Deciding at the beginning

When Pivot Adventure wasn’t working in its infancy, it was difficult to make the decisions I wanted to make.

Such as class sizes or tuition fees.

But I wanted it to be a certain way. I wanted it to stand out from the crowd and be the opposite of what was available. Instead of being expensive, we were going to be affordable. Instead of inside, we were going to be outside. Instead of clinical, we were going to be experiential. And so on.

The rational actor would have said, “Turn around. You are flying too close to the sun. Compromise.”

Yet, we made up our mind we were going to do it anyway despite what the critics would say.

And when it began to work, it freed us to go even further.

Looking back, it would have been easy to compromise on our values when the dollars and cents were not adding up. It would have been easy to justify decisions that wouldn’t have been good in the long run.

The thing is, money is only one axis to measure. Deciding at the beginning what we were (and what we were not), it freed us to say Yes and No on what opportunities came our way. It wasn’t the easiest choice but it has made us better and more generous for it.