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How to Raise Your Prices Without Losing Customers: Your Mid-Year Farm Marketing Plan (Part 2)
Episode Summary
This is Part 2 of your mid-year farm marketing reset — the halftime huddle that helps you finish 2026 profitable and finally pay yourself a farm-owner salary. To raise your prices without losing customers, audit your top three products, raise each by at least 20% so you’re paying yourself a wage with 30% profit left over, and build real relationships through consistent marketing so customers prioritize your farm in their budget. Then Charlotte shows you how to get your next six months up on the wall and put your one day off a week back on the calendar — with the mindset skill underneath each move that actually makes it stick.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- The pricing audit almost no one wants to do — and the three-step version you can run on your top products today
- Why raising prices is a self-worth issue before it’s a math issue, and how to raise them “cleanly” (no apologizing, no over-explaining)
- The “20% rule”: why raising prices by a few cents at a time keeps you broke
- How to get your back half of the year on one wall calendar so you stop reacting and start deciding — and how to honor your future self enough to follow it
- Move six, the most important of all: putting your weekly day off back on the calendar, and why rested farmers make more money than farmers who work seven days a week
- A quick three-number gut check to tell you exactly where to focus next
You’ll also hear how Hannah raised her chicken prices 70% without losing a single customer, how Annie raised her floral subscription 25% and made $30,000 more without growing another flower, and how one meat farmer sold ribeyes at $41.50 a pound to customers who didn’t even question it.
Memorable Quotes
“Pricing is not a math problem. If it were, you’d already have raised your prices.”
“You’re worthy of a day off just because you exist — not because you earned it.”
“Your numbers aren’t a report card. They’re a flashlight.”
FAQ
Q: How do I raise my prices without losing customers?
You raise them by building a real relationship with your customers first, so the price is never the only thing holding them to you. When you’ve been consistently emailing them about things they care about, most won’t even flinch at an increase. In 13 years I’ve almost never met a farmer whose prices were too high, so the fear of losing everyone is usually much bigger than what actually happens. Raise the price cleanly, with no apologizing and no over-explaining.
Q: How much should I charge for my farm products to actually pay myself?
Enough to pay yourself a real farm-owner wage and still have about 30% profit left over after that wage, not just break even. A quick test: if you sold everything you have available this season at your current price, would you be paying yourself what someone who takes all the risk and works these hours deserves? If not, your prices are too low, and that’s where most of us start. When you do raise them, don’t nudge by 50 cents, raise by at least 20% so you’re not right back here in a few months.
Q: How do I plan the rest of my farm season so I stop just reacting to everything?
Get your next six months up on one wall calendar and fill it in a specific order. Block your non-negotiables first (your day off, family time, appointments), then your sales launch weeks, then your other key farm dates, then your weekly email day. When you can see the whole back half at once, you catch the crowded stretches before they blindside you and you make sure the money-making work is actually scheduled, not just hoped for.
Q: Is it really okay to take a day off when there’s so much farm work to do?
Yes, and it’s one of the most profitable things you can do. You won’t make more money in the back half of the year by working seven days a week, you’ll make it by being rested and clear enough to think and plan strategically. The farmers in my program who hit the biggest numbers are not the ones working the most hours. Put one day off a week on the calendar and protect it like a doctor’s appointment you waited six months to get.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
- Start with Part 1 (Episode 307 HERE) if you haven’t done moves one through three.
- Free: get Charlotte’s masterclass on the foundational coaching skill she teaches — and join the Profitable Mindset Academy wait list — at charlottemsmith.com/coach
- The Profitable Farmer — Charlotte’s coaching program (enrollment opens periodically) charlottemsmith.com/mastery
- The Profitable Mindset Podcast — Follow the show and leave a review — It helps more farmers build a profitable, sustainable farm
About the Host
Charlotte Smith is a farm marketing coach, podcast host, and the founder of The Profitable Farmer. She’s a 5th generation farmer, now supporting the 6th, together. Charlotte coaches approximately 300 farmers per year across the United States and 15 other countries, helping them shift from selling-out-but-broke to genuinely profitable through clear branding and customer-focused marketing.
Connect with Charlotte
Sign up for Farm Marketing Week at charlottemsmith.com/masterclass.
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Welcome back to part two of your mid-year farm marketing reset.
And we do this so that you can finish the year strong and profitable and hopefully pay yourself a
farm owner salary to get to the point where you get a paycheck every month that warrants a farm
owner being paid that. And so first, so I want to check in because When you receive this,
we have just passed the 4th of July and I hope you got some downtime. I hope you had some family
fun and barbecue. I’m recording this right before the 4th. because I have to plan ahead because my
son is getting married on the 4th of July. So right now my whole house and yard and garage is in
chaos, getting the flowers harvested and picked and organized. We’ve got a team of designers coming
over to design all the bouquets. And so we’re having the rehearsal dinner here for 45 people.
