Pivoting in Business: Why I Closed My Pinterest Marketing Agency
When I started my business in 2015, I offered all things digital marketing and social media to clients. Along with building my own business, I was knee-deep in creating and analyzing digital marketing strategies for small businesses across many different industries. Basically, if it fell under the umbrella of “digital marketing” I could do it for you.
In 2017 I had an ah-ha moment that shifted my entire business. The platform that was consistently driving the most traffic to websites — for me and for all my clients — was Pinterest. The combination of being a visual platform based on SEO (search engine optimization) was the golden ticket for being able to measure the success of my content marketing efforts (and to keep getting paid). If you’ve ever struggled to quantify the value of “brand awareness” to a client, you feel my pain here.
The golden ticket for my business was that I could batch and schedule out Pins with Tailwind (affiliate link) and there was little to no “engagement” with an audience like on Instagram. WIN. This meant that I could focus on clients once or twice a month and get everything done, instead of constantly being in their accounts every day. Plus, my experience with being the social media manager for Megadeth and a few general social media clients turned me off to dealing with social media comments for life.
When I decided to niche my marketing agency to only offer Pinterest, it felt like the perfect fit. I loved the platform, had a knack for creating strategies that worked, and enjoyed helping businesses grow. I rapidly gained expert status and was featured on many podcasts and spoke at lots of conferences.
But by 2021, I made the tough decision to shut it down. Why? The reasons are layered, and my journey holds lessons for anyone navigating the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.
This blog dives into what led me to build, grow, and ultimately close my agency, and why it was the best choice for my business and personal growth.
Building My Pinterest Marketing Agency
The best part about niching my services into Pinterest marketing was that people immediately knew how to refer me — no more “Jack of all trades” frustration or lack of clarity from referrals. If someone was interested in exploring Pinterest for their small business, I was an easy connection and referral.
At the time, Pinterest was still kind of a “sleeper” platform. Most people thought of it as a place to Pin their bathroom remodel ideas and only businesses in the wedding, food blogging, or home decor niche were using it for business. I saw an incredible opportunity to educate my audience on the power of Pinterest as a true traffic driver.
I used my own business profile to test and refine my Pinterest strategies for business and “walked the walk” with using it to build my email list and repurpose solid, evergreen blog posts endlessly.
My most convincing argument with potential clients was, “It’s not about how much new content you create. It’s about creating new Pins for the content you have.” This concept was music to the ears of every burnt out entpreneur on the endless content treadmill of platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
The Agency Model
Going from a Pinterest manager to building and agency happened over the next 3 years. I learned how to efficiently create Pins, batch and schedule content, and onboard (and offboard) clients like a pro. Most of my clients were longterm and stayed with me for years (not an easy feat for the world of marketing managers).
I scaled my offers to include paid ads management, scaled my pricing to reflect my expertise and value, and scaled my business’ content marketing game to continue to build my brand and book podcast and speaking gigs.
The biggest challenge I faced over the course of those years was finding good team members, effectively training them, and managing the quality of their work.
I reached a point where I knew if I wanted to take more clients I would have to hire even more team members. With 2 virtual assistants handling the busywork, we were bursting at the seams of what we could take on. I knew I’d have to hire at least 2 more and promote the best to manage the team.
I was shifting hard from loving the strategy of making Pinterest work for clients to managing a team for quality control, being the HR department, and constantly training new VAs (I went through quite a few that weren’t a good fit or not as good as they looked on paper).
I knew deep down that managing a team was not what I wanted to do.
Then…2020
Like many online entrepreneurs, 2020 was my most profitable year ever. People had money to burn from the helicopter drop of printed government money and they wanted to hire out for Pinterest instead of the stress of teaching and implementing themselves.
The pressure of growing a team and trying to filter out bad-fit clients were serious time sucks and I was falling out of love with my business. I knew I had to question everything about my business when more money felt like more burden.
Pinterest also decided to jump into the virtue signaling game of all the societal pressures and conversations that blew up that year. Instead of seeing a home feed full of my interests, it became inundated with pictures and videos of men in full glam makeup and women’s clothing, and ads to purchase from businesses based on the color of the founder’s skin.
