123: Reflections, Growth, and Lessons: A Year in Review Part One

Welcome to the shoot it straight podcast. I’m your host, Sabrina Gebhardt. 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’re 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, I cannot believe that we are here at the end of the year. If you are listening to this in real time, it’s Christmas Eve. Eve. Maybe you’re listening while you’re running last minute errands or wrapping gifts, or maybe you’re out on a walk to get away from the overexcited kids in chaos, or maybe you’re listening to this after the holidays are over.

Either way, I thought it would be super fun to end the year with a little recap of 2024. I don’t know about you, but I can get really absorbed in my own business. Sometimes I lose track of things that go well. I think that my mistakes are like unique to me. I can get stuck in the day to day minutiae and I really do love looking back.

And if you’re nosy like me, I thought maybe you would love to hear the truth about what my year looked like. That’s what this week and next week are all about. I’m going to get down and dirty and share all the things with you. If you’ve been a listener of the podcast for a while, you know that I pride myself on keeping things real.

And that’s what this year in review is going to be all about the good, the bad, and all the in between. Before I get started diving into this year in review, I do want to take a quick pause to say thank you. I know you have a zillion choices when it comes to podcasts and the fact that you choose this one week after week is so dang humbling.

I appreciate your support and loyalty more than you will ever know. It really is such an honor to be in your ear each week, and I hope to continue to serve you and inspire you into next year. And I just have to ask, would you leave the podcast a review? The reviews really do make such a huge difference in how the podcast gets shared with new listeners, and I would appreciate it so much.

Here’s how I’m planning. This episode will go first. I’m going to reflect on some kind of key highlights and achievements, the high points of the year, and then I’m going to get into a little bit of the behind the scenes of what it took to hit those achievements, because I never want you to think that things just happen, that things just go well, that I’m just lucky.

A lot of work goes into this stuff. Then in next week’s episode, I’m going to do kind of a part two of this year in review, where I’m going to share all of the challenges and the lessons learned and give you also kind of a sneak peek of what’s coming in 2025. That’s where we’re going today. We really are going to get a true behind the scenes pullback.

Again, I know that what we see online is a highlight reel. We see a highlight reel. And so I don’t want you to hear this episode and just think I’m bragging and sharing all of the good things. It’s really, really important to me that you also hear the bad and the negative and the boring, right? I want you to know what it takes to run a business like mine.

And so that’s what we’re going to get into in the next couple of episodes. I’m really, really excited about this. We are going to start with some milestones of this year. We’re just going to start right off in the beginning, some big things that happened and some big changes I made and what that looked like this year.

So first of all, I hired a brand new coach at the end of 2023. I brought her on at the very end of 2023 and worked with her all of this year. This was the largest coaching investment that I have ever made by like double. Quite honestly, I was terrified, but I also knew intuitively that it was 100 percent the right move.

So I was terrified, but I was also extremely confident in the move. This has been incredibly challenging work that we’ve done together because we’ve done a lot. We have done a lot together. She has really pushed me in ways that I had hoped for quite honestly. I mean, when you hire a coach, when you make a big coaching investment, you want that, right?

You want somebody to push you. Um, and we’ve made a lot of great progress as well. But one thing to really note, and many of my coaching clients and mastermind students will tell you the same thing, but having a coach is definitely important for growth, but it’s also a lot of work. Having a coach means you have more calls on your calendar.

You have more communication one on one with them, whether that’s through boxer or what’s Slack or whatever the channel is. So yes, they’re supporting you, but it also takes a lot of time away from the other things you have going on. Uh, so there’s this bit of balance that you need to find when you’re working with someone in that kind of capacity.

Yes, she was inspiring me and encouraging me and we were creating new things together and making a lot of shifts and a lot of moves and doing new things. But I was also having to figure out how the heck I would have time to meet with her on a monthly basis, how I would have time to talk with her on a daily basis or weekly basis.

And then also how was I going to carve out the time to do the things that we were working on together? That’s the key in having a successful coaching relationship with someone is it’s not just deciding who you’re going to hire and then paying them. That is a teeny tiny portion of working with someone.

The more important part is figuring out how you’re going to actually do the work, how you’re actually going to commit the time, making sure that you say no to other things so that you can clear your calendar so that you have the capacity to do these things. The women that I personally have worked with in the past and when I have been their coach, the ones that have been the most successful and have had the most mind blowing growth, they do just that.

They commit to saying no to other things to make time to do the work. And that is, it’s, it’s so important, but it’s also really hard because you’ve listened to the podcast. You know, I have a lot of irons in the fire. I have a lot of things going on, not to mention a busy wild ride of a family. You know, we’ve got three kids and three very different seasons of life.

