238: Stop Copying Your Industry: How Innovation Creates Seven-Figure Growth with Lyrik of WorkPlay Branding

What if your biggest business breakthrough wasn’t hiding in your competitors’ strategies, but in your clients’ feedback? Lyrik Fryer, co-founder of WorkPlay Branding, joins us to talk about what it really takes to build an innovative business that stands out in a crowded market. Rather than following industry norms, Lyrik shares how she and her team built a seven-figure company by listening closely to their customers, questioning traditional business models, and creating solutions no one else was offering.

We dive into the realities of pivoting your business model, making difficult financial decisions to support long-term growth, and why founders often overcomplicate what makes their business unique. If you’ve ever struggled to differentiate yourself or wondered whether your next big idea is worth pursuing, this conversation is packed with practical wisdom.

Stop Looking at Your Competition—Start Listening to Your Clients

With well over a decade in the creative entrepreneurship space, I’ve started to notice that the businesses that are lasting are being built by owners who are deeply listening to the people they’re meant to serve.

As someone who spends my days helping photographers, creatives, and service providers grow into educators, speakers, and thought leaders, I see this play out all the time. It’s easy to assume that the next course you create, the next offer you launch, or the next pivot you make should look like what everyone else is doing. But the entrepreneurs who build businesses with longevity aren’t chasing trends, they’re the ones paying attention to the patterns their own clients keep showing them.

That lesson was woven throughout my entire conversation with Lyrik, and I think it’s one every creative business owner needs to hear.

Your Clients Are Already Pointing You Toward Your Next Best Offer

WorkPlay Branding didn’t start as the company it is today. Like so many creative businesses, it began with a broad list of services. They offered branding packages that included everything from logos and color palettes to photography and brand strategy. Over time, they noticed something interesting about their clients: they weren’t coming back asking for another logo or requesting new color palettes.

They kept coming back because they needed more content. Every new social platform demanded fresh photos and videos. Businesses didn’t simply need a beautiful brand, they needed an ongoing system to create the visual assets that kept their marketing moving forward.

Instead of convincing clients to continue buying services they were less interested in, Lyrik and her team paid attention to what people were naturally asking for. They simplified their offer, leaned into content creation, and eventually built a recurring membership model around that single need.

As multi-passionate entrepreneurs, we can do a lot of different things, which often leads us to believe we should offer all of those things. But your audience is constantly giving you clues about what they value most.

If people consistently hire you for one service, ask you the same questions, or seek your advice on the same topic, don’t dismiss that as coincidence. That’s valuable market research. Sometimes the niche you’re searching for has been right there all along.

Signature Offers Come From Clarity

One thing I see often while coaching creative educators is the pressure to continually add something new: another course, another mastermind, another digital product, or another service. Somewhere along the way, we start believing that growth comes from expanding our offer suite when, in reality, it often comes from refining it.

Lyrik shared that one of the biggest turning points for WorkPlay Branding was making the intentional decision to become known for one thing: creating ongoing media assets for businesses.

In creative industries where we’re capable of wearing so many hats, it can feel both uncomfortable and limiting at first, but clarity isn’t about putting yourself in a box.

Sometimes Building the Business You Want Requires Temporary Sacrifice

Another part of our conversation that I appreciated was Lyrik’s honesty about making difficult business decisions. When WorkPlay shifted from selling large branding packages to a recurring membership model, they knew it would affect their cash flow.

Instead of receiving several thousand dollars every time they signed a new client, they would receive a much smaller monthly payment. That’s a scary decision for any entrepreneur.

But they weren’t making decisions based solely on what would generate the biggest paycheck today. They were building a business that would support the life and the company that they wanted years down the road.

It reminded me of my own transition from photography into education.

When I began focusing more intentionally on coaching, speaking, and building educational programs, I knew it wouldn’t immediately replace the income from my photography business. There was a season where I had to decide whether I wanted to work every waking hour to maintain the same income or intentionally accept a temporary pay cut while building something more scalable.

Neither option is easy, but sometimes sustainable growth asks us to think beyond the next month.

Creative entrepreneurs often underestimate how much courage it takes to build something with long-term vision. We celebrate the finished product without acknowledging the seasons where founders quietly make difficult decisions that no one else sees.

