#103 - 5 Moments That Almost Broke Me in 2025 and The Lessons That Made Me a Better Entrepreneur

As we wrap up 2025, I knew I needed to share the real, raw lessons that shaped me the most this year — not just the shiny wins, but the moments that almost broke me.

In this vulnerable solo episode, I’m pulling back the curtain and sharing 5 mindset shifts that came from deeply uncomfortable, even humiliating, moments in my business and personal life this year.

If you’ve been through your own fire lately, I hope this helps you feel seen and supported.

We’re talking:
 ✨ What to do when people judge you
 ✨ How to protect your energy on social
 ✨ Setting boundaries with clients + collaborators
 ✨ Showing up as your next-level self
 ✨ Why belief is the real strategy

💻 Mentioned in the episode:

Grab the Digital Product Toolkit
– my step-by-step starter system for building a low-ticket offer in under 30 days. Includes AI prompts, templates, and sales scripts.

🎧 Listen in and then DM me @deborah_smith_coaching — which of the 5 lessons hit home for you?

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.

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.

🎉 Work with Deborah Learn More
💕 Visit Deborah online at DeborahCSmith.com
💕 Follow on the 'Gram. @deborah_smith_coaching

Transcript

 Hey there, I wasn't planning to record this, and honestly it was not on my content calendar at all. Um, but this morning I was thinking about what would make the most impact that I could share with you. And I've been carrying some really big lessons from 2025. Um, not just lessons that feel insightful, but lessons that really, quite frankly, almost broke me a, a couple of times, um, but then actually became big turning points for me.

So in this episode, I'm gonna pull back the curtain a little bit and share. Five of the biggest takeaways from 2025 that were the most growth filled moments for me, and mindset shifts that really gave me, uh, permission to keep going when things got ugly. Um, so this one's real. It's raw. If you've been through a tough year, I see you.

I think, um, you'll feel really deeply seen in this episode. So let's get into it. 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 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 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. Okay, before we do the five big takeaway lessons from Moments that literally broke me down this year, um, I just wanna do a few quick housekeeping notes. Um, first I'm gonna be at Pod Fest, which is a big podcast festival in January in Orlando.

It's from the 16th to the 18th. I dunno if anybody else will be there, but if you're going to be in Orlando, hit me up. I would love to meet you. Um, I'll be setting up a bunch of mini audits, so I'm gonna be helping audit both offers and also kind of customer journeys to the offer for people who wanna monetize their podcast and build their mailing list so they can grow their income a lot in 2026.

Um, last year I did this at podcast and it was so much fun. I met the most incredible people. And I did a bunch of mini audits, and some of those people became clients. Others just went on to actually set up these amazing funnels. So if that's interesting to you, and you're gonna be in Orlando, uh, message me.

And then on the 20th of January, I'm hosting my first in-person. Content strategy and creation event in person in Brooklyn, so those details will all be rolling out soon online. But if you are in Brooklyn or anywheres near in New York City and you want to strategize a content plan for your business for Q1.

Not only are we gonna be doing the actual strategy, we're gonna have templates for different types of content, emails, social media content, and we're gonna be doing photo shoots and all kinds of actual creative stuff. So super fun. And then, um, all of that will be up on my website. Oh, and then the last thing is, uh, in February I'm gonna be hosting a short container, like a five week container for digital product funnels.

So these are evergreen funnels that lead to a low ticket digital product that can be used as a stepping stone for higher ticket. And if you have not yet built a digital product and you want to in 2026, I highly recommend you check out my digital product toolkit. It is like, I think it's $47, but it's packed.

It's got, not only is it a step-by-step course where you can literally just little tiny lessons, one thing at a time, you'll get it done, and the promise is that you can get it done in less than 30 days, but you can probably do it in five days if you just consume the content. And, but I also give you templates and AI prompts and literally everything, plus sales scripts, guys.

So if you don't have a digital product and you want like a little quick win financially and a stepping stone to higher ticket offers, um, grab that. I'll put the link in my show notes. Okay. Let's talk about tragedies. I had, um, some rough moments this year, you know, and of course, as a business owner and an entrepreneur, you're constantly promoting all the shiny objects and all the, you know, wonderful highlights.

And of everything on Instagram is a highlight reel. And also LinkedIn. It's just like, how powerful am I? Blah, blah, blah. But, um, some of the things that had the biggest impact on me this year were moments that actually kind of crushed me a little bit. So let's talk about the hard stuff. So, um. Lesson number one is tune out the noise.

