The RKease Journey: The Power of Pivoting

"Pivot or persevere: When you hit something that's not working, you have two basic choices: change directions or keep going." - Eric Ries

"Pivot or persevere, the road is clear, in order to shine like a chandelier." - RKease Company

For my entrepreneurial journey, it has been such a wild ride, that I can't even fathom the fact that I even got here. Originally my business was to do stress education workshops to ease workplace stress, enhance employee engagement and increase retention. These aspects of a workplace are so important because they are needed in order to enhance employer branding and attract talent in the global marketplace. Throughout my venture, I was able to get a lot of connections and meet people who were on similar journeys as me, while starting their business. Being a first time entrepreneur has definitely had its ups, downs, highs and lows, but through it all it has enabled me to learn valuable skills, traits, and learn valuable lessons.

The last RKease workshop that I did was with Leap Junction and it was phenomenal to say the least. They loved rapping, being engaged, and having fun competing with each other to see who has the greatest jingle. All in all it was great, but pivoting was the greatest solution for me and my business.

Kamapro and The Orchard

According to an article by Silicon Valley Bank, a pivot means "when a startup breaks its core focus and changes direction in a fundamental way. Sometimes it happens early on in a company's life, sometimes, after one or more rounds of funding. It might mean scrapping a key product or pursuing an entirely different new market, if not both." Pivoting is crucial, especially if you find yourself getting no traction for your products and services. Traction is another important definition, that I wasn't clear on yet, but now I'm totally aware of it because partially reading the book, "Traction". According to the book, the definition of Traction is, "quantitative evidence that your product or service has customer demand. " (Wickman, 2007). Therefore, when I built my stress education workshop, I didn't factor a distribution strategy, when I was building it, so when I went to market, I didn't have any market need, which is the number one reason that startups fail. The research was accurate in terms of the product because technology companies and knowledge workers burnout consistently and have tons of stress-related issues due to high demands of pressure to produce for their companies, but they have other means of relieving that stress.

Cultural Gully Festival

Therefore, I pivoted into being an artist-entrepreneur, making my own personal music and turned my RKease brand into developing a service for entertainment where I rap songs for performances at shows in order to keep my brand afloat. Now the first performance that I performed at was the South Asian Cultural Festival called Cultural Gully. It was their first time running the Festival for Southwest Ontario and people loved it. I was super energised, and people were shocked that I can perform that well too. Nonetheless, it was phenomenal, but let's continue.

RKease - Step

My first single that I released called "Step" was actually a unique song within itself because it was written by myself and an artificial intelligence songwriting tool provided by Staccato.A.I., which allowed me to have the second verse written, but then I recorded it and then released it. It was a very great song and the feedback that I got from it has been phenomenal to say the least. Since, that song, I was able to get a distribution deal from a company called Kamapro Music Distribution in Germany, which partners with the Orchard music distribution company in New York. Therefore, it enabled me to get my music distributed to countries, that I would never have access to, such as South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, etc.

LEAPIN Summer Business Accelerator

Ultimately, this has been one of the greatest journeys that I have ever been on in my life and it's been a phenomenal ride. I can't wait to do more, keep building my business, brand, and keep impacting lives all over the globe. With that being said, I hope everyone has a great day, and it's full of rest, kindness, and ease, peace! :)