Hello and welcome back to the Messy Mompreneur podcast! I’m your host, Alysha Sanford, and I’m so happy to have you here.

After taking a one and a half year break to navigate motherhood, grief, and major life changes, I’m back with a fresh look at what it really means to build a life-first business as a mom entrepreneur. In this episode, I’m sharing how brand photography evolved into marketing strategy, what I’ve learned about balancing work-from-home life and homemaking, and why pivoting your business can actually be a powerful move toward sustainability and purpose.

Main Topics included in this Episode

  • Why my capacity and calling both shifted
  • What grief taught (and continues to teach) me
  • The transition from brand photography to the content marketing strategy behind the session planning
  • Sustainable systems for real-life business seasons
  • Encouragement for fellow parent entrepreneurs ready to pivot

Resources Mentioned

  • “The Friday Mix" sign up (A weekly newsletter with a mix of tips, insights, recent favorites, tools and resources that I don’t want to keep from you!)

Connect with Alysha

Music Licensing Info

Music by Eli Lev - Dancin' on the Lawn

Link

Episode Transcription

Hello and welcome back to the Messy Mompreneur podcast. I'm your host, Alysha Sanford, and I'm so happy to have you here. What happens when motherhood grief, a small business and a new venture collide? For me, it led to one of the biggest pivots of my career and I want to share that story with you today. So it's been a while like a year and a half to keep it real. I've recorded this episode a few times and it was never quite. The most recent recording was while walking my favorite pond loop, and I felt so inspired. I loved the birds in the background. It was beautiful fresh air in my face, and I had every intention of walking while recording solo episodes going forward, and I still crave it. But at that time I didn't have a great mobile mic and the wind would have driven us. All crazy, it was insane and not to mention driven my husband crazy. Who's the perfectionist that edits and produces this show? So I found a better mic right about the time that I was dealing with a foot injury. Sorry, TMI, I guess. And simultaneously coming into the cold season here in Southern Oregon. Weather would make it too difficult to plan recordings around, so I'm tabling the idea until next year and I'm so sad about it. But. I'll try it again next time and maybe by then I'll have more days of childcare so I can actually get out there more often. All right. So if you were an original listener to the show, you know that I started this podcast in the spring of 2023, and I had a couple of unexpected pauses as we came into early 2024. At that time, I was deep into the first of two heavy years of loss in our family. I'm going to whip through this quick because I don't want to Stew on it right now. First was our beloved, and only for a baby followed by my grandpa and then my dad, and then most recently two of my grandmas. In the last eight months, if you're listening in real time. I'll share more about navigating deep grief in future episodes because I'm not prepared to go there today, but I wanted to play a bit of catch. Up and. This season of loss has deeply shifted who I am to my. Core. Anyway, moving past that real quick, let's talk about this pivot that I've kind of gone through in the time that I've been absent from recording. I spent years behind the camera as a photographer and I still enjoy photography, but life shifted in big ways as I came into motherhood and everything since. Those shifts pulled me towards something that had been growing louder and louder in my heart, which is helping other small business owners and DIY marketers build marketing efforts and systems and routines that actually work for their real lives and capacities. And that. Was super loud after going through all of this loss and I just want to share a better. A better way to do it? It doesn't have to burn you out. It can even be something you're excited to do. And we'll get into that. So after becoming a mom, my energy and time weren't the same and. I feel like I knew they wouldn't be, but I had no idea how drastic the change would be. What used to work being everywhere all the time, being out for evening photo shoots because I love the golden hour lighting. I just didn't fit anymore as much as I tried to force it to, I felt like I was fighting against. Myself. I found myself so frustrated when things didn't work out right. And. It was just so hard. It's still hard because I still can't say no to every shoot that comes my way because I love my families, that I've worked with for years. But I had to make some changes. I realized that my bandwidth had changed and my passion for helping small businesses hadn't, so I had to figure out what that meant and what that looked like. So as I mentioned, my family went through back-to-back losses and that kind of season makes you pause and ask what really matters. What's the best way to spend my time? It's limited and I forget that. Even today I forget that and then I'm just. Reminded abruptly when grief sets in, but what really matters and how we spend our time and what we're doing on this Earth. During that time, keeping up with social media and the hustle of it was impossible and honestly, it wasn't what I wanted to be known for anymore. Posting all the time, I had an e-mail list, which we'll talk about, and so I started to use that even more to communicate with clients and things for events and shoots they were expecting. Booking links for that I was pausing because of everything going on. At one point I struggled with knowing where things were shifting, and then I realized that I wasn't quitting photography. I was evolving into something that felt. Sustainable and true to who I am right now and deeper into the why behind some of my initial client offers like brand photography and headshots and things like that that are really loved. So we're talking about marketing. Marketing has always been a part of my journey, even back when I started photography, when I picked up a camera and started portfolio building in 2009, which is crazy, it's forever ago I was experimenting with ways to get my name out there. Vendor shows Facebook was kind of a newer thing, but I. Hopped on there, networking in person and online collaborating. Building an e-mail list starting up a Pinterest account. Boosting some posts on Facebook, which I found out are not actually running ads and we could talk about that more too, but I started boosting posts and dabbling in that Craigslist was how I first started. I put up an ad for portfolio building and that was probably dangerous of me, but we tried it. I didn't see it then, but I was slowly building a foundation in marketing strategy all along. Over the years I started noticing I care just as much about helping other business owners show up as I did about my own work and photographing them. I loved thinking about how to make marketing work for people, especially those who didn't have endless hours to pour into social media or are even intimidated by the tech. Side of it. This came naturally while helping others with their headshots and brand photography I. Kind of. I started to nerd out during most of the shoots when talking about ways to use the photos beyond just taking the photos and it clicked for me that there is so much more to what I want to. Do and how I want