Success is built on foundations, not on hacks, not on trends, and no, not on going viral. Your success will be built on daily grounded practices that make your life and your business sustainable. So if you're in the game of running your own business for the long haul, then listen up because today we're talking about foundations.
Hey there, welcome to the Mindset to Market podcast, your go-to place for practical tools and solutions for the everyday challenges of being a creative and spiritual solopreneur living in a material world. I'm your host, Deborah Smith. And I help my clients bust through mindset blocks and build a daily practice that prioritizes your business's financial growth as well as your personal health and wellness. I'm here to offer you support with creativity, mindset, practical how-tos, and getting into imperfect, messy action so you can find balance while building the dream business. Let's dive in.
Welcome back, my friend. I'm always thinking about how can I best support you, the listener, in staying grounded, continuing to build your dream business, a business that truly supports your livelihood, right? So what I've got for you this morning is some real talk about the foundations of your success, and I've divided it into two buckets. So one is personal self-care, the wellness foundations, and the other is business and marketing foundations.
Okay? So starting with the wellness foundations.
Number one, it's the name of the podcast, it's the reason that I started this podcast, is your mindset. Your thoughts shape your outcome Scientifically, this has been proven. I'm not gonna drop deep into neuroscience. I'm gonna keep this super brief, but neuroscience, neuroplasticity shows proof that positive thoughts lead to positive actions towards a positive outcome, and that the same is true for negative thinking, right? You can spiral downward into shame and into fearful ruts, you can retreat, and you can doubt, and you can decide not to post that post, and you can decide not to share your offers and sell because you're in a downward shame spiral. Or you can spiral up into higher vibrations get momentum and reach out to people and connect and make progress and keep going. So this doesn't have to be rocket science. You can choose how you wanna do your mindset work. It's a few minutes of journaling every day. Is it a guided meditation? Is it saying your daily affirmations out loud?
All of these things can help recalibrate your brain towards possibility, right? Working every single day on your mindset is non-negotiable. It's a daily foundation. What are you doing every day to work towards a positive mental attitude? Because if you start your day flooded with doubt, your actions are gonna reflect that. So yes, your mindset is like marketing fuel, and we wanna be working daily on a way to improve your mindset around taking action inside your business. Number one, most important, mindset Okay, moving on.
Foundation number two, hydration. Yes, it sounds basic, but hydration is foundational. Dehydration inside of our bodies affects focus, energy, and our mood. We are made up of 60 to 70% water. Water is literally life, and so you better believe it impacts every single aspect of your daily capacity, right? Your capacity to think, your capacity to move, to ration, to discern, to respond. If you're dehydrated, you don't even realize it. You're running on half fuel. So this one's not hard at all, aim to drink two to three liters a day. Use a tracker and an alarm if you need help. You know, form a group with other people who are tracking their water and touch base, but keep a glass of water within reach, and you will be surprised at how much clearer your thoughts and your decisions become when you are hydrated. So foundation number two, hydration I just took a sip of water.
Number three, so important, nutrition.
You know I spent an entire lifetime in a former business working on nutrition programs, running a juice bar, helping clients eliminate toxins from their diet. I'm passionate about this topic. I believe you are what you eat, A fueled body leads to a focused brain, period. So very, very basic. Prioritize food and meals that are gonna sustain your energy and not just spike it, right? You're running a business. You need stamina, not a sugar crash. So if you're not sure that you're getting the right nutrition for your body, use a macros test. Find out what y- somebody at your age, height, weight, and blood type should be eating as a good macro ratio. Try meal planning with that new ratio. See how it goes. Test it out. At very least, I want you to think about planning your meals. Like, do not skip meals, please. Think of it like feeding your baby. You wouldn't skip meals for your baby, right? You wouldn't, like, not feed the baby. So hopefully not, anyways. So yeah, nutrition is key. Um, having balanced variety of fiber in your diet is key. It...
This all contributes to just healthy, sustained energy that keeps you going when you need that energy. I'm a Sakara nutrition affiliate, and I'm literally obsessed with this food delivery service. I order it weekly as a supplement to my personal diet, and it helps me stay on top of, really high quality, nutrient-dense foods without having to cook a lot. I love to cook. But right now, the way my business is shaped, I'm doing so much client work and coaching that I have less time to cook.
