Profitable Mindset

Cheaper farm down the road sinking your sales? It's not your prices. It's a skill gap, and it's fixable. In the final episode of our 4-part farm marketing foundation series, Charlotte breaks down exactly how to get customers to drive out of their way to a rural farm, keep them coming back season after season, and stop fearing the cheaper competition. You'll hear how one client, Valerie in Pennsylvania, 10x'd her farm stand sales in six months, with five other farm stands, six weekly farmers markets, and cheaper butcher shops all surrounding her, and a farm building you can't even see from the road. Inside this episode: Why relationship (not price) is what makes someone drive past five cheaper farms to get to yours The real reason customers don't come back after the first sale How to build your email list at community events, pop-ups, and partnerships Off-season email strategy that keeps customers loyal year after year How far in advance to market wedding flowers, CSAs, and seasonal products The 5-day launch framework that has farmers selling out in one week This is the long-game foundation that has farmers in the Profitable Farmer program selling out, charging their worth, and serving customers for an average of five years. If you're a farmer wondering why people aren't finding you, or why they're not coming back, this is the episode that ties the whole marketing foundation together.

FREE Two Day Event: Farm Marketing Week - June 2026 Sign Up HERE Click HERE and Let's Meet! Chat with us to see if The Profitable Farmer can break you out of marketing misery. You sell out every market. Customers rave. So why can't you pay yourself? If you've built something real on your farm and the math still isn't adding up, this episode is for you. Farm marketing coach Charlotte Smith breaks down the single shift that separates farms that sell out and stay broke from farms that sell out and finally turn a profit. Spoiler: it's not your prices. It's not your photos. It's not "pasture-raised" or "organic" or your logo. It's branding — and not the kind you think. In this episode: The real reason hardworking farms can't pay the farmer Why labels and farm practices don't sell (and what does) What branding actually means (it's not visual identity) How to stop competing on price The "Power of One" focus shift that fast-tracks profitability 🌱 FREE TRAINING Farm Marketing Week (free live online event): charlottemsmith.com/masterclass 🎧 LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE APP Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere podcasts are streamed. 📩 STAY CONNECTED Website: charlottemsmith.com

