Today’s episode is such a treat. This isn’t one of those interviews where you walk away with five quick steps to achieve X, Y, or Z. It’s something much more meaningful than that. What you’re about to hear is a conversation between me and someone I deeply admire—Sabrina Gebhardt. I’m inviting you behind the scenes to experience how she thinks as a multi–six-figure, life-first business owner.
What inspires me most about Sabrina is that she truly embodies the work she teaches. She doesn’t just talk about building a sustainable business—she lives it. I think you’re going to love hearing her perspective on the decisions she’s made throughout her career.
Let me share her official bio:
Sabrina Gebhardt is a business coach and speaker who helps female entrepreneurs build profitable, sustainable businesses without burnout. Through a blend of personal growth and strategic clarity, she empowers women to want more—without guilt. She’s the host of the Shoot It Straight podcast and the founder of the Root to Rise mastermind, where she supports women in simplifying, clarifying, and building businesses that align with their real lives.
And truly, she practices what she preaches. After following her for over a year, I can confidently say she lives this work every day. She’s also been married for more than 20 years, is a mom of three, and firmly believes your business should support your life—not replace it.
You’re going to love this conversation. Let’s dive in.
Table of Contents
Who Is Sabrina Gebhardt?
Yeah, absolutely. I’m Sabrina Gebhardt. I’m a business coach for women—primarily photographers—which naturally grew out of my own 15-year career as a photographer.
I live in Fort Worth, Texas, and these days I wear a lot of hats. I host a podcast, lead retreats, speak at conferences, create courses, and I still photograph clients. I love staying connected to the work itself.
Outside of business, I’m a mom of three. My oldest is about to launch into the world—she’s graduating high school in just a couple of months, which feels both incredible and completely gut-wrenching. And on the other end of the spectrum, I still have a 10-year-old in elementary school. My husband and I have been married for 20 years, and I’m just living this full, layered, real life alongside my business.
After 15 years in business—growing from doing the work to teaching it and then expanding your audience to serve more women—how have you approached that evolution without rushing it, especially in an online space where people often try to fast-track that process?
Yes, so I started speaking primarily to photographers, and while there might be a few small things I talk about that are specific to photographers, but no matter what kind of business you’re in, we all struggle with marketing. We struggle with mindset. We deal with client communication, client expectations, systems, organization — it’s really all the same stuff.
So like you said, I naturally started coaching other photographers. But over time, that slowly shifted into working with women more broadly because of exactly what we just said — there are so many similarities.
I hear that all the time from women in other industries who listen to my podcast. They’ll say, “I know I’m not your ideal listener, but I get so much value from it.” That’s what started to make me think, maybe I can coach women outside of photography. Maybe I do have something to offer beyond that space.
And that’s been really fun to explore.
How did you start getting into business coaching?
Yeah. It’s funny because, like you said, some people really try to rush that jump from doing the thing to teaching the thing.
They see it and think, “That looks cool. That looks fun. I want to be doing that.”
I was actually the opposite. I pushed back on it — a lot. I never intended to teach. That wasn’t on my radar at all. I wasn’t the kid who grew up wanting to be a teacher. I’ve never really had that instinct of, “Oh, I want to guide people in learning how to do something.”
In my first couple of years in business, I had people DM me on Instagram or message me on Facebook asking, “Do you mentor photographers? Can you teach me how to do this?” And I was like, no. Hard pass. Absolutely not. That’s so kind, thank you for asking — but no. I’m not a teacher. Not doing that.
And it wasn’t until I had been asked consistently for two years, I’m not kidding, that I finally thought, maybe I’m supposed to say yes to this. Maybe this is the universe knocking and I’m just not paying attention.
So I decided to take on one mentoring student. I told her, “Listen, I’ve never done this before, but I’ve been asked a lot. If you’re willing to try it, I’m willing to try it.” I felt like we connected, so we set some expectations and figured out what it would look like.
And of course, the rest is history. I did it, and I loved it. I loved pouring into her. I loved helping her fast-track her business and refine how she was shooting sessions. It was so fun. I had no idea how much joy it would bring me. And almost immediately, I thought, okay — I actually love this.
So many of us feel the joy of starting a business in the beginning, but then we sort of lose it. How have you been able to maintain that sense of joy and excitement and fun in your business?
I really do love supporting women. That’s not to say there aren’t parts of running a business that feel like a slog because absolutely there are days when I think, I don’t want to do this today. But it’s part of it. There are pieces that have to get done in order to do the fun things.
Overall though, I love it. I love all the different parts of my business. I love my podcast — hearing that people are listening, getting their feedback, hearing what they’ve learned. I love the higher-touch work where I get to really coach women. And everything in between.
I truly feel like I have something for everyone, and I genuinely enjoy it. I have so much fun. I’m not interested in running a business I don’t enjoy. It takes too much time and too much energy for that.