So I snuck away to record this episode and I can’t wait to go back to all the excitement.
And hopefully in the next episode I record, you will get to hear a little recap, but we are doing
all the, we grew and raised and are designing all the flowers for the wedding. And any of you who
have done weddings on the farm, and I know that’s a lot of you, so many details. One thing I am
just amazingly grateful for. beyond like so grateful for my family and friends and the kids,
this couple that’s getting married, my son and his fiance, they’re incredible. But the other thing
I’m so grateful for that I could never have planned is the forecast. We could have prayed every day
for the last year and a half and not gotten a better weather forecast for a wedding where we’re
growing our own flowers. It’s like 75 degrees and sunny and no wind. So it’s going to be perfect in
every way. Anyway, back to you. I’m here to help you. Last week,
I walked you through the first three moves of your halftime reset for your farm marketing plan
because now we are exactly halfway through 2026 and we can’t just hope things work out.
We need to be intentional. And what I mean by intentional is taking some time to do the six things
I overview in this plan. My clients inside The Profitable Farmer have the complete two-hour farm
marketing plan training and I always recommend… watch the whole thing twice per year.
Once at the end of the year, planning for the next, and then right now, halfway through.
You and I, we’re going to huddle up at halftime, look at what’s working, what isn’t, and to change
our play for the back half of the year. So similar to last week, every one of the three action
steps today is both a marketing move and a mindset coaching skill that you’ve got to build inside
your own mind to actually do it. It’s not enough to know the move,
know the marketing strategy you’ve got to do. If you haven’t built this skill in your head,
the mindset skill, you won’t follow through. You won’t do it. I know this because I’ve coached
thousands of farmers over the last 13 years. And knowing the strategy is not enough to implement
and follow it through successfully. You’ve got to have your mindset right. And that’s a part nobody
ever taught us. It’s also why this podcast is called The Profitable Mindset. If you are interested,
In the Profitable Mindset Academy, where you actually learn all the dozens of coaching skills I
coach with and teach, that opens up this August. You can sign up and get on the wait list for that.
And that is at charlottemsmith.com forward slash coach. There is a free masterclass there on the
foundational. coaching skill that I teach, and you’ll be on the wait list. All right.
So now grab your pen. Let’s finish out strong. We did the first three moves that you’ve got to do
for success the last half of the year in last week’s episode. Today is move four.
And that is the one almost no one wants to do. We want to do it,
but we’re scared or we’re resentful or we just don’t want to, you know, open our eyes to what’s
really going on. And that is a pricing check-in, a pricing audit. So a lot of farmers feel dread
when I say, let’s take a look at your prices. If that’s you, that’s okay. This is going to help. So
before we go any further, finishing out the season, I want you to know that almost,
I’ve never met a farmer where I’ve said, oh, your prices are too high. We need to lower them,
right? Most of us do not charge. enough. So here’s the test to know,
pull up your top two products, three products, and look at what you’re charging.
And now answer this inside your head. If you sold everything you have available this season at that
price, would you be paying yourself a real wage with say 30% left over?
right? 30% of total sales. That’s your profit. Would you be paying yourself a wage? Wage is always
before profit and then have profit left over. So not break even. I’m not saying would you break
even, but would you pay yourself what a farm owner warrants who takes on all the risks and works
the hours we work? And so that’s probably $40 an hour. $50 an hour,
$100 an hour, $200 an hour. Yeah. That’s what my farmers learned to pay themselves inside the
program. No matter where you live as the owner, you pay, you’ve got to pay yourself an owner’s wage
and then have money left over. Now, don’t beat yourself up,
please. If you’ve never been paid by your farm, if you’ve never charged enough to make that work,
that’s okay. That’s where most of us start. But you’ve got to turn it around if you want to be
around for the long run. Because remember, most farmers are out of business by years two through
five because they can’t figure out the cash flow part of it. This is a start.
You may be like most farmers. and not paying yourself yet. And again,
that’s okay. Don’t be yourself up. Or if you are, they often go through my pricing course and they
realize they’re paying themselves a couple bucks an hour or $8 an hour with no money left over,
no profit at the end of the year. But for sure, not even minimum wage or close to a sustainable
wage for you as the farm owner. All right. So let’s look at the reason why your prices are too low.