FREE Two Day Event: Farm Marketing Week - June 2026 Sign Up HERE Does Email Marketing Actually Work for Farms — and Why Are My Emails Going to the Promotions Folder? Email marketing is the most powerful tool a farm has — when it's done right. This episode covers why email outperforms every other platform, why your emails might be sitting unread in the promotions folder, and exactly what to send your list once you have one. Why is email marketing more effective than social media for farms? Email marketing is estimated to be thousands of times more effective than other marketing platforms because subscribers have given explicit permission to be contacted, there's no algorithm filtering your message, and you own the list. Social media is where people scroll. Email is where people buy. When someone is ready to make a purchasing decision, they go to their inbox, because that's where trust lives. Why are my farm emails going to the promotions folder? Emails go to the promotions folder for two main reasons: deliverability problems (account setup, sending patterns, list hygiene) and weak subject lines that don't earn the open. Both are skill gaps, not signs that email marketing doesn't work. Subject lines are the single most fixable variable. They need to feel personal, specific, curious, or directly tied to a problem your reader has right now. Generic subject lines like "Farm Update" get ignored every time. How do you write farm email subject lines that actually get opened? Write subject lines that sound like a friend texting you, not a marketer broadcasting an announcement. Think about your own inbox: you open emails that feel personal, that hit on something you care about, or that promise to solve a real problem. Subject lines like "The 5:30 freezer moment" outperform "Farm Update" because they're specific to a real situation your customer experiences. How do you build a farm email list from scratch? Build your list through three channels: a lead magnet on your website, social media posts that funnel people to your list, and in-person opportunities like library workshops, garden clubs, and partnerships with local wellness businesses. A great example: Charlotte's student Cassie built "5 High-Protein Dinners to Simplify Your Life." Five recipes featuring her ground beef, with a meal plan and her phone number on the last page. Made in Canva in an afternoon. Other farmers asked her for the file before she finished showing it. What should farmers email their customers about? Email about things your customers actually care about: their lives, problems, and goals. Not just what's available this week. Pure transactional emails ("Eggs available, $6/dozen") feel like a stranger asking for money. Story-based emails build relationship. Charlotte once sold out of London broil she didn't know what to do with by sending one email with a recipe and the story of how she figured it out. Relationship comes first; the sale follows naturally. How often should farmers email their customers? More often than you think. At least weekly during selling seasons, and consistently year-round to stay top of mind. A cold list is hard to sell to. The goal is for customers to see your name in their inbox and feel something positive. Not every email is a pitch. Some are stories, some are tips, some are farm updates, and the rhythm matters more than the perfection. Can someone write farm marketing emails for me? Short answer: yes. For the June 2026 cohort of the Profitable Farmer Marketing program, full-pay students get a private 2.5-hour session with Charlotte's operations lead, Rebecca, who builds an entire year of marketing assets specifically for their farm. This includes the lead magnet, welcome sequence, weekly emails laid out across the year, seasonal launch emails, and matching social posts (all customized to your customer interview language). The first farmer who tested this cried when she saw it. This bonus is only available for full-pay June 2026 enrollment; the next opportunity is October. Resources mentioned in this episode: Free email marketing course for farmers - charlottemsmith.com/free-email-course Profitable Farmer Marketing program — June 2026 cohort opens with 'The Power of One' welcome workshop on Tuesday, June 23rd. Full-pay enrollment includes the done-for-you year-of-marketing-assets bonus. Sign up at charlottemsmith.com/masterclass FAQ Q: What email platform should farmers use? Kit (formerly ConvertKit) and MailerLite both have free tiers under 1,000 subscribers and work well for farms. Pick one and learn it well rather than switching tools. Q: How long should a farm marketing email be? Long enough to tell the story, short enough that nothing extra survives. Most strong farm emails land between 200 and 500 words. Q: Will my customers unsubscribe if I email weekly? Some will, and that's fine — those weren't your customers anyway. The right people will look forward to your emails. Q: Do I need to write a year of emails before I start? No. Start with one email a week. The discipline matters more than the inventory. Q: How do I avoid sounding salesy in my emails? Read every email out loud before sending. If you wouldn't say it to a friend at your kitchen table, rewrite it. Connect with Charlotte Sign up for Farm Marketing Week at charlottemsmith.com/masterclass. Subscribe and Review Subscribe to The Profitable Mindset Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And consider leaving a review. Your reviews help other farmers find this work. Click HERE and Let's Meet! Chat with us to see if The Profitable Farmer can break you out of marketing misery.

