Dinah Hampson is the owner of Pivot Sport and Pivot Dancer, a trained physiotherapist and dancer, entrepreneur, and thought leader.
Tell us about yourself?
Pivot Sport Medicine is a multidisciplinary sports medicine clinic in Toronto, Ontario that has been in business for over a decade. During the pandemic, I had to “Pivot” and created the virtual brand of the Pivot business called Pivot Dancer. I work clinically with patients, and I oversee the business. I also travel to speak at and attend conferences, as well as work with elite athletes internationally. I am living my dream work life and just getting started.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
I would sit them down and tell them that the power of humility is actually a superpower to embrace. You have all the power, you have all the brains, and you have all the everything you need to achieve something magical that is all your own and that it is ready to share in a meaningful capacity. I had no idea I could do that.
The most important thing any entrepreneur needs to do in the first year of business is to find valued mentors who can give insight into what things may potentially look like further down the road. Make sure that you are finding sustainability and are constantly evolving in what you are doing.
A skilled mentor will be able to help you and adapt with you in this challenge. Then, as you scale up and learn, you will be able to take on new entrepreneurs to share your experiences with to keep the cycle going.
2020 birthed Pivot Dancer. I would congratulate myself for having the guts to think a little outside the box in a COVID-19 era, which felt almost impossible for an entrepreneur running a small business. I embraced whatever opportunity came my way to see how I could actually learn from it and take that to evolve what we were doing into something different. Now, many non-dancers participate, which is something I am very proud of.
What problem does your business solve?
A sports medicine clinic aims to solve physical pain and dysfunction. We are pretty clear in our mandate that people who are coming to us are seeking our help to solve their problems, not ours. We are super intimate with our brand mission and core values.
Pivot, over the years, has evolved and expanded from injury management to be very much centred around injury prevention. Pivot Dancer, which is our sub-brand that focuses on the people in the world who dance, is very, very focused on preventing injury simply because we know through science that dancers will have one injury a year. This can be extrapolated to elite athletes. You can expect after practising your sport for 1,000 hours, you will have an injury. It is documented.
Pivot Sport has striven to move from the reactive treatment of injury to how can we, as a group of clinical experts, open the floodgates to injury prevention and give people the tools, the education, the knowledge, and the resources, everything that they need in order to reduce injury rate.
It feels like at Pivot, we have created something so unique and warm and wonderful that I will convince people magically to work out, and they’ll be confused as to why they’re doing exercises every day, but they’ll do it happily.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Pivot has always meant to be a place of true excellence that was approachable. Being an elite athlete can often come with a barrier of inaccessibility. Our core values of excellence, mentorship, accessibility, leadership, and trust are something we practise in all of our endeavours.
I always wanted to create a space that not only had the highest calibre of expertise but also was a place that felt so comfortable that people felt like they were returning home.
What is your magic sauce?
Our Pivot Dancer audience includes dance medicine and science experts, professional dancers, and performing artists. Olympians and elite athletes. Ballet companies and international dance organizations.
We work with promising young dancers of note and elite training institutions across North America. Our strategic partnerships include dancewear and fitness promoters as well as technology platforms.
Our audience is interested in dance injury performance and dance performance optimization. They follow us for tips, knowledge sharing, and dancer community involvement. Our followers include Principal Dancers and Olympic Athletes from around the globe. Our business is a global leader in the virtual delivery of specialized cross-training for dancers and artistic athletes.
Personally, I am very much a “people collector”. My network of people includes those that I have known before my memory started remembering things. I love connecting with people and introducing people to others if I think that there is a common interest between them. As an entrepreneur, this has served me very well.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Pivot, over the years, has evolved and expanded from injury management to be very much centred around injury prevention. The most meaningful point to date in the history of Pivot would be taking the main brand (Pivot Sport) and successfully developing sub-brands from it (Pivot Dancer). When I look five or 10 years into the future, I want to see more sub-brands in the Pivot Empire and real international growth. I have worked with some of the best practitioners across the globe, and I am excited to continue to do so as I grow professionally within the international dance physiotherapy community.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Human Resources is a common (and beast of a challenge) for small businesses that don’t have the budget to hire a full department or employee.
I was not brought up to be a business person or to be outspoken. I wasn’t brought up to be strong. These are all things that I think are very important skills you should have in your human resources department. It is equally important to separate business relationships from friendships and understand the subtle differences between each while being able to maintain a friendly family work environment. There is no course or professional development training that teaches you how to do that.
It is exponentially more difficult as a small business owner rather than a bigger corporation because I don’t need a whole department or even a full-time position. When I opened my business, fractional HR positions didn’t exist, so I had to learn this role myself, and the curve was not a super flat one. Luckily, over time, I have had the opportunity to learn both from talented mentors and experience.
Where can you be found?
I can be found online at www.dinahhampson.com (my personal website for collaborations, public speaking, brand deals, and media inquiries)
Email: dinah.hampson@gmail.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/dinahhampson
Facebook: www.facebook.com/dinahhampson
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dinahhampson
Pivot Dancer:
www.pivotdancer.com
www.instagram.com/pivotdancer
www.facebook.com/pivotdancer
Pivot Sport:
www.pivotsmo.com
www.instagram.com/pivotsport
www.facebook.com/pivotsportmedicine/