It’s often a few things. Ask yourself why, if I said now, like go raise your prices right now,
what are all the objections your brain would come up with as to why you can’t? That’s the reason
your brain or your prices are too low. It’s how you’re thinking about it. Most farmers price their
products by looking around at what everyone else is charging. and then the grocery store or other
places like that, and then they decide. But since it’s not based on actual data,
like what your actual costs are, what the labor costs are that you’re putting into it,
and all the different costs, most farmers aren’t even aware of all the costs. they should be
considering, the price is often way too low. And then most farmers never learn the skill I teach of
how to raise your prices without losing customers. And since most farmers’ biggest fear is that
you’ll lose customers if you raise your prices, you keep them low. So that’s kind of a combination,
a set of reasons why farmers’ prices are too low. They think their area won’t bear the price they
need to. to be profitable. I tell you what my farmers live in every state of the United States,
some of the most poverty stricken areas, and they are charging sustainable prices.
that pay them a salary, a living wage, and a farm owner salary.
So it’s not that you live in the wrong area or have the wrong website or can’t find the people or
don’t have the people around you. It is the marketing strategy and the mindset skills.
Once you learn to market in the way I teach, which is relationship-based marketing, people will
learn to prioritize your products in their budget. So even if they’re on a small income,
they will learn how to prioritize buying your farm products because of how you market to them.
And so here’s what I’ve seen over and over throughout the last decade of teaching farmers.
You often learn the skill of, you can learn the skill of raising your prices.
Like, okay, I’m going to raise my price. But knowing how to do it without losing customers.
That means you’ve got to do the mindset work. For instance, my client, Hannah,
when she came to me, she was losing money with every chicken sold. She said it was like giving away
a chicken and a $20 bill. So then she was with me studying what she learned here.
Within months, she implemented what I teach and she raised her chicken prices by 70%.
And she didn’t lose a single customer. She did our pricing worksheets.
She realized she was way undercharging, losing money. She learned how to build a relationship with
them through marketing, raised her price to 70%, did not lose a single customer.
This is what my clients tell us over and over again. Ethan, he’s a farmer in the program. He’ll be
on the podcast in a few weeks sharing how he learned what I teach, relationship-based marketing,
and then was able to double his prices. grew his sales, he has a meat farm, by 80%.
He has the most expensive beef at his farmer’s market and he sells out more than ever.
Annie raised her floral subscription prices 25% and made $30,000 extra without raising more
flowers or working more hours and she did not lose any customers. The pattern is not that they have
magic customers or live in the right area who want to pay tons of money for farm fresh flowers and
meat and dairy products. The pattern is they learned the skill of relationship-based marketing and
then they implemented the mindset coaching and became willing to charge what their product is
worth. It’s all a learned skill. So here’s your audit. Here’s what you got to do. One,
list your top three products and what you currently charge. Two, write down what you would need to
charge for each one to actually pay yourself a wage and have 30% left over.
And three, pick the percentage you’re going to raise your prices by for the last half of the year.
I want to give you a hint here. This is what I know from business consulting, never raise your
prices by less than 20%. All right. This business of raising our prices by 50 cents a…
here and there and working them up over time. It is not helpful. It’s not useful to do it that way.
So I have a rule that I’d never raise my prices by less than 20%. Otherwise, then you’re going to
have to be going back a few months later because you realize you’re still losing money. You never
got ahead. And then you’re going to raise it again. And then people get annoyed by that. So raise
them once a year by at least 20%. At the beginning though,
often when farmers realize they’re undercharging, they often have to raise their prices two or
three times in the first year where they discover this work. That’s okay. You’re probably way
undercharging now. So make sure you also get your mindset on board to support that so that you
raise your prices cleanly. What I mean by that is unapologetically,
you do not apologize to your customers. You do not over-explain. That’s raising your prices
cleanly. No over-explaining, no apologizing, you raise the price. We coach on this a lot in our
weekly coaching calls. For instance, which products should be raised by what percentage? And
exactly how much time do you need to give people? And that because that varies product by product.
So your specific scenario does matter. It’s a different strategy if you do subscriptions where they
signed up for a whole season of milk or meat or flowers in advance. That’s different than bouquets
readily available each week or cut meat by the cut in your farm store and other things.
So in our weekly coaching calls. We sort it out. We look at each farmer’s context and then you will
have a plan for raising your price. So then we dive into writing and editing the price increase
emails so that you retain your customers and they support you in raising your prices. Most of your
customers, when you do it this way, when you’ve built the relationship with them, they won’t even
flinch because you’ve been consistently emailing them about things that interest them.
The coaching skill underneath this move. This is the skill that you need to build.
