#76 - Building Business in a Trust Recession - 5 Ways I've Consistently Grown My Income Despite Volatility in Online Marketing

Is it just you, or has it gotten harder to earn trust online? 

In this episode, I'm addressing the reality of the “trust recession” sweeping the digital business world - and what you can do about it. From burnout to bait-and-switch offers, your audience is more skeptical than ever. But here’s the truth: trust can be rebuilt—and it starts with how you show up.

You'll learn:

• 5 tangible strategies to build trust that leads to sales
• Why going “deep not wide” is your new marketing mantra
• How transparency, teaching, and long-term assets give you the edge
• The difference between content and real business-building assets

💥 Plus, this is your last week to get in on Summer Camp for Solopreneurs—a 7-week sprint to finally build that digital product you've been putting off.

🎧 Tune in and let’s turn this “trust recession” into your leadership era.

Let me know if you'd like this adapted into an email newsletter blurb or social media caption!

IMPORTANT LINKS:

⚒️ Get the Launch-Ready Digital Product Toolkit

🌞 Save your seat inside SummerCamp for Solopreneurs

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's talk about something icky that nobody wants to say out loud. Trust in the online business space is pretty shaky right now. So whether it's FOMO marketing or people selling high ticket offers that don't actually deliver results or AI creating this massive sea of sort of plain vanilla in our messaging, or just plain burnout from like the sheer volume of coaches and marketers that are in your feed on any given day.

The truth is that online audiences are more cautious than ever. So the question is how do you keep showing up as a service provider that they can count on? And how do you like launch something new if you need to face this sort of insurmountable wall of objections that are pre-plant inside people's minds.

So if you've been feeling like it's harder than ever to get people to say yes, you're not alone, or if you're just timid to start something, you are not alone. Uh, we're experiencing a pushback from the rapid growth in the online space, but I have good news that doesn't count you out because there's things that you can do to stand out against that trust recession and build lifelong customers.

So if you want the kind of business where you don't have to worry about this rollercoaster of the algorithm or hanging your hat on whatever's trending in online marketing at that very moment, and if you want the kind of business that helps you create steady flows of income over time because you are trustworthy.

Then listen up because I'm gonna share a few things that have worked for me. 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.

Deborah 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-tos, and getting into imperfect messy actions so you can find balance while building the.

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. Hey guys, welcome back to the show. I am coming to you live from the mountain. Today I am up in the Catskills and I'm doing something that I don't, I often do, which is speak somewhat off the cuff on a topic.

Um, if you're new here, welcome. If you go back and listen to past episodes, you'll learn that my norm is to carefully curate my content. Um, I'm really trying to. Create episodes that directly impact solopreneurs, help you with business growth, help steer you in the right direction, give you practical tools, and that typically means research and fact checking and scripting.

And yes, I actually do quite a bit of editing. Um, I also speak directly from the heart, so maybe it sounds pretty natural, but trust me, that I put in the time to make sure these episodes flow with useful content. I cut out all the fluff, you know, I cut out all my. Inevitable messy mess ups and ums and likes, and try to pare it down.

So it's just, just the content you need. Um, but today, I, I am kind of going off the cuff. I'm responding to what I'm seeing all over my internet feed, and I'm just leaning in there because I feel like it's a place that I can offer some actual value to you and some support. So I'm gonna share a few ways today to build long-term trust with people who come into your world through this.

Somewhat vapid online, medium of the internet, right? It's really what we're really talking about is specifically online business. It's different than if somebody walks through your doorway of your brick and mortar business and they see your face and they connect with your eyes, and they hear the tone of your voice, and you give them a warm smile.

A lot of trust gets built really fast, but when we are on the internet, we don't have that same, I mean, yes, you can do that through social media and videos and stuff, but basically you have less ability to share your authentic self through the online marketing space. So it's, it's harder to build that trust.

So I just wanted to share some thoughts with you about what has worked really well for me. Um, this is not based on whatever is trending or popular, but specifically on what I've done inside my own business has gotten consistent sales results. And of course, I have to give you the. Only bad news of this episode is that this doesn't happen overnight.

