195: What I Wish Someone Had Told Me

Welcome back to the Shoot Strip podcast, my friends. If I could sit across from the version of me that was three years into my business, man, I’d have a lot to say. 2026 marks, 15 years in business for me, and I recognize that that is no small feat. I work with business owners every day, struggling to make it to the three-year mark, to the four-year mark, to the five-year mark, and just dreaming of a business that has longevity.

And that takes them to the places that mine has. And it’s been a fun ride and it’s been an absolute joy. And I’m humbled, absolutely humbled to think about how far I have come and the opportunities that my business has given me and the places that has taken me. But thinking back to those early years, those first three years where I was absolutely.

Bone crushingly exhausted. I was second guessing every single thing I did. I was wondering if it was ever gonna feel easier if I was ever going to quote unquote make it. There are some things that I would tell her. I’m gonna share a few of those with you today.

Welcome to Shoot It Straight, the podcast for women building businesses and lives they actually want. I’m Sabrina Gehart, 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.

The early years are exciting, yes, but they’re also hard. They are filled with hustle and I know that hustle gets, um, a bad rap these days. We are very much into the balance and the ease culture right now. And hey, I’m right there with you. Okay? I love balance. I love ease. I love self-care. I love white space.

But hustle is necessary in certain points and the beginning years in a business, you’ve gotta have it. If you don’t have that hustle, it ain’t going anywhere. Okay? The early years are filled with hustle. They’re also filled with comparison because you cannot help but look around and see what other photographers are doing right when you are building your business.

And also whether you’re a photographer or you’re another kind of business owner, whatever you’re building, you can’t help but look around and see what similar businesses like yours are doing, right? A lot of comparison. There’s also this feeling that everybody has it figured out or has figured out something that you haven’t always feeling like you are behind.

Why are they getting those successes? Why are they getting those wins? How are they getting those results? How come they’ve, whatever cracked the code? I haven’t feeling like you’re just in the struggle, right? I hope that just right out of the gate I have made you feel seen. I have made you feel understood, validated that you can feel the empathy coming through.

Because that’s where I want you to feel. But I do have some honest truths, some lessons that I want to share that I wish I would’ve known then that I wish somebody would’ve sat me down and told me back then. So I’m gonna share five different things today. Number one, confusion is not a sign that you’re doing it wrong.

The early years in business are filled with confusion ’cause you don’t know what you don’t know. Yes, today in the year of 2026, we’ve got the internet, we’ve got Google, we’ve got ai, we’ve got YouTube University, we’ve got TikTok that teaches us everything. We have a lot of data. It doesn’t mean you’re not confused because everyone’s telling you something different.

Everyone’s doing it differently. Right. There are so many things that you have to learn when you are getting your business off the ground. Not only do you need to learn the skill that you’re selling, okay, whether it be photography or some other kind of business, you are optimizing and learning your skill, your craft, but all of the backend things, the client experience, email marketing, digital marketing websites.

Invoicing, pricing, bookkeeping. I mean, the list goes on and on and on and on and on, right? It’s very confusing being overwhelmed in those early years. It can feel like a big warning sign. It can feel like that big flashing red light that’s like, something’s wrong. We’re going down. It’s actually just the cost of entry.

That’s what I want you to hear. It’s the cost of doing something new. It is the cost of being a beginner. It is the cost of starting a business. It’s part of it. It’s part of what you sign up for, right? You’re signing up for figuring out all the hard things. You are signing up for hustling in the beginning.

You are signing up for feeling confused while you learn things and figure things out, and exactly how you wanna do things. Everyone figures it out as they go. It can feel like people are, you know, only showing their highlight reel. ’cause they are, and they look like they’re further along than they are.

It’s not actually true. Everyone is overwhelmed and confused in the beginning. It’s just the cost of starting. It’s the cost of being a beginner. It’s totally normal. Not a sign that you are doing anything wrong. It’s not a sign that you’re not cut out for this. It’s not a sign that somebody else would do it better.

