When in Doubt, Pivot: The Latest in a Series of Pivots at Centori

That’s the advice we’re all given, right?

If things don’t work out, flip the script and start over.

Well.. maybe not.

Instead, this is a retrospective of sorts into the pivot I’ve taken Centori through in the past year, what I’ve learned, and where I see its best growth opportunities in the future.

First, some context

If you’re coming across my story for the first time, let me take you on a (very brief) walk down memory lane.

Centori is a content marketing company I have been building for many years and just went full-time on in 2023.

Despite having a tech/product background (HubSpot and short stints at two startups) I've always been passionate about writing and now I get to make it my full-time job.

Here's a brief timeline of Centori's evolution.

• 2016: I had an idea for software to curate blog topics that never quite took off. I thought it'd be useful for a specific niche but was wrong (ain't that just how it goes).
• 2018: I pivoted into SEO. I started SEO freelancing and thought I’d build my own SEO tool rather than pay $100/mo for one.
• 2020: I had some success using my SEO tool so I thought why not sell it? I rebuilt the software and launched it - many signed up for free, but none paid. Disaster.
• 2021: It took longer than I’d like to admit, but I realized I couldn’t win with software. People wanted Ahrefs and SEMRush features without their prices... which is impossible to deliver for a newbie developer like me. I pivoted into a coaching offer where I taught founders/marketers how to do SEO.
• 2022: Rather than go “software-first” for our lowest tier, we leaned into community and group coaching to complement the one-on-one coaching offer. This seemed to work well and we scaled to over a dozen customers at that tier.
• 2023: After enough coaching clients struggled to create content, so I offered services to write their content. This allowed me to scale revenue and quit my job.

At the start of 2024, I was six months into running Centori full-time but I had a problem, I offered 3 different services at radically different price points:

• Software + Community, $39/mo
• One-on-one coaching, $399/mo
• Services, $2500/mo

This range in pricing and offers confused our messaging and spread things pretty thin when it came to managing our product and services.

When people asked "What do you do" I'd respond with a series of commas: "I help companies build SEO strategies, and I write their content, and I offer software and a community too."

Yeah... it confused me too.

That leads me to our latest pivot as we look to the second half of the year.

The most recent pivot

The last six years have been a journey in starting a software company and slowly but surely realizing that I was solving the wrong problem for my intended market, so I needed to choose:

• Fall in love with the market for software
• Fall in love with the market for coaching/services

I’ve chosen the latter.

Having worked with 100 companies over the last few years, it’s abundantly clear that coaching/services solve the SEO problems for the founders that I want to work with. Despite that, for years I resisted the idea of being an agency.

Why?

I’ve never heard someone say something good about their SEO agency. And for good reason, there are a lot of terrible agencies out there that:

• Sell services you don’t need
• Do the bare minimum
• Write low-effort content
• Chase vanity metrics rather than things that make a difference to the business
• Spam people for services

I resisted the idea of being an agency or services business because I “didn’t want to just be another SEO agency.”

Well… I don’t have to.

I don't write content for my clients. I help them grow their businesses using content as an acquisition channel. We do that by:

• Picking the right topics
• Writing ridiculously good content
• Creating lead magnets that attract and convert

I do it for my clients or show their teams how to do it.

So... what happens to the software and community?

So is this the end of the software and community?

Not quite.

I still have some happy customers in our community and using our software, but it’s a completely separate product from the core offering that allowed me to pursue Centori full-time.

The audience was also wrong.

Rather than cater to founders of small SaaS companies (who have little time for SEO) I'm going to focus it on service-business owners like:

• Developers
• Copywriters
• Designers

Who want a safe place to learn SEO, simple tools to get started for their clients, and the ability to ask questions when they get stuck.

Ok… so one more time, what do I do?

There’s a long way to go to get there, but I think a refined approach to messaging and a less confusing offer can help me get there. I’ve changed my answer to this question (and my LinkedIn bio) too many times to count.

So once again, if you ask me “What do you do?” Here’s what I’ll say:

I'm a writer and marketer, I help companies use their content to drive traffic to their website and convert visitors into leads.

It’s not sexy, but I’ve worked with 100 companies over the years and I’ve found that this is what works the best.