Exploring the entrepreneurial journey of KP and Jessie, the strategies that worked, the lessons learned, and the transformative power of finding a niche.

Bio

KP and Jessie are the color-obsessed design duo behind Inkpot Creative® who love supporting creative photographers who are building anything-but-ordinary brands. They know exactly what it’s like to be the loud, bold, colorful outliers in the industry. That’s why they partner with creatives who aren’t afraid to express themselves loudly and go boldly against the grain. In a world where first impressions matter and attention spans are shortening by the day, they’re focused on building strategic, personal brands and websites that people can’t look away from.

“As we started to just do more and more photographers, like everything we put out was a photographer site. So it just kept attracting more photographers. But I think switching everything in our copy and in how we talk to people and our like brand messaging to photographers just kind of solidified that even more, and it’s helped us. Basically, this is one of the first times since we started business that we haven’t seen like a lull in inquiries and booking people and we’ve been able to basically book our ideal clients.”

– Jessie

Transcript

Hey there, and welcome back to another episode of Unbreakable Brands, the podcast where we dive into the resilient strategies and mindsets behind successful women led businesses. Today, I have KP and Jessie, pronouns she/her, on the show to talk about the power of a niche and their journey to get there.

KP and Jessie are the color-obsessed design duo behind InkPot Creative, who love supporting creative photographers that are building anything but ordinary brands. They know exactly what it’s like to be the loud, bold, colorful outliers in the industry. That’s why they partner with creatives who aren’t afraid to express themselves loudly and go boldly against the grain.

In a world where first impressions matter and attention spans are shortening by the day, they’re focused on building strategic, personal brands and websites that people can’t look away from. I have known KP and Jessie for quite a while now, and I am so excited to have them on the show to talk about their entrepreneurial journey and niching.

Welcome to the show, guys. As you know, we start by talking a little bit about your journey. Can you both share a bit about your backgrounds and then how InkPot Creative came to be?

KP: Yeah, sure. I’ll go ahead and go first because I founded InkPot. So this is KP talking. I founded InkPot back in 2020. I actually graduated from university in 2020. We all know that was a pretty wild year, but I really struggled actually to get an in-person job, so what I ended up doing was moving into the online space. I dabbled in so many things before I kind of found what really made me happy.

So back in college, I had studied graphic design media arts and English I’ve always had a huge passion for books publishing. I really wanted to work in a publishing house, and after college I ended up actually starting off doing a lot of social media work just because I’ve also always really enjoyed social media. Before long that ended up morphing into website design and branding, but especially website design, just because it really feels like an interactive version of what I loved most about publishing, basically just designing layouts that are super interactive online.

Before long too, I started to get so, so busy at InkPot Creative and then that’s sort of where Jessie ended up joining me.

Jessie: Yeah, so when I graduated college, I graduated with a degree in psych. I had a minor in media arts and graphic design because KP and I went to the same school and we wanted to take some classes together. So I was like, okay, I’ll just take some on your major. Cause I think I needed some like creative courses to graduate. So I was like, I’ll do it. And then I ended up just minoring in it because I had nothing else to fill my schedule. So I had had like a little bit of a background in it, but not nearly as much as KP.

And my idea was to go back to school, get my PhD, become a psychologist, all of that stuff. And then we graduated in 2020 and got sent home the last semester of our senior year and did online school. And I was like, yeah, I’m done with school. This isn’t what I’m feeling. Maybe I’m going to put this on the back burner and figure something else out to do with my life.

So I ended up getting a remote customer service job, which was great to start off with. And then basically I was doing stuff every day that I didn’t love to do. I was not fulfilled at all. I was getting really burnt out and tired and didn’t really have motivation to do any anything. And once KP started to get a little busy, I was like, you know what? I can try this. I can jump in, start doing development because it didn’t really take that much creative juice. KP is definitely the more creative one out of the two of us. So I was like, let me give this a shot and see what happens. And I quit my job and joined KP. We had a plan where I was supposed to quit by June.

Our goal was for me to quit by my birthday and then I think she had a really busy week and everything was just getting so overwhelming that, you know, two weeks later I had already put in my notice and was like done being at my job and, and jumped in and I started doing development and project management and kind of taking over that stuff.

I also started to pick up blogging as we added that as a service. And I’ve kind of grown into that. I never thought I would be a blog writer. Writing was never my strong suit in school or anything. But I’ve been able to pick that up and it’s been a lot of fun. So kind of just jumping in and, and doing everything that, you know, KP needed to help with and, and learning on the fly.