We are very, very busy and then you throw in my business and then you throw in growth and it’s like, how does it all work? So yes, it was really, really exciting working with her this year. But it was also really, really hard. So I want to make sure that you hear that, that like, yeah, it was awesome, but it took a lot of work and effort to make it happen.

Some other milestones that happened this year. You’ve heard me mention that I hired two new team members. Early in the year, and I’m thrilled to tell you that here we are at the end of the year, and I am still completely obsessed with both of these women. I brought Jaden on to help me with social media.

And you’ve heard me mention this before, but I love Instagram. I’m one of those weirdos. Yes. I pull back from time to time, but generally speaking, I enjoy the app. I enjoy the community that I have fostered there. I enjoy getting to like, just share our lives and have fun. I don’t take it seriously. And I’m, because I, I view it that way and I have a healthy relationship with it, I’m pretty good at it.

Right. Like I know what to do. I know how to get things done. And so I held on to my own social media for a really, really long time. Because in my mind, I was good at it. I knew what to do. I knew how it worked and I was relatively successful, right? At the beginning of this year, my coach actually encouraged me to hand that off or to at least try handing that off and see what kind of Space it created for me to do other things.

And I was really nervous about this because again, like I had a good relationship with Instagram and, and it felt kind of frivolous to invest a lot of money in a team member to do this work for me. But when I hire a coach, I listened to my coach. And she encouraged me to try this. And so I did. And to be quite honest, when I hired Jaden, I told myself, I’m going to, this is going to be a three month test run.

I’m committing to this to three months. And then I’m giving myself the freedom to walk away and say, no, I don’t actually need this anymore. Um, I can tell you that within the first, I don’t know, two weeks of working with her, I was like, Oh no, she’s here to stay. Like I, it was an instant love affair with, with her.

And it is just so incredible. I’ve said this time and time again on the podcast, but when you outsource something, Not only are you getting time back, right? Like, because you’re not having to do the thing yourself, but it is incredible when you hire someone who is working inside their zone of genius. Okay.

When you hire someone to let them do the thing that they are so dang good at, they do it better. They do it faster. You see better results. It’s just, it’s incredible. And I know that. And I teach people that all the time. And this was absolutely the case in this situation. Sure. I was good at Instagram. I enjoy Instagram.

However, I handed it over to a professional and let her take the ropes. And my goodness, uh, she is so much better and so much more intentional. And if you have followed me on Instagram this year and you’ve kind of seen the shift in the kind of content that I’ve been sharing and how I’ve been showing up over there, that is all 100 percent Jaden.

And yes, I’m still the one that are, that’s creating the reels. I’m still publishing everything. I’m still posting everything. I’m still the one showing up in stories. I’m still the one responding to your DMS and to your comments, but she is creating the content map for me, so to speak. And she is writing out a lot of.

What I am posting and it has been an absolute game changer for me. I am absolutely obsessed. So she’s here to stay. I also brought on Rachel to do design work for me as an educator. You can imagine that. I have all kinds of things that I’m designing on a day to day basis inside of Canva specifically.

Again, I don’t mind Canva. I am pretty proficient and know my way around and have been making things in there for a long time. But as an educator, I have so much stuff that happens in Canva on a weekly basis. It’s, It’s podcast graphics. It’s pins for blog posts. It’s carousels for Instagram. It’s PDFs and worksheets and downloads for all of my courses and groups.

It’s slides for the presentations that I’m doing constantly, whether it be at conferences or in my groups or in my programs, there’s just a lot that’s getting designed. And again, I was holding onto that because I could do it. I could do it. I knew that I wasn’t great at it, but technically I could do it.

And I didn’t, I don’t think I realized. How much time I was giving over to that stuff. Again, my coach encouraged me early on to hand that job to someone else. And so I started doing my research on who to hire. I reached out to several other educator friends in different industries and different niches and ask them, you know, who are they using?

And I set up a bunch, a bunch of, uh, consultation calls with different designers. And I immediately clicked with Rachel and loved. Um, how she worked and how organized she was and various things. So I hired her again on a trial basis and gave her the first few tasks literally to kind of test her. I gave her the first few tasks and I gave her very, very little guidance.

I literally like gave her an outline that I had created in a Google doc. And I was like, can you make this into a PDF and make it cover page and an ending page and make it match this branding and blah, blah, blah. Just because I wanted to see, like, I wanted to throw her into the deep end and immediately, literally immediately when she got it back to me, which was an extremely quick turnaround.

I saw it and I started laughing because I was like, of course, this is more amazing than anything I’ve ever created and it was faster than anything I’ve ever created better than I would have envisioned it. And so immediately in my mind, I’m like, okay, Rachel’s here to stay. This is amazing. And then I went straight over to Voxer and I Voxer’d my business bestie, Coley James.

