197: The Business Audit I Do When Everything Feels Off

Welcome to Shoot It Straight. The podcast for women building businesses and lives they actually want. I’m Sabrina Gebhart, 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 of Straight Podcast. My friends today is going to be what I think is gonna be a short and sweet little episode, but something that feels important because as I often do, I am bringing you something in real time that I’m hearing, and I am kind of coaching some people through this, and so I wanna share it with you because if I’m hearing about it, she can’t be the only one.

Right? And it’s this. Do you feel like you’re in a spiral? Or maybe something is just off, like something doesn’t feel right in your business, in your body and your life, you don’t quite feel the way you used to. You’re not thinking about things the way you used to. You’re having a hard time prioritizing things or pushing through.

Maybe you’re really, really overwhelmed. If any of that is resonating with you, and I say any of that kind of loosely, because this can manifest itself in different people in different ways, right? Just like anxiety feels different to different people in different people’s bodies. This is the same thing, right?

Something can feel off in your business, your body, your energy, and it will feel different. That off quote unquote feeling will feel different to different people. And what I wanna talk about today is that most people try to just push through it. They try to just push their way straight through it. Like, okay, something feels off, but like, I don’t have time for this, so we’re just gonna keep on going.

We’re just gonna keep on marching forward and push through. Or on the other side, they just completely spiral and dig themselves into a deep hole and don’t really get anywhere. This episode today is where I wanna talk about like a different option. There’s a different way to go about this when things feel off.

That is getting really quiet, allowing yourself time and space to ask better questions and to take care of yourself in a better way. So first off, let’s start with this. This is not just about your business. This is not just about like a business audit. This is not just when things in your business feel hard or off or different.

For entrepreneurs, which is I would say 99.9% of you listening, everything is intertwined. It. It’s all one tapestry. Your sleep, your marriage, your workout streak, your offer suite, your clients, your revenue, everything is on the same list, and they all affect one another. So that off quote unquote feeling could be something.

Not related to your business, even though your business is what feels off, or it could be related to your business, if it’s your personal life, that feels off, right? Everything is intertwined. Everything is one tapestry. And so while I’m saying this is a business audit, it’s not really just business, okay?

So I want, I wanna make sure that that is very clear when we get started today. I wanna give yourself, I wanna give you four questions to ask yourself when you are feeling this way. Again, this is to keep us out of the, I’m just gonna push through and hustle through mode of feeling off, and it’s also gonna keep us out of the spiral.

This is leaning in, so to speak, feeling off, recognizing that something is not right, and giving yourself the time and space to process what that is to get to the root cause, right? It’s the same kind of thinking of if something is going on with your physical health. If you are getting headaches every single morning at the same time, yes, you can take Tylenol and it will help alleviate the pain, but what about what’s causing that headache at the same time every day, let’s get to the root cause so that we stop having the headaches.

So instead of you powering through or getting stuck in a spiral, let’s get quiet. And do a little bit of an audit to figure out why things are feeling off so that we can make adjustments and not feel that way anymore. Question number one. What doesn’t feel good right now in this moment today, this week, this season?

What doesn’t feel good? And again, we’re thinking personal and professional. Okay. I want you to scan everything. Is it your offers? Is it your schedule? Is it some one of the relationships that you have? Is it your physical body? Is it your mental health? Is it fill in the blank? What doesn’t feel good right now?

I want you to be really, really honest with yourself, and it may be uncomfortable to admit what doesn’t feel good right now. It could also be more than one thing. Okay, and I don’t want you to filter this. This is not something that you have to share with me or your partner, or your therapist, or anyone, so I don’t want you to filter it.

If parenting doesn’t feel good right now, it’s okay to say that if your marriage doesn’t feel good right now, it’s okay to say that. If you haven’t been taking care of yourself physically and you feel a little bit guilty about that, that’s okay if you don’t like the clients that you’re serving. Or whatever it is, any answer is correct.

There’s no wrong answer here, so don’t filter it, but get really, really honest with yourself. What doesn’t feel good right? Now? Another thing I don’t want you to filter is, well, it used to feel fine, like just because the thing that doesn’t feel good right now, used to feel fine, doesn’t mean that you, it can’t be a problem now.

Things change. People change seasons of life change. Just because you adored parenting your kid when they were five years old doesn’t mean that it’s six. They’re not like such a struggle. Okay? You don’t have to love everything all the time. It doesn’t have to work just because it used to work. You don’t have to still love photographing weddings just because you used to love photographing weddings and that’s what why you started your business because you used to love that so much.

It’s okay to change. So don’t filter. Whatever comes up for you when you ask that question. What doesn’t feel good right now? Get really, really honest. Scan everything personally and professionally and answer that question. I wanna talk to you about something for a second. I see this all the time in the industry.

Photographers who are good at what they do. They are genuinely talented, but they still feel like they’re one slow season away from questioning everything they’ve ever done. They are still making decisions from a place of scarcity. They’re still running their businesses in a way that quietly exhausts them.

I know that feeling because I’ve lived it. And I also know what it costs to stay there longer than you have to root to rise is my mastermind for photographers who are done waiting for things to click on their own. It’s a high touch group program and it’s one I’ve been running for years, which means it’s been refined.

Tested and built on what actually works. Not a theory, not what worked for someone else. What is working for photographers in real businesses at real stages of growth? The women inside route to rise aren’t just growing their revenue. They’re changing how they think, how they make decisions, how they show up.

That’s the work and that’s what makes the results stick. The next cohort isn’t open yet, but the wait list is, and that’s where you wanna be. Waitlist members get first access more details. The chance to have a conversation with me before the doors open to anyone else, and a discount at enrollment. If you’ve been circling this and wondering if it’s for you.

