Are you constantly rushing and seeing your big ideas flop? Today’s episode is an add-on to the conversation I recently had with Becky Hoschek about living in a perpetual state of hurry. I am sharing what a difference it can make to your life and your business when you create from a state of passionate urgency, rather than constant fear and scarcity.
The Shoot It Straight Podcast is brought to you by Sabrina Gebhardt, photographer and educator. Join us each week as we discuss what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur while balancing entrepreneurship and motherhood. If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in, yet willing to talk about the hard stuff too, Shoot It Straight Podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight.
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Review the Show Notes:
You are a badass (1:21)
Living in a rushed state (2:18)
Creating from scarcity and fear (5:28)
Creating from positive urgency (7:11)
Why are you creating? (9:37)
Episode Links:
The Aligned Photographer: Sign up today with 10% off exclusively for podcast listeners with the code: podcast
Episode 40: The Perpetual State of Hurry with Becky Hoschek
Jen Sincero: You Are A Badass At Making Money
Review the Transcript:
Welcome to the shoot it straight podcast. I’m your host, Sabrina Gephardt. Here I will share an honest take on what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur. while balancing business, motherhood and life. myself along with my guests will get vulnerable through honest conversations and relatable stories because we’re willing to go there. If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in yet willing to talk about the hard stuff to to shoot it straight podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight.
Welcome back to another episode of the shoot it straight podcast. Back in episode 40, I had a chat with my friend Becky horshack, about the perpetual state of hurry that we seem to live in. If you haven’t listened to that episode, it’s a great one. So make sure to check it out. I’ll make sure to put it in the show notes for you. That episode was such a great chat because it’s something that we all seem to suffer from. We are all in such a hurry. It’s not good for our bodies. It’s not good for our minds, and it’s not good for business. Recently, I was reading a book and I came across a quote that really jumped out at me, it’s about this similar thought and I wanted to share it and then take this conversation one step further. In the book, you are a badass at making money. Author Jen Sincero wrote, hurrying comes from lack and a sense of panic, that there isn’t enough to go around. It leads to feeling overwhelmed and making mistakes. And it inspires comparison and competition with your fellow humans. When you rush, you’re in a state of stress and worry, urgency on the other hand raises you up, it gives you energy, focus and drive. So in other words, urgency is positive, it’s being in flow and feeling pulled to do things that are in alignment and meant for you. On the other hand, when you rush or are in a sense of hurry, this is negative, it’s scarcity and lack and fear and comparison.
So let’s stop and compare these two definitions. Because when you’re looking at them, clearly, it’s really easy to see the difference. But the thing is that oftentimes we find ourselves in this rushed hurried state, trying to reach a goal or launch a thing or bring in more clients or create a new offer. And we’re so focused on what we’re doing that we don’t take time to pause, and to reflect on the heart of the matter. We don’t stop and ask ourselves what the driving force behind what we’re doing is, I’m certain that you will agree that we want to be in this state of urgency from time to time, we want to feel the passion and the urge to create the thing that we are meant to create. We want to be in creative flow when things are pouring out of us. And it feels easy. We want to have such an exciting idea that it is absolutely meant for us to get out into the world. Unfortunately, I think it’s more common for us to find ourselves in that negative state of hurry, especially if things in our business haven’t been going so well. Which given the state of the economy right now might be where you’re sitting at this very moment. Maybe it feels like everyone’s turning down your offer. Maybe it feels like no one’s opening your marketing emails, maybe it feels like no one’s booking your services. Maybe it feels like everyone’s complaining about how high your prices are.
Business doesn’t seem to be going very well. And when that happens, it’s very easy to fall into fear and scarcity and worry. And when we’re in that negative state the quote unquote, bright ideas that we think we have the quote unquote, brilliant moves that we assume are going to miraculously turn our business around that all of a sudden, they have to be done as soon as possible. Those things end up pushing us into this negative state of hurry. We fear that if we don’t get them launched ASAP will miss the window. We rushed to get these things off the ground, because they’re going to solve all the problems and save the sinking ship, we cut corners, and we hurry through the creation and launch because we want that money in our pocket right now. These things could be like a new offer that we think our clients want, but don’t actually align with our business. These are the flash sales that we run because we just have to drum up some business. These are the events that we throw together that aren’t to our standards, but it doesn’t matter because hopefully it’ll just bring in some money. These are the new businesses that we decided to start on the fly because we’re sure that it’s going to be a wild success, even when it doesn’t make any sense to us. These are the emails that we send negotiating price with clients. Hurry and rush are from a state of fear and lack and scarcity.