FREE Two Day Event: The Farm Marketing Fix - June 2026 Sign Up HERE Where Do I Start With Farm Marketing When I Have No Customers and No Idea What I'm Doing? If you're a new farmer wondering where to begin with marketing, this episode walks through the exact starting point Charlotte has used with thousands of farmers across the U.S. and 15 countries. No theory — just the four foundational steps in the order they actually work. Where should a new farmer start with marketing? Start by writing down every person you know who might be interested in what you sell. That list is the seed of your email list, and your email list is what builds a profitable farm. Most new farmers think they need a logo, a brand, a Facebook page, or a fancy website before they can start. They don't. The first move is identifying the people in your existing life who eat eggs, buy flowers, or care about pasture-raised meat — and that almost always starts with mom, sister, neighbor, cousin. Every farmer starts from zero. That list is your starting point. Should farmers build a website before using social media? Yes — your website should come before social media because Facebook and Instagram are designed to keep people scrolling, not to help you make money. Social media algorithms show your posts to a small fraction of your followers (often less than 5%), and you don't own that audience. A website works for you 24/7 and gets found by new customers searching Google. Social media should funnel people to your website, not replace it. Why is email marketing better than social media for farms? Email marketing outperforms social media by thousands of times because subscribers have given you permission to reach them directly, with no algorithm in the way. When someone is on your email list, they've said yes to hearing from you. There's no platform deciding whether your message gets seen. Email is also where people make purchasing decisions — social media is where they scroll. You also own your email list; you don't own your Facebook following. What is the correct order to set up farm marketing? The four foundational steps, in order: (1) write your list of people who might be interested, (2) identify your brand by interviewing customers, (3) build a website designed to sell, (4) email your list consistently. Skipping ahead to social media or paid ads before this foundation is in place is the most common reason farm marketing doesn't work. Build the foundation; everything else feeds into it. What are the stages of farm business growth? Charlotte teaches eight stages every farm moves through: Seed, Sprout, Roots, Bloom, Harvest, Orchard, Estate, and Legacy. Where you are determines what work matters most. Seed-stage farmers ($0 in sales) need to decide it's a business and pick one focus product. Sprout farmers ($1K–$10K) need consistency — one weekly email, one sales channel, one anchor product for 90 days. The most expensive mistake is a Sprout-stage farmer trying to solve a Harvest-stage problem. How can farmers learn marketing without making expensive mistakes? The fastest way is to follow a proven, sequenced path rather than piecing things together from free YouTube videos and conflicting advice. Charlotte's Profitable Farmer Marketing program enrolls twice a year, in June and October, and teaches the exact sequence in this episode with weekly coaching, a private community, and (new for June 2026) a done-for-you marketing plan built privately for full-pay students. Resources mentioned in this episode: Farmer website template (Squarespace): charlottemsmith.com/website Free email marketing course for farmers: charlottemsmith.com/free-email-course The Profitable Farmer Marketing program — opens June 2026. Welcome workshop is Tuesday, June 23rd. Sign up at charlottemsmith.com/mastery FAQ: Q: How many people should be on my starting list? Ten people is fine. Two hundred is fine. The number doesn't matter — what matters is that you start one and add to it consistently. Q: Do I need a logo before I launch my farm business? No. A logo is not a brand, and you can launch without one. Your brand is who you help and how you help them — that comes from customer interviews, not a designer. Q: How long does it take to build a profitable farm using this approach? Most students inside the Profitable Farmer Marketing program make their investment back within 90 days. Some do it in two weeks. The timeline depends on how consistently you do the foundational work. Q: Can I just use Facebook instead of a website? No. Facebook controls who sees your posts, you don't own your following, and the platform isn't designed to convert visitors into buyers. A website does all three. Q: What if I'm too rural for online marketing to work? Distance isn't the obstacle — relationship is the opportunity. Charlotte's clients regularly have customers drive 60–90 minutes past cheaper options to buy from them, because their brand is clear. Connect with Charlotte Sign up for Farm Marketing Week at charlottemsmith.com/masterclass. Subscribe and Review Subscribe to The Profitable Mindset Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And consider leaving a review. Your reviews help other farmers find this work. Click HERE and Let's Meet! Chat with us to see if The Profitable Farmer can break you out of marketing misery.

FREE Guide: The month-by-month roadmap to build your farm business from scratch. Grab it HERE This is the episode where it gets real. Not Instagram real. Actually real. Hayden's MRI confirmed a cartilage tear in her wrist. Recovery is months out, surgery is possible, and she can barely make bouquets one-handed. She's been in a depression. Her corporate job is doing layoffs and she doesn't know week to week if she still has one. She wanted to quit. And then she opened an email and found out she'd won a $15,000 grant from Ag West Farm Credit — the one she spent days applying for back in March and never thought she'd get. She was crying when she read it. That grant is going toward a greenhouse, season extension supplies, and, for the first time, hired help. On the sales side, the four-week CSA subscription is done. Pre-selling $1,200 back in spring funded her startup costs and meant she didn't have to market during the busiest harvest weeks. The flowers were already spoken for. But pickup logistics were a mess. Friends texted asking for exceptions. She ended up delivering some bouquets herself. Next year she wants a community drop point and stricter boundaries. The U-pick events were the biggest learning of the summer. Her practice run with 20 friends revealed that people were scared to pick the flowers, cut stems three inches long, and needed way more upfront education than she expected. The paid events went better until a bachelorette party of 10 bought tickets to her intimate sip-and-snip evening. They showed up 15 minutes late from a winery. Lesson learned: group bookings get a private event option with a minimum price. The two biggest fails? She didn't get succession planting done, which meant spending $200 at Wilco on plant starts right before the U-picks so the field didn't look empty. And she hasn't tracked a single harvest, expense hour, or bloom count all season. No system, no clipboard, no data. She knows it'll cost her in planning next year. The biggest strategic shift: she's moving away from summer bouquet sales entirely. Next year she wants to focus on early spring flowers with season extension, run the CSA from March through Mother's Day, and spend summer on higher-profit events instead of sweating through harvests in 90-degree heat while working 12-hour corporate shifts. Life is 50-50. This episode is proof. Click HERE and Let's Meet! Chat with us to see if The Profitable Farmer can break you out of marketing misery.

