23 Nicola Dixon on failure and hiding out to pivoting and abundance
“Instagram is no longer a photo sharing app.”
When head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said that via an IGTV video this summer, I watched as photographers freaked the eff out on photography Facebook groups, on their stories, and yepppp my DMs.
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NICOLA DIXON: How she designed her life and overcame financial trauma
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from failure and hiding out to pivoting and abundance
On episode 23, I’m joined by my dear friend Nicola Dixon. Nicola is an INCREDIBLE photographer — like, how of this world talented. She’s also a launch strategist and coach who helps photographers enter the digital product space. She gets so freaking vulnerable on this episode of the Montana Diaries Podcast — we go wayyyy back in her business journey and she is so kind to open up about failure, financial trauma, mindset, and her eventual successful pivot into the photo world. This episode is a must listen.
NICOLA DIXON
Nicola Dixon is a UK and Mallorca based destination photographer, podcaster, and launch strategist. She’s traveled the world, hosted workshops and worked with some of the most talented individuals from our industry. But as her business grew, the first thing to disappear was her time. She was increasingly exhausted from spending weekends and round-the-clock hours working on her photography business. That’s when she launched her first digital product, and ever since, she’s found her passion in helping other creatives do the same.
Nicola’s first business
Nicola began her entrepreneurial journey by opening a coffee shop at the age of 26 — she cites her love for visuals and aesthetics for the inspiration behind curating a space for people to gather, although she admits she didn’t have any hospitality experience and jokes that her love of aesthetics probably pointed to photography more than a physical shop. She is candid about the eventual failure of the coffee shop, even going as far as saying that it financially “ruined” her at the time and caused a years-long break from entrepreneurship and “burying her head in the sand.”
Coming back from failure
We’ve all gone through the collective trauma of the pandemic, and Nicola and I both point to the last couple of years as being incredibly difficult. Nicola talks her way through the transformation that comes from working through failure and the mindset blocks that come from it — the idea that if you lose your money you’ll never get it back, the shame of trying something that doesn’t work out, and what it is to rely on oneself.
Finding her way to photography
Nicola’s idea of having her “head in the sand” actually manifested itself into her trying out multiple types of entrepreneurial pursuits, even if she didn’t see it that way at the time — she took the name of her closed cafe and turned it into a different business where she hosted pop-up dinners with guest chefs, she began nannying, and she eventually started dabbling into photography by taking family photos.
She began working extremely hard in the photography world, undercharging at first but saying she was “desperate” for the work in the way that the volume and businesses felt like success. When the business started making more money and she found her niche in destination weddings, Nicola dug deep into possibility and money mindset work and realized that everything was available to her.
Increasing value by developing portfolio
Nicola quickly realized the value of portfolio development and began traveling to desirable destinations to shoot the kinds of the things she wanted to book. She credits this period of traveling and volume shooting to expanding her money mindset in her business — the work she was putting out and the experience she could provide was worth top dollar, and she quickly raised her prices to be in the top tier of her market.
Her business developed organically into the education space because Nicola began hosting her own workshops and teaching based on her own experience.
Expanding with digital products
“I saw what was happening around me — people moving into the education space, digital products becoming a thing and I fell in love with the act of creating and launching. I asked myself how I could teach this to people, and how to teach other photographers how to scale with digital products. I love coaching and teaching and I have no ceiling on myself — everyone can have an exceptional life. Money brings freedom and choices and when you get a taste of that, you want more. I’m passionate about DECIDING how life should look. What do I want my days to look like? I want to walk my own dog, I want to swim in the sea — I wrote that down for myself. What do you want YOUR days to look like?”
Design your life
Nicola and I both believe in DESIGNING your life — defining what it is you actually want, not what you’re “supposed to have,” and working toward those things you design. What do you WANT!? Like, REALLY. What do you want your life to look like? If you know what that is, you can work toward that and figure out how to sustain that lifestyle, instead of getting lost working to pay for upkeep of things that might not even be important to you.
What’s next for Nicola?
As for Nicola, she is moving to the island of Mallorca, where the workshop and 1x1 in person coaching portion of her business will be based going forward. She continues to be passionate about getting creative service providers off the “hamster wheel” of booking high volume and filling their calendars without thinking about the “why” of doing so.
If you’re curious about launching a digital product to diversify your business, be sure to check out Nicola Dixon’s website.
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