So my hack is I do their subscription plan, but I just do three days a week, and I just do lunch and dinner. And what you do is you get that 15% discount folded in, so it winds up being like 150, 160 bucks, but you're getting six prepared meals. It starts my week off, with amazing nutrition in my body, and the food makes me feel like I'm giving myself, like, medicine. Literally, it feels like it's healing me. So there's a link in my show notes for Sakara. It's so good. Here's the link for this transcript: https://sakara.sjv.io/R5xD3a
Okay, moving on. Four. Foundation number four is movement. Movement Daily movement, we gotta do this. It helps to metabolize the water, the food, the energy running through our system. It helps clear toxins out of the body. It helps to move the lymphatic system. This could be just taking a brief walk. It could be getting up for a dance break. Maybe it's just 10 minutes of stretching in the morning. But physical movement keeps our creative energy flowing. It breaks our stress cycle. It's so important to get up and move. So every single day, I try to plug in no less than 30 minutes of exercise. But guys, if I can't get 30 minutes in, if I really can't, like if I'm traveling or if I'm up against a big client deadline or if there's a, something happening, let's, like, with my mom's health or my own health, I still try to make time for at least 10 minutes of yoga every single day. It's non-negotiable foundation.
If you're not moving every single day in a way that makes you feel good, please add that to your foundational daily process. This literally keeps me alive when I feel stressed, and it's such an powerful self-care foundation. So movement, number four.
Number five, connection. Do not isolate yourself, guys. I used to be so bad with this one. I used to feel like everything was up to me. All the world, the weight of this business is on my shoulders. I couldn't ask anyone for advice. I had to figure it out on my own. I thought figuring it all out on my own proved that I could do it. That is, like, patently false. I used to believe that I had to do everything on my own or I was the only one that could do it. Such bad programming, but, uh, it's just not true. Connection is critical for your business. Daily connection, whether it's your peers, a mentor, or a group that you're in, it's gonna keep you out of your own head. It's gonna keep you in alignment with your bigger mission.
So if you don't have a coach, if you don't have a mentor... Well, first of all, I'm a great coach and mentor. But seriously, um, if you're not in a coaching group or you don't have a mentor, find a co-working community or start your own, right? You don't need to do this alone, and you need to be in touch with other people who understand what you're going through. And honestly, I believe that true success requires mentorship. Like, it's one of the things I wish I had realized sooner in my journey. I wasted a lot of time, like I was saying, trying to figure things out on my own, and my business drastically changed, like really strategically changed when I started getting the help that I needed.
And now I don't wanna do business or life without a peer coaching community, without a mentor. Um, I really, I lean into my groups, and I love coaching my groups. Uh, it's just the structure of support really makes a difference, feeling like you're being seen and heard, feeling like you have someone to ask for advice if you need it. It's really important. So create connections in your business.
Okay, number six on the wellness foundations is rest. This, my dear solopreneur friend, is something that gets neglected, and I think we don't include it in thoughts around our business because we think of our business as being on, as taking action, as moving the needle, as moving forward, as creating business deals, as, as pushing through challenges, as it's all action-based. It's all energy expended.
However, you are not a machine, and even micro rest, like taking five minutes of quiet to calm your mind and clear things out, can reset your nervous system. So sustainable success requires periods of rest. And it is-- You are being a leader when you take your rest. Getting a good night's sleep, obviously. Taking scheduled breaks away from your computer, away from your smartphone, staying off the social media apps for periods of time so you can take a break from feeling like you're always on.
This is actually part of the reason why I teach the marketing strategies that I teach is so you can have rest. You better believe that is based on, uh, the experience of me burning out. I've talked about this in other episodes. I went through severe burnout at the-- around 2016, '17, and I wound up taking a solo backpacking journey, because I was kind of freaking out. I was working way too much. I was not getting the rest that I needed, and I started to feel like I was coming apart at the seams. And I took this sort of drastic measures type of rest. I went on, a solo backpacking journey, but which was not great for my business, right? So periodic rest, building in breaks, taking vacations, having really good boundaries around your work hours, contracts that support your mental health. This is important. It's a critical foundation for your success. So number six is rest, right? Yeah.
Okay. Now let's shift into your non-negotiable foundations for marketing and more business strategy stuff. I'm gonna start right off the bat with money.
Number one, check your money every single day. Open your books, check your bank account, update your expenses, track your bills, track your incoming money, track your outgoing money. Money clarity is a superpower, and ignoring your numbers is not a strategy. It will lead you into a black hole. You cannot ignore your bills. You need to be focused on your financial growth for your business to be sustainable, and that focused growth comes from making really smart choices, and those smart choices come from being educated and knowledgeable about your money. This is a foundation.
I literally want you to open your banking app every single day and get really comfortable and familiar with exactly how much money you have. Look at your investments. Look at the amount of money you're bringing in every single day and the amount of money that you're spending every single day.
