---
# Decoding Tomorrow: The Infinite Pivot Series - #34 "Pivots are often made years before they happen."
**URL:** https://jimcarroll.com/2026/05/decoding-tomorrow-the-infinite-pivot-series-34-pivots-are-often-made-years-before-they-happen/
Date: 2026-05-13
Author: JimCarroll
Post Type: post
Summary: “Pivots are often made years before they happen.” – Futurist Jim Carroll Futurist Jim Carroll is writing a series, The Art of the Infinite Pivot, based on 36 lessons from his 36 years as a solo entrepreneur, working as a nomadic worker in the global freelance economy. The series is unfolding here, and at pivot.jimcarroll.com. […]
Categories: ArtofthePivot, Blog, Daily Inspiration, Knowledge, Reinvention
Featured Image: https://jimcarroll.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/InfinitePivot-34ExperientialCapital.jpg
---
*"Pivots are often made years before they happen."* - Futurist Jim Carroll
*Futurist Jim Carroll is writing a series, The Art of the Infinite Pivot, based on 36 lessons from his 36 years as a solo entrepreneur, working as a nomadic worker in the global freelance economy. The series is unfolding here, and at *[*pivot.jimcarroll.com*](https://pivot.jimcarroll.com/)*.*
Every pivot you have ever admired looks like a single moment - it's a big decision, a sudden leap, a brave day.
It's not.
It's something you've been thinking about for a long time. But more important than that, it's something that you were getting ready for long before you knew you were getting ready.
Why is that? Because every pivot worth making was paid for in advance, in the tiny experiments, side projects, abandoned hobbies, accidental curiosities, and detours that didn't make sense at the time. Here's the truth: people who appear to have made a sudden leap had been quietly preparing for it for years. They just didn't know it.
I have a name for it: *experiential capital.*
It's a topic that sits at the center of one of my books, *Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast!* It's also a phrase and concept that draws a LOT of attention in every keynote I do, because it offers up a concrete mindset pathway for moving forward.
What is it? Experiential capital is the deep, practical knowledge you can only acquire by doing something. By running small experiments, by tinkering, by playing with technologies and ideas before they matter. It cannot be bought. It cannot be downloaded. *It is earned, slowly, through accumulated small bets.*
And here's why it matters - it's getting you ready for a new trend, new opportunity, or new disruption, long before it happens. In that way, it accelerates your timing of adoption or aligning to a different future. That's important because in an exponential world, *the gap between when a trend appears and when it dominates your industry has collapsed from decades to months.* You no longer have time to start learning about a major shift when it arrives. The only people who can pivot fast enough are the ones who were quietly playing with the new thing for years before anyone called it important. The ones who invested in it through '*experiential capital.'*
That is the entire argument of the "*Start Small"* part of the *Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast* mantra that I share! People love *Think Big.* They love *Scale Fast*. They often skip past the middle, where the actual work happens. *Start Small* is the discipline of running tiny, low-stakes experiments without yet knowing which one will matter.
You don't run experiments to be right.
You run them to be ready.
As I wrote in the book: "*In the absence of clarity, taking initiative today is significantly better than finding a perfect plan tomorrow*." Starting small gets you there.
So here is the practical version: You don't need to know what your next pivot is going to be. You need to make sure you have the experiential capital to fund it when it arrives.
Pick three things at the edge of your industry, your interest, or your imagination. Start playing with them this month. Not as a strategy. As experiments. A few hours a week. Tolerate the awkwardness. Waste frivolous time. Learn by doing. And as you do this, pay attention to which ones you find yourself coming back to.
Those are the ones that will fund your next leap.
Think Big. *Start Small.* Scale Fast.
Emphasize the small. It's the fuel for your future.
---
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