186: When Confidence Feels Rusty

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 A Straight podcast my friends. Today I wanna talk about something that came up in a conversation with one of my Route to Rise students and also something that I have gone through personally and I thought, okay, these two things have happened relatively recently. Obviously this is a topic that has coming up, and so I’m bringing it to the podcast because that means that more than likely.

Somebody out there listening is going through or will go through a similar situation. It’s this premise that even seasoned leaders and seasoned business owners get a little wobbly. They lose confidence, they lose momentum. They lose their mojo and spoiler. That doesn’t mean that anything’s wrong. That doesn’t mean that you are doing anything wrong or your business is failing or anything like that.

I was on Voxer with one of my Root to Rise students, and I spend time with these women on Voxer twice a week for the five months that they are in my mastermind, and this is where they get to really pick my brain with what is happening. Very specifically with them and with what’s in their business, right?

It’s where we get into the weeds of their personal needs. And I love this part of the program because I really get to dig in and give very customized coaching for these women. So this one woman in particular was sharing how she is nervous to slow down in her business because she doesn’t wanna lose momentum.

Without getting into the details, she’s in a season where in her personal life, there’s some things happening behind the scenes that are dictating a season of slowing down, but she’s kind of having this internal pushback and fight against actually doing that. She is a very high achieving woman. Her business is very successful.

She has loyal clients. She’s got experience. She’s very good at what she does. She sets goals. She hits those goals. She’s one of those ladies, okay? And again, her personal life is dictating this season of needing to slow down and create ease, but she’s struggling to actually allow that to happen in our conversation.

Brought up some really interesting points, and I thought I would share how I coached her through this and also share a personal story of my own going through a similar situation. If you know that you’re good at what you do, you’ve got that really successful business, you know you are good at your craft.

You know that clients love working with you, but you feel a little shaky. Or out of practice or you are secretly questioning yourself. This episode probably has something for you in it. Again, my client we’re on Voxer one day and she’s telling me what kind of the mindset struggle behind slowing down, and she’s telling me specifically that one of her fears is that she’s going to lose momentum in her business.

She’s a photographer and she’s afraid that when she does get back to being busy again and the season of slow is over, she feels like she’s gonna be rusty with the camera and with her clients during sessions. She feels like she’s going to lose all of her marketing momentum and things are gonna slow down on the other side of this.

She feels like she’s potentially gonna lose clients because while she’s taking time away and having less availability, they’re going to need to go elsewhere for their photo services, right? So she’s has this fear of losing momentum and it’s holding her back from doing what she needs to do for herself to allow for this season of slowness.

And here’s what I told her. She’s right. She’s absolutely right. She is going to lose momentum. That’s going to happen. She’s not wrong. She is going to get back to sessions and feel a little rusty with using her camera and her settings and posing her families and just talking with people. Again, with the culling and the editing, it’s all gonna feel a little rusty.

She is going to lose her marketing momentum. That’s what happens when you take time away, right? You don’t have your marketing Mondays anymore, or you stop sending letters or you’re not launching anything, or you’ve taken a break from social media and you, you get off the train and things slow down. She is going to lose some clients because people are going to need the services of a photographer when she’s not available, and so they’re going to hire someone else.

All of those things are true. And I told her that when we change the expectation from trying to sugarcoat that those things will happen, and we come to the realization that yes, those things will happen. We’re not scared of it. It is a fact. It’s going to happen. It shifts our brain a little bit because instead of it being unknown, it becomes a fact.

It’s kind of similar to, this is the example I used with her. It’s kind of similar to when you decide to have a baby. You know that you are going to gain weight and that your body shape is going to change and that your physical fitness level is going to change, and your capacity for energy is gonna change and your sleep is gonna change.

If you’ve had a baby, you know that it changes everything. And I’m not even talking about your household, okay? I’m just talking about your body. We know that those things are gonna happen. We don’t go into pregnancy hoping like, oh, I hope I don’t, you know, gain a whole bunch of weight. I hope I stay the same size.

