To Pivot or keep going

How do you know if you are on the right track in life and business - my two cents

Jul 28, 2025

As a disclaimer, I don’t consider myself the definitely voice in knowing when an idea should be pursued or not. But I have done quite a bit of thinking about it and I’ve gathered a lot of information over the years, both from others and from my own experiences.

If you want to hear my opinion on this, backed up with my experience in business (and life), keep reading.

The (seemingly) conflicting advice we get

We have all hear the same advice going from successful people. It comes in different forms, but boils down to the same narrative. I’m talking about advice along the lines of:

If you need to push too much, it’s probably 💩

If you reach Product-Market Fit, you will know it

Find the right audience and things will fall into place

Build something great and people will start coming to you

The reason why I say this is conflicting is that one camp tells you to move fast and pivot if there’s no traction. The other is telling you to stick to it and find a way through. The fact is - they are both correct.

It’s definitely an art to know when to stick to it and when to move on. It reminds me of this meme:

You will never know if, and how close you are to success in these situations. You just need to roll the dice and see.

My two cents here are that, especially if you want to stick to it, you need a lot of resolve. You are most probably fighting the odds, there’s plenty of doubt and uncertainty and unless you have (for whatever reason) extreme conviction to make it happen, it’s only a matter of time before you quit. The two types of resolve I’ve seen are:

You believe to your core that what you are doing will work one way or another
You enjoy what you are doing so much that you would do it even with zero guarantee that it will work

So far, I haven’t found a third type of resolve. Maybe being too stubborn, but I don’t know if that causes success per se… Probably only if you’re lucky. If you have additional types of resolve, please let me know. I’d love to brainstorm here - maybe I’m missing something.

Think about if you are there to stay

Would you have the will power and energy to keep going if things go south? Because they will.

Why are you doing it?

Is it because it sounds cool? Or are you truly passionate about that? Would you sacrifice a lot to make it happen? Because you will have to.

Are you in love with the process… or the outcome?

Obviously, if you have to go to war or something, you will not love the process. There - the outcome is important enough. But in business, being miserable and only having the hope of success as a motivator, is often not enough. Look for something you are also passionate about and enjoy.

I will give better examples here later on in the post…

Do you just do it for the status?

This is also mostly about business. Are you doing what you are doing because status comes with it, or because this is what you want to do. This is very prominent for startups - nowadays, this is the cool thing to do for many. But way less people are actually passionate about building products and starting from scratch.

Another example is being a manager. Ask yourself - would you still do the management work if you didn’t also have the title? If not - you don’t want to be a manager, you just want to have power and feel important.

Some examples

A lot of this kind of advice is too abstract without tangible examples. Hence, it’s often not so useful. So here, I will give you some real world situations so you see my thoughts in action.

The fallacy of having your own company

It’s cool to be the boss. It feels good to run your own business. But it’s not easy. Many people hate their bosses, but it’s only when they start running things themselves that they see that being on your own is a lot of stress and a lot of work. Things they typically get shielded from at a regular job.

If you decide to build your own company just to not have a boss or for prestige, bad things will happen. You will not have the willpower to keep going once things get tough. Just the status “business owner“ is not enough to sustain you.

Building a startup

I remember the people from Y Combinator talking about the initial success of their program and pointing out that nowadays having a startup is a symbol, something cool (and mainstream) to do. In the early days, all founders were people with resolve to build cool stuff and tinker with technology. They would be doing it anyway. A VC or an incubator was just a way to do it with scale and money. That’s what built the Reddits, Dropboxes and Stripes of the world. Not someone with a pitch deck and a vision of a shiny co-working space.

I’ve also been there. If I’m perfectly honest, what I really wanted to do was to be high up in the food chain, have a team to run and be comfortable doing it. Far away from what a scrappy startup should focus on.

My mentoring

This example is also the inspiration for this whole post. I was thinking a lot about motivation, success and strategy and came up with this.

I’ve had many ideas - for business, for hobbies and for projects. Most of them never stuck. I’ve built whole products and companies, only to see no traction and give up (what I would consider) too early. In these situations, I’d think - am I not worthy? Am I not good enough? Why can’t I persevere like others do?

Then I came to the realization that I didn’t actually care about the products I was building. I was not a target user… and more importantly… I was not proud of what I was doing. Not because it wasn’t good, but because I had no passion for the topic.

The turning point came when I started with my passion project - mentoring. This was the first time I started working on something that I truly believed in. Something, I’m also doing because I like it. I don’t care about being in the news, about earning money with it and having a title “Executive Mentor“ or “World’s best coach“. I do it anyway.

I don’t care if others like it, I don’t care too much if I still suck at it. It’s just something I do. I’ve heard myself say exactly this to many people I’ve talk to about this. And it’s true.

This means I’m free of this constant second guessing and struggle. I don’t ask myself constantly - “Should I quit?“… “Am I on the right path?“. I’m already enjoying the journey. It only gets better from here. I either:

Enjoy the ride and do what I’m passionate about, or
I do what I’m passionate about AND I’m successful with it

Let me tell you - great things start happening if you have that resolve. You get the energy to stick to it and you find a way to connect to the right people. And also, people resonate with you more, because they can sense your excitement about it.

Things start falling into place. It’s electrifying. This is when all this advice you hear from successful people start to make sense. But you need to find this thing you truly believe in. You will know if you find it. But before you do, you will not understand what I mean.

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Over to you

A lot of these journeys like starting a company or developing yourself start with a process of self reflection. I invite you to take a deep breath now and ask yourself:

What is important for me right now in life? Am I doing what I truly care about?

Don’t worry if this question makes your head spin. This is a lifelong journey and the answer changes periodically.

This topic is something I work on a lot on during my mentoring. If this post make you think about your life or changed the way you perceive success, business or how you understand the advice people give regarding building a business, feel free to mention it in the comment section. I will try my best to give you additional advice for your specific case. It is always beneficial to talk to someone about this, because they can challenge you and make you think about these topics in ways you never thought of.

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