Beautiful Solopreneurs - It’s my birthday and we're leading with purpose!
Yes, December 12 marks another cosmic trip around the sun, and what better way to celebrate than by sharing a powerful shift that can help transform your marketing and your business?
Here’s the big idea: Stop talking about what you do and start talking about what you believe.
When you lead with your purpose—your why—you don’t just attract customers; you attract believers. These are the people who resonate deeply with your message, your values, and your mission. And these are the people who stay.
In today's short episode, I am sharing:
- how a shift in messaging from "what" to "why" changes everything
- two examples of how this works
- three simple steps to make this change today
- how messy, bold marketing is the new vibe
If you love this episode - please share it with somebody you know who might benefit and leave me a rating or a review. That would mean the world to me! 🥳
Mindset to Market is a Luminous Creative Production. If you'd like to learn more about our business coaching program and group coaching container, please visit us online at DeborahcSmith.com.
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Good morning, beautiful Solopreneurs. Welcome to the show.
This is the place and the space where we aim to empower you brave, bold, beautiful creators of your own reality to align your power centers, your mind, your soul, your gut intuition with your external expression of your business. Your marketing and your messaging and your visuals and your brand so that you can truly build a business that makes an impact in the world for you and for all the people's lives that you are going to touch.
And today we're celebrating something extra special. It is my birthday. Yes, December 12th. It's 12 -12 -24. Lots of numerology going on there. That marks another trip around the sun for me and I could not be more grateful. And so I thought what better way to celebrate than by sharing a powerful shift that I have been experiencing and that I think truly is transforming the way that I show up inside my business and I believe will transform your marketing and your business as well.
So here's the big idea. Stop talking about what you do. And start talking about what you believe. 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, Jessica. Debra Smith. I'm a holistic business coach with 17 years of experience, 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, creativity, mindset, practical, how to's and getting into imperfect, messy actions.
So you can find balance while building the dream. If you're a purpose driven solopreneur who's working on that dream one day at a time, then you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Oh, I'm so excited, you guys. Today's a big day. I have so many fun, special things planned. I'm going to do a lot of Self care today after I record this I'm gonna go take a long walk on this sort of snowy mountain path near my house My husband and I made plans to go to dinner later.
I just feel really grateful I added a bunch of space into my day to be able to just dream a little bit and just be present and not so be so busy I'm also meeting with some clients today Just basically grateful for all of it and I've been thinking about this topic a lot in the past two or three weeks It's something that I'm really going to be bringing prominently into my marketing for 2025.
So you're going to see a shift in my personal marketing that moves away from listing all the things that I will do for you, and that's going to focus intently on what I believe is The purpose of why I'm doing the work that I do. I think it's going to be a profound change. I've been sneaking this into my messaging for the last, I'd say two or three months, just to AB test content that is purpose driven as opposed to talking about what I do so much.
And I really believe that when we lead with purpose, Like our why are we showing up? Why do we create this business? Why do we care? You don't just attract customers. You actually attract believers, right? These are people who resonate deeply with your message and your values and your mission. So those are the people who stay and stick with you.
And this is not a new concept. This is not brain surgery. This is not, this is like for many people, maybe this is marketing 101, but I really think it takes a to
arrive in a place where you're crystal clear what that purpose is so that you can weave it into your marketing. So let's break this down with a really quick example. Imagine that you are a fitness coach and talking about what you do might sound like this, quote, I offer one on one fitness training to help women lose weight and build muscle.
Okay, so it's clear, it's factual, right? But it doesn't really inspire. Now, let's try that again, but this time we're going to lead with why instead. And that might sound something like, quote, I believe every woman deserves to feel strong, confident, and capable no matter where she's starting from. My mission is to empower women to reclaim their strength through personalized fitness coaching.
Can you feel the difference? It's totally, it's the same product, but it's completely different language. One is a service. The other is an emotional movement. It's about empowering and inspiring and calling people in by their aspirations as opposed to just giving you clarity on what you're going to do, like the factual functional thing.
So when you lead with what you believe, you're really inviting people to connect with you on a deeper level. And that's, I believe, where the real transformations happen. So you're saying to people, this is who I am. This is what matters to me. And if it matters to you too, let's build something together.
It's just more satisfying, right? On so many different levels. So let me share a really quick story from my own business that illustrates this point as well. I worked with a client who created printable PDFs for school teachers. So things like lesson plans, classroom decor organizational tools, like ways to help teachers get just streamlined, get organized in her original messaging focused heavily on what she offered, right?
Like this sort of laundry list of things that she was going to give to you, download hundreds of printables PDFs for the classroom. In a list of kind of the names of the different PDFs, right? So it was functional, but it didn't stand out. And frankly, it felt like a wall of noise or information.
It was just this giant, like I said, laundry list and almost felt like the clutter she was claiming to help you remove. Like it was just, lists of all the things she was gonna give you but it felt like almost like more work just even reading the marketing. We worked on shifting her focus away from that functional to do list and towards why she created those resources.
And her belief was that teachers deserve to spend more time, or all of their time, inspiring young minds. And less time buried in all the prep work that we know teachers do to get to that five, ten minutes of moment where they get to actually get inside the mind of their students and help, light them up, open them up.
So her new messaging focused on giving teachers back their time to do what they became a teacher for. Thank you. You're welcome. And so she changed her messaging to say, I believe teachers are superheroes who deserve more time to teach and less time planning. My resources are here to give you back that freedom.