And that is you got to build your own self-worth applied to money. So many farmers think it
reflects poorly on them if they raise their prices. Like customers are going to be unhappy with
them as a person. But pricing is not a math. problem,
if pricing were a math problem, you’d already have raised your prices. You’d said,
okay, here are the costs, here are the margins, here’s my salary, here’s a 30% profit left over.
You have a spreadsheet, raise the price. If it were a math problem, that’s what you’d do. You’re
not pricing low because the math says you should price low. You’re pricing too low because some
part of you, some part of you may be buried deep inside, does not believe you’re worth charging
more. or your products are worth charging more. Still, many farmers believe that asking for more
money makes them greedy or pushy, or that people are going to reject you.
And again, this is something we coach on every week. So if this is you, that’s normal. It’s normal
to feel this way, but you’ve got to do the mindset coaching to get over it. So this challenge of
thinking we don’t deserve or warrant a fair price, It’s underneath all of our underpriced food
products, our underpriced flowers, our underpriced classes, our underpriced labor.
It’s not a marketing problem. It’s a worthiness problem. And the skill to overcome that is doing
the inner work to charge what your product is worth, even when the woman inside you is afraid
people will leave. Most of them will not. But the only way you find that out is by doing it.
I want to tell you about a meat farmer in the program. She came on a coaching call recently, told
me what she’d just done. She raised her pork prices by 50% because she was losing so much money
otherwise. And she raised her beef prices by 70%. And she sold three quarters of a beef at the new
price the very next week. She sold ribeyes at $41.50 a pound.
Ground beef, $12 a pound. And her exact words to me were they didn’t even question it.
So sit with that for a second. And this is flower farmers too. It’s not just meat. It’s whatever
product you’re raising on your farm in The Profitable Farmer, you learn. how to build a
relationship with them. You learn how to raise your price without losing people so that you’re
happy, they’re happy, and you’ve built a sustainable farm. So sit with that for a second.
This farmer six months ago was telling herself, She would lose customers if she raised her prices.
She was charging so little because she thought that’s all people could afford. It’s all they’d pay.
That same farmer just sold ribeyes at over $40 a pound and the customers handed over the money
without flinting. What changed was not her product. What changed was not her marketing channels.
What changed was her belief about her own worth and therefore her product’s worth.
This is the inner work underneath move four. It’s not about the math. It’s about whether you
believe your prices are worth it because you are worth it. And mindset coaching is often how we
develop that belief because even though it would have been great if we were taught this as a kid,
we weren’t. We were often taught that we have to earn and prove our worth.
Now, this is going to help you finally charge a fair price. audit your top three prices,
decide your move for the rest of the year, pick the date the new price starts. You don’t have to
wait. It can be immediately for a lot of things. Write it down and move on. All right.
Now move number five in our mid-year reset farm marketing plan is we’re going to get your back
half of the year on the wall. What I mean by that is if you’ve been with me a while, you know, I do
a training inside the profitable farmer called the year on the wall. It’s my… of year,
your year-end farm marketing business plan training. And it’s where I show you how to map your
entire year out visually on one big calendar. We’re going to do a mid-year version of that right
now. So here’s what you need. Get a piece of paper or better yet, a big wall calendar.
I just order one on Amazon every year and hang it on the back of the door here in my office because
I can tape it to that, replace it every year. Take a regular paper calendar. You probably got one
sitting around the house and tear it apart and post the next six months on the wall.
July, August, September, October, November, December. Now we’re going to fill it in, but you got to
fill it in in this order. I usually fill it in with little sticky notes at first so that I can move
them around as I change things around. But the first thing you’re going to add on your wall
calendar is your non-negotiables. These are the things you block out your day off every week or at
the very least half a day. For instance, family time, your personal time.
My farmers and the profitable farmer learn to take an hour off every single day for themselves.
That goes on. That’s non-negotiable. It goes on the family or on the calendar first.
Block off your family trips. Block out the kids’ school events. Block out your doctor’s
appointments. Block out the time off you already know you’re taking. Those go on the calendar
first, not last, because if you put them on last, you’ll have scheduling conflicts. All right.
Second thing is calendar your five-day launches that we talked about last week. Put a big star or
something on that week so you know the whole week is devoted to that launch. You’re not going to
plan any other big things that week. And you’ll work backwards from that launch week. Eight weeks
before that, mark the week. that your email list growth push really starts.
You really start doing what we talked about last week. Six weeks before, mark the calendar,
write the email, schedule the focus times in there. I usually do two hours of focus time every day.
And if you’re a farmer in the program, we write those launch emails for you.
So you’ve got to just glance at them quickly, make sure they sound like you and schedule them.
Two weeks before, make sure you’ve finalized your product details and the prices. And then you can
just plan on your launch emails being scheduled and going out that week. All right.
