139: 3 Mindset Shifts For A Successful Business

Welcome to the Shoot It Straight podcast. I’m your host, Sabrina Gehart. Here I will share an honest take on what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur while balancing business, motherhood, and life. Myself, along with my guests, will get vulnerable through honest conversations and relatable stories because we’re willing to go there if you are trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in, yet willing to talk about the hard stuff too.

The Shoot It Straight podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight.

Welcome back to the Shoot It Straight podcast, my friends. Today we are talking about something that I love and that I can talk about all day long, and it’s been a minute since we’ve had an entire episode dedicated to this topic. We’re getting into mindset today, my friends. Before you click, skip, hear me out.

Business success is a combination of a lot of things, and the one that gets skipped the most is mindset. So if you were about to hit Skip or Next, or move on to your next podcast or whatever, because you think mindset’s not important because you only want the tangible tips. Because you only wanna know about the marketing and the pricing and the strategies and the what’s working this episode is for you.

I cannot tell you how many times I begin working with women who join a course or a program or start one-to-one coaching with me, and they come to me because they need help with business. They come to me because their marketing is a mess. They come to me because their packages are a mess. They come to me because they don’t understand why they can’t get their business off the ground.

They come to me wanting tangible business guidance and recommendation. But what happens almost every single time is that as I begin working with these women. We pull back the layers of their struggles and what they’ve tried and what’s happening in their day to day, and I get to know them, it becomes very, very, very clear that mindset is actually playing a massive piece in their struggles.

Almost always, this is the case, and here’s the thing, mindset doesn’t feel tangible. Right, like it’s not something that’s easy to check a box. You can take a course to learn your CRM. You can take a course on marketing strategies. You can take a course about how to price and how to calculate your expenses.

But mindset isn’t quite as tangible. So many people don’t realize they’re struggling with it. Don’t realize that it’s actually the thing that’s holding them back. And like I said, they’re willing to do the work on their pricing, their website, their client experience, their portfolio, because those are things they can see.

But mindset is tricky. And if you have every other thing in place, but your mindset isn’t in the right place, you are going to struggle with business. Let me repeat that. You can have every single thing set perfectly. You can have a stunning, cohesive portfolio. You can have top notch client experience. You can have the best website and the best SEO.

You can have incredibly perfect pricing and clear packaging and all of that. But if you have mindset issues, your business is not doing as well as it could be. Things are hard for you. You’re not attracting the right people. There are things going wrong. Again, this is what I see over and over again, especially in the women that I’m doing the high level one-to-one coaching with their business on paper looks great.

They’re getting inquiries. They’re creating gorgeous work. They’re luxury pricing. They have incredible client experience. Everything is going well. It looks like they are wildly successful. When I’m working with them, oftentimes it’s to take them to the next level, right? Like they’ve reached where they wanna reach in their photography business and they’re looking for something new.

Maybe they wanna become an educator. Maybe they wanna double their income. Maybe they want to expand in some way, shape, or form. But when we dig deep, we realize that there’s actually mindset that’s holding them back. Yeah, their business is doing great, but it could be so much bigger. My friends, I have done this work myself and I continue to do this work.

So if you’re one of those people that skips out on mindset, you think you don’t need it, you think everything’s working, you think it’s all great, stick around. Listen to this episode. ’cause I think you’ll probably get a little something out of it. There is a lot that comes with the mindset talk. Okay?

There are so many nuanced pieces about it. But today I wanna share three things, and it’s three things that I see very, very often when I am coaching women. Please know that if these three things don’t speak to you, if you truly feel like, nah, nah, those three things are not issues for me. There are a zillion other things, okay.

That could be affecting your mindset, and it might be worth kind of going down a rabbit hole and doing some reading or some listening, and I’m gonna share some resources at the end of this episode. Okay. So the first thing that I see so often with the women I coach is their mindset around time. We are freaking busy.

I know that you are just as busy as I am, and there are some days where I literally get through the end of the day and I’m like, damn, I did a lot today. I did a lot today and I’m so proud of myself because I kept humans alive. I made it to all the places I needed to be on time. I somehow managed to be an acute outfit and had makeup on.

I recorded podcast episodes. I coached women. I finished a gallery. I sat down and had dinner with my family. I worked out with my husband. I had a quiet time, and I feel like a rock star. But then I also feel like a failure because of all the other things I didn’t get done. And I know that you probably feel the same way.

