Ep. 47 Roundtable: 2026 Business Pivots w/ Laurie MacPherson, Haley Johnson, and Erin Perkins
I'm officially claiming 2026 as the year of the pivot.
I'm making some big pivots in my own business this year. I've let go of my business coach and am flying solo, making exciting new investments, and really stepping into my role as a strategy-first agency. But I'm not the only one making bold moves.
Everywhere I look on Threads, in networking groups, across the online business space, people are making massive changes. They're shifting their offers, changing their marketing strategies, pivoting their entire business models.
So I invited three of my friends and fellow online business owners to share the big pivots they're making in 2026, how brand strategy plays into those decisions, and what success looks like on the other side.
Let me introduce you to Lori MacPherson (LinkedIn strategist), Haley Johnson (copywriter and quiz strategist), and Erin Perkins (accessibility expert). Each of them is making a completely different kind of pivot, and each of their stories offers valuable lessons for anyone navigating change in their own business.
Or listen on your favorite platform: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | YouTube
Pivot #1: Lori MacPherson - Ditching Facebook for Threads
The Change: Lori is stopping using Facebook for business and moving to Threads instead.
"I've used my Facebook page for many years, but if I'm honest, it's always been my least favorite platform," Lori shares. "I'm a LinkedIn girl, hence the work that I do. And I also enjoy using Instagram. Facebook was always my third platform and it really has become a broadcast channel in recent years. The result of that is that there's no engagement on there and it's no longer serving me and my business."
Making the decision to stop using Facebook felt like a massive relief. Lori's already enjoying the quick and unfiltered nature of Threads.
Why This Matters
I am 200% in support of this pivot.
I've had a Facebook business page for years. When I first started freelancing, that's how I built my entire business through Facebook groups. But exactly like Lori said, Facebook's just not the place to be anymore. We're not seeing engagement. People aren't hiring from there. Frankly, it feels like a waste of time for a lot of business owners.
Conversely, Threads is popping off. People are having really candid conversations, hiring from the platform, and genuinely growing their audiences. It's become a powerful visibility and lead generation tool for online business owners who show up consistently.
How Brand Strategy Played a Role
"One of the reasons I'm making this change is because my brand strategy has changed," Lori explains. "I focused on careers only until the back end of 2023. Now I'm focusing on LinkedIn too and have a successful group program which supports business owners to get to grips with LinkedIn. And Threads is a much better place to talk to business owners directly now than Facebook appears to be."
This is exactly what should happen. A shift in your business (like changing your offers or target audience) should always lead to at least a reevaluation of your brand strategy. Lori changed her offers, which means her marketing strategy needed to change, and she needed to take a second look at where her ideal clients are spending their time.
What Success Looks Like
"Best case scenario is that the LinkedIn work will end up being half of my income next year. At the moment, it's about 30% with careers still being 70%. I would love to see that go to 50-50 in terms of evolving my business and the work that I do."
That's a clear, measurable goal tied directly to a strategic marketing shift. Love it.
Pivot #2: Haley Johnson - Taking Her Business Back
The Change: Haley is restructuring her entire business to prioritize her needs and the work she actually wants to do.
"The big pivot that I'm making in 2026 is really kind of taking my business back to being about me and the work that I want to do and the structure that actually makes sense for my life today," Haley says.
But she didn't come to this decision on purpose. She reached a burnout point last year and got an amazing full-time job opportunity. She took it, essentially closing her business, getting rid of all her clients, and letting her team go.
Shortly after, she was let go from that job.
"I had been slapped in the face with this 'big companies don't care about you' reality check," Haley explains. "And as someone who had been maybe trying to grow a big company, I didn't feel seen or like that experience would reflect what I was trying to put out into the world."
The pressure to do right by her team as an aspiring big employer, combined with the terrible experience of working for a big employer who only talked about values on the surface, messed her up a little bit.
When she turned back to her business (because she's only ever worked for herself), she realized something crucial: she needed to be in business for herself first. Obviously serve her clients, but her priority couldn't be creating a great company culture just because she felt like other people weren't. She had to create a good environment and setup for herself.
The Hard Truth About Corporate Life
There's a lot to unpack in Haley's story. One point really stands out: corporations say they care about you, but they don't. I 100% agree with that.
I'm so sad that Haley had to have that experience, but I think it served as a powerful awakening. How does she want to spend her time? What type of clients does she want to serve? Where has her business maybe gotten off track?