None of those things. It’s just ’cause you’re a beginner. It’s part of it. It’s part of what you signed up for. The second truth I wanna share for you, you are going to outgrow your prices faster than you think. It’s always going to feel like you’re outgrowing them too fast too soon. You couldn’t possibly raise your prices.

At this point, I don’t care what kind of business you’re in, I don’t care what you sell, what kind of service you provide, who your ideal clients are. This is a fact for. Everyone, period. When you start your business, whether you’re selling a product or a service, you set your prices and some of you may set them on what you think is an industry standard.

Many of you are gonna set them at like an entry level price point K, and that’s great. That’s a great way to start out. You’re going to outgrow them. People are going to love working with you. Your art is going to pop off. The things you are selling are going to fly off the shelves. People are going to fill up your calendar with your services.

It is going to happen sooner than you think. You’re going to get that gut instinct. Mm, I think it’s time. I need to raise my prices. I’m booking out months in advance. No one is telling me no, I can’t keep my things in stock. My commission calendar is filling up so fast. Whatever in industry you’re in, right?

It is going to happen so fast and you’re gonna get that inkling. Maybe I should raise my prices and immediately fear is gonna step in. Here’s the thing, that fear of raising your prices never goes away. I’m sorry. I know you don’t wanna hear that. It’s true. It never goes away. You will have that fear every time you raise your prices, year in and year out, and that’s what’s gonna happen.

You’re going to continually raise your prices year in and year out. If you’re a service provider, the service that you provide, you are going to get better at it. You are going to become more proficient. You are going to fine tune your things. You’re going to continue learning to where you need to charge more.

All of those things are gonna cause you to raise your prices, not to mention inflation and time and all of that. Supply and demand. Same thing goes with your products, okay? The more in demand they come become, the more rare they are. Your prices are just going to go up. The fear of raising your prices never goes away.

Raise them anyways. Raise them anyways. I’m telling you right now, as someone who’s been in business for 15 years, your future self is going to thank you. You’re gonna outgrow ’em super fast. It’s gonna feel too soon. You’re gonna be terrified to raise them. Do it anyways. Here’s the third thing I wanna tell you.

When you say yes to everything in year one, it is going to cost you what feels like everything. In year three, it compounds saying yes. Every time you say yes to the wrong opportunity. The wrong client, the wrong price point, the wrong project, the wrong fill in the blank. You are also saying no to the right things because you are filling your calendar with the wrong things.

Does that make sense? When you take on clients that are not for you, or projects or collaborations that are not for you, or you book people at the wrong price, you are filling your time with the wrong things. Therefore you have no time for the right things. Okay? This is a boundaries problem. If you’ve listened to the podcast for a while, you know this is a boundaries problem.

Boundaries are not just for when you are successful. Please hear me say that boundaries are not just for when you are successful. They are not for when you have quote unquote made it. They are not just for when you have a super high price point and a super limited availability and super rare drops of things.

Boundaries are how you become successful. You cannot become a success without boundaries. This is a huge part, being able to say no to things that are not the right fit. If you find yourself in year one saying yes to everything, even though you do not want to, you are going to get yourself into this really bad cycle.

You are going to start having repeat clients that are the wrong ones. People who booked you at a lower rate that expect to continue to book you at a lower rate, photographing people doing things that you don’t really even wanna do, but because they asked, now you do it. That is all negative momentum that is going to take you to the wrong spot.

I’m okay with year one. You dabbling in things to see exactly what you wanna try. There’s nothing wrong with that. Using the photographer example that many of you are, there is nothing wrong with deciding that you wanna become a photographer and wanting to try ’em all. Try out all the niches. Say yes to a micro wedding.

Say yes to a branding session. Say yes to a senior session. Say yes to an event. Say yes to a family. I’m okay with that. What I’m not okay with is you continuing to say yes to those jobs or non-ideal clients. Or discounts when it’s not something that you wanna do when you have already decided, you know what?

