Pivoting to Progress with Nadine Fonseca, Co-founder, Mighty Kind

Plot twits might be fun to read about in a story, but when it’s your life that’s getting upended or dramatically changed, you might not like it as much. Dashed dreams are among the hardest to pivot away from, because where do you go? Nadine Fonseca, co-founder and CEO of Mighty Kind, knows all too well the mental struggles that come with finding out that you have to leave a precious dream behind.

“After injuries and rehabilitating physically and kind of mentally from that, it was a real struggle to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be,” Fonseca says. “I spent a lot of time just working jobs to work jobs and I think just trying to figure out, was I an entertainer? Was I an academic? What was I meant to do with the rest of my life?”

This wasn’t the last time that Nadine came face-to-face with a seemingly impossible question that forced her to change course. At this point, Nadine has changed and pivoted so many times throughout her life and her career that she barely even bats an eye when the world throws a wrench in her plans. But how did she get to that place? And how did her path ultimately lead to Mighty Kind, a kids magazine that puts tough topics front and center? Find out right here on The Journey.

Main Takeaways:

• Pivoting At The Least Convenient Time: Changing your business plan at any point is inconvenient at best, but sometimes re-doing work is worth a herculean effort. Being objective about what’s going to work for your business long-term and being honest about what you can handle will go a long way in helping you see hard changes to make.
• Just Because You Can ‘Do it on Your Own’ Doesn’t Mean You Should: Maybe you thought about your business one way, but now, as you get closer to launch, you’re realizing you don’t have the bandwidth, or maybe even the right skill set to do it all on your own. The solution is simple, you need to get help, and there’s no shame in that. The smartest and most successful leaders can identify their blindspots and bring in the talent to fill them, which benefits the entire company.
• Pivoting and Thriving: Those who are the most pliable are the least breakable. At every point, being able to shift the business toward what you can see is going to work better is a good investment. When an opportunity arose out of a crisis, Nadine found that being nimble and shifting the business to digital turned out to be the best move.

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This season of the Journey is produced by Mission.org and brought to you by UPS. To learn how UPS can help your small business, go to UPS.com/pivot.

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