And I said, Hey, I found this girl. She is magic. You need to reach out and hire her. And I think Coley hired her within like 48 hours. Um, which is hilarious, but Rachel has been absolutely incredible and she’s taken so much off my plate and I absolutely love working with her. I’m going to have both Rachel and Jayden linked in the show notes if you’re looking for someone to help you with either of these things.

But like I mentioned when I said I hired a new coach, adding team members is absolutely glorious, but I want to be really clear here and not just sugarcoat this. You don’t get all of that time back like you would hope there is still a lot of delegating and communicating and working together that has, that’s, that’s kind of part of working with someone, right?

You have to assign tasks to them. You have to tell them what you need. Ask them to do work for you. Then you have to review it and make changes. You have meetings from time to time to communicate what’s going on in the big picture of the business. They’re still, it’s not completely hands off. Right. There are still things that have to be done.

And with these two women, they were brought in and roles that I hadn’t been working with someone before. So I’ve also been kind of figuring out like how to use them and how to best utilize them and what that works, what that looks like, but it has been absolutely worth it. And I’ve seen just an absolute enormous payoff from working with both of them.

So that’s really exciting. Another really big milestone this year is that I launched two brand new courses into the world. I launched Marketing That Attracts back in June and just in the six months that it’s been alive, it’s already has almost 50 students, which is crazy. Instinctively, it was the easiest course I’ve ever birthed.

It literally just poured out of me so, so easily. And it’s also been the best received course I’ve ever created. The DMs I get, the emails I get from students about how it’s changed their marketing and how things are actually working to bring them their ideal clients. It just, it warms my heart so much every time I get one of those messages.

It has been so fun to see something intuitive be born. And it happened after I released something else, which I’ll actually talk about in next week’s episode and things that didn’t go well this year. But that was a really, really cool process. And I am loving the course. The students are loving the course, and you’re going to continue to hear me talk about it on the podcast and on social media if you’re there, because it’s something that I’m really, really proud of, and I am really, really confident in.

And again, just hearing the wins pour out of people is so exciting. The other course that was born actually was just born a few weeks ago. The personality portrait blueprint was born and released for Black Friday this year. Honestly, uh, I had hoped to launch that course earlier in the year. I, my plan was to launch it in August.

But some things happened that I will get into in next week’s episode that really created a place where I needed to set it down and put it on hold. This course, the personality portrait blueprint is something that my audience actually has been asking for for a while. Anytime I would put a question box up on Instagram and ask people what they wanted to know more about or learn from me.

This was the topic that was mentioned. They wanted to know how I ran my personality portraits. How did I charge for them? How did I photograph kids in five minutes? How many images were I giving? How did I market for them? They wanted just to know literally the whole thing. Like they wanted to implement this in their business and they wanted somebody to walk them through what it looked like.

So. The cool thing is that this is actually what I’m calling a mini course because you can totally binge it in a day. Um, it is broken out into several modules for organization’s sake, but the trainings are really short and the resources are really easy to get through. But the really, really cool thing is that we launched it during Black Friday.

And we launched it as a surprise, which means that there was no, what I call a launch runway to prepare the audience at all. So when I teach you about launching or marketing something, whether it’s inside one of my courses or in the mastermind or in one to one, when I teach you how to launch, there’s this whole long run, long runway, okay.

Where you’re. Spending a few weeks preparing your audience and kind of leading them into this offer you have. And then you spend a couple of weeks sending lots and lots of emails and having lots and lots of social media content where you’re really doing kind of a marketing blitz on the particular offer that you have.

So um, a really solid launch is at least a month long. We didn’t do that this time. If you were on my email list for Black Friday, we did like five days of a sale and every single day of the sale was something different. And all the offers were available all week, but we featured something different every day.

So Monday we featured one thing. Tuesday we featured something else. Wednesday we featured something else. And I’ve never done a Black Friday sale like that before. And so we kind of threw this new course in the middle of that launch, even though I had no launch runway and it was like a surprise thing that was newly available.

I doubled my sales goal for that course, which is amazing and wild. Uh, so that was definitely a highlight and a win seeing that my audience really did want that course, right? It’s one thing for them to drop it in a question box. We want to learn more about personality portraits, but then like when it’s available and they actually have to pull out their credit card and pay for it, they actually did want it.

So that was really, really exciting. Again, you’re going to hear more about that. In 2025, I’m going to do actual marketing for it and talk about it more because it is a fantastic little course. The women that are inside are already loving it. I’m getting lots of great feedback. So, uh, that’s really exciting.

