As founders, we all face moments of doubt. If progress stalls or the numbers start to look a bit thin, it’s natural to wonder if you should keep heading down the same path or try something new.
Ultimately, each path could be the right one. What matters is learning how to read the situation and having the confidence (and often, humility) to choose the right direction for you at the time. Tommy Halvorson, Founder and CEO of The Fire Society, shares some lessons he learned on his way to building one of the Bay Area’s most in-demand hospitality agencies.
Seeing the spark
When Tommy Halvorson launched his first events, almost everything went wrong. “My truck got a flat tire, the jack broke… and then I got a bad Yelp review. It was horrible.”pivot
But instead of quitting, he noticed something important. “Every event that I did lost money. But people were impressed with the level of execution.” That was his turning point.
Early signs of customer excitement, even before the financials make sense, can be a reason to keep going. Research backs this up: founders who build on those signals of product-market fit are more likely to survive and grow.
Knowing when to change course
Persistence is certainly powerful, but our ego can sometimes cloud our judgment. When Tommy bought Serpentine, a San Francisco restaurant, he thought it would be simple compared to catering.
“I went into that restaurant with hubris. I thought, ‘I can run this with my pinky finger’. Boy, was I wrong. You have to remove your ego and be okay with being wrong. Because ego can drive you to bankruptcy real quick.”
Studies on entrepreneurship show that founders who pivot early, when core assumptions don’t hold, often outperform those who push ahead blindly. ‘In a sample of 400 startups, 93% of the success cases had to abandon an original strategy that proved unviable’ (Bhide 2000).
Questions to guide your decision
To help you make a call, start by asking yourself a few questions.
- Are customers showing genuine demand, even if revenue lags?
- Do I have the resources – financial, emotional, and the team culture – to keep going?
- Would a pivot or shift open up bigger opportunities?
- Am I pushing forward because I believe in the idea, or because I don’t want to admit I was wrong?
Tommy admits: “You just have to kind of know how to walk that line.”
There is no single right choice. The work is in asking yourself the right questions, being honest with yourself, reading the signals, and trusting that whichever path you choose is part of your journey forward.
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