easy to stick with what has been safe, rather than what truly fulfills us. Recognizing that there are better times than others to chase passions (only you can decide when and if a career jump is worth it!), I am sharing some amazing advice today from an expert I interviewed this past September on my podcast.

Sam Jayanti founded Ideamix, a community that helps entrepreneurial souls evolve their passions into a profession. I took so much from our conversation, and I know you’ll love her advice too.

Here are some highlights, and feel free to click below to listen to the interview in full!

Is it Time to Pivot? Three Tips from a Business Expert

Find the intersection of your passion, your abilities and your opportunities.

“The most thriving individuals come from finding the intersection of those three things,” Sam says. But it takes work—self-awareness, assessing what you’re good at, and seeing what opportunities are out there.

Sam says this can be done by being as objective as possible about what you like, but also being honest with yourself about what you’re good at. A conversation with a friend can kick this off, or a session with a career coach. (If you’re looking for a career or life coach, I’ve worked with Cassidy Nasello before and got so much out of the process.)

Prototype the idea.

This part of the process, Sam says, can become quickly complex. She says a first step could be figuring out the people who are going to be your customers, and build the lowest-cost version of your product or service to start testing it with them.

And whatever you do, expect challenges: “Whether you’re small or big, there are an endless set of problems and pivots that are just part of the journey, and the only way to tackle those is by setting in place a process to make agility a part of … the culture of your organization and you.”

Be prepared as much as possible. (But know that risk is part of the game.)

Around the 13:30 mark, I ask Sam which launch method is most successful—the “leap and pray,” or the “prepare and meticulously plan before launching.” It sounds like the answer is somewhere in the middle:

“In any entrepreneurial endeavor, there’s always a leap of faith. … But the more figuring out you can do [ahead of time], the more prepared you are. The biggest factor when you think about startups and small businesses … the number one reason companies don’t make it is because they fail to find the product-market fit.”

Successful entrepreneurs know they have to channel that instinct to leap with preparation, and when you meld the two, there’s a huge amount of success.”

Hope you enjoyed these tips! Come back for more good stories and advice to round out 2020. I”m so grateful you’re here. 🙂