But it’s been way more fulfilling and I feel like I probably work more than I did at a regular job, which I feel like any business owner is like, no, this is way more work than it would be if I was like working for somebody else. But it feels way more fulfilling and like I’m doing a lot more and like better work while still also being able to have that kind of human interaction and use the stuff that I learned in psych about, you know, how people function and how to work with people and you know, how to help people, and the client project and management stuff.

So it’s kind of the best of both worlds without, you know, actually having to go back to school and do all of this stuff to become a psychologist like I’d originally planned on.

And the freedom because for those listening, KP and Jessie are currently in Milan, Italy. They’re on a grand Europe tour, like dreams coming true for them, but like that freedom of freedom. You know, you don’t have to be in one place to is probably amazing.

Jessie: Yeah, it’s definitely being able to just like take time off whenever we want and go do what we want. I know that even, you know, when I was working, we tried to take vacations when I had my customer service job and it was just so hard to be like, okay, well I have to see if I can get this week off or if I can get these three days or I only have, you know, seven days left that I can take off for vacation and it was just so hard.

But now we’re like, we want to take a month off, we want to take two months off, we want to take this week off, it doesn’t matter. We just do it and we do what we want to do. And it gives us that freedom and that flexibility to, to kind of go after the things that we love to do.

I love that. Okay, before we talk about niching and where you guys have taken your company, I’m going to put you on the spot a little bit because you guys are partners. So how has that been working together? As a couple, essentially, like, what are some of the things, the challenges, the successes that you’ve had with that transition?

KP: I feel like in all honesty, it was definitely more difficult when we first started working together. But over time, it’s one of those things that like you really just start to get into a groove. And we were also like best friends for, I don’t know, three years before anything, like we started dating or anything, which has made it a lot nicer. And we were like college roommates and everything like that. We played sports together. So like we’ve worked together in many different instances and especially in sports too. I feel like it’s the closest it gets to running a business cause there are some really high pressure moments in sports. So we’ve just gotten really used to, you know, pretty much like finding what each of us is really good at and then kind of just letting the other person move in the direction of what they enjoy doing most.

If you were to hand over like the best piece of advice other than letting you know each person like go after what they love to—because I know there’s a lot of entrepreneurs who are couples in business—what would it be?

Jessie: I think being able to communicate and also separate work from life as much as possible and not kind of bring anything that’s going on in business into anything that’s going on in your life, just to kind of have that little wall as much as possible, which I know is really hard when you’re running your own business.

It’s also really hard when you’re working from home and everything is just in one single spot all the time. So just finding ways to separate it as much as possible. Sometimes you’re going to get in disagreements in business about what should happen or what’s going to do it. Or one of you like slips ups or misses something and the other one’s like, come on, we need to do better. Like as much as it’s hard to, to do that, having the like boundaries of being like, okay, we can have disagreements, things can happen in business, but that doesn’t necessarily have to affect anything else.

Now I want to dive into the power of a niche. That’s what we’re here to talk about. So I know that you guys have found a lot of success focusing on a specific niche. So I want to talk, have you guys explain the process of discovering that and honing in on that? Because I feel like that’s the number one piece of advice people give in this space is like, find your niche, niche down. And I think There can be these beliefs that you have to find it immediately and do it from day one. But I know you guys had a process to get there eventually. So I just want to hear all about that.

KP: So this is going to sound kind of funny, but I remember a very specific mentorship call with you. I want to say it was like maybe my second or third one. And we were talking and we were really trying to define like who I most wanted to work with. And I remember it came up when I suddenly realized like, Oh my gosh, I think it’s photographers. And like that was way back in 2021 and we didn’t like officially niche down until 2023. So it’s definitely been a really, really long process.

Jessie: I think, too, when it comes to it, you have to give yourself the time to figure it out and not feel like you have to rush into it. Like, even KB was saying, that thought came into her mind in 2021. We really didn’t niche down until, like, last year. Or, I guess, publicly niche down. I think in our minds we were like, no, it’s photographers. But we didn’t kind of switch all of our marketing and how we talk to people and you know, how we put ourselves out there towards photographers until last year. So I think giving yourself the time to actually like, think about it, see who you like working with. And especially when you’re like first starting out in business or trying to figure it out, like getting different types of clients and be like, okay, no, I actually really don’t like working with that type of client. So we can like check that one off the list. That is not who my niche is going to be. But giving yourself the opportunity, like try out new things, see what works, see what doesn’t.