The third thing is you’re going to calendar your other key dates, like the end of the farmer’s
market season, the week you clear out the beds or dig dahlias, fall events.
on the farm, off the farm, or processing dates, slaughter dates, harvest dates,
all the things you’re already committed to, any classes you’re teaching. These go in third. Fourth
is make sure you get that weekly email day scheduled on the calendar. Pick the same day of the week
for organization. Makes it really easy. And that’s the day that you send a marketing email to your
whole list. Mine is Thursday. I love that day. There’s no science to this. There’s a little
science. We talk about that inside the Profitable Farmer in a coaching call. We can look at the
context of your farm and figure out which day of the week would be best for you. But mine’s
Thursday. Either way, though, pick it and put it on the calendar every single week from now to the
end of the year. When you look at this whole calendar laid out this way, two things happen.
One, you can see exactly where the back half is going to get overly crowded. So you can plan for it
now instead of being surprised by it. And two, you can see whether you’ve actually scheduled the
things that drive sales and make money or whether you’ve got just…
enough money making things and you just hope they happen because you’re off reacting to all the
unplanned things. So seeing your whole calendar laid out that way, how I do it in my office is it’s
on the wall where I can see it. So if someone asks me to speak at an event or something,
can I do this or that? I can glance at my calendar immediately and know not just that day,
but the weeks around it if I’ve got space to do that. So I love having my year on a wall.
Now, the mindset coaching skill underneath this move is the skill of honoring you in the future,
having your own back, as I call it. Most farmers I work with are committed to honoring the demands
in front of them right now, like the cow that got out or the cow that needs milked or the flowers
that need weeded or deadheaded or the customer who needs a delivery or an email from the processor.
or the fence that needs fixing. They sacrifice everything for those most urgent things.
But the skill most farmers haven’t learned is the planning I teach in the Master Your Time,
Master Your Life time management program. Your life will calm down. Your farm life will calm down
when you learn the skill of making sure interruptions are handled and don’t become a problem.
In that training, you also learn to honor future you, the you in the future that wants you to work
on building a profitable farm today. There’s a version of you six months from now who wants you to
do this work now, today, and we want to honor her. If you don’t learn to honor yourself in the
future and honor your plans, and instead you just react to everything that everyone else wants or
needs, you’ll never build a profitable farm, no matter how small or how big your farm is.
And when you learn this, what happens is the current emergencies and interruptions stop happening
or they become very rare and totally manageable. When you put your day off on the calendar in
October and you protect it the same way you’d protect a doctor’s appointment, for instance,
you’re honoring your future self. You’re saying, the woman I am in October deserves a day off.
as much as the woman I am today. And I’m going to take care of her in the future. I’m going to take
care of myself in October. scheduling it today and honoring it. When you write an email in the week
you said you would write it and send it, even when 10 other urgent things are pulling at you,
that’s you honoring you in the future and your farm. You’re saying the version of me who’s selling
all my Thanksgiving turkeys in that one week in September deserves me today who actually does the
work I said I do. All right. September needs me today to do this thing that I committed to.
And yes, that is a learnable and life-changing skill we work on at the very beginning of the
profitable pharma. Your first week inside, you learned this skill. You also learn it in the
Profitable Mindset Academy. The reason most plans die is not that the plan was bad.
It’s that the person we were when we made the plan last January did it,
but then we treat ourselves poorly. Later, we don’t honor the commitments we made last week,
last month, last January. We override the plan we made then. And then we wonder why we never make
progress. So this skill is crucial. It’s treating your future self, future you,
like she matters as much as the cow that got out matters. The skill is building enough self-trust
that when you put something on the calendar now, you know you will do it in the future. This is the
power of coaching inside the Profitable Mindset Academy. You learn to become the person who does
not procrastinate. You become a person who does what she says she’s going to do when she says she’s
going to do it. And the constant interruptions have calmed down because you learned how to calendar
in the way I teach. All right. Let me share a personal example, because I had to live this before I
could teach it. And now I know it’s learnable and doable. A few years ago, I decided I was going to
go to Italy for two weeks. I had never been away from the farm for two weeks.
And so my brain… wanted to talk me out of it and say, there’s a hundred reasons I can’t go.
The animals, the customers, the deliveries, the chaos that would happen while I was gone with
employees who would be faced with emergencies they couldn’t handle. Every part of that present self
that wanted to go to Italy knew and had all these reasons I couldn’t do it.
I should skip the trip, but I didn’t. I committed to my future self. I committed to the future
version of me who would be standing in Italy a year later. I treated her like she mattered.
