The decision that keeps you awake I've sat across from people running their own thing at the exact moment they're asking themselves: do I keep going, or do I change course? It's the hardest question in business because the answer isn't binary. It's not "pivot or die". It's "pivot or persevere, and either one could work out badly if you get it wrong". Look at what's happening around us right now. Airlines are watching fuel availability tighten across routes. Luxury brands like Dolce & Gabbana are dealing with debt as spending slows. Energy companies are pivoting to solar and heat pumps because pump prices keep climbing. Some of these moves will look brilliant in two years. Some will look like panic. The people I work with at ALIRA face this constantly. A client might have built something that works in one market, and suddenly they're wondering if they should expand it, refocus it, or abandon it entirely. The honest answer is: you need to separate signal from noise first. What actually counts as a signal Most people confuse busyness with data. They're running hard, things are happening, and they think that means the business is working or not working. It doesn't. You need to know what to measure. I think there are three things worth tracking when you're uncertain about direction. First: unit economics. Does each customer, each job, each transaction actually make you money once you account for the cost of getting them? Not revenue. Profit per unit. If that's broken, no amount of growth fixes it. I worked with someone last year who was growing at 40% but losing £3 on every sale. They thought they were succeeding. They were going bankrupt at speed. Second: why people are actually using what you've built. Not what you think they're using it for. What they're really using it for. I've seen people pivot away from their best feature because they didn't realise customers were choosing them for it. Dolce & Gabbana's struggle isn't just about luxury spending slowing, it's probably about not understanding which products actually move. That's a different problem to solve than just "the market is down". Third: the cost of staying still. This one trips people up. You get so focused on whether you should pivot that you forget to calculate the cost of not pivoting. If your market is shifting, sitting still has a cost. It's not free. Right now, businesses are losing customers to competitors who've already moved to renewable energy or adjusted supply chains. That's a real cost. When perseverance is just stubbornness I'm going to be direct: most people persevere too long. They confuse sticking with their vision with ignoring reality. The thing that separates good pivots from bad ones is usually this: good pivots happen because you've learned something about what customers actually want. Bad pivots happen because you got tired or scared. One is strategic. The other is reactive. You persevere when the unit economics work but growth is slow, when you're early and your market is still forming, when you've got a moat that's getting stronger even if it's not visible yet. You persevere when you genuinely believe the problem is temporary. You pivot when you've learned something fundamental about what you're selling that changes the game. When your best customers are using your product for something completely different than you intended. When the economics of your original plan have shifted permanently. When staying on your current path requires you to compete on something you'll never win on. The trap is this: perseverance feels virtuous. It feels like you're staying true to yourself. Pivoting feels like failure, like you didn't understand your own business. So people persevere past the point where it makes sense. The framework that actually works Here's what I do when I'm advising someone through this. I make them answer four questions, and they have to answer them with data, not opinion. One: is the core problem still real, or has it changed? The Strait of Hormuz closing changes the problem for airlines fundamentally. That's not an opinion question. That's a fact that reshapes their decisions. Two: are you losing to execution or to strategy? If your idea is right but you're just not executing well, you persevere and fix the execution. If your idea is right but the market has moved, that's different. That's a pivot question. Three: what's your runway actually buying you? Not in months, but in learning. If you've got six months of cash left, can you learn what you need to learn in that time? If the answer is no, you're out of time to persevere. Four: what would change your mind? Get specific. Not "if revenue doubles". "If customer acquisition cost drops below £40 and stays there for three months." Something testable. Something you can actually measure. If you're working through this seriously, a Decision Matrix tool helps. You list your options, you list the criteria that matter, you score each option against each criterion. It forces you to be specific about what you're actually deciding. The move that matters I think the best businesses do both things at once. They persevere on their core thesis while being willing to pivot on everything else. They don't change what problem they're solving, but they're ruthless about changing how they solve it. That's harder than picking a lane and staying in it. But it's also what separates people who build something real from people who either get lucky once or get stuck. What to do this week Pick one metric that would change your mind about your current direction. Not multiple metrics. One. Write it down. What's the number that, if it moves in a certain direction, tells you something fundamental has shifted? Now check where you actually are on that metric. You might find you've already got your answer. Second, talk to three customers this week and ask them what they use your product for that surprised you. Not what you think they use it for. What actually surprised them about it. Listen for what they don't say as much as what they do. Third, if you're genuinely torn between pivoting and persevering, write out your unit economics. Revenue minus cost of goods, divided by number of units. If that number is unclear to you, that's why you can't decide. Fix that first.