This is a really important lesson for all of us:
Lots of us get burnt out and feel like we want to apply for full-time jobs. That's not always the right answer.
It's okay to shift, try something, fail, and then try something new again.
How Brand Strategy Played a Role
Haley had a fascinating (and incredibly honest) answer when I asked how brand strategy factored into her pivot.
"Brand strategy kind of played a role in that because I've been resting on my laurels for a little bit with my brand strategy. You know, I came up with it when I was like 23 and I had my mission, my vision, my values, my purpose, and it was all great. But I'm 30 now. I'm not the same person I was when I came up with that brand strategy."
She'd been clinging to her original strategy for so long because she wanted that to be what she represented to the world and to her clients. But she really needed to step back and reevaluate: Is my brand strategy serving me or does it just look good on paper?
"I needed to be a little bit more selfish with my purpose, my mission, my vision, my values," Haley says. "I have a background in trauma-informed marketing. I really care about honesty, transparency, respect, consent, all of those things. And I had them woven so strongly throughout the core identity of my brand and who I was as a person. But I kind of forgot: what are my values? What do I care about? What gets me excited to work every day?"
She realized it doesn't have to be everything for the greater good. Sometimes she can just say, "I'm inspired by curiosity and I want to go places that feel exciting and curious for me." She can know that will have a good end result because she obviously cares about doing good for others and having a positive impact, but she doesn't need to be so upfront about those things because they're already tied into who she is as a person.
The Expert Assumption
I was a little surprised to hear Haley's answer, being a copywriter and marketing expert herself. I think we assume that people who are marketing experts have it all together and don't fall into the same pitfalls as the rest of us.
But Haley was transparent: yes, we do.
Her point about outgrowing her brand strategy but still clinging to it like a life raft because "that's what I said I was when I started my business and so that's what I needed to continue to be" is going to be so relatable for so many of you.
Your brand strategy and your offers and your marketing should evolve as your business evolves. Haley created her brand strategy when she was 23. She's 30 now. She's a different person. That's normal. You grow and learn and change, and your brand strategy should grow and change with you.
If it's been seven years, five years, or even two or three years since you've taken another look at your brand strategy, let Haley's story be a lesson. You should always be checking in and reevaluating. You probably don't need to burn it all down and start over, but there are likely some tweaks and shifts that need to be made to ensure you're still in alignment with who you are and where you want to go today, not who you were when you were 23.
What Success Looks Like
"Best case scenario result from this pivot is that in a year, in two years, in five years, I'm not sitting there burnt out on my business ready to jump on whatever job opportunity is thrown my way. I'm doing work that I love with clients that I love and building a life that I actually want to live."
For Haley, it's less about changing her brand strategy and more about speaking the brand strategy she's been living in her business into existence.
"It feels very counterintuitive and it feels very kind of selfish, but I'm allowed to be selfish. So many people and businesses out there are selfish with literally no concern for the people who work for them or the people that they serve. So I can be a little bit selfish and still care about people and those things."
On Being "Selfish"
I love Haley's point about being selfish because it's okay to be selfish.
I think as women, as moms, as military spouses, as caregivers of any kind, we think we need to put ourselves last. Our clients should always come first, our family should come first, this other person should come first, and we should come last. If we put ourselves first, we're being selfish.
That is so, so, so not true.
You do your best work, you show up as your best self, and you make the biggest impact on the world when you are a little bit selfish.
I know that in five years when Haley comes back and listens to this episode, she's going to say, "Oh my gosh, I am living a life that I love, working with clients I love, doing work that I love." I'm so excited for her to step into this next chapter.
Thank you, Haley, for being so open and transparent about a topic that many of us might not want to pull back the curtain on.
Pivot #3: Erin Perkins - From Services to Tech Company
The Change: Erin is moving from being primarily service-based into building a tech company.
This is a big, scary pivot, and honestly, if I were her, I'd be pretty terrified. But I know she's going to be successful.
"This was not a clear linear decision," Erin explains. "It wasn't even on my radar for 2025. It was really a very slow build with lots of small moments that really just started stacking on top of each other."
It started with a disagreement about accessibility audits and what people do or don't want to do. At the same time, someone emailed about a micro tool. Then she ended up at an AI summit. None of these things did it by itself, but they got her brain going.