There are definitely stressful seasons. But if I’m not doing something I love, I’m out. So yes, I really do still love it.
You are good at prioritizing your life, too. I love that you hired a personal stylist this year. How do you do it?
Yeah, that was actually on my vision board for a long time. For years, honestly.
In high school, I loved fashion. My two best friends and I had this running challenge our senior year to see how long we could go without wearing the same outfit twice. We were constantly mixing and matching, borrowing from each other, buying new pieces. Some of those outfits were wild, Kara, absolutely wild, but it was all in the name of being unique.
Then life happened. I had babies. Postpartum bodies. Then another baby. And another one. Somewhere along the way, I fell out of love with getting dressed. I stopped having fun with it. Honestly, I forgot how.
Eventually I thought, you know what? I’m going to hire a stylist. I was tired of not feeling good about how I was showing up in the world. And it has been an absolute game changer. It made it fun again.
And to your point about fun, last year, 2025, was the first year that when I sat down in January to write my goals, I didn’t write a single business goal. Not one. They were all life-focused.
My word of the year was beauty.
My entire vision board centered around that. I love my business, at that point it was a well-oiled machine, and I didn’t want to step away from it. I just didn’t want it to be my focus.
So 2025 became about doing beautiful, fun things. Creating beautiful moments with my family and friends. Investing in hobbies. Being intentional about joy.
And yes, 2025 was a disaster in some ways broadly speaking, but personally? It was a really great year for me. Because I focused on beauty. And it was really, really fun.
But it’s funny, because even though I intentionally focused on things outside of my business, some really incredible things still happened inside my business last year. They just… happened. I wasn’t pushing. I wasn’t hyper-focused on growth or metrics.
And I think that really proves the point: once you’ve built a well-oiled business — where you’re clear on your audience, clear on what you do, and clear on how you serve — you can shift your focus for a season and the business can still grow.
That was such a powerful realization for me. It made the whole year feel even more aligned.
You really embody what you’re selling in a really beautiful way I think. How do you do that?
Yeah, I think embodiment is huge. I see that a lot. Women will come to me for one-on-one coaching or join my mastermind because they see that embodiment and say, “I want what you have.”
It’s not necessarily that they want to be a teacher or start a podcast. It’s more about the elements behind it — the ease, the fulfillment, the revenue, the success. They’re asking, how do I have that without burning out?
And obviously, we start with the foundations. That’s a big part of my coaching. I’m not going to start where you think you are — we’re going to dig deeper and start where we actually need to start.
But it’s really fun. And honestly, it’s such an honor to be seen that way. It truly is. I love getting to work with women and help them build that for themselves.
One Thing I Always See You Do Is Really Trust Yourself and Your Intuition. Does That Come With Time?
Yeah, it definitely comes with time and practice. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Sometimes the next step feels obvious, but I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve made decisions that made absolutely no sense on paper just because my gut said, “This is what you’re supposed to do.”
And I’m like, okay… if you say so.
It’s a learned skill. And the first time you do it, it’s terrifying. You’re trusting the process. You’re trusting that intuitive hit — whether you call that the Holy Spirit, if you’re faith-based, or your intuition, or whatever language resonates with you. But it’s that internal nudge that makes you pause and think, wait… are you sure?
Usually, it’s something that doesn’t make logical sense.
A recent example: in the summer of 2024, I was on vacation with my family when I had a really strong intuitive hit to set down two major revenue streams in my business. And not just big revenue streams — easy revenue streams. They didn’t take a lot of effort to fill. They were consistent. Predictable.
And I was like, wait. You want me to set both of these down?
It was jarring. I didn’t understand why. I didn’t know how I’d make up the income. My mind was swirling. But I’ve followed my intuition enough times that I thought, all right. If this is what we’re doing, we’re doing it.
The first thing was deciding not to offer fall mini sessions in my photography business for the first time in 13 years. And I didn’t. It ended up being completely fine. Other client work came in and replaced the income and I had more freedom in the fall than I’d ever had before.
The second decision was to pause an entire run of my mastermind. On paper, that was a huge revenue hit and a big momentum hit. I ran it twice a year. It was always being talked about, always enrolling. It felt incredibly risky to step away from it.
And honestly, I didn’t know if I was pausing it temporarily or permanently.
But what happened on the other side of that decision was pretty incredible. I took that fall off from teaching for the first time in years. My oldest daughter was a senior in high school and plays a fall sport. I got to be fully present for her senior season — back-to-school events, homecoming, football games, all of it. I had time in a way I hadn’t had before.
And what also “fell into my lap” was a massive internal business project. I call it the Great Migration. I moved my entire education platform, switched email platforms, did a full rebrand, and launched a completely new website — all within about three months.