Those seasons matter, as they’re often where the strongest businesses are built.

Stop Using Your Industry as the Blueprint

One of the biggest mindset shifts Lyrik shared was that WorkPlay intentionally stopped looking to the photography industry for answers. Instead, they studied businesses outside their own space.

They looked at companies like Uber and Drybar in order to understand scalable systems, customer experience, and operational efficiency.

I think this is such an important distinction, especially for educators and coaches. When we spend all of our time consuming content from people who do exactly what we do, it’s easy for our ideas to become smaller instead of bigger. We unintentionally start measuring success against someone else’s business model instead of asking what would best serve our own audience.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with learning from your peers. In fact, I believe community is one of the greatest gifts we have as creative entrepreneurs.

Inspiration doesn’t have to come exclusively from your own industry. Sometimes the best ideas come from asking, “How does another industry solve this problem?”

That’s often where innovation begins.

Your Sales Calls Are Full of Product Ideas

One of my favorite practical takeaways from this conversation came when Lyrik shared how WorkPlay is evolving its business again. Rather than sticking with quarterly content shoots, they’re introducing a flexible credit system because of something they kept hearing on sales calls.

Clients weren’t saying they didn’t want the service. They were saying they wanted more flexibility. Some only needed two hours of content instead of a full-day shoot. Others wanted to split their time across multiple locations or events.

Instead of dismissing those objections, the WorkPlay team treated them as valuable feedback. Those conversations became the blueprint for an entirely new offer.

I think that’s a lesson every educator, coach, and creative service provider can apply immediately. How often do we hear objections and automatically assume someone simply isn’t the right fit? What if, instead, those objections reveal an opportunity to improve the client experience?

Not every piece of feedback should change your business, but recurring feedback deserves your attention. Your clients are often telling you exactly how to serve them better.

Brand Trust & Authority Is Earned

As our conversation came to a close, Lyrik talked about becoming more visible as the founder of WorkPlay Branding after spending years quietly building the business behind the scenes. There’s so much conversation today around building a personal brand, and while I absolutely believe founders should show up and share their stories, I also think Lyrik’s journey is a beautiful reminder that visibility works best when it’s supported by substance.

She didn’t spend years trying to become known before she had something meaningful to say. She spent years refining the business, listening to clients, improving the offer, and creating a solution she genuinely believed in.

Now, when she steps onto stages or shares behind-the-scenes content online, she’s not manufacturing authority, she’s documenting it.

The strongest personal brands aren’t built just on perfectly curated content calendars. They’re built on years of experience, thoughtful reflection, and a willingness to share the lessons learned along the way.

Listening Creates Longevity

If there’s one theme that kept coming back throughout this conversation, it’s this: the answers you’re looking for are probably much closer than you think. They’re in:

• your inbox
• your discovery calls
• the conversations you have after speaking on stage
• the questions your students ask inside your membership
• he clients who keep referring their friends because of one specific thing you do exceptionally well

As someone who coaches creative entrepreneurs who are stepping into education and speaking, I’ve found that the entrepreneurs who build businesses with longevity aren’t trying to create something completely revolutionary every six months.

They’re paying attention, noticing patterns, refining instead of reinventing, and they’re building businesses around the people they actually want to serve—not around whatever happens to be trending on social media that week.

There was so much wisdom packed into my conversation with Lyrik, but I keep coming back to one simple idea: stop looking sideways. It’s tempting to believe that the next breakthrough is hidden inside someone else’s launch strategy, content plan, or business model.

More often than not, your next breakthrough is already waiting for you in the conversations you’re having every single day. Listen to your clients, pay attention to what they ask for, notice what they struggle with, and look for the patterns instead of the trends.

Whether you’re building a creative service business, growing an education brand, or stepping into speaking for the first time, stop trying to look like everyone else.

Be brave enough to listen first, build second, and trust that serving their audience well will always be a better strategy than chasing the crowd.

Connect with Lyrik

Lyrik Fryer on Instagram: instagram.com/lyrikanselmo

WorkPlay Branding Website: workplaybranding.com

WorkPlay Branding on Instagram: instagram.com/workplaybranding

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