Okay, this is the big takeaways. Tune out the noise. And I talk about this all the time, but, um, in this case it really is specifically other people's opinions. So I was, um, in a situation over the summer where I was at, uh, a, a big. Entrepreneurial conference and um, I was in a situation where I was being publicly and outright, called out by another business coach who is a leader, a podcast host, and, and a big influencer while I was in a conversation with, so I was, is in between sessions.

I'm chatting with a few women that I'd met and one of the women who was the leader of the community, who was one of the hosts decided to make an example out of me. Um, and I think she was trying to make a point to the other women, and I think she was actually. Thought that she was complimenting me, but basically she was saying she felt, um, annoyed that so many women in the industry say that they want success, say that they want to make more money, but then don't do the work that it takes to actually get that.

That was the point she was making. And then again, I think she thought she was complimenting me and she basically said like, look, look at you. You're somebody who has all this experience and so much knowledge, but I can't put you up on stage. I can't promote you because look at this. And then she literally took my phone out of my hand because I was, we were, had been exchanging Instagram, um.

Contacts. So I had it open to Instagram, like previously in the conversation and she scrolled on my own phone and said, look at this, look at this meaning with my account open. Um, and then she said, I can't put this, I can't promote this, like directly, uh, insulting my image essentially, right? So it was like really embarrassing.

Um, and look, I'll be the first to admit, I don't put a ton of time into a perfectly curated. Uh, Instagram feed. And really, honestly, if you look across my entire, like the aesthetic of my entire online, um, world is a little bit disjunct. It's a little bit messy. Artist. Hippie. And this is because I'm authentic and I've been in business for 20 years.

I ran a juice truck in Brooklyn. Like I am not an influencer. I am a business coach. I understand how businesses run. I know. How to create a very simple direct line from A to B to get a client to pay you money. I don't necessarily, I'm not, I'm not a model, right? I'm not an influencer. And so, um, I can be influential, but that does not mean that I've put a lot of attention into the aesthetic of my brand, and I get that.

You know, honestly, I understand that brand identity and cohesion are very much what sell online. And I also understand that people, you know, use Instagram as their entire business model. And particularly I think millennial, uh, people, it's a very important to them to see how, like if your Instagram feed is curated and you look.

Like you have your s together, you, you get, you can definitely have a greater impact. So I'm not dissing what she was putting forth and I actually think many things that she shared were correct. Um, that being said, there was a flaw in her comment, which is that she didn't know my business operation or any of my offers.

She hadn't seen my website. She didn't know that about my podcast funnel or any of my SEO funnels that have been. Carefully curated, set up for many years and continuously deliver me new clients and sales. So she was basing my value and my worth entirely on my Instagram grid. And so there's a big lesson there, right?

First of all, it rattled me more than I wanted to admit, and for a few days I started really doubting myself. I doubted my tone, my image, my content, my success, every piece of it. I was shaken by this. But here's the the takeaway. Eventually I realized that, I mean, I know her opinion isn't the problem. The problem is my attachment to being liked by her, right?

So people are gonna like you or not like you. People are gonna follow you and unfollow you. People are gonna think you're the most amazing things in sliced bread, and other people are gonna think that you're a terrible person. It's just like. You can't control other people's opinions. Mean girls are gonna be mean girls, tough love coaches are gonna give you tough love, right?

Like, I'm sure she felt justified in doing what she did because she, she has a huge following by the way, many, many, many thousands. And she probably thought she was helping me by being like, yo, clean this up girl. Um, but the mistake was that she didn't take the time to look beneath the surface and ask how I actually connect with audience members or what my operation and system are.

But it didn't matter. The point is that I felt. Injured in my ego and I felt really judged and, um, and like, you know, literally she judged a book by the cover. And in this case I think she got it wrong, but you know, a million followers online does not a millionaire make your business Income is only as solid as your actual system.

So, you know, and insecurity often looks like criticism in the online space. So. My job is not to please everybody who doesn't like my style. My job is to lead the people who need my help. And so the takeaway, the big, big takeaway is tune out the noise. If you've been holding back because of the, what will they think spiral.

