185: What Five Years of Community Taught Me About Support

 Welcome to Shoot It Straight. The podcast for women building businesses and lives they actually want. I’m Sabrina Ebhart, and around here we believe in clarity over hustle, alignment over burnout, and giving yourself permission to want more, more ease, more beauty, more income, more space to live. So if you are ready to grow without losing yourself in the process, you’re in the right place.

Welcome back to the Shoot at Straight podcast, my friends. Today’s episode is a little different and I wanna be super clear about this upfront. Enrollment for the first class lounge opens today. However, I want you to hear me loud and clear when I say this. This episode is not a hard pitch to join us. It is about the background story of how it came to be, what is happening over there, how my relationship with community and support has evolved over time and how this group came to be.

I want you to know underlying, under everything else, this new space was not born from needing to fill a hole in my business. It was born from my experience building communities and a community that I had that needed to change. So if you have been listening to the podcast for a while, or you follow me online, you have heard of the Roundtable.

The Roundtable was my old membership and it ran successfully for five years, which is a really long time for our membership, and I’m really, really proud of that. During that time, there were hundreds of conversations, hundreds of coaching moments, so many connections with women. Women were meeting online and making business besties, and then they were taking their friendships to real life, like seeing each other face to face in person always made my heart so happy to see when they were sharing photos online.

I have always loved communities. Memberships because it is a space where you can find your people. I’m not saying all communities are created equal, or all memberships are created equal because they’re not. But I really pride myself in the spaces that I build and how they feel to the women that join.

And I have. I’ve just always loved them. I’ve loved building them. I love connecting people. I love supporting people in a group space. So the Roundtable existed for five years, and she was doing great for a long time. About 18 months ago, I started to notice a pretty marked shift in the space. It started to feel stale and a little bit outdated.

I noticed participation was low. Our Facebook group was dying. People were leaving like the spark had left the room. I knew intuitively that the membership itself wasn’t wrong. There had just something had become misaligned along the way. I knew I did not want to stop offering a membership. I wanted to offer one that actually fit who I am now and also who my audience is.

Now. Sometimes something doesn’t end because it failed. It evolves because you’ve grown, which is very similar to the rebrand experience that I launched last month and have been talking about. So again, I could tell that the old container of the membership wasn’t working anymore. The misalignment was palpable.

Again, participation in the Facebook group was down and. It was once hopping over there. It was once a space where people would ask questions and the whole group would swarm and support women and answer questions and give them what they needed to, you know, get through whatever struggle they were having.

And it was just dying. I mean, nobody was showing up anymore. Nobody was asking questions, nobody was answering questions. I also noticed that attendance on our Zoom calls was really down and they once were the place to be. Attendance used to be so high on the Zoom calls, and there were times where I would show up and one other person would be there, and it was just, it was really sad.

And under all of that, the energy required from me to maintain the old structure of the group was just, it was a lot. It was a lot. It was stressful and annoying when participation was low and it felt like I was beating a dead horse. You know? There was so much that goes on behind the scenes to coordinate something like that.

You know, I’m scheduling guests, I’m preparing and scheduling content. I’m scheduling emails. I’m participating in answering questions in the Facebook group. I’m showing up to calls to coach. It’s a lot, and again, the misalignment was palpable. Everything was just so down and it was not what it once was. I knew that just because the container had stopped working, that wasn’t my signal to quit.

It was a signal to refine what we were doing over there. I knew there was still a place for a group like this. Something just had to shift. As you know, I just launched this massive rebrand. It was a process that took months and months, and like I shared in a few episodes last month, the rebrand wasn’t just visual.

It asked me some much deeper questions about me and my business. Who do I wanna lead? How do I wanna lead? Where do I wanna take my business? How do I wanna show up? What kind of support do women actually need long term? So during this rebranding process. I began to gain some clarity on what I wanted out of a new membership space.

The first class lounge emerged when I stopped asking how can I make this membership work? And I started asking what feels right to me right now? I allowed the refinement of this group to take time. I mean, I definitely wanted it to go faster, and I definitely experienced some frustration along the way because it was taking so long and I didn’t know what to do.

But ultimately I was patient through that discomfort. I was patient until I knew in my gut what the future looked like. So. The first class lounges, first of all, a space for all women business owners, not just photographers. That’s really the biggest change. I have been feeling called to this for a really long time for a lot of reasons.

Many of you listeners of this podcast are not photographers and you never have been. I get messages all the time, and I have for years of women who listen to this podcast and they send me a dm. I got so much out of your podcast and I’m not even a photographer. Local business owners to me that are photo clients of mine or friends in the community.

I listen to your podcast and I get so much out of it, even though I’m not a photographer. So that bug had been in my ear for a while, and during this rebrand that resurfaced again that I think the next level is me supporting women. Not just me supporting women photographers. That doesn’t mean that you photographers need to go anywhere.

I’m still supporting you. I’m still going to coach you and teach you from my lived experience, which is 15 years as a photographer. So a lot of my stories and examples are from that space, but ultimately, business owners have the same problems. We struggle with clients. We struggle with marketing. We struggle with messaging.

We struggle with balance. We struggle with pricing, is all the same stuff, right? The details could be a little bit different here or there, but ultimately, same problems. Same problems. Another reason why I wanted this space to be for all women business owners is I wanted new questions being asked. I wanted to hear from women that weren’t just photographers, not because I wanted the challenge of coaching them and answering the questions, but because I think that when you ask different questions, even pertaining to different industries.