I felt uncomfortable being force-fed others' values and ideologies, and it was no longer an app I could let my children look over my shoulder at while scrolling.
They promoted trends and keywords not based on what people were searching for — but what they wanted people to search for.
I felt a deep disconnect between how I felt about the platform Pinterest had become, and asking clients to spend money on ads and putting that revenue in Pinterest’s pockets.
Never-ending Updates
Like all social media platforms, Pinterest has changed drastically over time. From algorithm updates, to content updates, to products and paid ads — it’s an ever-evolving space.
Along with my agency model, I created several courses and masterminds over the years for those in my audience who either didn’t want or couldn’t afford my services. With every update, I had to find the time to re-record instructional videos and handouts.
The biggest challenges of staying ahead in the Pinterest ecosystem were:
Pinterest frequently rolled out updates that disrupted workflows and strategies.
Then they’d changed them back (the “do hashtags work on Pinterest” years long saga has been ridiculous).
Keeping up felt like chasing a moving target — it was exhausting.
Every change required retraining my team, re-strategizing, and communicating with confused clients.
The Type-A Mom Productivity Skills Moment
During 2020-2021 our oldest child was doing online school and our little one was in part time daycare. I was trying to manage a full marketing agency, be an online course educator, and help my kiddo learn from home on her laptop at the end of my desk.
The context switching of her daily schoolwork was killing us — we were frustrated and overwhelmed by all the new things we had to manage together (I’m guessing you might have had a similar experience if you had school-aged kids during that time).
One day I realized that she didn’t have to do 5 different subjects everyday for school…we could structure her work how ever we wanted.
So we implemented a system that I’d been using in my business to “get it all done” as a mom, wife, household manager, and business owner: Theme Days.
We grouped all her lessons for a subject into one day. So Monday was math, Tuesday was science, Wednesday was language arts, and so on. This kid finished her entire school year in April with a 97%. 😲
I realized that if an 8 year old could have such success with using theme days to structure her work, than this was something I needed to share.
The shift to teaching productivity and mindset to Type-A working moms started to grow in the back of my brain.
Choosing Evergreen
Our family moved to a different state in the middle of 2021 and it was single-handedly the most stressful time period and undertaking we’ve gone through as a family ever.
I was so stressed I had a severe shingles flare up, gained 15lbs, and couldn’t sleep. The pressure of starting a new life in a new community where we didn’t know a soul was a lot. I had no time and even less energy.
Over the course of 6 months, I let go of all my Pinterest clients except one. I tried to focus on my online courses but I lost the desire to continue to promote Pinterest and it showed. Building a business around a constantly changing platform wasn’t aligning with my long-term goals and the shift to evergreen had to happen.
Shutting down the agency wasn’t the end; it was a pivot toward something better.
From 2022 until 2025 I was sidelined with health issues and the more I tried to force the business pivot, the more resistance I felt. My brain wasn’t working right and my half-hearted attempts at marketing didn’t work. In May of 2024 I finally gave myself permission to stop completely and focus on getting better. I still had mom-duties and am the admin assistant/accountant/errand runner of the house, but taking off the pressure of clawing my way into my business every day made a big difference.
I didn’t know that shutting down my Pinterest marketing agency was laying the groundwork for me to heal and regroup with what I’m putting out in the world to help others — but it truly did. It’s a decision that in retrospect was the only right choice.
I could have easily let my hoop-jumping, people-pleasing tendencies get in the way of doing what was best for my health and wellbeing. It’s so easy to feel like everyone was judging me and I had failed.
But I chose to only worry about myself, and I’ve come out stronger and more focused because of it.
Conclusion: You Can Always Make A Different Choice
Closing my Pinterest marketing agency wasn’t a failure—it was a decision rooted in clarity and growth. As entrepreneurs, we sometimes feel stuck with choices we made years ago. But the truth is, we’re allowed to change course.
If you’re questioning your current path, remember: you’re the one in charge. Your business should serve your life, not the other way around.
Did this resonate with you? Drop a comment below and tell me more!