So I think just not not rushing into it. It doesn’t need to be a decision that’s made overnight. It doesn’t need to be decision that’s made, you know, within your first year or anything like that. It’s something that can kind of evolve and develop as your business grows and it might even change as your business grows depending on what you’re doing. So give yourself the space don’t don’t force yourself into something and it’ll naturally come out.

Yeah, I love that you collected the data in that realm well and I talked a little bit about like value-based niching too. So you could niche an industry or you could niche by value. Like it doesn’t have to be only photographers, you could niche specifically by a value or an interest or a set group of folks. So there are different ways to niche too. And I think that thinking about it holistically like that can help as you like get closer and closer to what it is you’re doing and then who you’re serving on repeat. So on that same note tell me about the moment where you guys like what was the conversation where you’re like we’re gonna do it. We are going to publicly announce that this is who we’re serving, we’re changing our copy, we’re, we’re like. This is it.

KP: I feel like it officially happened, I would say it started last summer. So like summer 2023, there had been like so many photographers that we had worked with by then. And like the amount of time is in conversation that I would just like suddenly be like, Jessie, like, should we just niche down? And it got to a point last year where we hadn’t updated our brand like ever since I first branded like back in 2020. And it was getting to a point where I was like, I feel like the work we’re putting out is at such a different level than like what our own brand and website looks like. And we kind of like had this conversation where we were like, okay, like I think we need to go through like our own rebrand process, like our own entire website design process and really just see if like at the end of it, we feel like photographers are who we most want to work with.

So like by going through like, even like all the branding questionnaires and everything like that, like we really came to realize like, no, like this is the direction we want to move in. And I feel like just even going through that entire process on our own just like opened up so much and we ended up like hiring a copywriter to do all of our copy, which also helped a lot with like our brand messaging and everything and really kind of helped us to feel like we were carving out our own space and really niching down.

Jessie: Yeah, I think one of the big turning points was when we worked with our copywriter and like got that first draft back. We were like, Oh my God, like this is amazing. And this feels like it’s speaking to the exact people that we want to speak to. Like it felt so connected with us and what we wanted to do.

So I feel like we had been in the mindset of this is the right move. And then we got that copy back and we’re like, Nope. This is the right move. Like this is exactly what we want to put out there. This is exactly how, you know, we want to market ourselves, how we want to attract people who we want to work with.

So I think that kind of was the last like nail in the coffin of like, nope, this is right. We’re good. We’re on the right path here. But it did take a lot of time to be like, no, we really need to. Basically completely rebrand our ourselves and focus on it and we had spent a lot of time like subtly marketing to photographers.

And obviously like through our work, as we started to just do more and more photographers, like everything we put out was a photographer site. So it like kind of did it for us where it just kept attracting more photographers, but I think switching everything in our copy and in how we talk to people and our like brand messaging to photographers just kind of solidified that even more. And it’s helped us. Basically, this is one of the first times since we started business that we haven’t seen like a lull in inquiries and booking people and we’ve been able to basically book our ideal clients.

Every single client we’re like, yes, we’re super excited about this. Like, this is amazing. We’re really excited to work with you. It’s been really amazing. Everyone that we’ve been able to like collaborate with, you know, the end of last year through the beginning of this year. So I think it all has kind of like come together and you always feel like you’re doubting yourself a little bit in business, but I feel like everything’s been like falling into place to the point where like, no, this was definitely the right move.

Okay. I’m obsessed because not only did you go through your actual process or the process of rebranding, which I feel like between us, we all know very intimately for other people, but then do it like taking a dose of our own medicine is like, oh my gosh, look at this alignment that we found by doing that.

And that by honing in, you have actually increased your revenue or like booked more of the ideal people that you want to book because there’s a lot of fear around that. I hear that a lot in business of like, oh, but I don’t want to deter anyone from working with me. And I always say, if you work with everyone, you work with like no one. But did you guys have like those doubts and fears? Like, oh, now we’re going to totally deter other people from working with us or did it feel so aligned with when you got the copy back that that like took it away. Tell me a little bit about that.

KP: I love that you asked that because that was our main hesitation over the last few years of like being scared to actually niche because we were like, no, but we work with so many other cool people too who like aren’t photographers and what if they never want to work with us again? And shockingly, we found that we’ve still been able to work with everybody, which is like so funny because I’ve heard other people say that too. And I was like, Oh, there’s no way that’ll happen to us. Like we’ll niche down and then we’ll never be able to work with anybody else. But it’s been the exact opposite.