We’re busy being a mom and an entrepreneur can feel like our heads are spinning all the time. And what I often see is this kind of perpetual overwhelm. It’s busy days and mile long to-do lists, and it’s just this perpetual. Overwhelm and anxiety around how much there is to do and how busy we are. And I know I’ve shared this mantra on the podcast before and it’s something that I share with the women I coach and in my programs, and it’s everybody’s favorite.

I’m gonna tell you right now if you’ve heard me say this, or if you haven’t, this is everyone’s favorite mantra, so hear me write this down. I have an abundance of time and I am not available for overwhelm. This is what I tell myself on the mornings where I look at my calendar and on my to-do list, and I think to myself, I don’t know.

This is a tall order. Is it all gonna work out? And I feel myself creeping into like the taking short little breaths, the feeling pressure, the feeling like my head is spinning, the feeling like I have to move 1 million miles an hour to even possibly survive the day. I repeat this mantra over and over again.

I have an abundance of time and I am not available for overwhelm and my friends, I’m telling you, it’s magic. I’m telling you right now, this mantra is magic. Take this with you the next time that you’ve got a really full schedule. A lot of places to be tight, timelines, all of that. Carry this mantra with you.

Make it a screensaver on your phone. Write it on a sticky note. Repeat it in your head all day. And the most beautiful thing happens because we are telling our brains, nah, I’m not gonna get overwhelmed. I have plenty of time. It’s magic because it actually all works out. We don’t feel like we’re rushing through the day.

We get through our priority tasks. We make it on time to things. We carry this. Ease with us because we’re repeating this mantra over and over again, telling ourselves that it’s gonna be fine. I have plenty of time. I don’t need to be overwhelmed. And it works. Your brain believes you. Okay, so carry that mantra around with you.

The thing is, with time, it’s, it’s finite. We have a limited amount of it, but time is also really flexible. Have you ever noticed that if you have like two weeks for a deadline, it will take you the full two weeks to complete something. You are still rolling in on the last day getting the thing finished, and that’s just the way it works.

Like you’ll take the whole two weeks, but if you give yourself 24 hours for a deadline, you can get the thing done in 24 hours. It’s so true. We can and will get things done in the amount of time that we give it. And so time is fluid in that way, right? We can get things done faster and more efficiently and without distractions when we have less of it and when we look at it as this beautiful fluid thing.

A couple of tips for you regarding time, if it helps, and if this is something that you’re struggling with. I definitely want you to write down that mantra. I want you to repeat it. That is my best tip. That is my best suggestion. Again, it’s magic, but if you need some tangible tips, I personally love setting timers.

I have a little timer cube on my desk, and it automatically will set to 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 60 minutes depending on how I flip it, and I use that thing a lot, especially if I’m feeling. Particularly distracted or unmotivated to get something done, I will set a timer and tell myself, okay, I’m gonna work on this for 15 minutes or 30 minutes, and when this is up, if I’m not finished with it or I’m not in the zone to finish it, I’m allowed to move on to something else.

And man, the timer’s magic, I really do like put my head down and do the thing. Most times I’m done by the time the timer goes off. And if I’m not done with the task. I get to the end of the timer and I’m already deep enough in it that I’m motivated to finish and I’ll keep going. So setting a timer can really, really work.

If you’ve never done this before, I highly recommend it. Another thing is creating and prioritizing your lists. Realistically, we tend to think that we can get more done in a day than we actually can. We tend to underestimate how long tasks will take. What happens when we do that is we create this perpetual frustration that we’re never getting through our list.

When in reality you gave yourself things that couldn’t actually be done in a 24 hour period like you overcommitted, and you’re feeling frustrated because of what you put on your list, like you are the one to blame. So when you are making lists of things to get done every day, I know that you’ve heard choosing a top three.

Everyone that coaches around time management tells you this. There’s a reason why everyone tells you this. This falls under the same category as the fact that everyone tells you that you should drink half your body weight and water. There’s a reason why people say this. It’s because it’s the rule. It’s what works.

It’s what matters. Don’t ignore the fact that everybody tells you to have a, a top three priorities for your day. You should. If you’re not doing that, you should. And the thing about this is you need to make sure that they are things that you actually have the time to complete in that day. Because that’s the other thing we do is we’ll give ourself three priorities for a day, but when it’s a day that you’ve got carpool and a doctor’s appointment and three back-to-back zoom calls and a photo session, like, when do you actually have time to do that?

Because you, you never have time to like sit down at your desk or at your kitchen table to work on the thing you’re setting yourself up to fail. Make sure that you, when you are creating your priorities for the day, every day of the week, you’re actually placing them on days that you have time to do the thing.