It's completely different than Here's yet another list of things for you to do, teacher. It was just a huge shift, and the results for her were incredible. She shifted away from that functional messaging to that aspirational, inspirational, purpose driven, Y power, values based messaging, and her audience connected deeply with that.
And next thing guess what happens? She starts hearing from more teachers. She starts getting more downloads. That bumps her messaging up in the algorithm. Now she's got this fully slick, operation, that's getting tons and tons of online feedback, which is bumping her further up in the algorithm.
So she's getting more and more eyes on her content. It translates directly to, yes, more sales, but also a greater sense of purpose and alignment with the people she aimed to serve, those teachers who she's getting that freedom back for. And literally people were messaging her saying you completely get me, I so needed this.
And that kind of like really aligned feedback from her ideal client. So it was a simple switch, but it did require sitting for a moment with the reason why she began doing these principles in the first place. And then returning back to that purpose, returning back to that why. To get clear how to speak to those people in a more aspirational way.
How can you start leading with purpose in your marketing? Let's keep it simple, and I'm going to give you three steps. Number one, I want you to get clear on your core belief. What is the why that drives your work? Write it down, and here's a little challenge for you. Try to write it down in just one sentence.
One sentence, right? So what is your why? What is your purpose for doing what you do? Write it down in one sentence. Number two, I want you to embed this. in your messaging. So whether it's on social media, if it's in your bio, your email signature, your website's homepage, the header, little, captions underneath photos, like anywhere you have a chance, your 404 page when people, click the wrong URL, like any and everywhere you have FaceTime with your ideal client, embed this bio.
This purpose driven messaging. Make sure that your belief is front and center in all of your messaging. And then three, you're going to tell stories that align with that belief. Share your client wins, right? I just shared a client win with you that aligns with my core purpose. Which is to help more Of my clients tailor their, streamline, their marketing and their messaging so they can quickly connect with those ideal clients.
So that was a big win. We're helping that client shift her messaging and getting her instantly more eyes on her marketing and more sales. That's my purpose. So I shared a client win with you that I just, it's very meta, but we just. I just went through an exact example of that. So you're going to share personal anecdotes, behind the scenes moments, anything that reinforces why you do what you do.
I want you to start to pepper that in through storytelling. So and don't worry about being too much or too bold. Listen, purpose driven messaging that is magnetic. It has a magnetic quality. It's either it's going to pull the right people into you, magnetically draw them to you, and it's going to repel and filter out.
Anyone who's not a right fit. And let me tell you something, you guys. It's my birthday. I'm going to talk candidly about this. Transparently, the whole sort of likes and follows and attention that we get on the internet through social media and stuff like that kind of gives us those dopamine hits and, dumps whatever chemicals into our brain that it does.
None of that matters. And the core engine of your business is not about that social approval. Because people could be following you and seeing and hearing your message, you and not ever say a word and then just contact you one day and say, I think I need your help. That's happened to me more than once.
And on the same token, all of those people who like, like you, they could just be your friends or they just could be people who like the way that you create your content, or they just could be people who like what you're wearing that day, but they're never, they're not your ideal client. They're never coming to work with you.
So we don't want to focus on any of that external, those external, vanity numbers when we're thinking about our messaging. We want to focus on why do we do what we do, be bold, be brave, don't worry about it being too much, create purpose driven messaging because it's going to be the thing that magnetizes people more clearly and succinctly into your universe, helps you to connect with them, and then ideally helps you to be able to work with them and help them get the benefit of your services.
So that's it. That's the shorty episode today. Lead with your purpose, lead with your why in your messaging and watch what it does for your marketing and your business. And yeah, just as I reflect back on the past year, I had a big pivot year this year. I had so many major changes. challenging decisions that I had to make.
I really, I shut down forever, old parts of my business that were holding me back. I ditched a lot of old messaging and caring about other people's, what they would think. I focused intently in and really niched down to just what Who I want to work with, which is women building their solo online business, helping them really streamline from a purpose driven place.
And, it just reminds me the power of sticking to your guns, really giving yourself time and space to develop the, who you are in this. And Just being honest with yourself, being transparent with the world. I think that 2025, I really believe what I'm about to say. I think it's going to be the year of messy, bold, brave marketing.
I think people are sick and tired of the same old plain vanilla copycat messaging. I think AI is going to drive that even further, where people are going to be able to start recognizing this was written by a robot, and to stand out from that, it's going to demand that we step even further and deeper into who we are as authentic creatures on this planet, and that you will be rewarded for showing up, doing it messy, doing it real, and being bold and letting your you know, core center, you write that mindset, that belief, that core purpose drive the car.
So let's step in, let's, be brave and share our passion with the world and let that, magnetize those people to you who really want to get that work done. And honestly, I believe if we lead with our beliefs, both in our businesses and in our lives, We will truly inspire others to do the same and that's the game people.
So thank you so much for being with me on this journey, for listening to this episode. If this resonated with you, you don't want to give me a birthday present, scroll down where you're listening and click through give me a rating. If you want to leave five stars, I'd be so grateful. If you are listening on Apple or Spotify or I think a couple of other listeners, you could also leave a review.
That would mean the world to me. It really is the thing that propels a podcast forward and gets it in the ears of more listeners. But also reach out to me, connect with me in any way that you would like to connect. I listen to, I read every email and I respond. Hello at Debra C. Smith and thank you so much for being here to celebrate this special day with me.
I feel your presence. And until next time keep on shining that light, keep aligning your mindset with your marketing and showing up as the leader that you are meant to be. And. Until I see you next time, may you be vibrant.
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