You're gonna have to invest some time, but it doesn't have to be years of your life. It could just be, you know, a couple of months of, of really hunkering down with consistency. So when I started my first online business, I was starting from literal scratch. I had no prior business experience. I did not have a business degree.

I did not have an investor, I did not have a coach. I didn't have family money or really any core assets to build upon. Uh, like I truly had to start from just a dream and a willingness to fail. I. And then get back up. And that was 18 years ago. So since then, I have failed so many times. I can't even keep track anymore.

Like I have way more failure stories than I'm, than I wanna tell you. But with every attempt, uh, that I've made to create something new, to shift, to reshape my business and my message to pivot. To evolve, to level up my technical skills, you know, to condition my nervous system to work through money blocks and like negative self-talk and to continually find, encouraged to keep going when I felt vulnerable and like, you know, down and out.

And even just to push through like. World crisises and things that we are dealing with today that feel impossible to keep showing up, to get back up more times than I fell down. That has built an entrepreneurial muscle and it's from that place that I'm sharing these trust building tips with you from that place of a real knowing what worked from trying it and it's succeeding.

So, and by the way, I too have been. Burned in the online space in terms of like really losing trust in people and humanity. In the past five years, I've left two high ticket coaching programs where I felt sort of flabbergasted by the lack of support that was actually being delivered for the investment that I put in.

And I'm sure that every single person listening to this has downloaded a lead magnet that just left you more confused than supported because the person had really good marketing, really good messaging, and they convinced you that. You were gonna get what you needed from it, right? But now you're on their mailing list and they're marketing to you all the time, and they're selling to you all the time, but you're not actually getting value or the win that you're looking for.

So I get it. It's, it's, it's hard to believe that anything out there is legit when you face that stuff. And yes, the internet is still kind of the Wild West, which is pretty amazing in 2025, but. There is an opportunity in that for your growth, okay? And for you to step into your leadership era, in your niche, in your genre, or even just with a few clients, like you don't have to try to go from zero to a hundred thousand dollars overnight.

You want to find a few clients, build some trust with them, and create a system that works around that relationship by serving them and learning from it. So if you have been struggling to get people to say yes to your offer, or if you've noticed maybe that an evergreen funnel that you had that was once really easily converting is no longer converting, uh, even when you know your offer is really good and legit, if you're at that point.

That you're noticing like a dip in sales or just things that are once working or no longer working, you're not imagining that we are in what I call a trust recession, and here's what that means. Number one, people are craving consistency and don't necessarily trust whimsical, sort of trendy things the way that they once did.

People are tuning out the hype. Right. People are able to now see through trendy and hype marketing, and people are investing more slowly, right? There's a much longer runway for people to invest their money, but they're investing more intentionally so. We, in order to keep showing up as a trustworthy voice in such a noisy space where there is such a big void, we need to start putting your focus into the areas of your personal growth and your business that are long-term investments.

And once again, I'm calling it a long-term investment, but it doesn't mean it has to take you an entire year showing up consistently week after week. You could do that for a couple of months, like 7, 8, 10 weeks, and see tremendous results. So I just want my, I have three new clients that hired me in April.

We started their programs in May. All three of them did not have a mailing list or consistent connection with their audience. So I, I was like, that's the foundation. We have to build that first. Already on June 25th, less than two months later, all three of them have launched a small. Offer that they sold out just because they built their mailing list out and started consistently connecting with people.

It, it wasn't hard work for them. It, they just needed focus and, and a plan. So here are, here are a couple thoughts I wanna share with you. And, and five, I came up with five. I was thinking about this all morning, five ways that I have. Invested in myself and my business relationships to build trust that have paid off in spades over time.

And these don't, these, none of these cost any money. Well, actually some of them could cost a little bit of money, so we'll get there. But number one is be transparent about your journey. So. This is really hard for people to do. This has been hard for me to do, but sharing behind the scenes of what you're doing helps people see that you are actually doing something.

I. And like that could even literally be you studying. If you don't have a working business yet and you're building something, show me that you are in school for it because you're gonna launch something special. Right? Show me what you're learning. Show me what's working and what's not. Vulnerability is not weakness.