And then another task is, or another tip would be putting things in a parking lot. That’s what I say as creatives. We like to pick up ideas. Because we see the world around us. We see entrepreneurs around us. We see our competitors and our friends, and everybody’s doing all these fun things and creative things, and we get a million ideas constantly.

It is so fabulous being a creative, but it’s also really hard because of this. Most of the ideas that you are getting need to be put in a parking lot. They are not. For right now, they are for maybe in the future. I am willing to bet that you have enough on your plate currently. Enough things that you need to get done, galleries you need to get out, clients, you need to respond to website tweaks you need to make, et cetera, et cetera.

That picking up these random ideas constantly and trying to shove them into your priority list for the week is not actually what you should be doing, and it’s adding to the overwhelm because your list is just getting longer and longer and longer and longer. Put things in a parking lot. This is kind of a running list.

You can have it in a, as a note on your phone. You can have it in a project management software like Asana or Notion. You can just have a paper list and a spiral. This parking lot is anything that sounds fun or potentially great or something that will take time and effort, but that is not for right now.

It does not need to happen. It does not jump over the current priorities, so sure, write it down. Save it for later though, and put it in the parking lot. And then the last tip I have around time is to kind of ask yourself those things that you’re constantly putting off, the things that are on your priority list week after week, but that are like continually pushed to the next week and pushed to the next week and push to the next week.

The stuff that you’re saying is a priority, but you’re never actually getting to what’s the underlying issue here? Because if you’re constantly pushing it away, there’s something else happening. Okay? There’s a reason that you’re not actually getting to it week after week. Is it because it feels hard? Is it because it’s boring?

Is it because you feel shame around having to do it or not having done it? Is it because you’re stuck in perfection? Think about why you are not getting it done, and then consider how you can combat those things. If it feels hard, do you need to watch a tutorial? Do you need to ask a friend how to do it?

Is it boring? Okay. Set the freaking timer and get it done already. You know, are you stuck in perfection? Okay, just hit publish or hit send. Consider what it is that is the underlying struggle, and then figure out how you can combat, combat that thing. And again, maybe it’s something that actually needs to be put in the parking lot and not picked up right now at all.

One of the topics that I get asked about the most as a business coach is marketing. Photographers ask me how to get more inquiries from ideal clients, how to make social media work for them, and generally how to be more effective when it comes to marketing. While they’re asking me these questions, I hear the same sentiments over and over again.

Marketing feels tedious. Nothing seems to work. I can’t seem to be consistent and more. If this sounds familiar to you, then I have something really fun to share. I have a new free guide called Magical Momentum. This is a 30 day done for you marketing plan that is designed to connect you with your ideal clients.

It’s full of fresh and fun ideas to get you out of your boring marketing rut, and it’s laid out in a way that is. Easily achievable daily steps that you can take to show up consistently for your business. If you are ready to try something new and hit the easy button on marketing for the next 30 days, grab your free guide@sabrinagehart.com slash momentum.

And now back to the show. The second thing, the second mindset piece that I see the most struggle with in the women I coach, female photographers, female creative entrepreneurs. Is mindset around money. This is a huge one and could literally be like an entire two month long series just on its own. But money mindset keeps so many business owners stuck.

And my friends, I’ve struggled with it myself. I honestly, if I’m being completely honest with you, I think we all struggle with money mindset. I think every woman has a struggle with money mindset. You could be on one end of the spectrum or the other, but you’ve got a struggle somewhere. Most money issues, as with all mindset issues, honestly, they stem from something in childhood.

Something in childhood happened that left an imprint that gave us our struggles with money. I have to work hard to make money or, uh, having an abundance of money is not for me. I have to go into debt to survive. I can’t go into debt to survive. Like there’s all of these stories around what our bank account looks like, how much money we can bring in, how much money we can charge, what’s acceptable for us to have and not to have all of these stories, most of which stem from something in childhood.

I always recommend if you are really struggling with this, there are tons of books and resources out there. Hiring a coach can be huge, but also you probably need to see a therapist, and I’m not saying that with shame. I see a therapist, almost every single woman I coach sees a therapist or begins to see one while we’re working together.

There’s magic that comes from therapy. I feel like I’ve said the word magic 15 times on this episode already, but it’s true. There’s some deep work, especially things that are stemming from childhood that a coach or a program cannot do the work for you. You really need a therapist. You know, a book might get you part of the way there.