That's what I do, because I'm running a business, so I check my numbers. I know how much money right now is in my bank account. I know how much money I'm spending on my tech stack. I know how much money I am, I have coming in over the next three to six months through client contracts, and I can use that information to plan accordingly. So where you put your focus is what grows. If you are in business for the long haul, you need to be growing, sustainably growing your income. So focus on your money and watch what happens. Okay.
Number two is metrics. You wanna have a daily foundational system by which you check your metrics. So I think if you're using social media in any way, shape, or form to grow your business, then I think checking steady growth inside whatever platform you use is, is important. What's landing with your audience? You know, don't just blindly post content, right?
Check reach, check engagement, check how many people click through from your emails, and then adjust the messaging according to whether or not it's resonating. And ladies, I use a very, very simple tracker. I track monthly and quarterly growth stats for things like Instagram and email, list, and I just keep my eye on it, right? I, I write down the number at the start of the quarter, and I set a goal for the end of the quarter, so three months later. And then I have my goals and my growth goals, and I work towards those goals every day.
So if you don't have a system to track your metrics inside your business, which is really audience growth and sales growth and kind of checking to make sure that the efforts that you're making is getting the results that you want, right? Okay, moving on.
The third foundation for your business daily foundations is lead generation. Are you doing daily, weekly, and monthly tasks inside your business to increase your audience growth? Are you connecting with new people? Are you creating conversations around your topic, your niche, your business? Or are you waiting for people to find you? Are you kinda like, "Oh, I've got this great website and this great product and this great offer, so somebody's gonna stumble across it and buy it from me"? Let me tell you something. Successful entrepreneurs do not wait for people to come to them.
They don't wait for sales to come in. They create sales through smart and strategic Messaging and offers. So if you're sitting back and coasting and thinking like, "Oh, these sales are gonna start pouring in," I hate to break this to you, but that is wrong, especially in today's oversaturated market where somebody will hustle harder than you to get the sale. So you need to have daily lead generation tasks built into your-- every single day into your business. That looks like reaching out to people saying, "Hey, how are you doing?"
Like just DM connections if you're using social media. That looks like n- nurturing your email list, sending out valuable information. That could look like a long-term strategy, like having a podcast, having, a YouTube channel, a blog, maybe writing a book. Like something that's building your audience on a daily basis. It could be short-form video, right? That's a really popular way to grow your audience. And you just wanna be showing up wherever your ideal client is hanging out, so you can be present in the conversations that they're having and offer your solution. You want to be proactive about generating new audience members on a daily basis.
And I teach this strategy to my clients. We work on how to build email marketing funnels and sales funnels, so they have growing audiences and people who are primed, like they're priming the pump, right? People are out there who know about them, are learning to trust them, who like what they do. And when it comes time for them to sell something, they have a warm audience waiting for that. So lead generation, foundation. Cannot skip it.
Let's move on to number four, which is your sales systems, right? Lead generation, obviously. Sales systems, obviously. You need to be following up with potential clients. Send the invite to them. Extend the offer. Build in a simple system so that sales are happening even when you're offline. No more random hustling, right? This has to be a repeatable system that has momentum, and the way to do that is to set up that system, automate it, and then keep it running with those leads coming in and proper messaging.
Because a sales system that generates new sales for you automatically while you're away from your computer should be the goal. You should have that set up. And when you have that low-ticket strategy in place, something like 15, 17, 27, even free, it's so much easier to invite people to your high-ticket sale when they've already bought something from you. It's statistically proven to work,
so If you're nodding along and you're thinking, "Yes, I need a structure like this," then come and chat with me about my six-month solopreneur business foundational program. We talk about all of these foundations. We set up all of these foundations. We build that funnel. We get your lead magnet set and clear. We work on cleaning up your offers. We talk about storytelling, messaging, sales copy, email marketing, the whole thing, in- including long-term strategy. And then you have weekly coaching calls, right? So for six months, we meet every single week. We go over all of this stuff so that you really have it humming in your business. And of course, you get lifetime access to all the tools, all the worksheets, all the templates, all the trainings. It's really just a step-by-step course to build your online business foundations with a coach.
So let this be the moment that you stop winging it, right? Start building something sustainable. Having a mentor, having a coach makes a difference. So let's build your business on rock-solid foundations, okay? Instead of winging it, instead of throwing spaghetti against the wall. Trust me that I have done all those things, and it wasted a lot of time and a lot of money.
Okay, my friend, that's all for now. And I wish you the most amazing, powerful week. Set these foundations up and work towards them every single day. And as always, I'll see you soon. And until then, may you be vibrant.