What that means is I spent the whole year before making sure my employees were trained and they had
backup help and they could handle any possible problem that might come up while I was gone. I got
all the systems in place.
could go away for two weeks. And I did. I went. I didn’t check email. I didn’t manage anything.
The farm did not fall apart. It thrived. The cows kept giving milk.
The world kept turning. And the version of me who came back from that trip was so different than
the one who left and very different than the person the year before. I learned how to honor who I
wanted to become in the future. like in a month, six months, a year, by doing the work today that
actually lets me live the life that I was dreaming of. And again,
if you don’t know how to do this now, that’s okay. Nobody does. We aren’t taught this. It is a
skill we have to learn. And it’s what we learn deeply once and for all inside Profitable Mindset
Academy, how to act now in a way that serves us in the future, us,
our family. our farms in the future and do it with grace and lots of time and space and
accomplishment, not rushing or overworking. All right, that’s action five. Get the rest of your
year on your calendar and become the woman who follows through on that.
Move number six is short, and yet it’s the most important one, and that is to put your one day off
a week back on the calendar. I know some of you may have never taken a day off or you stopped
taking it in May when the workload exploded. I get it. I lived that for years on my farm,
seven days a week, year round until I was so burned out. I couldn’t see the point of any of it.
I thought, why am I doing this? Is this all there is to life? I get up, I work my tail off, take
care of the kids, go to bed and wake up, do it all over again, seven days a week. So here’s the
truth. And I have to keep talking about this because it often goes against everything we were
raised to believe. You won’t make any more money in the back half of the year by working seven days
a week. You will make more money by being rested, clear,
focused human being who can think strategically. And be intentional about planning one day at a
time. In the very beginning of our farms, the work and the payoff is linear.
You raise a flower, you sell a flower, you make money. You raise a chicken, you sell a chicken,
you make money. That only works up till about $10,000 or $20,000 on your farm.
And then you have to work differently. It does not. More work does not equal more money once you
pass that point. So if you can’t learn how to pay yourself today on your farm with a day off,
there’s no future place where there will be a day off for you. So this is why I keep preaching it.
And the farmers in the Profitable Farmer program learn to take time for themselves daily and a
weekly day off. or two weekends off and it’s life-changing for them.
They can’t believe it happened. So it is possible. It is a learned skill. So just know this,
the farmers in my program who hit the biggest numbers, the most sales and keeping the most money
are not the ones working the most hours. It doesn’t work that way. They’re the ones who learn to
market strategically. In the way I teach, they manage their minds. They take off their one day a
week. They take off their hour every single day of personal time where they’re doing absolutely
nothing, not folding laundry, not doing dishes in the personal time, not weeding the flower beds in
the personal time, but just personal time every day, no matter what. That one day off and that
personal time every day is what lets them come back on Monday or the beginning of the next week
with a brain that works and a farm that starts paying you. So today,
last task here is pick the day off that works best for you. It can vary during the week if it
happens, if it needs to. Sundays was the day I wanted to take off. I didn’t want any people at the
farm picking up. product or doing anything. I didn’t want any contractors here. I just wanted the
employees that were the bare necessity to get the chores done. So maybe some of you,
it’s a Monday, Tuesday, whatever day, it doesn’t even matter. Just put it on the calendar for every
week through the end of the year, and then treat it like you would a really important doctor’s
appointment with yourself. You wouldn’t cancel that doctor’s appointment. You waited six months to
get into the specialist. because someone else needed something. So don’t cancel that appointment
for yourself either. And then what you do on that day is yours. Like sit on the porch,
take a walk, read a magazine. scene. Doesn’t have to be anything expensive or fancy, but just don’t
work and don’t think about work. So know that the coaching,
the mindset coaching skill underneath this move is also very crucial because you won’t take your
day off if you don’t work on this. And this is the skill. What it is,
is the belief that you are worth resting, that you are worthy of taking a day off.
without proving it, without proving that you deserve it, or without proving that you earned it.
You’re worthy of taking a day off just because. And the other belief,
the other mindset skill that we get to through coaching is that you believe resting a day off is
purposeful. And it is actually productive,
not wasteful. or something that only comes after you have proved your productivity.
No, we’ve got to get away from that and believe resting is purposeful and productive in and of
itself. This is the deepest one of all of them, and it’s what makes your farm work. Most of the
women I coach don’t believe at first, when I first meet them at the core of who they are,
that they deserve a day off unless they’ve earned it or approved it. They believe if they aren’t
producing, they aren’t worth resting. We often aren’t even aware that we believe that stopping is
selfish or lazy or wrong, but it comes through the coaching questions I asked where they get down
to the underneath. deep inside and they’re like, oh, well, the reason I keep working is that I
think I have to prove something first or I have to earn it. And these beliefs didn’t come out of
nowhere. It came from how most of us were raised. It came from a culture that taught women
especially, that our worth is in our productivity and usefulness, how good of care we take of our
house, our kids, our family, ourselves, our yards, everyone else in the community, our church,
wherever it is. We have to give and give and give, and only then do we earn a rest.