These ideas and creations are created as a reaction The frantic pace and the rush can feel very similar to positive urgency. And therefore we get confused. We assume that we’re hurrying because it’s a good thing. We can think that these hurried offers, these things are going to magically solve all of our problems, that they’re going to magically pull us out of scarcity and fear and into this overwhelming positive abundance, that they’re going to bring us the best clients and make us the most money and end all of our problems. But it’s the heart behind these creations. That’s the problem, because when they’re created in hurry, when we aren’t seeing clearly, we aren’t making wise choices. We aren’t pausing to make sure that things make sense. Unfortunately, what happens is that these ideas that are created from a place of scarcity and fear are the ones that we hurry and rush to create and launch end up as complete flops. I have certainly made many decisions from a state of hurry in my business over the last 13 years, I have launched offers that were a terrible idea. Yes, they made a little money. But yes, I was also miserable and regretted them later, I’ve spent hours and hours rushing and hurrying to create promotional materials for a flash sale that absolutely fell flat, it was a waste of time and made $0.
I also created an entire course once from the state of hurry, I just knew I had to create a course to make passive income just like everyone else around me seem to be doing. I very quickly mapped out materials, slapped on a name, recorded it, put it into an education platform, learned how to market it and spent countless hours getting ready for a launch that I knew was going to be a massive success. I spent months in a state of hurry while working on that project. The idea itself wasn’t bad. But it was the fact that I didn’t take time to pause and reflect and realize that it wasn’t actually what my ideal clients wanted. I was creating it from a place of comparison and scarcity. And guess what the results were minimal. When you look at the hours spent versus dollars made, it was a massive flop. On the flip side, I’ve also created programs and courses from a sense of positive urgency.
Remember, this urgency, it is positive energy. It’s the ideas that you have in your heart and your gut that you know are yours. You’ve listened to your audience, you are massively inspired. And while you do feel a sense of urgency to get it out into the world, it’s positive energy, you’re in flow, it feels easy and exciting and joyful. Again, I’ve created things from this space of urgency before and let me tell you, the experience of creating those things felt insanely easier compared to the things that I have created in a sense of hurry. The things created when I was in flow that urgently needed to get out into the world were a wild success right from the get go. All of the hard work that I put into getting the offers out into the world didn’t feel hard or complicated. There was no comparison, no fear, no judgment. It was just the certainty of knowing that this is my next move, and it’s time to get it out there. Friend, if you have a brand new photography business, or maybe you’ve been in business for a few years, but you aren’t thriving, I think I can help.
Let me introduce you to my new course the aligned photographer. In this self study course, you will learn practical and tangible ways to lead with your heart so you can focus on capturing your magic. In these seven modules, you’ll learn things like pricing for profit, marketing, setting goals, creating a sustainable schedule, email marketing, building boundaries, and more. Plus, there are three incredible bonuses built in to really take things to the next level. Lessons are a mixture of video lessons, audio trainings, and printable worksheets. Plus, every module has a resources page full of free things to help you take the topic even deeper. The best part, in my opinion, are the live monthly q&a calls where you show up and get all of your business questions answered by me. So if you find yourself in a photography business that is burning you out, that isn’t making you a paycheck that is uninspiring and just not everything you had hoped for, then definitely check out this course. And as a special bonus, just for my podcast listeners use code podcast at checkout to save 10% And now back to the episode.
So if you find yourself currently working on getting something out into the world, and you’re feeling rushed and overwhelmed, I really would encourage you to take time and pause. Reflect on the heart behind what you’re creating. Is it stemming from a positive energy or a negative one? Are you creating something because you’re scared? Because you’re war? Read, because you see everyone around you creating something similar, because you think you have to, because you’re reacting to something that has happened or not happened. If you answered yes to any of those things, I would encourage you to take a break. Allow yourself to stop, allow the momentum to stop, slow the train down.
And then ask yourself if you even really want this thing at all. Because I can tell you from experience, there’s nothing worse than wasting weeks and months of time and energy on something that wasn’t meant to be yours in the first place, or that you’re going to hate doing down the road. Instead, imagine how great it would feel to put this project down and to walk away, and to allow yourself the time and space to think and to come up with your next great idea. The one that’s truly meant for you and you alone, that’s going to be passionate and exciting. And that’s going to create that positive urgency feeling. I know it can seem counterintuitive to stop creating something in order to figure out what the next thing you want to create is. I know that sounds weird, especially as a creative entrepreneur, whose literal goal is to create things to make money. But just trust me on this, the best place that you can possibly create from is passionate urgency. And those ideas come when we allow ourselves the time and space to think when we’re running 100 miles an hour, managing our businesses and our everyday lives while trying to create something new out of scarcity. We have blinders on. And we can’t see what’s going on around us.
And if we can’t see what’s going on around us, we definitely cannot be creatively inspired, allowing yourself the time and space to drop the hurry to drop the scarcity and to have the mental bandwidth to think clearly. And to be inspired is where your next grade idea is going to come from. And that next idea, the one that comes from your gut, that that is going to be so much more fun and so much better aligned than anything created from scarcity or fear or comparison. That’s it for today, my friend. 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 Sabrina gebhardt.com backslash 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