FREE Guide: The month-by-month roadmap to build your farm business from scratch. Grab it HERE Hayden's four months into building Big Oak Flower Farm and she's in that weird middle spot — wishing she was selling more while intentionally holding back because she doesn't have enough flowers yet. Sound familiar to anyone starting out? The free queer wildflower walk she organized at Champoeg State Park? Twenty people showed up, almost 100 people and businesses shared it on Instagram, and one attendee turned out to be a tourism marketing director who called her event email "marketing gold." She didn't spend a dime on advertising. She just offered something free that her ideal customers actually wanted, then asked local businesses to share it. Every single one said yes. She won a $900 grant from Wine Country Pride to fund supplies for her U-pick events — snips, vases, signage, all the stuff that adds up way faster than you'd think. And even though she didn't get the money just to learn, the grant application process forced her to budget down to the cost of parking signs and scissors. That kind of planning pays off whether you get funded or not. On the sales side, she's at $1,000 in pre-sold subscriptions, a couple of walk-up bouquet sales, her first bulk "bucket of blooms" order for a baby shower, and a $40 custom bouquet she sold at a party after someone saw the flowers she'd brought as a gift. She's also dropping bouquets at local coffee shops with her business card — something that terrified her a month ago and now feels natural. The real talk this episode: $1,300 for farm insurance as a first-year business (and why you need it before your first event), using Wave for free accounting, and why she's finally turning to AI to help her figure out what to actually say in her marketing emails instead of staring at a blank screen. Click HERE and Let's Meet! Chat with us to see if The Profitable Farmer can break you out of marketing misery.

FREE Guide: The month-by-month roadmap to build your farm business from scratch. Grab it HERE I can look out my kitchen window and see Hayden's flower farm taking shape. She lives in a little cottage right on our family property, and I've had a front-row seat to every breakthrough and every meltdown. Hayden is 32. She moved back to the family farm after years of city life because — as she puts it — "it's so much more fulfilling to wake up and go outside and see things growing than there is at any corporate job, no matter how cushy it is." But the practical side of her kept saying no. She grew up watching how hard farming is. She's got good health insurance. She sits at a desk. Why would she go do that all over again? Because the dream wouldn't leave her alone. Sound familiar? In this episode, you'll hear the story behind the name "Big Oak Flower Farm" — it came from her childhood, when she and her cousins would call each other up and say "meet at the big oak in an hour" or "let's race to the big oak." When that name hit her in the car one day, she knew it was right. You'll hear her scrappy funding strategy: $500 saved from working twice a month on a neighbor's farm, driving her old pickup to get $10 loads of compost from the city waste treatment facility, and doing absolutely everything herself. We dig into three sales models she's weighing — CSA subscriptions for early cash flow, a little farm store for walk-up sales, and you-pick events (she's dreaming of "sunset in the flower field" evenings). And you'll hear me pushing back in real time on her decision to NOT start an email list yet. No formal training. No business degree. No trust fund. Just a woman figuring it out. If she can do it, so can you. Click HERE and Let's Meet! Chat with us to see if The Profitable Farmer can break you out of marketing misery.