Launching two courses in a year is actually a pretty big deal. Now to get to the behind the scenes part of this, uh, I know that Looking from the outside in, people who are not in the education space see educators launch courses and programs and retreats and offers and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

They see educators creating these things and launching these things and all you see from the outside is the marketing efforts, the talking about it here and there, and then the sales, right? Like, Oh, it’s selling out or people are buying, or I’m welcoming these people into the program. You don’t see the mountain of effort that it takes to get these things born into the world.

So when I have new one on one clients, that start working with me specifically when they want to feature or not feature when they want to focus on building an education platform for themselves. Almost everyone says, I want to release a course. And to them, I say, that’s awesome. And I fully support that.

However, I need to be really real with you on what it takes to launch a course. It is a thousand times easier to launch one to one coaching or mentoring or even a retreat than it is a course. There is so much work that goes into launching a course. And I’m not saying that it doesn’t pay off, but people don’t realize that it is.

like so much legwork. So like I’m having the visual right now of an iceberg. You see. The tip of the iceberg. You see the marketing. You see the talking about it. You see the people joining. You don’t see the huge amount of effort that it takes behind the scenes. And so I’m always really real with my one on one clients about we can do this, but I need to be honest with you about what the timeline is going to look like, how much work it’s going to take, how quickly you can get this done.

I need to be real with you about the thousands of tasks. That it takes to actually birth this thing. And so when you, the listeners here that I launched two courses in 2024, it was a lot of work. Yes. They both poured out of me really easily and they were both really fun to create and things that my audience was ready for, but that does not mean that it was any less work.

Okay. It was still outlining modules and recording videos, creating the resources, building the course platform, all of the marketing discussions. And then there’s all of these little tiny tasks that go into it, you know, like creating the product, creating the coupon codes, creating the tracking links, writing, and scheduling all of the emails.

It is this. Beast of an effort. So it took a lot of work. Yes. I’m really proud of those two courses. I’m so happy they’re out in the world, but it took up a ton of time. It really did. The other thing new that happened in 2024 is that I actually launched a brand new program. I have mentioned this briefly on the podcast a couple of times, but it’s not something that I’ve really talked about a ton publicly.

And that is, it’s called the education blueprint. And it was a brand new idea I had in late 2023. And I actually decided that I was going to do this differently than I’ve ever done an offer before. There was no public launch. There was no wait list. There was no sales page. There were no marketing emails.

I created a list of women that I wanted to participate in this program and I invited them to join. So this was an invitation only offer and I had a Google Doc laid out with like how the program was going to work and what they would get with joining and all of that. And, um, it was a really small, intimate group.

There was only six women in it and, uh, it sold out in a day. I launched, I birthed a new thing, launched a new thing and it sold out in a day, which is absolutely wild. Um, but what you need to hear is when it, when I say sold out in a day, again, this was invitation only. So the women said yes. That’s all that was.

I’d handpicked who was invited. They all said yes. They all joined, which was really exciting. And this program ran from May until now. It’s wrapping up at the very, very end of the year. And so I, I launched. And ran a brand new program this year. The premise behind this program, if you can’t tell from the name, the education blueprint was getting photographers who have experience and were ready to step into the education space.

So helping them step into that space, giving them a platform, giving them all of the tools they needed to start showing up as authorities. As educators to create freebies and trip wires and sales pages and write email funnels and launch offers and change the way they show up on social media, change things on their website, create additional pages on their website and everything in between.

So it was a huge, huge undertaking, but something that I knew I was ready for and that these women were ready for. So it was really exciting to work through. But logistically, I was doing something brand new, something brand new. I did not know how it was going to go from start to finish. I didn’t know how the retreat portion was going to work.

I wasn’t nervous, so to speak, because I have run group programs and retreats for years now. So, But there was that piece of unknown to it. Like, would it go the way that I had envisioned? Would these women have the success I envisioned? Would the retreat be as beneficial as I hoped it would? All of that and spoiler alert, it did.

It was fabulous. The women have done so incredibly well. I am absolutely thrilled and proud of what they have built this year of the changes that they’ve made of the role they’re stepping into as educators. It’s been so dang exciting. And the retreat was absolutely incredible. Every woman. We had a great time.

They got a ton done. It was amazing. So that was definitely a high point this year is launching and running a brand new program. And I’m just going to go ahead and answer the question that I know you’re asking. Am I running this, this program again for 2025? I don’t think so. I’m not a hundred percent sure on that yet.

I’m giving myself a little bit more time. When I launched this program earlier in the year, again, it was so intuitive because I knew exactly who I wanted in the group and I invited them and it was just easy. If I run the program in 2025, I don’t have six to eight women this time that are on my radar to invite, so it would be, it would have to be something that I launch publicly that I market for.

