Have I pivoted too much?
The past few years in business have been a bit of a roller coaster. In the space of three years (2025 being the start of the third) I went from part-time freelance photographer and part-time employee at a marketing agency, to a full time freelance social media manager and photographer.
If I’m honest, at the moment I’m more social media manager than photographer, because the focus has had to be on that to ensure I kept paying my bills. I’m very lucky (and privileged) in two respects. First, I inherited a large number of clients when I went freelance full time as the agency I was working for had closed down and all the clients I was managing chose to stay with me on a freelance basis. So I didn’t have to suddenly panic about finding loads of new clients. Second, I still live at home and so my outgoings are fairly minimal (if we’re not counting paying for Arnie, my horse).
When I first became a full time freelancer, focussing on the social media management seemed like the right thing to do. It was the sensible thing to do. Yet for the two years I’ve been a freelance social media manager, something hasn’t seemed right. It’s felt a bit sticky, and as a result I’ve not grown my business to where I’ve wanted it.
At the same time, I’ve been trying to offer everything I enjoy, and know I’m good at. And I’ve not been promoting myself anywhere near enough on the photography side of things, where I’d spent years establishing myself and building an engaged audience and number of clients online.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, because looking back I’ve been doing way too much to the point that it’s caused so much overwhelm that I’ve not been doing enough for my business.
Then Alice Benham said this in one of our ON IT sessions (if you haven’t joined yet, I would definitely recommend) “the less you pivot, the deeper the foundations you build”.
And I realised I’ve pivoted too much. I’ve tried to offer too much within my business. And it’s just not worked.
The result?
The business hasn’t grown, I’ve neglected the community on Instagram I had been building for my photography business, and I’ve lost sight of the parts of my business I love.
So what am I going to do about it?
First things first, I’m going back to the big picture work:
I’ll be asking myself:
What do I love to do?
What do I love about it?
How does this help those I want to work with?
Who do I want to be working with?
I’m rediscovering what I love about my work, and why I love working with the people I want to work with.
I’ll then refine my offers to reflect this:
What these offers will be, exactly, is yet to be determined. But I do know that writing and photography will play a much larger part.
And I’ll continue to make sure I’m prioritising my own passion projects:
The main aim for this is to ensure I am still creating for myself. That I’m constantly igniting my love for being creative. So that I making creating for me a habit and an integral part of my day-to-day.
Which will not only benefit me, but my clients too…
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This is all probably (definitely) easier said, than done, but I’m going to work hard to do it anyway. Because I need to.
