“No one plays this game, or any game perfectly.
It’s the guy who recovers from his mistakes, who wins.”
Phil Jackson
In my experience, scaling a business to its first $25 million in revenue can be more challenging than scaling a business from $100 million to a billion.
Why would this be the case?
One of the key reasons is that a company with larger revenue has made a lot more mistakes getting there and will pivot quicker from them than a smaller company still focused on making success as straight a line as possible.
Wherever you’re at in your business-building journey, here are four inspirational stories from unlikely companies who are known for their pivot.
Trader Joes Makes Grocery Shopping Fun, Cheap And International
After operating a small chain of convenience stores in southern California, Joe Coulombe noticed some key strategic trends creating a gap in the market. Upwardly mobile college grads were steadily increasing, as was the number of Americans traveling internationally. Local American grocery stores didn’t sell international foods, and college grads were acquiring more “gourmet” tastes than what 7-11 offered.
So he pivoted his convenience store strategy, concerned that his stores were not different enough from 7-11.
Here’s what he did – he opened a Polynesia/Tiki-themed market in Pasadena, CA (making the shopping experience fun and very un-grocery store-like).
He stocked it with good wine – much of it inexpensive (home of the five-buck-chuck), hired good people, paid them well, added more locations near universities, and added healthy foods and well-priced, internationally sourced gourmet foods. Today Trader Joes has 530 stores and grosses $18.5 Billion.