Uh, this is your reminder to just let people think whatever they want. They're going to do that anyways. They're gonna judge you incorrectly. They're going to get you wrong. And in some cases they may look like. They insult you or they kind of yuck on your yum, and that is none of your business. Your business is to keep building, keep believing in yourself, and tune out the noise.

Okay, so let's move on to number two. The, the second sort of big lesson from 2025, which for me has to do with the internet in general. Um, and that lesson is the internet is a tool, not your home. Okay, so there was a point this year where I noticed that I was completely drained by being online, not just content fatigue, but that feeling of just existing on the internet more than I was existing in my real life.

And I put a lot of time into networking this year. I made some incredible new friends this year all through online connections, a lot of 'em on threads, um, some through Instagram, some through LinkedIn. And I'm really excited about all those new connections and those, those people. There was a point at, uh, kind of again, midsummer where I was trying to relax one day, and instead of being in the moment and just enjoying nature and taking a walk to the stream out behind my house, I found myself mentally editing the caption that would go with it.

Like every, everything that I was doing was being framed by how I would tell that story again on the internet, and it really just hit me kind of like a ton of bricks. I felt it in my stomach like, this is not. A normal way to think about the world. And so I started doing something pretty radical and I set an extremely short time limit for every single day for my, um, Instagram specifically.

'cause I, that's the app that I use the most. So 10 minutes a day max, I set really clear boundaries and my phone is now restricted to. Notify me that I only have a few more minutes left before my time is up. Um, and I kept it that way for the rest of the year. I stopped scrolling mindlessly. I reminded myself that the platform is a tool to support my purpose, not the purpose itself.

And there's lots of ways to connect. You know, there's networking events and in-person events. You know, setting up coffee chats with people to get those really deeper connections anyways, so it's such an easy slippery slope to get online and start scrolling endlessly and, you know, winding up, going down other people's funnels and all that stuff.

And it's fine if you're doing research or if there's a, a particular purpose for it, but. I just want to give you this takeaway. Social media is an amplifier. It's not your actual job, right? So unless it is your actual job, if you're a social media coach, then maybe be on there all day. But if you are doing something else with your life and your business.

Remember that social media is there to amplify your purpose. It is not your purpose and it's just a tool. It's not where you need to spend all your time and just so don't forget to log off and go live your life. The more time I spent offline, the better I felt and I still, and it also setting those limitations.

Allowed me to get way more strategic and focused about what I was gonna do there for those 10 minutes when I was on there. And so I had my content ready to go. I had, um, you know, clear messaging ready to go. I connected with and interacted with anybody in my dms, posted my posts, and, and I kept it moving.

Okay. And by the way, you can split those 10 minutes up throughout the course of your day, a few minutes in the morning, a few minutes in the afternoon, a few minutes at night. You cover the, the gaps. But. You're not online all day. So, um, that was good for me and I thought you would appreciate that. So let's move on.

Lesson number three is that balanced relationships equal sustainable business. Okay. So this was, this is one of the hardest things that I, I think I struggle with in business in general. Which is making sure that relationships are reciprocal, um, even with clients. So this one came from just a few relationship shifts in my year where, you know, with team members, collaborations that I was working on with other, um, peers of mine and even a couple of client dynamics.

And so I found myself in one particular situation this year where I was just giving so, so much and I kind of fell back into my old people pleaser pattern. If you are a people pleaser, raise your hand. This one is probably for you. Um, and I started feeling really resentful, like I'm doing all this extra support because I really want you to get this win.

I care more than you do. I'm working on your project more than you are. I've crossed my own boundaries in terms of time limits. I have, um, kind of stepped outside my comfort zone. Trying to support this person in getting to their goal. And I think my justification originally was, well, if she wins, I win.

Because you know, any client that gets to the success, you know, mark, whether they're, whether that's financial or completing a project, whatever it is, that's something that I can then share as my win because I help them achieve that goal. And of course, my every client, I want them to reach their goals, but I had to check in with myself on this one because I was allowing an imbalance to occur.

Uh, because I didn't wanna be seen as difficult or, you know, I didn't wanna be pulling back from what I'd already started giving. And it got more and more imbalanced as time went on. And that was totally on me. Like, that's not the client's responsibility. They will receive what you give and you have to have clear, clear boundaries and then you have to stick to those boundaries.

But this is also, you know, relationships around co-creating an experience. I was a part of, um, a group community. Event this year. That was basically a list builder where I did a tremendous amount of the work. Again, I am responsible for how much I give, right? Nobody is telling me We need you to give more.