She started playing around with building a custom GPT for accessibility. Then when working with a client on a new website platform, she had a realization: "Wow, I do accessibility for a living. I still can't remember where I need to check."
That really set the alarm bells off.
She ended up talking to a developer who told her that what she wanted to build was a terrible idea. "That sucked so bad," Erin admits. "That was something that I was very much like, just watch me."
That forced her to get clear about what she really wanted to build. That's how Successible came to be and how she's ending up with a tech company.
"I know what it's like to be a creator, a designer, and I'm somebody that always wanted to do things right. And I am just building it for us."
Why This Matters
Building a tech company is a crazy goal, and I mean that in the best way. I know that Erin is so passionate about what she does and so great at it. I'm excited to see how transitioning from done-for-you services into a tech company is going to allow her to have so much more impact and make accessibility so much easier for designers, creators, and online business owners.
How Brand Strategy Played a Role
Erin's answer was a lot different from the last two.
"When I'm thinking about brand strategy, my mission has not changed at all. It is that accessibility should always have been easy. And it has never been easy. And that's what has always blown my mind. But what has changed is how I'm doing things, how I'm presenting it, and how accessibility is not something that's going to be checked for good or bad after you build a website, after content is published. Successible is going to bring it in the moment of creation and that's how I'm building it."
Her ideal client is still very value-based, but they love a good tool. They want things to fit into how they work. That's how they're building Successible - to fit in where people already are.
"It's really the same mission, but it's more scalable."
Three Different Relationships with Brand Strategy
This is fascinating. We heard from:
Lori: Her brand strategy shifted, which drove the pivot in her business
Haley: Her brand strategy hadn't shifted but should have, which was part of why she made changes
Erin: Her brand strategy didn't change, but the impact she wants to have did, and this new tech is how she can have that bigger impact
Erin's answer shows that sometimes we define our brand strategy and think, "Okay, I'm going to get to my goals one way. I'm going to have the impact I want to have in this one way."
But it doesn't always have to be that way. Sometimes you can make a big pivot and go down a completely different road to have that same impact, maybe even on a bigger scale.
Erin is such a great example of being bold, brave, and fearless in doing that.
What Success Looks Like
"Best case for success and the result of my going from service-based to tech company: we become a seven-figure company. Now, I've never even hit six figures in the service-based business. So if I can be successful at this, I think it's going to help creators and business owners really do accessibility while they create. It's going to be part of how you build. It's going to be a game changer. It's going to have a huge impact on how people create content. And that's really my goal."
Seven figures. Can you imagine?
I know she's going to get there. And when you're seeing Successible all over the app store and all over the internet, you get to say, "Hey, I knew her when Successible was in its infancy."
What We Can Learn from These Three Pivots
Thank you so much to Lori, Haley, and Erin for being so open and sharing the big pivots they're making in 2026. I know it can be scary to talk about these things because in the back of our heads, we're all saying, "Well, what if it doesn't work? Then I have to backpedal and be like, just kidding."
But there's really something to be said for building in public. Being transparent about "I'm doing this thing. I'm changing something. I don't know if it's going to work, but I hope so." We need to hear more of that from other people to encourage us to do the same.
Brand Strategy Is Woven Into Everything
I really enjoyed hearing how brand strategy played into each of their pivots in such different ways. It's such a testament to how brand strategy is woven into every single piece and part of your online business.
You cannot separate the two. That's why it's so important to:
Have a defined brand strategy
Constantly reevaluate your brand strategy to make sure it's still going to take you where you want to go
Whether you're shifting your marketing channels like Lori, restructuring your entire business model like Haley, or making a massive leap from services to tech like Erin, your brand strategy should be guiding those decisions.
Not dictating them, but guiding them. Giving you a framework to evaluate whether this pivot aligns with your values, serves your ideal clients, and moves you toward your long-term vision.
Your Turn
What pivot are you considering in 2026? Where has your business maybe gotten off track from your original brand strategy? Or where has your brand strategy not kept up with who you've become and what you want your business to be?
I'd love to hear about it. Connect with me on Instagram or Threads and tell me what changes you're making this year.
🔗 Links & Resources Mentioned In The Episode:
➡️ Laurie's Website & Instagram
➡️ Haleys Website & Instagram
➡️ Erin's Website & Instagram
➡️ Morgan's Website & Instagram
🎧 Listen to episode 47 of The Six Figure Brand Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and YouTube