That’s your answer. Get on the list, Sabrina gbb hart.com/mastermind-waitlist. The link will be in the show notes back to the episode. Second question. Why doesn’t it feel good? Why doesn’t that thing or those things feel good right now in this season? And I don’t want you to stop at like the surface answer.

If you’ve ever heard of the exercise, that’s the five why’s. It’s, you know, ask yourself why five times like a kid would, right? Why doesn’t this feel good? Well, I’m overwhelmed in my schedule right now. Why are you overwhelmed in your schedule right now? I’ve said yes to this volunteer thing and this client, and I’m still behind on this other client, and we’re hosting a party this weekend.

Okay, why doesn’t that feel good? Right? Like dig deeper, ask yourself why as many times as you can to try and get to the bottom of why that thing doesn’t actually feel good. It could be the surface thing. That could be the simple answer, but there could be several layers deeper of why it’s actually bothering you.

That’s where we get into a little bit of our, you know, our childhood or our traumas, or our attachment issues or relationship history or, you know, mental health or illness or whatever. Okay. There, there often is something underlying causing the discomfort for the particular thing. So ask yourself why it doesn’t feel good, and again, be brutally honest.

There is no wrong answer. This is not going to be shared with anyone. Just let yourself answer the question. We’re gathering data, we’re gathering information to try and solve a problem. Why doesn’t that thing or things feel good in this season? The third question I want you to ask is, who can support you through this?

Now, I know many of you listening are probably like, Nope, I’m out because you don’t like to ask for help. You don’t like to get support. You like to be the one supporting you, like to be the one helping you like to be the one going out and doing the things you like to be asked for help you liked to mother.

We can’t do that all the time. We have to have people in our back pocket. We have to have people that are linking arms with us, letting them help us. Okay, so who can support you through this? Do you need a team member? Do you need to ask your partner for more support? Do you need to ask your mom or your neighbor or a friend?

Do you need to hire a sitter? Do you need to see a therapist? Do you need a doctor? What kind of support do you need to get through this? Because you don’t have to solve this problem alone. Maybe it’s a business coach again, maybe it’s a therapist. Maybe it’s making an appointment with your doctor. Maybe it’s getting on some medication.

Maybe it’s hiring a va. Maybe you need more childcare, or maybe you need people to help pick up your kids or whatever. When you think about what doesn’t feel good right now and why it doesn’t feel good, who can you ask for, for support to support you with the thing or with creating time to take care of the thing or someone to just talk to about the thing?

Whatever it is, who can support you? There is an answer to that question. Please do not skip it and immediately say, there’s no one that can help me. There are people that can help you. There are, and I want you to ask for help because. When something feels off, we need support. It doesn’t have to be support forever, but you need support in this season.

And then the last question is, what am I missing? I’m not saying that you’re missing information. I mean, what are the gaps in your life right now? What is missing from your life? Is it sleep? Is it movement? Is it connection? Like in-person connection? Is it margin? Is it ease? Is it depth of relationships? Is it fun?

Is it laughter? What is missing from your life right now? What is missing? What needs to be added in? What do you need to find time for? What do we need to create more capacity so that you can have in your life? What is actually missing right now? So when you ask these four questions, again, you’re probably getting really, really vulnerable with yourself.

And I hope that you’re allowing yourself to do that because if you’re filtering these answers, you’re, you’re kind of missing the point. Okay, we wanna get to the bottom of this. We want to, to really nail down what needs to change, who can support you through this, and what you can add in to bring in some more joy.

So sometimes this audit most likely, will have revealed something that you didn’t wanna see. It probably revealed something that you don’t wanna do anymore. Something that you want to change, but you didn’t know you wanted to change something. You’re ready to set down something that you built that actually has an expiration date on it.

It probably revealed something that you didn’t want to see or that you’re having a hard time facing, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Hear me say that it’s not failure. It is not failure. When you recognize that it’s time to set something down, or it’s time to make a major change, or it’s time to pick something new up, or it’s time to pivot, that is not a failure.

It’s clarity. You just gave yourself clarity. Congratulations. No wonder things are feeling off. No wonder your business, your body, your energy, your relationships felt off. You were forcing yourself into a puzzle where your piece did not fit. You were forcing yourself to carry something that you weren’t meant to carry anymore.

You were continuing down a path that was no longer your path. Congratulations. You now have clarity about what you need to change. My friend. I don’t think that this audit is always gonna give you a to-do list. Sometimes it will. Sometimes you’ll hear, you’ll go through these questions, you’ll answer them, you’ll get some clarity and you’ll realize, oh, I need to ask so-and-so for help.

I need to hire so-and-so to be a part of my team. I need to cancel this thing. I need to take this offer off my website, whatever that is, and it’ll give you an action item, right? Maybe even a little list. It’ll give you a to-do list of things to change. Sometimes, and I will say for, for those of you that are still listening, that this is really resonating with, I think more often it’s gonna give you permission to let something go.

And that’s what I hope for you. I hope that you hear this and you have been given permission to do something, to make a change, to let something go, to set something down. And that’s a really brave move to make. And that is something that we work on in root to rice. Rise is where we do this work in a room full of women who are asking the same hard questions.

They have built successful photography businesses and something is stirring. They want more, they want less. They want to pivot, they want to shift. They still love their business, but it doesn’t feel good and they don’t know why. And we work through those things together to get Tim to, to the other side.

We work on it together as women who are all doing hard things. There is an incredible community in that space, and they have me in their ears supporting them and helping them through those hard questions and those hard decisions. And if that feels like something that you’re interested in, the wait list for the next run of Root Rise is opening for enrollment June 10th.

I will have it linked in the show notes, but you can go to sabrina gab hart.com/mastermind-waitlist to put your name on that if you want to hear more when it opens. That’s it for today, my friends. We’ll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening to the Shoot at Straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode@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.