And I don’t know that I have the bandwidth for that. Maybe I do, maybe not. If you’re interested, if you would be interested in a program like that, um, send me a down DM on Instagram and let me know your thoughts. If I don’t launch it for 2025, I. I think I will likely launch it for 2026. Maybe it becomes an every other year thing.

So I’m not sure. TBD. One of the things I’m asked about the most as a business coach for photographers is marketing. Students want to know how to find their ideal clients. How often should they email their list? How can they use social media effectively? What makes a good blog post? You get it. Marketing is a beast.

And if you’re like most photographers, you’re overwhelmed and probably pretty frustrated with the marketing part of your business. My friend, if this sounds familiar, hear me when I say this, you are completely normal. There is so much out there about marketing books, blogs, courses, coaches, gurus, marketing specialists, and social media accounts.

And they’re all telling you to do something different. Unless you actually went to college for a marketing degree, it’s no wonder you’re confused. You started your business because you love taking photos, not because you’re a marketing genius. But the truth is that marketing does play a big role. You do have to find clients.

You do have to make money and therefore marketing is something that you do need to learn if you’re going to run a profitable and sustainable business for the long run. The great news is I’m here to help in my new course, marketing that attracts, I’m helping you filter through the noise and sharing five Organic marketing strategies that actually work for photographers.

And I’m giving you the inside scoop on how to do them ideas for what they can look like in your business and all the resources you need to have confidence and clarity to market your business. And don’t even get me started on all of the additional resources and bonuses inside this course. There are swipe files, templates, bonus trainings, organizational tools, worksheets, and how to videos all the way to your heart’s content.

So if you’re ready to stop throwing spaghetti at the wall and get clear on a marketing strategy that will bring you results in your business, then Check out marketing that attracts at the link in the show notes to learn more. Now back to the show.

Another really exciting thing was I brought in four new one to one coaching clients in 2024. I rarely talk about this part of my business except like in passing. It’s funny because I love this part of my business so much. I have never marketed for one to one clients. They’ve always just come to me and which is amazing.

And I realized that that is such a gift and I’m so honored my one to one client work. The way I do it, everybody does it differently. The way I do it is it’s a minimum of six months, but some of these women have worked with me for years and I get to go so deeply with them in this process. And because of that, their growth is always just like.

It’s like mind blowing. It’s mind blowing what they achieve when we work together. And it’s just, it’s so fun. So working with those 40 women this year has been incredible. I do only take a handful a year because it’s really, really important to me that they get the best of me while I’m doing so many other things, right?

I have the membership, I have these courses, I have the mastermind. I want to make sure that I’m not overcapacity because if I’m overcapacity, I’m not serving them to the best of my ability and I’m not interested in coaching in that way. I am not interested in volume coaching where I just bring on as many clients as possible and then everybody gets a watered down version of me.

I want them to get the absolute best of me. And so I keep those spots super, super limited. I do have a couple of spots for 2025. So if you’re hearing this and you’re like, Oh, that sounds really interesting. I would love to work with Sabrina one on one, send me a DM. I will have a link in the show notes where you can send me an email as well.

And we can hop on a zoom call and chat for about 15 minutes and see what it is you’re looking for. And if I can support you. So I’d love to have that conversation. Um, some highlights for me this year are always the retreats always. And in 2024 I hosted four retreats, which just, I mean, I could cry thinking about it years and years ago.

It was a dream of mine to one day get to host a retreat. And here I am. I hosted four this year. I host multiple every year. I just. It just warms my heart so much to know that women continue to choose working with me in this capacity and showing up to these in person events. In 2024, we were in Charleston, we were in Destin, Austin, and Seattle.

So, the, all four of them were incredible and impactful for the women that were there. Charleston was the first ever alumni retreat that we’ve ever had, which I’ll talk about again in a minute. Destin and Seattle were Root to Rise retreats the spring and the fall. And then Austin was the retreat for my brand new education blueprint that ran this year.

And that was so, so fun. I do want to be transparent again. I’m sharing the behind the scenes. I want you to know the, the reality of these things. Yes, the retreats are incredible. They are incredible. They are so fun. They are so emotionally charged. They’re like my cheeks hurt from laughing after every weekend.

They’re, they’re just the most impactful way to spend time with women. But they’re a lot of work. And Destin, uh, the spring run of Roots Rise and Destin was the first time that we have really had to lean into being flexible. Uh, if you can’t already guess this about me, I have these retreats planned to a T.

I have them planned to a T. My retreat coordinator, Cheyenne, and I work really, really hard to get the logistics nailed down ahead of time. I’m a believer in if you can get that logistics nailed down ahead of time, it’s less things to stress about less decisions to make later. So we are always really diligent about making sure we’ve got everything we need about the timing from the chefs and the restaurants and the yoga teacher and the model sessions and the daily schedules and all of that.