There’s no way I could have done that if I hadn’t created space by setting those things down.
Now that we’re on the other side, it was absolutely the right decision — for my family and for my business. Everything landed exactly where it needed to.
It was just another reminder of what can happen when you trust your intuition.
It’s interesting to hear you talk about how you planned to have the space not knowing what you would do with it.
Exactly. All of that ended up being a pretty last-minute decision. I even joked about it on social media afterward — I was like, I somehow spent $12,000 last year that was absolutely not on my bingo card on January 1st. It definitely wasn’t in my business budget either.
But everything unfolded during that window of time, and looking back, it really felt like divine timing — which is usually what happens when you follow your intuition.
You’re on TikTok as a creator now! Can you share about that?
I’m literally just over there having fun. I’m not coaching. I’m not giving tips or advice. I’m just showing up as a person balancing business, kids, and all the things and it’s so fun. It really is.
So if you’re listening to this and you’ve thought about trying it, just do it. Get on TikTok. It’s so much better.
And honestly, the algorithm is incredible. I was just talking to someone about this the other day, so I have the numbers fresh in my mind. I’ve been on there just over a month and posted 34 times.
What’s wild is how dialed in the algorithm is, not just based on what the video shows, but even the text you include. You can intentionally create one piece of content for one audience and another for a completely different audience, and it doesn’t get confused the way Instagram sometimes does.
I have needlepoint content — I’m obsessed with it as a hobby (note for the readers, we both love Georgie & Lottie). I have Pilates content — also obsessed. I share about having a senior in high school. And each of those topics attracts totally different engagement, comments, and viewers. It’s just fun. You can show up and share whatever you want.
Whoever is meant to see it will see it. They really do push it to the right people. It feels like magic.
When you post over there, it actually gets viewed by the right audience. On Instagram, sometimes it feels like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping someone sees it.
And here’s the crazy part — out of those 34 posts, I’ve already gone viral three times, all on completely different topics. That just shows how far your content can go with even a small amount of effort. It really is wild.
What would you tell the woman who is afraid of slowing down?
when you choose to slow down in your business — whether it’s intentional or life forces you to — you are going to lose momentum.
Let’s just say that out loud. It’s going to happen.
But I don’t want you to be afraid of that. Losing momentum doesn’t mean you shouldn’t slow down. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take maternity leave, time off, or whatever it is that’s calling you to step back.
Yes, it’s hard to rebuild momentum. But remember — you started your business from nothing. From the absolute bottom. If you could build from there, you can rebuild from the middle. You’re not going all the way back to zero. You’re not losing everything you’ve ever created.
What it does mean is that you need to plan for that next season. Your next launch might require more effort. You probably won’t be able to recycle the same email sequence or reuse the same content and expect it to work the same way. You may need a longer runway. More emails. More content. Maybe even ads. You’ll need to warm people back up.
It will take more effort. It might feel like a season of hustle — especially if you haven’t had one in a while. And that can feel jarring. You’ve just slowed down, and now you’re being told you need to push again.
But it’s true. I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.
The good news is, you will get back to ease again. You’ll rebuild the momentum, and then you can take your foot off the gas. You don’t have to hustle forever — just in seasons.
And it’s always worth slowing down when you need to. Whether it’s an intuitive nudge you don’t fully understand yet, or something happening in your life that requires your attention — it’s always worth choosing your family, your health, or whatever matters most in that moment.
You’ll get back to where you were. It just might take a little more effort, a little creativity, and a willingness to do things differently for a season.
It’s cool to see someone as successful as you are talk about how it’s a normal thing to have to work harder in some seasons. The online space can make it feel like we are doing something wrong if we have to hustle.
This is the quiet one.
And that’s exactly what I did when I came back after pausing the Mastermind.
I knew I had lost the marketing momentum of it always running. So when I launched the current round — the one I’m in with students right now — I went in knowing I’d need a longer runway. I couldn’t just recycle the same emails or reuse the same sales page. Everything needed a refresh.
So we updated the sales page. We reworked the emails and added more of them. We mapped out the entire launch runway more intentionally. I also brought in support, because sometimes it’s hard to see clearly inside your own business when you’re so close to it.
The launch felt slow at first, and I was definitely nervous. But we picked up steam, momentum built, and we ended up with a really strong finish.
It took more effort — but it was absolutely worth it.
Connect With Sabrina Gebhardt
You can find me on Instagram, and I’m on TikTok as well. Both handles are @sabrinagebhardt. And online, you can find everything here.
My membership is called First Class Lounge, and it’s a space where women rise together. It’s a really relaxed, supportive community. We’re actually housed on Instagram, so it’s a platform you’re already using. You don’t have to log into something new or sit down at your desktop — you can plug in right from the app.
We do weekly coaching questions, bring in guest experts and it’s just a really great space.
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