#63 - Foundations for Solopreneur Success

Let me tell you something that will change your solopreneur journey: 

Success is built on foundations - not hacks, not trends. FOUNDATIONS.

Daily, grounded practices that make your life and business sustainable.

What truly keeps you going and what truly moves the needle?

In this episode I'm sharing the solopreneur business foundations that I see as non-negotiable for ongoing success inside your business and no matter what you do. I truly believe these practices will change the trajectory of your health and your wealth. 

I’ve divided this into two buckets: 

1) Personal Self-care and Wellness Foundations 

2) Business Systems & Marketing Foundations. 

If you're listening to this and feel like you're ready to set up these foundations inside your business, and you'd like to work with a coach and a mentor, then please contact me about my 6-month Solopreneur Business Foundations coaching programs. 

Book a call to see if this program is the right fit for you: BOOK A CALL

Lead Gen Strategy:

If you're ready to add an aligned digital product to your business suite of offers and you want support to GET IT DONE, then please join us for the next round of Profit By Design. 

We begin live coaching on Monday, March 31st and I'm excited! 

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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Mindset to Market is produced by Deborah C. Smith and designed to inspire and support big-hearted creatives in finding their own unique path, building a sustainable business, and creating financial, spiritual, mental wellness and abundance.

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Transcript

 Let me tell you something that will change your solopreneur journey.  Success is built on foundations, not on hacks, not on trends, and no, not ongoing 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, and 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, 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 set.

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-tos, and getting into imperfect messy actions so you can find balance while building the dream business. If you're a purpose-driven solepreneur, who's working on that dream one day at a time, then you're in the right place.

Let's dive in.  Welcome back, my friend. I'm so happy to drop in this morning with a solo episode. I missed you. Um, I was out traveling around. I had a bunch of networking events and I actually skipped last week. So, um, I. I'm so thrilled to be back. Thank you for listening. Thanks to everyone who's been reviewing and rating the podcast. 

And as you know, 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? And how can I help you keep moving forward despite. All the total chaos that's happening in the world. And so this morning I was thinking, you know, it's been a while since we tapped into the overall system and really looked at the foundations of your business.

I.  So what truly keeps us going and what truly moves the needle in business. 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. I. So one is personal self-care, right? The wellness foundations and the other is business and marketing foundations. 

And if you're already one of my clients, then you know, I preach the daily self-care. I preach the self-care. I have been self-employed for 18 years, and self-care is the holy grail of sustainability. Okay? Write it down.  In fact, honestly, hit pause, get a notebook because you might actually wanna write down all of the things I'm about to share, because trust me, I'm about to give you the whole game.

Okay, so grab a notebook and let's do this.  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, and you can take actions that you know, 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 with 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? So later this week I'm gonna share an interview with a guest named Addison Bowen.  She's a hypnotherapist and she works with her clients to unblock really deeply planted beliefs around money.

So if you're really stuck, there's deeper ways to go down in inward and reprogram your thinking so that you can truly find success. However, working every single day on your mindset, I. Is non-negotiable. So write it down, mindset, non-negotiable. It's a daily foundation. And then make a list. 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, affects energy, and it affects 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, you, you don't even realize that you're running on half. Fuel. So this one's not hard at all. You guys 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'll 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 guys 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. Um, I'm a certified nutrition holistic health coach.

I believe you are what you eat, period.  A fueled body leads to a focused brain, period. So very, very basic. Prioritize meals that sustain not spike your energy.  I'm gonna say that again. 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 you, 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.

And shameless plug. 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 like really high quality nutrient dense foods without having to cook a lot. So I love to cook. I'm, I literally taught cooking for years. 

But right now, the way my business is shaped, I'm doing so much client work and coaching so frequently that it's, 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 like 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. 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 a system. It helps clear toxins outta 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 a powerful  self-care foundation. So movement number four,  number five, connection. 

Do not isolate yourself, guys. I, I,  ooh, 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 outta 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 coworking 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 was 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, I.  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. An 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  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. 

Um, this is actually part of the reason why I teach the. Marketing strategies that I teach is so you can have rest Ian guys. You better believe that is based on the experience of me burning out. I've talked about this in other episodes. I went through severe burnout at the around 20 16, 17.  And I wound up taking a solo backpacking journey, um, 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. You know, I took this sort of drastic measures type of rest. I went on like a solo backpacking journey, but which was not great for my business, right? Like so periodic rest, building in strategically, periods of breaks, taking vacations, having really good boundaries around your work hours, contracts that support your mental health, like this is important.

It's a critical foundation for your success. So number six is rest. Write it down.  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 in 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  again, period.  Right? I'm telling you, this is a foundation. I literally want you to open your.  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.  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 numbers, uh, 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  kind of steady growth inside whatever platform you use is, is important. I.

What's landing with your audience? Um, 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, uh, 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, I'm about to do this all right now at the end of the month. 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 things that you're, the efforts that you're making is. 

Getting the results that you want. Right.  And I think that would be a great episode is just like, what are the most important needle moving metrics? So I'll work on that because that actually is such a good topic. 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 kind of 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? 

Lemme tell you something, successful entrepreneurs do not wait for people to come to that. 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 nurturing your email list, sending out valuable information.

That could look like a long-term strategy, like having a podcast, having, you know, 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. 

Offer your solution. You want to be proactive about generating new audience members on a daily basis. And as you guys know, I teach this strategy to my clients. I work with my clients 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 daily lead generation guys foundation cannot skip it. Gotta do it every day.  And I have a wonderful daily method that I use. 

For strategically growing your social media platform that I teach inside my private group coaching container. So maybe I'll talk more about that in a bit. Um, but 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. 

So if you don't have a lead generation system in place, if you don't have a great funnel to attract new audience and, and invite them into your world, um, I am hosting a next round of Profit by design. It's a three module mini course is a sprint coaching container, and it starts. Monday, March 31st. So if you're listening to this anytime before March 31st, please jump in.

We're gonna work on creating that niche aligned digital product that creates lead generation for new audiences. And you can share it as a lead magnet. You can share it as a low ticket offer and sell it. This is a no brainer. It's a, it's exactly what you need to start that conversation yourself. And it's $179.

It's a month long support container. It's like crazy low cost for this offer, but I just want to see it work. So I'm keeping it low cost and it's getting results for my clients and it's really exciting for me. So jump in there right now. That link is in my bio and let's go  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, like something low ticket 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 just the statistically proven to work so. 

If you're nodding along and you're thinking, yes, I need a structure like this, then this is your invitation to come and chat with me about my six month solopreneur business foundational program.  My signature offer that I created and I coach. My group, uh, coaching program is basically six months of a solopreneur bootcamp.

We go through brand identity and visual identity. 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, and 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 systems, and.  The trainings, um, it's really just a step-by-step course to build your online business foundations with a coach.

So the investment for that program is 14 point 97. I'm keeping it that at price because I want people to win.  And let this be the moment that you stop weighing it, right? Start building something sustainable. Having a mentor, having a coach makes a difference. So just drop me a line if you're interested in that. 

And I will share the details and we can chat about it, and 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, so I hope you found this helpful.

And always send me messages, send me questions, tell me what you want more of. I love getting messages from you guys. Rate the podcast and review it if you wouldn't mind. It's so helpful and  I'd be happy to go deeper on any of these foundations, if any one of them is a sticking point for you. So I think I am gonna go back into that metrics one and work on an episode around metrics.

I feel like that's such a critical part of my day. I mean, I check my metrics all the time, so maybe that would help you.  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.