215: Nobody Dies If the Gallery Is Late

 Welcome to Shoot It Straight, the podcast for women building businesses and lives they actually want. I’m Sabrina Gebhardt, 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’re ready to grow without losing yourself in the process, you’re in the right place.

I’ve got a short and sweet quick little episode for you today, something that I inevitably end up coaching women on every time I either one-to-one coach them, oftentimes even when I’m on, like, a power hour, a quick little call in my first class lounge group, and definitely in my Root to Rise mastermind.

It’s this, my friends, that we are not in an emergency business, okay? When I say we, the photographers listening, the creative entrepreneurs listening, the business coaches that are listening. If you are listening to this podcast, the vast majority of you fall under this umbrella. We are not in the business of emergencies.

We are not in the business of creating oxygen. We are not in the business of saving lives, and yet so many of us run our business from that attitude. Nobody dies if the gallery is late, if it goes out on Thursday instead of on Tuesday. Nobody will lose a limb if the fall mini session announcement slips by a week because we dropped the ball.

Nothing happens when we miss deadlines, change j- deadlines, pivot our situation. We are photographing families. We are creating art. We are coaching other women. We are not running an emergency room, and yet, again, we treat our business like we are. We put ourselves under the pressure of someone that is in a life or death business, and that’s not where we are.

We rush through things. We skip lunch. We are culling at 10:00 PM. We have a stomach pit drop when a deadline slides. We treat ourselves with this immense, insane pressure, and my friend, all of it is self-inflicted. Every single thing is self-inflicted. I would love for you to think about who actually set the deadlines that you’re panicking about.

Who set the turnaround time? Who set the shipping deadline? Who said that the thing was gonna happen at this way and this time? Uh, it’s probably you, right? Probably you. The deadlines that we give ourselves, the, quote-unquote, rules that we are giving ourselves are self-imposed. And my friend, that means that they’re fluid.

That means that they are fluid. They’re self-imposed. We can change them. Listen, deadlines are good. I love a good deadline. They create action, momentum, but you’re the last person to tell someone to stop. We get so motivated to set them, and then we don’t give ourself any grace or any wiggle room to change them when they need to be changed.

Deadlines are a tool that you can hold, that you can use to your benefit, to your business’ benefit, to your client’s benefit. It’s not a sentence. And when I say that, it’s not a punishment. It should not push you over the edge. Your business and your personal life should not be to the detriment of self-imposed deadlines and rules.

I’m gonna tell you a couple of things, and these are things that I learned from my friend Amanda McKinney. She was on the podcast recently. But they have really helped me, and I wanna pass them onto you. Number one I close my laptop by two thirty, three PM at the absolute latest, Monday through Friday. The time is decided.

Even if my work is undone for the day or the week, if it’s a Friday, I’m still doing it. The first few weeks I made this decision felt, mm, sticky, felt guilty, felt a little bit of the like itchy hands. Like I, I don’t know, I can’t stop twitching. I’m not done yet. I, I need another minute, I need another 30 minutes, I need another whatever.

What this process has taught me is that the work is still there. The world is still spinning. My business is still moving. Nothing implodes. No one dies. There’s no catastrophe. Things just go on. And how much better am I for someone who closed her laptop at two, two thirty, three o’clock, and then unwound the rest of the evening?

Did some needlepoint, had some time with my kids, had a very, uh, great dinner with my family where I’m engaged and everybody’s, you know, talking and chatting. Unwound for the evening, went to sleep, got to read my book. How much better am I for that when I step back into my office on the next business day, even if I’m behind on things?

As opposed to the person who just constantly says, “20 more minutes, 20 more minutes, one more hour, one more after bedtime. I’m gonna stay up late and finish this. I’m gonna work all weekend to get caught up.” Let’s contrast those two women. How much better am I for my family, for myself, and for my clients, even if I’m late?

The other thing that I learned from my friend Amanda, and let me, let me preface this. The, the closing my laptop is something that I’ve done for years, but I’ve like doubled down on it. I have recently doubled down. I’m not sliding on it anymore. I’m not doing it most of the time. I’m doing it all of the time.

I have doubled down on that boundary. Now, something new that I’m doing from my friend Amanda is I have a sticky note. I’m looking at it right now. It’s on my laptop, and it says, “I did enough today.” Not only is that sticky note there, but when I close my laptop at the end of the day, I say that out loud and I shut the laptop.

If you don’t have a laptop, if you have a desktop, say it and then power it down. There is something about that trigger that gives me permission, but also resets my brain into, okay, and we’re done for the day. I’ve said the thing, I’ve shut the laptop, or I’ve powered it down, and now I am done and I can move on.

It’s like a little stop sign for me. It’s a boundary. It’s a physical boundary by way of the note. It’s a mental boundary by me saying it out loud, another physical boundary by shutting the laptop, and it is such a good trigger to make this stick and also tell myself and remind myself that it’s okay to be done for the day, whether or not my list got done, whether or not my deadlines were hit.

It’s okay. So here’s what I want you to hear from this. Everything that I’m– I like to teach here, here being on the podcast in Root to Rise, on my social media, they’re things to support you, pricing, systems, the seasons you’re in, boundaries, all of these things. They’re meant to support you. A business can survive When you have all of those fundamental things in place and you decide to shut your laptop at 2:00 or take the weekend off or whatever, miss a deadline, move a deadline, you’re not held hostage by your business when you have those foundational pieces in place, okay?

You’re not held hostage, and you’re, uh, you’re able to settle into the truth of, “I am not in the business of emergencies. I am not in the business of creating oxygen. It is okay to be a mom, to be a wife, to be myself, to have a business that feels lighter, to have free time in the evening. It is okay, and better yet, it is much more sustainable.

It is much more sustainable.” So if you’re someone who is being held hostage by your own deadlines and your own rules, the things that you created, if what you have created is not working for you, I want to remind you that you can change it, and you should change it. It’s okay to miss a deadline. I’m not saying I want you to be someone who perpes- perpetually misses all your deadlines.

But side note, uh, speaking to the photographers, if you are always struggling to meet your editing deadlines, my friend, change them. Stop telling your people that you’re gonna get galleries to them in two weeks. Tell them it’s five. Tell them it’s six. Tell them it’s two months. I don’t care what you tell them.

You can tell them anything. Give yourself more time so that you are not drowning under your self-imposed deadlines anymore. I want you to just ask yourself, “What actually happens if the deadlines move?” And let me tell you, as a business owner of over 15 years and someone that’s coached hundreds of women on this, nothing will happen, especially if it is communicated to your clients.

If you tell them from the get-go that your turnaround time on galleries is four weeks, nobody’s gonna care. Nobody is going to care, right, when we communicate those things to your clients. And then I would love for you to try the I did enough Post-it Note activity. Put a Post-it Note by your computer. Set an alarm when you are committing to turn off your computer.

Read it out loud, and shut it down. Let that be your reset that you are now stepping into family time and that the work is done for the day, and everything else can wait till tomorrow. That’s it for today, my friends. We’ll see you next time. 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/podcast. Come find me and connect over on the Gram at xo.sabrinagebhart. And if you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you’d hit that subscribe button and leave me a review. Until next time, my friends.