In Purpose First Entrepreneur, I share the Purpose First Performance Equation, which identifies six variables that shape performance.

Purpose First Performance Equation from *Purpose First Entrepreneur*

We can influence each of those variables, but we tend we put the bulk of our focus on our actions, abilities, and decisions.

“If I’d only done A instead of B…”
“If I just get more experience in C…”
“If I opt to do X or Z instead of Z…”

Why do we ignore circumstance?

One factor is that we often see our circumstances as uncontrollable and fail to recognize where we really do have choice. It’s easy to fall into the belief that our circumstances are fixed entities, things that we cannot change.

Of course there are circumstances beyond your control—your age, your race, your birthplace.

But what will determine your success is whether you have the ability to be self-reflective and see the many circumstances that you have the power to change, even if that feels incredibly difficult.

Your beliefs, the group of people you surround yourself with—these things may feel fixed, but they are within your control.

For entrepreneurs, that’s true in terms of your business as well. You can choose your business model, your location, your team, and your own role. These choices can sometimes be difficult, but the first step is recognizing where you have a choice.

You cannot control the uncontrollable. But you have the power to decide how your respond to the uncontrollable.

We’ve all gotten a taste of this in the past few years, when a global pandemic disrupted so many aspects of our lives and businesses without our permission.

It highlighted in a new way something that many of us already understood—the power of “the pivot.” The ability to reflect, realign, and reposition when circumstances change has always been key to performance and, ultimately, success.

It’s possible that on Day 1 of your start-up, you’ve got a product that fits the market perfectly. In fact, we know that many of the fastest growing companies figure out that product-market fit from the start. When you look across the board at the mega players—the Microsofts, the Googles—they’re often doing the same thing now that they were doing when they were founded.

So is an ideal product-market fit a logical goal? Of course.

But here’s reality: those companies are anomalies.

There are a handful of companies that have managed that kind of synergy from the start. Every start-up founder wants to achieve that, but very few will.

But that doesn’t mean that your business can’t ultimately become incredibly successful. What it means is that you need to dig in to look at the circumstances that shape your business and recognize which ones you can control.

While you can’t control the market, you can’t control the demand for the product you want to build, as an entrepreneur, you can control how you respond to the market. You can continue to pivot by degrees until you find that fit.

That agility will benefit you as a leader and as a business owner, and in many cases, you may land on a product that you’re even better at creating and something that’s even more valuable, especially from a purpose perspective.

Mike Shannon captures this perfectly in his Purpose First Story. He and his Packback co-founders originally planned to build a company that could lower the cost of textbooks for students, but when they recognized that their original model didn’t match the realities of the market, they opted to evolve rather than struggling against the tide or giving up completely. Instead of getting hung up on that original business model, they acknowledged the current circumstances and made the choice to reach the same goal—supporting student learning—in a new way, through an online platform for student engagement.

Leonie Lynch’s Purpose First Story speaks to this mindset as well. Her original model for her company, Juspy, focused on creating a postnatal recovery drink, but when she realized the need for a nutrient-dense, delicious, easy-to-use product extended to many busy adults, she reframed her plan and developed a product that is flexible enough to meet that market.

ShipBob’s story shows how developing a flexible mindset to respond to uncontrollable circumstances can lead to unicorn success. Co-founders Divey Gulati and Dhruv Saxena were facing a pain point in their own e-commerce business—the time- and labor-intensive process of order fulfillment. Instead of simply trying to find a way to solve this challenge for their own company, they pivoted their business and built a supply chain that could help other e-commerce businesses succeed.

We can’t control the uncontrollable. But you do have the ability to control how you respond to the uncontrollable, if you develop a mindset that allows you to recognize those opportunities.

I know that those moments and experiences can be emotionally and mentally overwhelming. But to emerge from them, you have to be able to pause, identify what you can control, make purposeful decisions, and then move in incremental steps that will put you on the path to your wider goal.

Eventually the smallest steps turn into progress, and that allows you to get back to a position where you are in control.

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