I was just overgiving and towards the end of it, I looked around and I said, oh, all these people got the same benefit as I did, but I did, you know, 60% of the work. So that's, again, that was on me. I have to like monitor my own. Energy levels and realize I'm hardwired to over deliver and that can create imbalances, and so I just have to keep checking in.

So the lesson here is that, you know, business relationships are just relationships and they must feel equitable. The best relationships of my year in 2025 were ones where everybody did their work. My clients did their homework, I did my research and my tech work, you know, or whatever coaching work was in our contract.

And there was a mutual respect about time, shared values and really aligned energy and that felt super sustainable. It felt rejuvenating. I looked forward to those, those conversations. I looked forward to coaching those, those women and they got so much work out of it 'cause they were putting the equal time in as I was and, and or money, whatever the relationship contract is and.

Excuse me. A mini takeaway for you is just ask yourself, where in your business are you giving more than it feels good? Um, that's a little breadcrumb that you can follow to kind of look for energy leaks. I also wanna add, um, as a practical tip, if you feel like your work relationships between yourself and a client or yourself and a coach are not quite balanced.

Look at the contract, and if it's your contract that you created, um, consider. Editing that contract to include more, more clarity. That was another thing that I did this year that really helped me a lot. I went back to my coaching contracts and I updated them to get really clear about little things, like how many times could somebody reschedule before they just lost the session?

Or like, what happens if somebody shows up five, 10 minutes late? Just clarifying all that stuff really tightened up my energetic boundaries and it helped me quite a lot. Okay. So lesson number four from hard Moments, um, is embody the version of you who has already arrived at the goal. So what does that mean?

Um. Well, I'll tell you the story. There was a couple of moments this year when I hit a real low point energetically. This was tied more to personal stuff going on in my life. Um, specifically stuff happening around my family, you know, helping my mother as she is in end of life phase. And so I've talked about that a lot.

There's lots of episodes about, you know, being a caregiver and kind of that being hard to manage, but, um. You know, I hit like a confidence dip because I was experiencing such an energetic low. So my revenue was fine, my clients were doing well and happy, but internally I was kind of spiraling downward and I caught myself operating from this weird, really low energy place, like this kind of hope it works vibe, like Hobe can pull this off.

And I was preparing for, you know, a sort of like a mini launch of a product and I just was. Like, I felt like I was just like rolling the dice and winging it. Now I have been in business for 18 years, so to reach a place where I'm kind of like, feel like I'm just at a energetic low and I'm gambling on decision making around my business is just uncomfortable and uncommon.

Uh, it is almost like I'm still trying to earn my next level instead of owning the fact that I have not only the experience and the knowledge of how to do all this stuff. I literally teach it like I just was in a weird head space. So I flipped the script on this, and this is the lesson I made the decision to just act as if the goal had already been achieved and to make moves as if my success was inev inevitable.

So. Just making that mental mindset shift changed everything. Like I told myself from here on out, every action is the action of the person who has already won, whose success is inevitable, whose financial income is exactly what the goal target is, and I raised my standards with that mindset. I cleaned up my daily habits.

I started investing in those steps that would align me with where I was headed instead of staying stuck in this mental downward spiral where I was afraid I still wasn't gonna pull it off. So the takeaway from that situation for me was that you don't arrive where you're headed by waiting around to feel better.

You arrive in those places and reach those goals by acting like you've, like you belong there, like you're already there and you can apply this. To anything, any situation like we really need to set ourselves up mentally for success as entrepreneurs. So you're not gonna get there by waiting around for something to happen to you.

You're gonna get there by taking aligned actions that are the actions of the successful person for whom success is inevitable, and that begins with the belief. And, and really the mental attitude that I got this and I'm gonna take steps that prove I got this. Um, and that is the perfect transition to lesson number five, which is that belief is the real strategy.

Believing in yourself is the, I would say like, it's like a huge percentage of the game. If you believe in yourself, everything in your life is gonna be a lot easier. And so we have to. Take care of ourselves and fill our tank and fuel ourselves with self-care and self-worth and self value as entrepreneurs.

Um, and this lesson was really gifted to me by my clients who are incredible, amazing, brave, talented, uh, caring, impactful women and men. And so I watched so many of my clients this year say yes to their big dreams, and then go take really messy, really imperfect, really terrifying steps and kind of earn those wins, right?