It is a bridge. It is a relatable experience. So. If you are hoping to guide somebody along a pathway, it helps for me to see that you have already walked that pathway yourself. Show me you walking the pathway that could look so different for so many different people. But sometimes for me, I just flip on my camera and show myself working and talk about how much time it took me to edit a document.

Like it's not sexy, but it shows my work, right? Okay, so be transparent about your journey. That could look like going on social media, talking to the camera, um, email marketing. You can tell your story in emails and show us that you are, uh, walking your talk. Number two, trust building thing, um, is when you do have a win with a client, highlight it.

So don't just tell me what your offer can do, but show what your people are doing with your offer. So share real stories of progress that you have had with people. And by the way, that does not mean perfection. It doesn't have to be like I just told you a story about three women who started with me two months ago and are already selling, but.

Like neither of that, none of those women had a perfect offer or a perfect pitch or or are perfect in any way, and nor am I, they just showed up consistently with their audience that they had created, and it is not brain surgery to do that. But a lot of times people fail to be consistent. S because they're worried about perfectionism, right?

You're worried that it's not perfect yet, so you don't wanna keep on sharing information. We don't need you to be perfect. Show us your messy stories of progress. Show us clients that you're working with and how they're overcoming challenges because people walking the path with you is a visual and audible example of how it could look to work with you.

And I'll just tell you, with all three of those women, I meet with them weekly and we work through the vulnerable obstacles that they're dealing with, and we talk a lot about exactly what is the right message for their audience so that it really, so that it's worth their time to, to write out this full email or to create their long-term content.

So highlight client led wins. That's, that's my second. Uh, a thing that I do that has really helped show other people that they can trust me, right? Because they see people working with me, getting results, and then they go, oh, I, I, okay, maybe it is working. Maybe I can trust her. Um, the third thing, the third tip, I guess these are tips, is to teach more than you sell.

Now you will hear me often telling you to sell more. That's because most people don't sell at all. They're like, hoping we're gonna go digging for your offer. Been married, you know, buried beneath a pile of leaves or a pile of blankets or something. People hide their offers deep at the very end of their pit.

You know, sales messages at the very end of a landing page, at the very end of an Instagram post, they'll be like, oh, and by the way, if you want, it's like, no, no, no. I want you to sell out front. I want you to have sales as a regular part of your content pillars, and I want you to get really comfortable talking about your offers and selling them.

But a way to build trust is to be generous with what you know. Right. So this podcast is just hours and hours and hours of me helping you make progress without, you know, I sell offers at the end of my episodes a lot, but I, whether you ever buy from me or not, I might never see your face, but you're gonna learn from me regardless.

So, generosity builds trust. Educate your audience in small, tangible ways. Give them bite sized nuggets of. Usable information that helps them feel like they're making progress to solve whatever problem you help them solve. Even if they never buy from you, it doesn't matter because you can only serve so many people at a time anyways, until you start building, you know, these tangible digital assets that start to sell on the back end of all of your work.

You wanna be working with clients and providing, you know, solutions and services and programs or courses or whatever you sell. They're gonna remember who helped them before they were ready to invest. They're gonna remember you and they're gonna say, oh, she taught me how to do that two years ago. Now I'm finally at the point where I can spend some money.

I'm gonna go back and see what she's doing. So teach more than you pitch. Just be generous with your content, be generous with your knowledge. Be generous with your solutions. Don't gatekeep, there's so everything is already on the internet for free. 100% of what you teach. The difference is that you, a lot of times people need a service done for them or they need a guide, or they need accountability, and so people are buying you and your personality and your story and your version of the work.

Over, you know, 'cause they could piece it together themselves for free on the internet. That's not what they're paying for. They're paying for support, guidance, accountability tools, or you're saving them time or they love your particular style. And that's all coming through you building trust to get in front of them and show them what you do.

So you wanna teach and give generously more than you pitch. Um. The, the next one is about really deepening your relationships. So my number four is go deep, not wide. And this was a hard one lesson for me at first when I first got into coaching, which was now 15 years ago. Really, I, so I got a coaching degree and I knew I was way too green.