But Destin threw a wrench in our plans, so it had forecasted to rain or be heavily overcast Almost the entire weekend that we were there, which you guys, I was freaking out because we were having this retreat in an epic beach location, like two blocks from the ocean. I had images of dreamy lighting at sessions and at our farewell bonfire on the beach.

And I was looking at the forecast as the days were approaching and I was terrified that the whole thing was going down in flames. I’m happy to say that it all worked out beautifully, but we did some major schedule rearranging to work around the weather. We had to get all of the attendees involved. So normally.

Attendees arrive and we have this beautiful casual like charcuterie and like a happy hour welcome evening. And then we have our chef’s dinner and it’s just the first night is always just like chill social time, getting together, warming up to one another, welcoming them to an incredible weekend. But this time the check in evening was the only evening we were guaranteed a gorgeous Sunset.

And so we flipped the switch and we actually did a session that night. We did our beach session that night. It was absolutely the right call to make, but it made the welcome experience a little different. Instead of having this casual and, and slow and organic, like welcome happy hour experience. It was, let’s have a group powwow and then get your camera bags.

We’re leaving for the beach, but it ended up being a really great experience. Everyone rolled with the punches and was super appreciative of us being flexible to give them those dreamy well lit images. It worked out wonderfully, but man, I was really stressed. I was really stressed, but I’m happy to say that the attendees had an incredible experience And I’m sure of that because more than half of them rejoined the program again.

So it all worked out, but it was not all rainbows the whole time. So another funny like milestone I have for you is that this year I went viral for the first time. You know, you’ve probably heard those stories about how people always seem to go viral on like the one piece of content that they have or that they create that has nothing to do with their business, right?

Like maybe they are a business coach and then they share a video about their dog chasing seagulls at the beach and that’s what goes viral, right? Luckily, that’s not my story. I actually went viral with something that was meant for photographers. And so that was really, really cool. And the timing was also cool because I went viral during the Root to Rise retreat in Seattle.

So I was showing up online with really great content about what was happening behind the scenes at our retreat. And I was heading into a launch of the program for 2025. And that is the same time that I was going viral. So that was lovely, but I’m here to give you a little bit of the behind the scenes part of going viral that you don’t hear about.

It is a freaking full time job managing it. I was trying so hard to be a really good steward of all of these new followers and all of this traction that I was getting. I was trying to respond to all of the comments and to respond to all of the reshares and all of that. But every time I opened my phone.

There was about a thousand more notifications from people, and that is I am literally not exaggerating. That is an actual true story. Every time I open my phone, there would be another 350 shares and You know, 45 comments and new followers and all of this. And so it was constantly like drinking from a fire hose for an entire week.

Every time I opened my phone, I was like, Hey, let me go respond to all of these people that reshared it. Let me go respond to all of these comments. Let me go, you know, check out these new followers pages. It was so much work, but it was also hilarious. Because Jaden, my content strategist, and I were just laughing.

Every day I would send her a screenshot of the new metrics, um, and we were just dying. Like, it would not stop. Next time you wish that you go viral, just keep in mind that it’s going to add to your to do list and give you more to do. And it’s, it’s absolutely a wild ride. But again, I’m thankful for the timing.

I’m thankful that it is actually content that was meant for photographers. So all of the new followers I got were photographers, which is amazing. It was just, man, it was a wild ride. So a few general wins for this year that I, that I will share. My email list had a lot of growth. I gained about a thousand people on my email list, which is incredible.

Uh, my social media had a bunch of growth. I gained over a thousand followers over there. All, almost all of which were photographers, so very intentional followers. And I had an increase in revenue over last year. I saw about a 15 percent increase in revenue and, uh, that is really inex, it’s very exciting.

Very exciting. Anytime you have revenue growth, but it feels like an extra big win at the end of this year because it was a tough financial year for a lot of people. The best part about that number is that about 10, 000 of that growth was truly passive income. It was from the new courses that I created.

It was from tripwires being sold off of the back of freebies. So things that I truly did not have to show up for at all. Once somebody hit purchase, they didn’t have to hear from me. Everything was automated. And that was a big goal of mine at the beginning of this year to increase my passive income because passive income is number one, it’s passive.

You know, once you’ve created it, there’s not a lot more involved, but it’s also very profitable because it’s already been created. And because it’s not taking any time from you. And so that was a really big goal of mine to increase my passive income this year, and so I’m really thrilled to report that.

Um, it’s going well. A couple of things before I wrap. I wanted to share just a couple of my favorite moments from this year, um, which I don’t think you’ll be shocked to hear. They, they all have to do with travel . Uh, if you’ve listened to the podcast for a while, you know that I love travel. I just, I have a heart of wonderlust and I love adventures, so I got to take my three kids to like a poolside resort.