I tried the micro wedding and I actually really hated it. So stop taking micro weddings. Or I tried the maternity session and it was not my vibe. Okay, we’re not doing that anymore. Or I gave the discount once and I got burned and it turned out horribly. I’m not doing that anymore. You’ve got to have those boundaries in place to get you to success, okay?

So be very careful with what you say yes to in that first year because it starts the rhythm of what the rest of the future of your business is going to look like. The fourth thing that I want to hear you say, and I’m going to say photographers here, but again, this applies to everyone, the photographers that you are comparing yourself to.

They are not your competition. They are your community. This is a mindset thing. I struggled with this so, so deeply. My first few years in business, I saw everyone as like the evil, scary competition. I didn’t want them to look at my work. I didn’t want them to DM me. I didn’t want to run into them at a public location.

I didn’t want to anything. I was so terrified. Of what they would think of me, of just, just everything. I was so terrified because they were the competition and that was bad and it was real lonely, as you can imagine. It was real lonely and it took me years to figure out that that is not the case. Sure, there are evil competitors out there, but they’re few and far between.

Most of the people out there in your industry are. Peers, their community, their people who can commiserate and support one another. And I have spent almost a decade building that both in my business, my local photographer community, but also nationwide in the way that I educate, the way that I build communities for other women, the groups that I host.

It is not about competition when we work together. It is so much more fun and freeing comparison is the loneliest way to run your business. It is terrifying. It is fearful. It is the emotion of scarcity, but when you look at your competitors as community. Collaboration that comes from that, whether it’s truly collaborating with your businesses or just becoming friends or just talking shop or answering questions and cheering each other on, collaboration is the fastest way to catapult your business and also how it feels to run a business.

Comparison is lonely. Collaboration and community is an overflowing cup. It is so much more fun when you know that you are not in whatever you’re in alone. The last thing I wanna share with you, there’s so many lessons I learned over the years, like so many, truly, this could be like probably a six week series if, if we wanted to keep going.

But the last one I wanna leave you with today is that you don’t need a bigger audience. You need one that trusts you. You don’t need larger, you need more trust. Stop chasing followers and start building relationships. 10 people who follow you and trust you and like you and connect with you will convert a thousand percent better than 10,000 people who follow you.

And just scroll a small but mighty audience is what you need. You are a small business. Most of you listening are a small business. Okay. You can only serve so many people. You can only photograph so many clients. You can only coach so many people. You can only style so many people. You can only paint so many commissions.

You are a small business. You have a limited amount of time and people that you can serve. It is more important to build relationships that are deep and loyal than it is to chase followers. To chase a massive audience connection is what creates that loyalty. Connection is what creates people that rave about you without you even asking.

Connection is what creates people who talk about you when you’re not even in the room as a small business that is king. So you don’t need a bigger audience. You need one that trusts you more. I think about this advice that I’ve given you, these examples, these are all things that I did not know in the beginning.

I learned slowly and very hard and very expensive lessons, and honestly, I wouldn’t trade it because the path I took brought me to where I am today. And like I said in the beginning, I am so grateful and so humbled by where I am today. But if I can help you skip any of those things, if I can help you avoid those mistakes so that you can just get to the good stuff.

That’s what I’m about, right? I want you to have less self-doubt. I want you to spend less time on doing the wrong things. I want you to learn from my mistakes, okay? So my friends, I just wanna leave this with you today. You’re not behind, you’re not broken. You’re not doing anything wrong. Your business isn’t doomed to fail.

You’re not, you know, none of those things. You’re in the beginning. It feels this way. I hope that you learned some lessons today, some things that you can take away. I would love to hear from you. You know that I love to hear from you, the listener, on your thoughts on the podcast, so you can do that by either leaving a review.

I would love, uh, some updated reviews on the podcast, or come find me on Instagram at xo dot sabrina Gehart and send me a dm. Let me know that you listened to this episode and which one of these lessons jumped out at you and really hit home. I would love to hear from you, my friends. That’s it for today.

We will 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 at. Sabrina gebhart.com/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.