I wanted to serve people for free. So I partnered with a business partner and I opened an in real life, um, juice bar type business because I wanted to coach people on nutrition and wellness. That was my, initially, the industry that I was in for coaching. But I didn't have enough. I was too young, I was too green.

I didn't have enough experience, so I just decided I would build a product-based business and then teach for free coach for free. To help people. And then that free coaching would in turn, like sell my product, right? So if I'm teaching you for free the value of a different, you know, intake of nutrition, then you're more likely to buy my physical product, which at that point in time was juice or plant-based meals.

Um, eventually I started selling coaching packages once I had experience, but. What I, I learned is that at first I really tried to serve everyone and, uh, especially like in the wellness and the weight loss industry and nutrition, coaching and fitness, all those health and wellness industry type businesses, it's.

Really, really, really niche what people are looking for. And so when you try to speak to everyone, you really do speak to no one because people are not out there looking for, you know, this one size fits all thing. People wanna feel like you are. Custom creating a program for their personal set of variables, which when it comes to the body and health and wellness and nutrition, it's hyper individualized.

Every person is cellularly so different. So it's not even like you're coaching like a business program where everybody is an accountant or something. This is like. You know, specific to your hormones and your cellular makeup, your genetics, your daily routines. So it's really hyper-focused. So it, it helps a lot to get laser focused on your person.

And I know you've probably heard this a million times, but. You know, creating an an ideal client avatar and really getting clear who she or he is, or they, or them getting laser focused on what their problem is and getting laser focused on what they think the solution is. Then speaking directly to that problem and that solution, and really talking to their dreams and their decision making process.

That's how you build trust. That's how they're gonna believe that you are trustworthy because they can see that you understand them. And I apologize to everyone who has heard this a million times, but until you start doing it, you are not gonna see growth results the way you will when you start to hone in on that target client.

It is true. I hate, I hate saying it because I know everybody when you're first starting out, wants to just keep their doorway open to anyone, but people are passing you by because they don't see you as a solution for them. So if you wanna get more, you know, you want to rapidly increase the number of people in your audience and that leads to sales.

You wanna really go deep and not. Not so wide. Do you wanna be more specific about who you are for? And it builds trust much faster when you talk about things, the way that they talk about things. So that work is, it's at the beginning of this marketing journey, you guys, you gotta do that and go back to it.

I revisit my ICA, my ideal client avatar on a regular basis to make sure I'm still. It's still aligned with who I am for starters, because you can't really help people that you're not a right fit for. So it's on you as a service provider or a coach or a consultant to make sure you've got the right person in mind who you can really help get results.

I. Okay. And five my favorite. This is where I think my business coaching is going in the next three to five years. I am so happy to help my clients do this. I am so like riled up about this and so always consistently passionate about it and it is such a great way to build trust and that is my friends create assets, not just content.

Create assets. An asset is something that has value over the course of a long period of time. Okay, so everyone out there whose entire marketing plan is Instagram or like just regularly posting into the void on social media. Hear me say this again. Create assets. Even if you just create one asset that can build over time.

You need to do, that's what is going to help you build trust because, so evergreen tools, like things like guides that really put your knowledge and your wisdom and your proprietary method into a shareable PDF document trainings, like mini courses or like, you know, short live, you know, book ended podcasts that target a specific thing or a lead magnet that really gets people a result.

They don't just add value, they show that you are in it for the long haul. You took the time to, to organize all of this information in a way that it's usable for me and I can get a result. I. It positions you as the solution, not just a personality, not just a cute like influencer, but, and by the way, nothing against influencers, nothing against, you know, trending social content.

I actually think. Influencer style, trending social content is a kick ass top of funnel strategy. I like really love it. It's just that that is not the core engine of your business and that is not going to build trust. That's simply gonna get you in front of a larger number of people. But if you don't have a trust building mechanism built inside the.

You know, engine of your business, then all of the flash dancing and, you know, trending and viral social media will not matter because you have nothing to to deliver once they've discovered you. So evergreen tools, assets, long-term assets. And by the way, your weekly newsletter. Is a long-term asset. The content that you put into that newsletter can easily be translated into a blog.