I hope I can still wear all my same clothes. Like we just, we know that what we’re signing up for is uncomfortable change, and we also know that on the other side of postpartum also, it’s not gonna be fun. I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who is obsessed and in love with her postpartum body. It’s hard.

Things hurt. Things are squishy. Things don’t look like We want them to look, and it’s hard to get back into our pre-baby shape if that’s a goal, right? It’s hard to enjoy running again and working out again and feeling good in our clothes. All those things are hard, but we still sign up to have the baby.

We still choose the hard because that’s the best thing for ourselves and for our family in that season. But we know it’s gonna be hard going in and we do it anyway. And mentally we’re like, okay, it’s gonna be hard, but I can do this. It’s fine. It’s not gonna stop me. So the same thing is similar here, right?

You know, you need a season to slow down for whatever reason that is. And if you can set the expectation that yes, you are going to lose momentum. Then it changes things a little bit because then instead of going in blind and hopeful, you can go in knowing that like that’s going to happen and that’s okay.

I’m, I can get to the other side of this. So let me give you a personal example of this. I talked a little bit about this on a podcast episode recently with Coley, but last fall when I was launching Root to Rise, I was feeling a little off going into that launch historically for the past several years, four years now, I guess.

I have run the program twice a year, which means that I am all, I was basically always either coaching women in the program or launching the program. Or preparing for the next run of women or welcoming in and then coaching another run of women. Like that’s what my year looked like, right? I was coaching women from January to May, and then I was launching and welcoming in the new group in, you know, April and May.

And then in July we would start and I would coach again from July through October, and then in October I would launch and enroll the next group. And so it was the cycle, right? I was on this mastermind train and I was constantly in it. And it was a very well oiled machine, and I loved what I was doing, and it, you know, it, it felt easy.

There was a lot of momentum. But what was different last fall was that I had decided to not run a fall run of the program. Okay? So I stopped the mastermind train intentionally. So that meant that in 2025, I coached women in the program from January to May, and then I did not do a launch. I did not enroll women and I did not coach women for the rest of the year.

I got off the train for a little while and what happened? I lost the momentum. I didn’t realize at the time, which is why I’m telling you this story. I didn’t realize at the time what it was going to do to my confidence going into my launch. I didn’t realize that I was going to have this rusty feeling, this hesitation, this second guessing this, you know, like, is this program really any good?

Is anybody gonna join it? Is anybody interested anymore? Am I still a good coach? I, I, I had all of these weird, weird energies going around. I wanted to go into the launch last fall, feeling really grounded and really so solid and really confident. And instead, I just felt kind of awkward, kind of off. Again, some of the thoughts that were rolling around in my brain were like, do I still know how to run this program?

Is anybody still interested in this program? What if I’ve lost my edge for coaching women in this container? What if this version of me that took time off is like not good enough for these women anymore? I just, it was a lot of like negative self-talk and uncertainty, and what I was feeling was in my head.

Okay. None of those were facts. Those were all stories. This is the difference between feeling confident, losing that momentum versus having actual experience. Right? I did not lose any experience, any of the experience that I had. Um, I did not lose any skill. I just, it my, my mindset was telling me all of these stories.

Does that make sense? So it didn’t mean feeling that way, didn’t mean that I was incapable of a coach, that I was incapable of launching a program, that I was incapable of running a group. It just meant that I had stopped using that skill, that that muscle memory kind of went away because the momentum stopped.

So here’s what I did to get out of it. I did not panic. I did not change my launch strategy. I did not change my language. I did not offer discounts. I did not beg or sound needy. I did not do anything from that panic, fear spot. But I did reach out to my coach. I did reach out to someone that I trusted and shared how I was feeling, allowed myself to be vulnerable and say, Hey, this is weird.

This is a new feeling for me. I don’t really love it. I’m going into this launch. Can you help me get out of this? Then as the launch started to unfold, both what I’m gonna tell you I worked on with my coach and also just as the launch started to unfold, things started to shift. So, so here’s what happened.

