Hey Reader!

I was having a chat with a friend of mine the other day about how they felt jaded and hopeless in their creator journey. I did my best to hype them up and offer some advice, one suggestion being to take this as an opportunity to change up their content subject matter and process to find what brings them joy, and it got me thinking about what "ah hah" moments led me to recently pivoting my content.

If you're new around here, Reader, my original "niche" (if you will) was sharing travel tips for budget travellers. I would share tips on maximizing your budget, saving money on flights with points and flexibility, budget travel essentials and any tips I could find that would help my people travel more within their budget (broke millennials raise your hands 🙋🏼‍♀️😂). While I am still very much a budget travel girly, I decided to pivot my content slightly to include content to help creators with their journey.

My decision to pivot my content was made in Spring of this year, but it took me a while to declare it 😅 Was I even credible enough to share what I know? Would people look at my follower count and go "yeah okay what could SHE know..."? The imposter syndrome was REAL, but more on where I got the confidence to pull that trigger later...

How did I know it was time?

For a little backstory, I started this account back in 2020 (who didn't start their travel account during the pandy lol) and I wasn't really travelling much. I've always been a type-A planner, and would share tips for planning trips, saving money, and destination tips from places I'd travelled in the past. I immediately fell in love with content creation, and at the time I also had a travel blog where I'd share travel guides and more tips, so I started to invest in some courses and e-books to learn the creator ropes so I could make a career change.

And BOY did that not work as fast as I thought it would 😂 but I digress LOL.

I spent three years learning, experimenting and slowly growing, and I eventually found myself running out of ideas of what I could post under the "budget travel" niche. My creativity started to feel strained and I felt boxed-in, mostly because I had other interests and passions but felt like I needed to stick to "budget travel" because that's what I had branded myself as.

But here's the thing: I'd completely lost that love of creating that I had inspired me to get started in the first place.

I found myself looking up lists and lists of tips to travel on a budget, making notes of which ones I would share next, even if I had never tried them myself. There isn't anything inherently wrong with sharing tips that you come across but have never tried, but for me it just made me feel even more disconnected to my content and my purpose. What was the point of building a brand around these budget travel tips if I didn't feel like it belonged to ME?

With that disconnection, I also started to feel significantly fatigued at the thought of showing up 5 days a week, and was no longer feeling confident in my ability to make content creation my career.

I knew that if I wanted to make this my career and actually enjoy myself, I was going to need to make some changes.

So how did I go about pivoting?

In short, I dug deep into why I was still posting on social media and what kept me coming back every week even when I wasn't loving my content. The answer? My community, and the conversations we were having about our journeys as creators.

That was my "ah hah" moment (or one of them, at least). I realized how much I love talking about the creator experience and that I wanted to start sharing what I had learned about content creation. So I decided that I would still share travel content (not necessarily through the lens of "budget travel") but start to integrate content aimed to help fellow creators on their journey.

If you're looking to make a change to your content, here's the logistics of how I pivoted my content and brand:

• I tweaked my content pillars. I removed "budget travel" and added in "creator tips". Right now, I have four solid content pillars: Travel destination tips, travel photography, funny/relatable/real travel moments, and tips for content creators building their brand and business.
  • The reason this works for me is that most of my community are fellow creators and are in the travel space. They resonate with the creator tips, but also connect with my travel and travel photography content. It's all under the umbrella of "travel content creator", which is the majority of my community.
• I changed up my bio. I went from focusing on budget travel tips to focusing on helping creators along their journeys:

This one was kind of a big deal. Though I didn't necessarily announce that I'd changed my bio, it was out there for literally anyone to see. A sort of "silent" declaration, if you will. It took me ages to come up with something that I felt summed up my content and offers, but if you're thinking of changing your bio, I strongly recommend inputting a prompt into ChatGPT to get an idea of how you can sum up your mission statement and how you can format it (and obvi tweak it to make it your own)!

• I created an offer. Okay so truth be told this isn't necessary to pivot your content, but it actually helped me so much! Let me explain. Something that I've never seen any coaches talk about, is how much easier it is to create content when you have an offer to promote and lead to. This doesn't mean that you should be "selling" in every post, but you can take that offer (even a free one!) and break it down into little tiny bits of value that you can turn into a tremendous amount of content. It also gives you a "north star" or direction in every piece of content, so you're not creating content just for the sake of it (or chasing trends that don't actually help your community understand what you're about and why they should follow you).

How did I find the confidence to pivot my content?

Lol in short, I didn't. I just did it scared (thanks Elyse Myers for this, IYKYK).

Here's the thing: I feel it in my BONES that I am meant to be a content creator and that I am going to be successful as long as I don't give up. I'm in this for the long haul, and I know that I might hit a thousand bumps along the way, but eventually I'll get there. You can't fail if you never give up, right?

That's the mentality I went into this change with.

I also knew that the burnout I was feeling from losing my love for creating but still feeling pressured to show up every day (or else I'd lose everything I'd built), wouldn't get any better as long as I didn't feel like my content was leading me somewhere.

So really, my only option was to pivot my content and start creating content that I loved, that I knew I could talk about for ages, and that was going to lead me to my end-game: becoming a mentor for fellow creators, travelling as much as I could and becoming financially free.

That realization hit me like a brick wall, and got the ball rolling towards my brand and content change. I could not be happier with the work I've already done to get where I am today, and I'm so glad that I finally listened to my gut that kept trying to tell me that I was meant for something different from where I'd started and that it was OKAY to make that change and leave that chapter behind.

If your gut is telling you the same, take baby steps to re-align yourself with your purpose and your goals, and start pivoting your content and messaging slowly 💛

Me going through this process is actually how the Happy Place Creator Club membership & training modules were born. The soul-searching work within the first module is exactly what helped me get out of my "funk" and start creating content that I love and got me better reach, growth and overall fulfillment with content creation. The membership isn't re-opening until next year, but if you're thinking about pivoting your content and have any questions (or need a kick in the butt to take the leap 😉), my digital doors are always open!

Hit "reply" to this email me or DM me on Insta and I'll do my best to help ya out with your "re-brand/pivot" questions! 😘

Talk soon!

- Amanda 🧚🏻‍♀️

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Amanda Lee

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amanda@thehappyplacetravel.com

www.thehappyplacetravel.com

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