How To Pivot In 3 Weeks

A local entrepreneur shares his lessons learnt in having to rapidly change course.

- Aaron Fuchs

In early March, I was in California, visiting the campuses of some of the US’ best universities: Stanford, USC, UCLA and UC Berkeley. My team and I were marketing iXperience’s study abroad and internship programmes. The year was going well: we were on track to host 400 or more students in five locations around the world. Our product and entire brand revolved around the transformative power of travel, experiencing new cultures, and stepping out of your comfort zone.

A week later, I was back in South Africa, disconnected from my team, scared for my parents, and confined to my home. We had to close our global campuses and refund around 50% of our students. Our projected 2020 revenue was exactly $0, and we were quickly running out of cash.

It would be a lie to say that we acted with certainty and confidence: what happened after was based on a lot of discussion, debate, and intuition. The principles that our team stuck to, however, allowed us to not only survive, but thrive. We acquired more customers than we previously projected and we are on track to grow.

There will hopefully be very few crises like this one in our lifetime. My intention in this article is to share some of the strategies and habits that we built that I believe helped stabilise our business and put us in a strong position for the future.

Our approach to transforming and strengthening the business through the crisis:

Face the financial reality without fear

• Dynamic scenario planning