It came from that kind of upbringing. It came from all these small messages over the course of our
lives that said we have to keep working, keep producing, keep proving your worth. If you have time
to Lean, you have time to clean is what they used to say in the restaurant business. So my dad
would always say, if you have time to rest, then you’re not working hard enough. So just know that,
that we were raised this way and we’ve got to shift our belief if we want a profitable farm.
The belief too that we are worth resting. I am worth resting, not because I earned it.
So just know that we get to rest because we exist, because we are a person,
not a machine. And resting does have a purpose. We will be more efficient in the week following,
knowing after that day off, and also we’re more efficient knowing a rest is coming every day.
When you have your hour of personal time every afternoon, and you know that’s coming where you’re
doing absolutely nothing. And you will learn more about that inside our coaching program.
So, but the point is that your mind has stopped and your body has stopped.
The worry has stopped. When you have that kind of break for one hour a day, you are more efficient
and you get more work done in the hours leading up to that rest. So skipping the rest makes you
less productive. Making a rest time, an hour a day. And at least one day off a week makes you more
efficient and more productive. So the skill here is unwinding, unwiring the belief that says you
have to earn it and practicing the new belief that says you are inherently worth a rest.
And there is no evidence that says we aren’t worth resting. We think, oh yeah,
I have to prove that I’ve earned a rest. I have to get so much done before I can rest. No, there’s
no evidence that says that is a world law or life law or universal law, right? We turn this around
for women in our coaching program once and for all. And it is so wonderful to hear your stories
about finally caring for yourself. Here’s what happens. Autoimmune diseases go away in my program.
So many women report that. that their stress reduces drastically.
They make more money. They say, all I did is a time management program. I learned how to manage my
time and take a day off and take an hour off every day. And I’m making far more money. This is what
happens when you learn to treat yourself as a human being worth,
worthy of rest. One of my clients, you’ve heard her on the podcast. She’s a farmer. She’s a mom.
She’s a widow. She lost her husband a couple of years ago. She raised her hand on a recent coaching
call and needed my help. She said, Because she felt overwhelmed, exhausted,
and just couldn’t seem to make herself do anything. And the garden wasn’t in yet. The emails
weren’t written. She felt behind on everything. So I coached her for a little bit. It didn’t take
very long. And here’s what we got to. Underneath all of her feeling behind was a story she was
telling herself. that she should be able to push through and do it all.
She should still be getting all her work done, that she shouldn’t be napping or hiding to cry,
even though that’s what her body actually needed. And the shift happened in one sentence.
I asked her, what would happen if you acknowledge that this is a hard week and that’s okay to not
be at full capacity? And she said, well, I don’t feel guilty.
about not getting anything else done because I know I can’t do it right now. That right there,
because of our coaching call, she learned to give herself permission to give herself what her mind
and body actually needed without thinking she had to earn it. And without thinking she had to
finish the to-do list first or prove she’d been productive enough to deserve a nap,
she just got to do it. That’s the work underneath move six. The day off is not really about Sunday.
The day off is the once a week practice of giving yourself permission to be a person before you’re
a producer. And the women who can do that every week for the rest of their lives are the women who
don’t burn out, who don’t get sick or rarely get sick, who make more money than ever,
keep more money than ever, don’t get buried by their farms. The day off isn’t about scheduling.
It’s about whether you believe at the core of who you are, that you are worthy of at least one day
off a week and one hour every day of pure rest in the middle of the day, just because you exist.
All right. So that’s it. Pick a day, put it on the calendar every single week for the rest of the
year and move on. All right. So before we wrap, let’s just do a quick numbers gut check.
Because data is what makes the rest of the plan work. So I want you to look at three numbers right
now with zero judgment. These numbers aren’t a report card. They aren’t a judgment of you.
They’re a flashlight for you to shine the light on and be aware. Number one,
how many email subscribers do you have today versus January? Write down the growth.
Okay, so if you had 100 in January and you have 200 now, the growth is 100. You’re up 100,
whatever numbers those are. Or if you’re the same, if you have 100 in January and you have 50 now,
you’re down 50. Or if you’re 100 then, 100. Now it’s the same. Okay. Number two,
how much have you sold so far this year? Combine every, all the sales combined, like the
agritourism, any consulting you do, plus all your products. And how does that compare to your goal
you set in December? Write down both numbers and the gap if you,
if there is one. So if December you said you wanted. For the sake of just an even number,
you wanted $100,000 in the year and you’re at $200,000 or $20,000 in sales right now.