to help. Storytelling, connection and authenticity are still at the heart of what I'm doing. The only thing that's changed is the medium and not fully. I'm not just creating photos anymore, I'm building strategies and systems that help other DIY marketers and businesses thrive while wearing all of the hats. And sure, I can help them to have some pretty photos, but I just want them. To. Know where to use them, how to use them and the messaging to go along with them. So now I'm working with many more small business owners, creatives DIY, sorry DIY marketers and organizations who want to stay visible without living on line 24/7. People who are tired of chasing trends, burning out, or feeling like they're always behind. My goal is to help them create simple systems and let marketing run in the background so they can get back to running their business and living their lives. So some lessons I've learned during this pivot and that I want to share with you for a take away, if you're facing a pivot. Your capacity can change, but that doesn't mean you're calling disappears. Life seasons aren't roadblocks. They can be the very thing that push you to find better ways to work and make an impact. Sustainable systems and strategies always outlast frantic hustle, especially on social media. Pivoting doesn't mean starting over. It means building on the experience that you already have. Your audience cares about both your business and your humanity, and now more than ever, so it's OK to show up as both. It's OK to show up as messy as honest. As evolving. It just makes you more human. We'll talk about AI in future episodes, but it is kind of everywhere. To the point where it's almost. Hard to know if something is authentic and real, or if it's just AI. They call it AI slop. I feel like there are. Some powerful ways to use AI in an ethical way, and it can be a really cool asset to your business if you're willing to let it be. But you have to have boundaries, you have to. Keep that human element. People want to see you. They want to know you. They don't want another faceless account. Yeah, we can get into that again later. But anyway, little tangent. So anyway, if you've been wondering whether it's OK to pivot or if your capacity has shifted, it doesn't mean you're failing. It means you're growing. It means your business gets to grow with you and that's the coolest thing. And when I was in the middle of it. And the unknowns, it was hard and I was. Feeling lost and I was afraid to give my followers whiplash by changing things on social media. And maybe I did. But I had so many more that stuck around, then left, and I just want to encourage you. They're along for the ride with you. That's the beauty of it. I'd love to hear your pivot story if you have one, you can DM me at hey, Alicia Sanford on Instagram and you can also send me an e-mail or just take a moment today to reflect on what's shifting for you. If there's something rumbling. My contact info will be available in the show notes in this episode. All right. A few more things to catch us up from my 1 1/2 year hiatus from this show, a few more notable things that happened that I feel absolutely lit up about and have to share with you, you know, for. Context. The first one I opened a second business in early 2024, which is probably crazy. But I did it because I couldn't shake it, and that was a creative space for locals to rent by the hour to share with other. Creatives, entrepreneurs, small business owners and organizations, and this was a longtime dream of mine to provide something to other small businesses without a full time space to expand their own dreams. And that whole experience was so much fun and we'll talk about it more. Especially when talking about our capacities as humans and entrepreneurs and parents, if you're a parent. So that was one of the things that happened. I also had nervously joined a local economic development group for the town that my creative space was located in, which was unknowingly the. Beginning of building some amazing relationships, I was so shy, but I'm so glad that I took that step to go and sit in there in the first meeting and then join as a member during the. Next, and I'm now a volunteer board member for that group serving in the area of marketing and PR, and we'll talk about that more as well. It's been a total blast and the sense of community that I have found and that I feel. I can't stop talking about it, so you're going to hear about it and I'm going to encourage you lovingly to join a group if you haven't and along with that group, I joined the local Chamber of Commerce as well. Well, and that led to being asked to teach one of their monthly workshops on marketing. I was terrified and thrilled all at once, but I took that leap of faith and it introduced me to the world of public speaking. Beyond those required speeches in school that always have my stomach and not the days leading up to them, if you. Know you know. Not that I didn't have knots in my stomach before this workshop, but this was something I was so passionate about and so excited to share my heart on. And it's just different when you're forced to pick a topic in school that you may or may not care about. It's different when you're sharing your heart, and when it's so much of your why. So anyway. And then recently, our little family moved to the cutest little cottage in the country where we live. After almost 13 years in our last home, we were. More than ready. Being out here where it's so quiet and watching the insane amount of wildlife in our front yard and on the hill across from us and connecting with our sweet new neighbors. It is just a dreamlike as we were moving in our next door neighbor, one of like 3, I watched her picking blackberries across the road and then two days later she showed up on her doorstep to introduce herself with an amazing BlackBerry cobbler. And I have goosebumps talking about it right now. It might seem simple to you. I've never had that. Experience. I've seen it in movies. I've seen it in shows and we. Are so blessed to have that now it's just it's a cozy feeling anyway. How to share it? I might talk about it again. Sorry. Anyway, I feel so inspired to sit in front of the large front window or the covered patio in our new home during my work blocks while my daughter plays nearby. And I look forward to attempting a garden, and maybe he'll share that with you or maybe I won't. I don't know. We'll see. But yeah, it's been a wild year and a half heavy on the bittersweet. And we're working through it. But I'm excited to share more with you. We're going to be deep diving into sustainable marketing because it's obviously my new focus going forward and I can finally. Kind of see a bigger picture with this show. It definitely started as a passion project to fill a gap that I felt like I couldn't see in other shows I wanted. Entrepreneurship. I wanted motherhood. I wanted parenthood. I wanted to. Little bit of home making. I don't know. I wanted to combine it all and I hadn't found it yet, so that's what we created. There will definitely still be a few interview episodes sprinkled in with industry experts that. Have game changing thoughts or offers or whatnot that would. Benefit you and future mom conversations and yeah, I'm excited and I want to thank you for being here with me. I'm so excited to keep sharing this journey with you and to also cheer you on as you navigate your own. All right. Until next time. Bye.