A podcast might get you part of the way there, but a therapist is what’s gonna get you over to the other side. Mindset. Money mindset stuff. Money mindset stories. Here’s some examples of what this can look like. If you’re curious, you know, what this, what this might look like for you. Thinking things like, I’m not good enough to charge those prices, or people will only wanna work with me if I overdeliver in images and prints and discounts.

Or thinking, I could never make that amount of money, whether it’s have 10, 10 K months or hit six figures or fill in the blank. You could think to yourself, I can’t take a regular paycheck because I’m terrible with money, or I can’t take time off or limit my availability because I have to book every single lead that comes in.

That’s a money mindset struggle. There are a hundred more. Okay. There really are. There are so many more, and. Money mindset is scary and it is a massive block for business owners. I truly believe that you will hit a wall with your income. You will hit a wall with your clients and the types of people you’re working with.

You will hit a wall with your paycheck. You will hit all of these walls in business if you have a money mindset struggle. Because your mind literally will not let you go further, and it’s so important to do this work. So if you have this negative mindset around money, your business is gonna be lackluster.

Or like I gave the example earlier, you know, I coach a lot of women one to one, that their business is great on paper. They want to level up and there’s a money mindset story there, and there’s work to be done in order to get them to the next financial level. Not to mention if you’re struggling with the scarcity side of money, mindset of not being able to charge, of not being able to make enough money, of not being able to, whatever.

Your business feels fricking scary all the time. You’re terrified. You’re terrified of making enough money. You’re terrified of paying your bills, you’re terrified of what your revenue looks like. You’re terrified to tell potential clients what you charge. Everything feels scary, and so if you’re feeling that way about your business, that’s a huge red flag that you’ve got some real work to do in the Money mindset department.

The third mindset struggle I see the most with women I coach is mindset around perfection. I see so many women stuck in this perfection mode, whether it’s they’re launching something new or they’re constantly tinkering with their website, or they can’t make a decision about A CRM or they’re constantly toying with their pricing.

Women get stuck in this perpetual decision making phase, and they never move on and take action. I. They’re just perpetually tinkering or modifying or trying to write the perfect email or the perfect blog post, or never starting a blog ’cause they can’t get the perfect ideas, never showing up on social media because they never can get it, quote unquote, just right.

They’re not taking action. They’re stuck in indecision. And this indecision and this paralysis is perfectionism. The thought of, I need to make things perfect. I need to make the perfect choice. I can’t go live with this thing until it’s perfect. What happens is that they stay stuck where they are instead of making any progress and moving forward, instead of just launching the new pricing and see what happens or hitting publish on the website changes and just letting SEO start working or just launch the new offer and start to book clients, they get hung up on the details.

Taking a step forward is always, and I say that in bold red letters with an underline. Taking a step forward is always better than staying stuck, even if in the worst case scenario, something goes wrong. In the worst case scenario, you send the launch email and the link is broken, or you raise your pricing and you get a whole bunch of rejections.

Or you publish that website page and realize that something was wrong on it. Even when the worst case scenario happens, which it often doesn’t, it’s still better to have taken action than to not have done the thing. What I always say is that we take our business way too seriously. It’s not that deep.

It’s not, it’s not that deep. Yes. As photographers, we’re making memories. We are capturing incredible events. But I’ve said this a million times. We’re not in the business of creating oxygen. We are lucky enough to create art. It’s not life or death. It’s not that deep. It doesn’t matter if a mistake happens, it doesn’t matter if you have to go back and change your pricing, if you have to go back and relaunch that thing.

If you have to go back and tinker with the website page, it literally doesn’t matter. Just take messy action. Just move forward. I love to encourage women to take a step back from the perfectionism and the seriousness and just take a step forward. You’ll feel so much more accomplished and so much lighter.

If you can approach your business with a gaming energy, look at it like it’s a game. Games are fun. Games are exciting. When we look at things with the, with that kind of energy, we’re so much more likely to try something and see what happens. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes you finish somewhere in the middle, but it was still fun to play.

Things will go better because we don’t have this fear and worry around things not being perfect. If they work, amazing, if they don’t, who cares? No big deal. Everything is fixable. How to work on changing your mindset. So we’ve talked about the three types of mindset struggles I see the most time, money and perfectionism.

Now what, how do you work on changing it? My friend, working through your mindset is, is hard. I’m not gonna lie. It is so hard. It is probably the hardest part of being in business because it’s not as tangible. It’s not as tangible as working through the modules of a course. It’s not as tangible as setting up your CRM or hitting publish on your pricing or getting your contracts finalized, like it’s not a box that you can check, but it is so necessary.

