Welcome to Episode 7 of the Stephanie Kase podcast! Today, we’re talking about something I get a lot of questions about: pivoting your business to something totally different. If you listened to episode one of the podcast, you know that I’ve pivoted my business from being a wedding photographer to a photography and now a business educator. While I focused a lot on my journey in that episode, this one is going to be all about tips and tricks to pivot your own business. Most of my income is passive at this point, and it’s just so freeing. I love talking about all of this because I truly believe it can transform your business and your life.

Starting Your Business Pivot

If you’re thinking that your business or brand needs to go in a different direction, I think the first thing to do is start taking your audience along for the journey. Start making small changes and allowing those with you to follow along. I’m not saying you can’t pivot quickly – but I would avoid just doing a sharp turn into the new venture. This is one reason I LOVE a personal brand. It just allows more room for these kinds of moves without it feeling like a big departure from your existing brand or business. People start to follow along and cheer you, the person, on – not just your business. It makes pivoting so much easier in the end. I attribute my own pivots to having a personal brand that was about me, and not just my photography.

I don’t think we talk enough about the fact that you can’t really pivot quickly. You need to be able to make the changes slowly, especially if you’re providing the sole income or major income of your household. For me, that was important. I couldn’t just cut out half of my income by stopping photography. I had to slowly bring that down and work in more products and passive income. It took time. From 2019 to 2021, I began to decrease my bookings and increase affiliate income, my courses and products for passive income, and slowly my photography income became way less of what I brought in. It’s been really cool to see the effort I’ve put into these products allowed me to pivot my business pretty naturally.

My Faith and Pivoting

Another aspect that was really important to me was praying about my business pivot. I prayed about how I would make it happen and what I would do. My prayers really helped me lead into the pivots I made. For me, it looks a lot like what are the strengths that I have? Where am I feeling called? Where am I feeling lead? And where do I want to go and making sure that it was where God was leading me and not just something that I wanted to do, right? Everything I’ve done in my business that I have invited God into has done so much better than anything I tried to do on my own. So, I made an intentional effort this time to listen to what God was leading me towards. I saw him leading me to my teaching ability, my natural gifts with content creation, and those types of things. I knew I wanted a business with passive income, not something service based so I could have the flexibility I needed as we had kids.

And let me tell you, it has been the best decision I could have made. Our twins are already four months old. But, it has been the best thing ever having a business that the hours I work is not directly related to how much money I make.

So anyway, if you’re someone who is thinking about a pivot, make sure it’s where you’re feeling led and where you can best show up to use your strengths and serve others.

Passive Income

Pivoting doesn’t just have to be about building passive income, because not everyone wants to do that. Although it’s super popular right now (and I think it’s really smart), it’s not something you have to do. I want to be clear, too… even if you are a service-based provider, you can build passive income without having a totally passive business. For me, when I was a photographer, I was asked about how I edit so I launched presets that brought me in $10K. I also began sharing my affiliate link more and more for Honeybook, which brought income in too. Adding additional income streams can add up quickly. So, think about that – you can always start with small things that tie into what you already do and use every single day. If you’re thinking about pivoting your business, start asking yourself what is one small step you can take towards your pivot.

Sometimes those big pivots can feel really overwhelming and impossible. I didn’t think I could just jump from wedding photography to full educator. These smaller steps helped me bridge that gap and make the transition.

How I made the Pivot

Now, I want to talk through how I made my pivot from wedding photography to being a business educator. If you listen to episode one, I talk more about why this was and the journey! But for the first five years of my business I was a wedding photographer. But, I knew that I didn’t want to do that full-time. I always had the dream of being an educator. So, one of the first things I did to work towards that pivot was starting my YouTube channel in 2019. This was before I had products or courses. I had just started my email list, too. Even back then, I knew growth on YouTube would take time – and getting it to the point that it would generate income was not going to happen overnight. But, I started the email list and YouTube channel in 2019, knowing they would help me in the long run.

2019 and 2020

At the end of 2019, I joined Hope Taylor’s mastermind. This was a great step to get some more help creating products and launching my shop. The mastermind began in January 2020 and by February, I made the decision to stop booking new weddings. It was super scary, especially considering that I was stepping into my role as a photography educator. But, it was an important small step to make. From that point in February, I launched my first online course about how to photograph wedding details. It was very niche and specific, but helped me establish myself as an educator. Up until the launch, I had been sharing photography related videos on YouTube, which also helped show that I knew my stuff. I also converted those videos into blog posts and demonstrated my value as an educator.

Around that point, COVID happened. A lot of my weddings were rescheduled and I had way more time on my hands. So, I began to launch a series of smaller products including templates, guides, and other digital items for photographers. At the time, I stayed focused on just photography education. After those were launched, I began to focus on building another course: The Business Confident Photographer. It was a huge deal for me for a few reasons and I’m still so proud of it!

But, right before I launched the course, I began to start pivoting my content into more general business tips and tricks – less on just photographers. If I’m being honest, I had no idea what the new direction would be but I just kept throwing content out and seeing what would stick. From there, the rest was history. During the summer of 2020, Instagram Reels were released. I did some videos about them and the were insanely popular. At that point, I decided we were ditching the photography content for good and moving in that direction.

2021 and 2022

At the start of 2021, my YouTube channel was growing rapidly but it felt really hard in my business because I didn’t know what to do with everything. Because I wasn’t booking clients, I wasn’t doing a lot and I wasn’t sure what my new products or courses would be. I continued to get questions about editing photos and creating a light and airy aesthetic online, so I launched mobile presets. The launch wasn’t anything crazy but it helped me continue to transition away from photography. I created a new product that could be continually bought from me and people got what they wanted.

So, a few months later, I launched four more products related to content creation and Reels. At this point, I joined my second mastermind with Kat Schmoyer and she helped me really decide to create my course about Instagram Reels. We focused on creating new content and the course, as well as growing my email list.

During the fall, I worked hard with a copywriter to overhaul my website. We changed who I was speaking to and made sure it wasn’t just photographers anymore. I began to set up new funnels and sequences to pitch my products after free downloads and it changed everything. Now, we’re focusing on educating other business owners about content creation and it feels amazing to know we’ve made these pivots happen!

That’s my story about pivoting! I hope that it inspires you if you’re thinking about pivoting your own business! Whether it’s adding in affiliate marketing, a new service, products, or something else – it’s a process that takes time but is absolutely do-able! If you have any other questions about pivoting (or episode ideas!), make sure please send in your requests! Email me at [email protected] with your questions!! I can’t wait to hear from you!