You can easily turn it into a podcast and consistency. You'd be surprised how important the consistent weekly touching base with your your audience actually is. Now, yes, email marketing can be done wrong and it can become spammy and it can be something that builds. That sort of trust recession as well.

I coach my clients to be, to put a lot of value into their newsletters so that it's not just a sales tool. Um, you can sell, you could definitely sell from that platform. That's how I have been in business for the last 15 years. But you really should have. Content that gives them value, whether or not they buy for it to be something they're gonna continue to open.

And of course you wanna have good storytelling, good formatting, you know, all of that stuff. But that can be done and that does not have to take long. Um, and that brings me to, I have two ways that I can support you with these trust building. Assets. One is my digital product toolkit. If you don't already have a digital product that is a long-term asset and you wanna create one, I have a wonderful, very mini but very thorough course.

It's called the, it's a mini course. It's really, it's a toolkit. It's the digital product toolkit. Uh. It is online at all times Evergreen for sale, and it's at deborah c smith.com/digital-product-mastery-course. And I will put that link in my show notes. And the other thing is I am running a very short term, two month long hyper project focused coaching program this summer.

I call it summer camp for solopreneurs. There are only four spots left and. We start on July 1st, so this is timely. So if you're listening to this after July 1st, um, and you're interested in something like this, just hit me up and we can talk. But this is really, it's a seven week, technically we're gonna go eight weeks, but the last week is a, an implementation week, seven weeks.

Program focused, timeline focused to help you take little tiny baby steps to get that long-term digital asset created by the end of summer so you can launch it and start selling if that interests you. Um, I do chat with everybody who wants to come into this container just 'cause I wanna make sure it's gonna be a fit.

Primarily, I wanna make sure I can help you succeed. And last summer I had eight women join me. Six of those eight women. Made back the money. They invested in the program before we even finished the other two. Had that same experience about two weeks after. The program ended a couple weeks into the fall, into September, I should say.

So we start July 1st. We go through the end of August summer camp for solopreneurs. It is a pro, it is a digital asset building coaching program and friends, it is fun. Uh, it is an amazing community. It is. We meet weekly, multiple times a week. You get tons of support. You have me. Helping you start your business or launch a new product, and you have your community and all kinds of tools.

You also get the mindset to market, uh, signature course that I created, which features my mindset to market. Method for building a solopreneur newer business. Also, get my amazing balanced bowls mini course that helps you eat a nutritious, healthy meals. It's so much. It's an amazing program. So if that interests you, I only have four spots left.

They are gonna sell out. So hit me up today, tomorrow, let's have a quick chat and see if this is the right time and the right program for you. But if for some reason now's not the right time, just chat with me anyways. Maybe we, maybe we'll meet up and do something, um, at another point in time. All right.

Do not worry about the trust recession, because these are the five. I'm gonna recap this for you. I did jot them down. Number one, be transparent about your journey. Number two, highlight wins along your P path, especially client led wins. Number three, teach more than you pitch. Be generous. Number four, deepen your relationship with your person.

Go deep, not wide. And number five, please, y'all, I'm begging you create assets, not just content. This is, this is a huge piece of my success. Differentiating your revenue stream. I have evergreen. Mini courses that are like out there on the internet on Udemy and other places that I make sales every single day that I've done.

I haven't touched, lifted a finger to touch in over several years at this point, and it really helps with me keeping my business going and being able to serve more clients and make a bigger impact. So if that's something that interests you and you want support. Click those links in my show notes. Go to my website.

It's deborah c smith.com and you will find these limited. Well, you'll find my Evergreen digital product toolkit, and you'll also find the link for summer camp. Okay, my friends. That's it for this shorty episode. I hope you're having an amazing time. I know the world is bonkers, crazy. I know it's a terrifying moment that we're living through, but stay strong.

Work on your business. Just be consistent. That is a leadership. Path. Keep showing up. Keep showing yourself. Keep shining your light. Keep talking to people. Do not be afraid. You can do this. I know you can because I am living proof and I got your back. All right, my friends, until we meet again, which is gonna be soon 'cause I'm gonna publish my interview with Jen Marilla.

Um, may you be vibrant.