Finding your niche may be the hardest part of getting started as a creator. Passion is an excellent compass, but even when you know exactly what you want to do, that’s no guarantee it will grow into a sustainable business.
As author Kevin Kelly has pointed out, it’s your ability to keep exploring and iterating that tends to lead to long-term success. But new creators often feel pressure to decide their fate right out of the gate. So what happens when the world turns upside down, macroeconomic conditions change, and you have second thoughts about your first steps?
For some creators, the key to progress may be trying a new niche. Marina Williams is a creative entrepreneur who started as a portrait photographer, became an educational content creator, and then pivoted again into event production, founding the popular photographers’ retreat Colorpop. But it took a lot of leaps to land the worklife she enjoys most.
Williams’ introduction to photography was in middle school. “My grandfather shot film,” she recalls. “He gave me all these old film cameras and taught me how to use them. When I started high school, I saved up and bought my first SLR and started doing photo shoots around town with my friends.”
She went on to study photography at Florida State University, and after graduation found a full-time position as an in-house photographer for a kids clothing company in Utah. Though she enjoyed the job, she quickly realized it wasn’t her passion, so after a year, she left to start her own business as a freelancer in 2019.
“I started doing mostly senior portraits and some weddings engagements—pretty much everything to pay bills,” she says. “But my passion was creative portraiture and women's fashion.” Then the pandemic hit and all of her shoots were rescheduled or canceled. So she adapted by taking self portraits in her home and sharing her process on Instagram and TikTok.
“People were really excited,” she recalls. “I started pumping out some free education tips, videos, guides. It sort of snowballed from there. Now photography education is what I do full time.”
In 2021, as in-person events became viable again, Williams decided to leverage the following she’d been building online through her educational content and host her first Colorpop event.
“My business partner and I organize 10 epic photo shoots in three days in everyone's favorite locations here in Utah, like the salt flats,” she says. “It's definitely a trajectory for my career I did not expect, but I'm very happy I'm able to do what I love for a living.”
Building a business
Williams estimates the majority of her audience are people who just got their first camera and are still learning how to use it. “I love creating education around that,” Williams says. But about a year and a half ago, she says she hit a “huge turning point” where she realized online education was where she was putting the least amount of her time.