Write that down. So you know that for the year, I wanted $100,000. Six months in,
I’m at this much. Here’s the gap. Number three is how many customers have you served this season?
Like what is your weekly sales, sales average? Okay, so for me on my farm,
I averaged 100 customers a week at $3,000 a week.
All right, so just make it really simple like that. Even if you’ve got multiple products,
just make it simple and guess, do your best guess. How many people have you served?
And what is your weekly average sales number versus last year at this time?
And write down that comparison. So June of 26 versus June of 25. That’s it.
Those three numbers, they’re going to tell you where to put your energy. Here’s how. If your email
list has barely grown, then move number three we talked about last episode is urgent.
If your sales are behind where you predicted or set your goal in January,
then move two last episode becomes urgent. If your customer count dropped,
your pricing audit and your launch matter even more. Okay.
So make decisions from the data, not from stress and panic.
Be logical. We need to tap into our logical brain to build a profitable farm. All right.
And here’s the most important thing about looking at your numbers. None of them mean anything about
you as a… if the number has gone up or down or stayed the same, it is not a judgment on whether
you are smart or capable or worthy or doing a good enough job, period. It’s just simply an
indicator of where to put your energy next. Okay. And the skill underneath looking at your numbers,
the mindset skill. is being able to look at them without making them mean something negative about
who you are. That’s harder than the math. Remember that. That’s why we have a whole program just on
learning coaching skills and getting coached every week because the mindset coaching skills are
more important than anything. You will not make money. You will not pay yourself. You won’t make a
profit if you don’t have your mindset in order. All right, let’s bring this home.
I’ve been teaching farm marketing for over a decade, for 13 years now. I’ve watched thousands of
farmers go through the six moves I just gave you in the last two episodes. Here’s the pattern I
noticed. The farmers who succeed are not the ones who learn the most marketing tactics and
strategies.
They aren’t those. The farmers who succeed. are the ones who learned how to coach themselves
through the moments when their brain tried to talk them out of doing the thing,
the marketing, the price increase, the price audit. That is the game. Mindset skills,
mindset coaching, a useful, productive mindset, which takes learning.
It takes focus. It takes intentional practice every day. That is the game. The strategy is the easy
part. I teach you that. in easy step-by-step videos, the skill of executing it,
choosing and staying chosen, feeling discomfort without distracting yourself with scrolling or
overeating or over Facebooking or whatever it might be, asking without apologizing,
honoring future you who has a goal she wants to be at in six or 12 months,
believing you’re worth resting, looking at your numbers without making them mean something about
you. This is the work. Most farmers don’t finish strong. Most farmers go out of business within two
to five years. Like 98%, USDA studies showed 98% of new farmers are out of business within two to
five years because they don’t manage their mindset. Not because they’re lazy.
Goodness knows none of us as farmers are lazy. Not because they’re not smart.
but because nobody taught them these skills. So again, I’m spending the next year teaching these
skills to the women who want them in the Profitable Mindset Academy. It’s a 12-month coaching
program where you learn the dozens of coaching skills that I teach and that I use every week,
coaching my clients and my clients learn to coach themselves. It’ll change every area of your life,
your marriage, your health, your money, your relationships, the way you feel in your own skin.
your mood, and yes, your farm. These are all the skills I’ve spent 25 years learning,
becoming skilled at, teaching for a decade now. They’re the ones my clients have used to heal their
autoimmune disease, save their marriage, grow their bank account, all the things,
and they’re learnable. So be sure you’re on the list if you’re interested in that. You can go to
charlottemsmith.com forward slash coach and sign up for, to get the short video teaching one of
the foundational skills. And you’ll be on the wait list because the Academy opens this summer.
Oh my goodness. It’s going to be life-changing. All right. So this is your halftime, all six moves
across both episodes, 307, 308. And last week we went through the first three steps.
Today we started with number four, the pricing audit, the skill of self-worth applied to money.
Step five was get your six months on the wall and honor your future self.
And move number six is put your one day off a week back on the calendar and believe you’re worthy
of resting without proving that you deserve it or have earned it. Okay.
You’re not behind in any way that matters. You are just halfway through the year. You’re still
completely in control of making it end any way you want. The farmers who finish strong are the ones
who use this time in July to intentionally reset on purpose and to learn the coaching skills
underneath to do the reset. All right, that’s it. Take care. I can’t wait to see you in our next
episode.