And even with like all of our copy, most of our copy is written specifically for wedding photographers. And Jessie and I were talking before this call and we realized in the last month alone, I think most of our clients have actually been like portrait and family photographers who don’t even offer weddings. So it really goes to show that like niching down is not going to, you know, stop other people from reaching out. If people still align with your work and they still align with your values, they’re still going to wanna work with you.

Jessie: And like for us, that’s been in the past I guess year, year two, even as we’ve like subtly been moving towards photographers, we’ve worked with photographers, we’ve worked with authors, we’ve worked with a tattoo artist, wedding planners, copywriters, coaches, therapists, like we’ve worked with a broad spectrum of people. So it hasn’t completely closed the door for anyone who isn’t a photographer. And we do, I mean, even internally, we get that question from people who inquire and they’re like, I want to work with you, but I’m not a photographer. And we’re like, totally fine. If you like our work, if you have the same values as us, like we’re totally open to working with you, we’re not going to be like, nope, not a photographer, go find someone else. But it also kind of helps draw in the photographers that we do want to work with. So it kind of works out in the best way and we still are able to work with everyone that, you know, vibes with us creatively and also the people that we kind of want to attract and constantly market to.

Yes. I’ve started saying specifically, not exclusively when I’m talking about who I serve, because in general, like if you know anything about my company, I work specifically with women-led businesses. I say specifically and then I add, but not exclusively because every once in a while I’ll get on a call and it’ll be a guy and he’s like, so I know you’re here for the ladies.

Like that’s pretty much the first sentence and then they’ll be like, but I love that mission and I love X, Y, Z. Like, can we have a conversation? And I’m like, well, if you’ve gotten this far and you’re behind that, we’re going to be fine, like, of course, we’ll have a conversation about it. So it sounds like that’s a similar path that folks end up chatting with you guys about like, okay, it might not be that exact area, but at the same time, the majority of the people, yeah, cool. Our photographers, which is what you want and love anyways. Okay.

So any advice you would give to entrepreneurs who are like struggling to find the niche other than having patients and collecting some data, what would be another, any other pieces of advice that are like for people who are like, Oh, I’m worried. I don’t know even how to do this that you guys would give.

Jessie: I feel like our other biggest piece of advice is don’t feel like you can’t pivot. Like with anything in business, you can try something out and if it doesn’t work, one, it doesn’t mean that you’ve failed at something. If something doesn’t work, if you don’t like something, that doesn’t mean that you failed. That doesn’t mean that you’re a failure. It just means that you don’t like it. And the beauty of running your own business is that you don’t have to do something that you don’t like. So if you’re like, okay, I think this is the person or this is the group of people that I want to work with. And you try it out and you’re like, nope, actually, that’s not who I want to work with.

It’s okay to pivot and go back out and try and cast your net and see what you bring in and see the people that, you know, you, you like to work with. And like you said, it might not be like us, where we have like, okay, our, our niche is a group of people and it’s photographers. It might not be a specific career. It might be, you know, the values that they have or something like that. You know, we also work with a lot of, I mean, pretty much every single client that we work with is either queer or queer-affirming. So that’s a big value of ours. And that’s a big value that we look for in the businesses that we work with, so it might be something like that, that kind of drives it.

And it doesn’t matter what industry they’re in, but as long as they have that value that is really important to you, like, that’s. You look for, and that’s what you vibe with. So feeling like you’re not stuck in where you are and you can pivot at any point. You can pivot as you grow a lot of things in business, change As you grow and as you evolve in your own business. So it’s totally fine. If your ideal client changes, you know, the five years into business from what it was the first year in your business, like that’s probably going to happen. And that’s, that’s totally okay. So just giving yourself the freedom and the flexibility to kind of go with the flow, see what happens. And if you aren’t feeling something, if something doesn’t feel like it’s working for you, just stop doing it and change.

Yes, love. That is the most important lesson. I want to add one piece to that, which is that there’s an endless number of niches because humans are complex. And so I think another like attachment to the fear is not only, Oh, I’m going to deter people. I’m going to have no clients or, you know, whatever your stories are telling yourself. Well, the other piece of that is it has to fit into some kind of box. And I like, don’t like being in a box, but that’s really not the case.

I had a client who’s a biotech copywriter. And so she only works with companies who are actively doing something to make our environmental crisis better. And that is like such a specific, but very wide range of companies doing really cool things. And like, Oh, I, and when she said that, I was like, that is. Like not something that you would Google or look up or be on a list of niches or something like that. So it’s like, keep that open if you’re in that process.