I had this conversation with my coach and I was encouraged to make a list of all of my proof of success. She said, make a list that proves that you are a badass coach. So I made a list. I got on my phone and I put testimonials of women. I’m coached. I put. Facts. You know, I’ve hosted 10 retreats and I’ve had this many people in the program, and I’ve coached this many people one-to-one, and I’ve made this much money coaching and my students have seen these kinds of results, and I listed very specific examples.

I’ve spoken on this many stages. I’ve recorded this many podcast episodes. I mean, I got really into it, okay? I really got into the nitty gritty of things that are actual data-driven proof that I know what I’m doing. I sent her this list. And she immediately sends me a message and she’s laughing. She’s laughing and she’s reading over this list that’s like, you know, pages long.

And she’s like, how dare, how dare you not trust yourself? How dare you feel? A lack of confidence. She said, when I read over this list, there are women, I have been coaching for years. Who have a very tiny percentage of the, the wins that you have and the proof that you have. And she just kind of hyped me up and she encouraged me to read over the list a few times, read over it every single morning during the launch to keep it fresh in my mind so that I was kind of hyping myself up again.

Right. And then the next thing that happened was as the launch started to unfold. As the emails started going out, as the social media content started to be shared, women were reaching out to me with questions, which is exactly how I want it to go. They respond to an email and say, can we get on a call? I have questions, or they send me a dm, Hey, I wanna know more about the program and if I’m a good fit.

Or they send, Hey, can I reach out to you on Voxer a yes to all of those things because I love talking to women, not because I wanna sell them, but because I just wanna get to know women. And so I started having these conversations with women, which is very similar to getting back, getting my feet back into the coaching pool, and I started to get my mojo back because I was having these conversations and I was being able to put that coach hat back on.

I was being able to step back into that mastermind leader role and everything just picked back up again. I was able to get back into it. My confidence returned. After I started, after I started doing the thing, not before, reading over the list of the proof and the wins helped me take one step forward, but it, I didn’t actually feel really confident and great and like the momentum was picking up until I was doing the thing.

Having these conversations with women and coaching them through these things. So here’s what I wanna make sure that you hear. It is absolutely possible to lose momentum in certain seasons of your business. If you move, if you take a maternity leave, if you have a sabbatical, if you take time away to build something new, whatever that may look like, this will happen to you, whether you’re planning on it or not.

There are seasons where you need to pull back and you will lose momentum, and it’s not a reason not to do the thing. It isn’t a reason to be scared. The truth is you built your business from the ground up The first time. Getting that momentum the first time was hard, but you did it, and that means you can do it again.

Will it be comfortable? No, but do it anyways. The great news is that honestly, most likely it’s going to be easier this next time because you’ve learned a few tricks along the way, right? You’re not starting from scratch again. So I, I wanna leave you with a couple of things. If you want more support on this or from me, I have two things I wanna share.

One, I have a 14 day business reset. Okay? It’s called More Money, less Burnout. It is not just for photographers, and it’s 14 days of audio coaching from me. So, if you like this podcast, you’re gonna love it. Every single day you will get an email. The audio is three minutes or less. It’s very short, and they have little tips and tricks.

Okay. It’s really a great freebie and I will have it linked in the show notes if you wanna grab that. But it’s at sabrina gab hart.com/business-reset. The second thing I wanna tell you about is first class lounge. This is a space for women who want growth and accountability without the intensity or the pressure of a course.

It is my membership and it lives primarily on Instagram, so it’s in a place where you already are, which makes it so easy. I’m gonna also have that one linked in the show notes. That is sabrina gehart.com/membership. My friend, if this episode hit home for you, I’d love to hear from you. Truly. I really would.

Come find me on Instagram at xo dot Sabrina Gehart and send me a DM and I would love to chat. That’s it for today. We’ll see you next week. 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@sabrinagehart.com slash podcast.

Come find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gehart 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.