For three days without my husband, my husband was in trial, he’s an attorney. And so I took the kids, uh, and that was the very first weekend of summer. And it was so fun because they’re all big kids now. Like if you’re a mom to littles, you’re probably thinking that sounds horrible. I don’t want to manage my young children around water by myself without a wing man.

Totally. 10 years ago, I would not have done that five years ago. I would not have done it, but they are all big. And so I got to ride water slides with them. I got to do the lazy river with them. I got to get in the pool and throw the football with them. But a lot of that weekend was also me reading by the pool and them running around.

It was so fun to let them run around together. There was lifeguards all over this property and the big kids stayed with my youngest. And it was just really, really fun. It was really like, I felt like as a mom, I’d reached a new level, like a new level of parenting and we had a blast. We stayed up late every night.

We climbed and we snuggled all in one bed and watched movies before bedtime every night. The resort had s’mores every evening for people staying there. And so the kids did s’mores. I mean, it was just a great, it was a great way to start the summer. It was a really great memory. I took my youngest child on a one on one trip to Washington D.

C. this summer. He’s always been interested in all of the D. C. things and talking about wanting to really, really wanting to see the Lincoln Memorial. And so we did that, uh, just He and I, and he had gone on a few smaller one on one trips with me in the past, but nothing like my older kids, my older kids have been on many, many, many one on one trips with me.

Most of which were planned around photo sessions with my clients. And they’ve been to places like Jackson hole and park city, Utah and New York city and Seattle and 38 and literally all over the country. But my little guy who is nine and a half had never been on a really big one like that. And so we went to DC this summer and it was really a really great time.

We had such a fun time. Um, so that was definitely a highlight. And then we always spend at least two weeks in Colorado in the summer as a family. It’s always a highlight of my year. It is my happy place, Colorado in the summer is magic. If you’ve never been make this a priority, it will change your life.

But one of the really fun things to highlight for me. Was on that trip. I finally took the steps to meet with a realtor and I actually went to an open house while we were there. I have been saying for years and years, it is on my bucket list to own a vacation home in Colorado. And I, this year I was like, I’m done talking about this.

I’m ready to start like putting this into the universe. And that meant meeting with a realtor and going to an open house and starting those conversations. And so that was really. Really a highlight for me. And then I got to go back to Colorado later in September with my middle child to photograph one of my favorite longtime families there.

They actually used to be local to me and then they moved to Colorado during the pandemic. And I actually did two sessions for them while I was there. I did a evening session that was like a playful. We went to one of their favorite outdoor spots and the kids like played and, uh, we dinked around and the lighting was magical and it was just, uh, like jaw dropping the whole thing.

And then we did a sunrise session where everybody was dressed up and like matching outfits. And we went to a really beautiful location and did like more traditional family portraits there. So. That was an incredible experience and my middle and I were there. I think we were there for four days and we had just a great time.

We had an absolute great time. Uh, we had been to that location before. And so we just had a great time. We, we went to the farmer’s market and we went shopping. We went hiking and, We just really had a great time together. So that was definitely a highlight. And then, like I said, all four of the retreats I hosted this year were big, big highlights for me.

But I told you I was going to come back to the alumni retreat I hosted last or this past January when we were in Charleston. So my route to rise program has a very loyal following, let’s say. More than 40 percent of the women who have been in that program have done it more than once, which is wild to say, is wild to say if you’ve ever joined a high ticket group program, uh, I doubt you’ve joined it more than once.

That’s just like not a thing for people, but for some reason it is for my people and I love it and it just, it makes my heart so happy that they keep coming back and wanting to do it. And so for years. This group has been saying we need an alumni event. We need something for alumni. And I put it off for a long time because I didn’t know what that would look like or how I could serve them.

Well, this year, this past January, we had an alumni weekend retreat in Charleston. And I decided it was going to just be the standalone weekend. There was no program involved. There’s no calls or anything like that. And since it was being held in January, we were going to focus on goal setting and kind of creating a marketing map for the year.

But really it was going to be more about Just being together. So like a girl’s weekend. So we didn’t do model calls for a bunch of sessions. We didn’t have a bunch of work blocks planned. We had a couple of work blocks, but we also did a lot of downtime. Like we went shopping together on King street and we played games and we did, it was just a lot of down, fun time.

And it was, Just an absolute blast. Again, going into that weekend, I wasn’t nervous about hosting retreat because I’ve done it so many times and I wasn’t nervous about the attendees because I had been at a retreat with all these women before, but I was nervous about how it would go because I’ve never hosted this particular type of weekend before.