Okay, so I want to expand on this and ask you about something I hear a lot. Let’s say you’re only working with photographers and how are you staying motivated and inspired in that work since it is within a niche? Because I feel like that’s another fear of like, oh, but then is it going to feel repetitive or is it going to feel like the same things? And I know you guys have an awesome unique approach. So maybe we’ll get into that, but tell me more about that.

KP: I feel like for us, a lot of it comes down to our why. So like, again, we do this a lot for like the freedom and being able to kind of do what we want to do. And we find that we’re able to connect with our clients on that too, because pretty much everyone we work with really kind of does it for the same sort of reasons.

And when it comes to like actually being inspired in our work, um, a lot of it low key comes down to like the personality of the people that we work with. So a lot of our work is very personality driven, so that’s not the way it works. It’s really complicated. You have to be like, you have to be a tech or maybe you have to be like, You have to be like, you have to be a businessman. You have to be like a sales person. You have to be like a tech. You have to be like a business person. And then like, and then you have this sort ofpedia that you have to work with on, with like three, four or five different people. But at the same time, you’re also creating like a three dimensional product that you’re having to really look at and work with and then communicate to them a lot more.

We’ve kind of found that the opposite has been true for us.

Jessie: Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. I think, you know, a lot of our clients were able to connect with over travel, like KP said. And they’re like, no, I want to do this because I understand how this is going to help my business. And like, I actually want to work less, so I’m going to do this as a way to like work less and then be able to travel.

Right now we’re like, okay, we’re going to take some time off and go to Europe and we can do that. And that’s what we love to do. Or even when we’re in the US, like we move around basically every single year. We started on the East coast, then we lived in Denver, then we went out to Vegas. Like just having the flexibility to, to do that and knowing that like working with these people is what is allowing us to do that, I think keeps us motivated. But then I also think on top of, you know, being able to connect with clients and show off their personality. And being able to see all of the work that they do is also very inspiring.

And being able to work with a lot of queer photographers and queer affirming photographers and put more out there that highlights queer love, like that representation is still very important. And I think being a part of being like showing that and putting that out there for other people to see is really inspiring for us and like keeps us motivated because the more we can do that, like the more it’s out there, the more it’s going to help more people, the more, you know, it’s visible and that’s super important. So I think being able to work with the specific types of photographers that we work with too and showcase that is really fun on one hand because the work is always amazing, but then it’s also something that like, we know we feel really good about and we know that it’s helping people down the road.

Beautiful. And KP, when you said, we’re here to figure out what makes them tick and just that constant curiosity that you’re bringing to every person who comes through, who brings their own, like, needs and wants and desires, I think it’s a cool part of, you know, our industry in particular, because we get to have that piece of it altogether and be part of a larger mission as well.

So I want to know what’s happening with InkPot Creative. What’s new on the horizon. What projects are coming up? You guys have niched. It’s been about a year now. Give us the deets.

KP: We’ve had so many changes this past year. I feel like we relaunched our rebrand earlier this year. We just went through and revamped all of our offers. We were getting to the point where I feel like most business owners get to this too. We’re like three or four years in. You just start to have so many things that you’re doing. That you’re like, almost start to lose control of all the things you’re doing.

So we actually revamped all of our offers and now have just two. So we just have a rebrand service and a blogging service, and it’s made it a lot easier for scheduling on our part. And it’s also made our marketing a lot cleaner coming up to next fall. We’ll be hosting our high-end wedding summit again. We hosted our first. An annual one last year, which Bethany came and spoke at it was so much fun. We’re really finding that we love hosting like online summits and doing things like that. I know Jessie’s also now picked up an interest in YouTube. So she’s gonna start to grow like a YouTube channel for InkPot, which should be fun.

And then we also potentially are going to be starting a group coaching program for blogging. Which is something we’ve been like kind of toying with internally for like the past year or two. Yeah, that’s pretty much what else we have.

Oh, I love that. Okay. So if folks want to find you get in your circle and worlds to find out about all these cool things, where should they go?

Jessie: So we are on basically all the social media, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, all of it. We are InkPot Creative. You can find us, uh, online at inkpotcreative.com, or we also have our own podcast, which is The Unexpected Entrepreneur Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, anywhere that you listen to podcasts.

Fantastic. Well, thank you both so much for being on the show. And if you’re still listening to this, I am having KP and Jessie on another episode this season to talk about the mentorship work we did together because KP was one of my first two mentorship clients, mentees, and then we worked together several other times over the years. So we’re going to dive into that. They’re going to give an insider’s perspective. So you’ll definitely want to catch that episode later.