We all learn from one another. We all rise together, right? Having fresh energy and fresh blood in the group is gonna bring new topics, new discussions, new ideas to the table, and we can all learn from that and all rise together. So that was the first big change about this group. We also refined the container of this group.

We are no longer a Facebook group. We are now this cutie private Instagram group. We participate over there daily. Which I’ll talk about in a minute, but we also still get together on Zoom. It is important to me to have women face-to-face in a room together, even if it’s virtual. An Instagram group is darling and fun and easy because we’re over there, but it’s still not the same as face-to-face.

So we have two to three calls every month on Zoom. One of them is some sort of coaching call from me. One of them is a coworking call where we get together and it’s like coffee shop vibes. We’re listening to music, we’re working, you know, in tandem together. And then we still have guest experts every other month.

Guest experts bring their expertise and I think it’s really important to bring, feature these other women experts to come teach to us on different things. And again, having this group be not just photographers. Now I’m really excited to expand what we’re talking about and who the guest experts are over in first class lounge ’cause it’s not just photography related stuff.

And then the Instagram group, what happens over there is I do a weekly coaching over there via a question box. I drop a question box on Monday mornings and you know it’s live for 24 hours and you can ask anything. Ask anything. And then I spend the week answering those questions and I pin all the answers into like the feed of that group.

So ultimately you can go to that feed and you can scroll and you can find all these questions that have been asked, and you can like jump to the one that feels exciting to you and watch it and get an answer. So it’s little tiny nuggets of coaching. We also throw in some fun extras over there on Instagram and they’re, they’re optional, but you know, they’re fun.

We’re doing, uh, book clubs that are super chill, super easy. We’re like, quote unquote, reading together, and we’re doing check-ins every, you know, 10 days on. Like, Hey, what are you thinking? What part are you on? How’s it going? But if you don’t wanna participate, you don’t have to. I’m also sharing more behind the scenes of what’s happening in my business and in my life in real time.

Because it’s important to show women by example. That stuff is messy. It’s messy, and it can be chaotic. And sometimes you’re on a high and sometimes you’re on a low. Sometimes things are great, sometimes things are terrible, and I want people to not feel alone in what they’re going through. So I’m sharing more behind the scenes stuff over there as well.

Plus, uh, when I see fit, I’m coaching on larger, timely topics. So, for example, last month was all about how I approach goal setting, and I talked about that over the course of four weeks, you know, in its own kind of little subject. So that’s what happens over in Instagram. So the container has been refined.

The space is now for all women business owners. The rhythm is a little steadier. Instead of the group only showing up on Zoom a few times a month, now it’s this daily drip, right? This is ongoing support for women who don’t need hype over big things. They just need steadiness, right? It’s little drips of support daily that when you’re on the app anyways.

There I am showing up, sharing things that are real, answering questions. It’s there when you need it on a more steady basis. It’s also a space for support without pressure. It is meant to feel easy. It is meant to meet you where you are. One of the first things I have you do when you join is to, uh, flag the group as close friends and also.

Add it to favorites. There’s two little dropdowns when you follow a page and that makes sure that you see what’s happening over there and it’s there when you need it, right? So when you’re on the app, you can check in. When you’re off the app, it’s no big deal. It’s just meant to feel easy, right? You don’t have to log into a different app or a different platform.

It’s where you are. Anyways. And it’s also meant to be coaching without a lot of urgency. It’s not a push you hard space. It’s not a push you towards a certain goal space. It’s a stay with you. It’s a slow, steady pace, and it really, really is beautiful. I wanna be clear who this space is for and who it’s not.

This is so important to me because I never want someone to join something and it be the wrong fit. Like never. This group is not for women who want constant accountability. I do not want you to join this group and think that you are going to have constant access to me to ask me a ton of questions every single week and get personalized feedback that I’m going to hold you accountable for things That is not what this group is.

That kind of support is for my mastermind and for my one-to-one coaching clients, not for first class lounge. This is also not for people who want any kind of performative growth. Again, like I said before, there’s no urgency here. This is not. Join this group and learn this skill. This is not. Join this group and hit this income goal.

This is not. Join this group and transform X. This is accountability. This is consistency. This is small wins. It’s a place to belong. It’s a room to be in with women business owners, many of whom are moms, all of which who are juggling multiple things. It’s not a course with big wins. It’s a safe space for daily growth.

Okay. The first class lounge is for women who want support that respects the season that they’re in. Again, it feels easy. It feels accessible. That’s not to mean that you’re not gonna get some really great nuggets and be inspired and held accountable, okay? But it’s meant to be smaller, quieter, easier. So my friends enrollment for the first class lounge opens officially today.

If you’ve been craving community that feels mature, spacious, and supportive, this might be the perfect space for you. Look at the website, read the details, sit with it. Make an intentional choice. And my friend, you allowed to want support. That feels really good. You’re allowed to want to be supported by women who want more.

You’re allowed to choose ease over a large, hefty program. All of the details are linked in the show notes, and if you feel called to join us, I can’t wait to serve you in first class. That’s it for today. 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@sabrinagephart.com slash podcast.

Come find me and connect over on the gram. At Sabrina Gab Hart 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.