It was a smashing success. I’m thrilled to tell you that we’re having our second annual alumni retreat. In early January in Palm Springs, and I can’t wait for that. That was just a really big highlight for me, knowing that those women still found incredible value out of the weekend, but also they left being refreshed and recharged.

And you know, again, we laughed a ton. We had so much fun. It was just absolutely incredible. I want to end with a couple of personal wins, uh, that I saw this year. I really listened to my intuition this year. Sometimes it was making extremely scary decisions. And sometimes it meant pulling back from things, but with age, this is something that I am just getting better and better at.

I’m going to share more about this in next week’s episode, because a lot of listening to my intuition are things that maybe would be deemed as. Anyway, so I’ll talk about that next week, but I do consider it a win. I do consider it something that I’m really proud of at 44 years old, being able to listen to my intuition and trust making decisions that way, uh, even when things feel really scary is, is an incredible gift and I’m fully, fully aware of that.

So I’m really, really proud. I took a ton of time off this summer. I’m also really proud of that. We traveled way more than usual. Some of that was Together as a family. Some of that was with individual children. Some of that was, you know, I hosted a retreat in the summer, so it looked like a lot of different things and we were constantly in and out of the house and in and out of suitcase.

It was a whirlwind, but it was also so fun and full of a lot of really, really great memories. And then this is going to sound really silly maybe, but it’s a really, really big personal win for me. And you may have heard me mention this on the podcast recently, but I hired a stylist this year. This actually happened at the end of the year.

So I think it was end of October, maybe early November. I’ve lost track of the timeline at this point, but it had been on my goal list for Probably two years now. And I kept waiting. I had told myself that I was going to give it to me myself as a gift. Um, and so I, it was a gift this year for all of the success I’ve had in my business.

It was kind of like my bonus, so to speak. It’s been something that had been on my heart for a long time that I’d really wanted to do. I don’t know if you feel this way, but for me again, I’m 44, my body’s changing. I’m going through perimenopause. I have a teenage daughter who has one kind of style. I can’t do that style because I’m not a teenage girl.

That’s six feet tall or over six feet tall. I kind of had lost my style identity. And it was causing me to kind of have a little less confidence in the way I was showing up and presenting myself in the world, both personally and professionally. I was just frustrated. I would walk into my closet and never have any idea of what to wear.

I wouldn’t like anything I’d see. Wouldn’t like the way anything looked on my body. I was just, I was just frustrated. I had my colors done by house of color earlier in the year. I think it was. Maybe April. And so that helped a lot narrowing down colors and helping me kind of know what, you know, tones of makeup to wear and, and all of those things.

But it didn’t take me all the way to the finish line, right? Like it was a step in the right direction, but it wasn’t all the way there. So I finally pulled the trigger and hired a stylist and. It has been the gift that keeps giving. I did not realize how much working with a stylist was going to have to do with mindset and it has been wild.

It’s been a wild ride. I have absolutely loved the process. We have, I hired her to do all the things. Um, she created a style board for me and you know, example outfits. She came to my house and cleaned out my closet. We got rid of three quarters of my closet. Um, that is not an exaggeration. That is an actual Fact statement.

I donated like 19 bags of clothing to our local donation and that was wild. Then she went shopping with me and then she’s helped me with some online shopping. Then she came over and put together outfits together after all my new clothes were purchased. It’s been a whole thing. But it has absolutely been what I hoped for.

It has given me confidence back that I, I didn’t realize how far it had dipped, but it has given it back to me. It has made getting dressed fun and easier. It has, um, just been such a joy. So I can’t wait to continue working with her into the new year as we go into other seasons. Cause obviously she helped me shop for fall winter, but you know, I live in Texas.

We have a very extreme. Difference in our seasons between fall, winter and spring summer. So she’s going to come back an early 2025 and we’re going to prepare for new seasons. And I’m really excited to continue this process, but that was a huge personal win for me in 2024. So. That was a lot. You guys, I didn’t think I was going to talk for as long as I did, but here we are at almost an hour.

Um, so today I shared all the good stuff with you. Okay. Again, like I said in the beginning, I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging. I don’t want to sound like I’m sugarcoating my business. Yes. It was a great year. Yes. I had growth in a lot of ways. I did a lot of really fun, exciting things, but hear me when I say this, guys.

It was hard. I had a lot of challenges and I had a lot of really big failures. Uh, that is what I’m diving into next week because I don’t want you to just hear the wins. I don’t want you to just see the highlight reel. I want you to see the real, real. So next week is going to be part two of my year in review.

And that’s where I’m going to be sharing all of the not so great stuff about the year and really, really spilling the beans with you. So come back next to hear the rest of the story. And I will see you then my friends. Thanks so much for listening to the shoot it straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at SabrinaGebhart.

com backslash 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.