And really just. Make their dream happen by, yes, they had me as a coach and I was helping them answer tough questions and build things. But they did the work. They really said, you know what? I'm gonna believe in my dream. I'm going to show up as if it's possible. I'm gonna believe in myself as the successful version of this that I know is possible.

And they really did, uh, a lot of yes. Behavior and a lot of, um. Self-care and the ones who made it happen for themselves, they were not the most ready or the most perfect, right? They were the most convicted that they should be doing this work. So it didn't matter what the niche was or what the business idea was, or what the offer was, or what the funnel was, what mattered and what was the same across the board is their self-belief and just knowing.

That they could do it. And so the lesson is, you know, it really reminded me that belief is what carries us through when strategy is stalling or when we have a low dip in our energy, or when something doesn't go as perfectly planned, or when the tech, you know, spazzes out in the middle of a webinar or when the email that you sent out, you forget to, you know, put in the right notifications or names or whatever.

There's gonna be technical errors. There's going to be, you know. A need to constantly refine and tweak our messaging. There's gonna be changes in the offer. That's, that's entrepreneurship. You're gonna be evolving along the way, but the difference between self-sabotage and momentum is believing in yourself.

So. You know that example that I gave in in lesson four was me sort of catching myself and applying the many, many years of mindset training and coaching that I've had to not allow myself to just downward spiral and get into victim mode. And you know, oh, poor me. My life is so hard. Like, yes, life is hard.

Yes, my mother's illness and all the stuff with the finances around that and the constant insurance company calls, all that stuff is hard. There's a lot of other hard stuff too. The world is not an easy place. But if I believe that I can show up as an, you know, and achieve my goals, I'm gonna have a way better shot at it than if I let myself fester in that downward spiral.

So if you are having a really hard time, which we all do, and I know that 2025 was a. Really challenging year for so many people. Um, I know there's lots of big wins in 2025 as well, and we should celebrate all of those, which is why I wanted to share these lessons that came from difficult moments. But, you know, I always say give yourself 24 hours to have a pity party and cry it out and feel your feelings.

Your feelings are valid, but they also contain nuggets of information for where you can go next. So if you catch yourself feeling that downward spiral. Um, that's okay. And let yourself feel your feelings. But then remember that you are here for a reason. You were called to create your business for a reason.

You have work to do and an impact to make on people's lives. And this can and should be a source of income for you that helps you to reach those bigger life goals, um, and, and stay in the game. Keep yourself in the game and believe in your potential. Yeah, that's the strategy. Um, and also I just wanna tack onto that by saying you don't need to have all the answers.

You just need to believe that you are the one who can figure it out. Right? Believe in your potential to figure it out. So, all right, that's, that's it for today. Um, I know that was a little vulnerable. I'm sharing all the ugly stuff on this one, but honestly, I know I'm not the only one who's had a year of, of big stretches and a lot of surrender.

And some deep soul growth. And so if this resonated with you, um, I would love to know which of these five lessons hit home most with you? Which of these kind of triggered something in you and made you think, oh, wow, I had something like that happen to me? Um, I would love to hear from you. You could DM me anytime on Instagram.

It's at Deborah Smith coaching or. If you would be so kind, drop me a message. Um, you could email me, leave a review if you like the show, if the show is helping you on your path. Would love you to share it with an entrepreneur who would benefit from it and leave, leave a rating or a review. It's such a helpful thing.

Um, and here's to wrapping up the year in truth, in authenticity, in, you know, in an integrity. And we're gonna kick off 2026 with some unshakeable. Self-worth and belief. And I've got some exciting things coming, like I mentioned at the top. So check the show notes if you're interested in any of the stuff that I spoke about earlier.

Um, I'll be in, in Orlando in January from the 16th to the 18th at Pod Fest. I'm hosting an in-person, uh, event in the third week of January in Brooklyn, and I am gonna be coaching a one-time short container in February for digital products, and that's gonna be awesome because. So many people have a great idea for digital product, but then just like never get it done.

So again, check out the digital product toolkit, um, 'cause that can get you to the finish line quickly. But also if you want support with that, um, I will let you know more detail about the digital product, uh, coaching program that's gonna happen in Feb. All right, my friend, as always, happy New Year. Um, stay strong, stay positive, and until we meet again, may you be vibrant.