Mindset work is the game changer to having a successful business, and it is more often than not a continual work. You can make big strides in certain areas. Some things you will fully overcome, but more than likely it’s going to be lifelong. It’s going to be something that you need to commit to. So I mentioned before therapy.

The deep stuff, the stuff that you see really getting in your way. The stuff that you’re struggling with both personally and professionally, you probably need therapy about it. If you have not seen a therapist, please find a therapist. Ask a friend. Look online. You know, today’s day and age in 2025. There are so many online options.

Find a therapist. Commit to going for a little while, do the work because it’s amazing how light you’ll feel on the other side. I do have some books I can recommend to you. Uh, there are some great books to work through. Like I said, books will help you get part of the way there. So I’m not knocking them by any means.

They definitely change the way you look at things. They can give you really great perspective. A lot of these books will have kind of like worksheets and like questions to journal on and work through at the end of their chapters, which are super helpful. But I don’t think personally that they can replace working with a therapist and or working with a coach.

I think they’re supplemental. They’re not a replacement. A couple of books I love to recommend, I will have these all linked in the show notes. There’s a book called Stop Overthinking. Uh, there’s a book called You Are a Badass. Another one called The Mountain is You. And then one that I love that has a terrible name is Rich as FUCK.

I’ll have those all linked in the show notes. They’re all fabulous, fabulous books. Podcasts are also great. You’re listening to this one. I talk about mindset a fair amount because I love talking about it. A couple of other really great podcasts. Uh, the Hustle Sanely podcast is really fantastic. Jess is a friend.

She’s been on our podcast a couple times. She’s taught in my mastermind a couple times. She talks about mindset a lot. It’s a really great listen. There’s another one called Abundant Ever After by Kathy Heller, but you can also search mindset. You can search mindset for women, money, mindset, mindset for entrepreneurs, mindset for photographers, and there’s literally thousands upon thousands upon thousands of episodes and shows go down the rabbit hole.

Again, these are meant to be supplemental. They’re not meant to replace the deep work of therapy and or coaching, which is the other thing I recommend working with a coach. Working with a coach, whether it be one-to-one. Or in a group capacity, but where you have a little bit of access one-to-one. There’s something so beautiful about being seen by someone who understands your struggle, that’s able to hold up a mirror that’s gone before you and worked through the same thing you’re working through.

They can hold up a mirror to you and kind of coach you through the struggle you’re having, talk you off the ledge, give you ways to. Think, give you assignments to do. And I do this a lot, a lot, a lot with the women I coach, and I love to coach them through mindset struggles and see them kind of on the other side, right?

But again, most of these women are also seeing therapists, so they’re getting mindset work from a professional licensed therapist and also the business perspective of the same mindset. Struggles from me. They’re working in tandem. And then the last thing that I think is so helpful, but so many people roll their eyes on is affirmations and mantras.

I’m telling you, just like the one I gave you at the top of the episode that I love about time, when you find some that speak to you, they’re amazing. Carrying them around with you, having them written around your desk or in your car, or on your mirror or on your phone. They can be such game changers because they rewire how we talk to ourselves and how our brain thinks about things.

And my hack for this is chat, GBT chat g bts actually pretty awesome with the affirmations. You can go in there and start a new chat and tell it a little bit of background. You know what you do and what you’re struggling with, and ask it to give you affirmations. Say, give me 25 affirmations because I’m struggling with underpricing and you know, I’m a photographer, blah, blah, blah, and see what it comes out out with.

There’s some pretty awesome things that it spits out, so don’t sleep on that. That’s my little hack for affirmations currently. So this has been. Kind of a long, deep episode around mindset, and again, I’m hoping that you listened all the way through. I’m hoping you got some nuggets, some pieces of encouragement and wisdom, something that speaks to you because mindset matters.

It’s not as tangible as a lot of the other parts of business, but I think it matters more honestly. I do. It’s important to have all your business ducks in a row, but you’ve gotta have the mindset piece in order to have this success. To feel the success that you want. All right, my friend. I would love to hear from you if you thought this episode was valuable.

If it spoke to you, I, I just, I’d love to hear from you. I don’t get to hear from you guys enough. The podcast feels one way so often, so will you come find me on Instagram and send me a DM at Sabrina Gehart Photography. Tell me what you thought of this episode. Tell me what landed with you. I cannot wait to chat with you.

That’s it for this week. We’ll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening to the Shoot at Straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode@sabrinagebhart.com slash podcast. Come find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gebhart Photography. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you hit that subscribe button and leave me a review.

Until next time, my friends shoot it straight.