From Stuck to Scaling: 3 Mindset Hacks Every Entrepreneur Needs
I’m diving deep into the mindsets and energetics that are absolutely critical for long-term business success on social media.
Sure, strategies and hacks are helpful, but let’s face it—what really makes or breaks your business is your mindset. After 14 years in the game, I’m sharing key lessons I wish I had known when I started, and the mindset practices you’ll want to implement right now.
Whether you're just starting or feeling stuck, this episode will help you shift your thinking and energy to hit that next level of success.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
[02:29] Mindset #1: Embrace Experimentation & Testing: Growing a business means being willing to experiment. Even after 14 years, I’m constantly testing things out. It's not just something you do at the beginning—it’s a lifelong practice.
[06:19] Avoid Perfectionism: One of the biggest mindset shifts I had to make was letting go of perfectionism. I started to get curious about what was working instead of obsessing over getting it right. Pay attention to your analytics, like on Instagram, and use those insights to refine your approach.
[09:33] Mindset #2: Create Your Own Metrics of Success: Success isn’t defined by likes and follows. I share how you can set your own metrics for success—metrics that you can actually control. For me, this looks like posting consistently without overthinking or regularly creating specific types of content.
[12:57] Mindset #3: Play the Long Game: Success doesn’t happen overnight, and that’s okay. I talk about why resilience is crucial and how important it is to stay committed to your goals, even when things don’t go your way. Building a business, brand, and audience takes time.
[15:35] Stay Consistent, Even When Growth Feels Slow: I get real about my own Instagram journey, where follower growth was painfully slow. But staying consistent was the key to hitting breakthrough moments that attracted my ideal clients.
[17:53] Convert Your Current Audience: Instead of always chasing growth, I share why it’s essential to focus on converting the audience you already have by refining your messaging and giving them the nudge they need to take action.
PS: I’m excited to announce that I’m opening up three spots for private mentorship! If you’re interested in working with me 1:1, apply for a free Instagram breakthrough session where we’ll talk about your business, your goals, and how I can support you in fast-tracking your success.
Links mentioned in this episode…
Apply for a complimentary IG breakthrough call! - or DM me the word APPLY on Instagram and you’ll get the link.
REELS FOR BUSINESS 3 DAY WORKSHOP REPLAY: If you missed my recent live workshop on creating Instagram Reels, don’t worry! You can still get access to the replay. REGISTER HERE AND WE’LL EMAIL YOU THE REPLAY FROM ALL 3 DAYS!,
Want to dive deeper into using AI for marketing? Check out my four-part mini-series and my interview with AI coach Juan Galan, one of the most popular episodes to date!
JOIN HOT REELS: The 12-Month Instagram Content Lab
An intimate, strategy-packed mentorship for established business owners ready to create killer content that stops the scroll, grows your following and attracts your dreamboat clients (even if you have no idea what to post and feel like you’re always throwing spaghetti at the wall!)
FREE guide to Monetize Your IG: Seven Simple and Proven Ways to Finally Make Money on Instagram
Apply for your FREE Instagram Breakthrough Call with Elizabeth
Quote
[07:12] "It's not just about posting content; it's about building relationships. When you shift your focus from numbers to connections, everything changes."
TRANSCRIPT
S3 Ep29 - From Stuck to Scaling: 3 Mindset Hacks Every Entrepreneur Needs
00:00
I love teaching you tips, hacks, and strategies to grow your business on social media, but at the end of the day, not even the best thought out strategy will work for you in the long term if your mental game is not sound.
00:16
So today we're going to explore the mindsets and energetics that are required to get you from where you are now to where you want to be. These are the lessons I wish I would have known 14 years ago when I first started my business and six years ago when I really started to show up consistently every day posting on social media for my business and brands. I cannot wait to share this with you. Let's go.
00:45
Welcome to Strut It, a podcast about creating bold visibility on social media with zero apologies. I'm Elizabeth Marberry, your host and Instagram marketing coach. I help small business owners get seen on Instagram and monetize their offers so they can make more money doing their sole-led work. If you're tired of spinning your wheels on Instagram and you're seeking simple, proven Instagram marketing strategies that actually work,
01:13
You're in the right place. Let's dive in.
01:24
Welcome back to Strut It. I am so thrilled that you are here.
01:28
Thank you for taking care of you and investing in your knowledge so you can grow your business with more ease and joy. Today's episode is so special because I absolutely love teaching tools and strategies and things you can go implement. But at the end of the day, what I'm honestly most passionate about is the mindset and energetics behind why we do what we do.
01:58
Why are some people successful and some people aren't in terms of achieving whatever business goal they have or vision, I'm always so curious about that. And at the end of the day, it always comes back to mindset and energetics. Essentially how you are thinking and your belief systems about what's possible for you. And this is the work that I really do a lot
02:27
clients because
02:29
The people who come work with me privately typically already have a very established business, but they've kind of hit a wall, whether that's a revenue wall that they've hit or they're doing all the things and they're still not growing their Instagram. They're still not attracting new leads on social media. They're still not making the money they want in their business. And usually when we look under the hood, yes, there's some strategic pieces.
02:59
some, you know, let's tighten up the marketing or let's refine your sales process. But really, ultimately what it comes down to many times is mindset. And I want to be honest with you, this is something that I continue to always work on within myself. This is not something that you learn once and you're done with.
03:24
Mindset and energetics, meaning like who you're being, what you're embodying, is a lifelong journey. It's not like you learn the stuff and you're done and you check it off a list and you walk away. It's a continual practice. So I just wanna say that, that as I'm gonna be sharing these mindsets with you today, I'm still continuing to practice them and they're really critical components of a not only a successful business, but successful life in my opinion.
03:54
So today I'm going to be sharing with you three different mindsets that are absolutely required to take you from where you are now to your next level. And as I mentioned, this is a continual practice that you will be doing. These are mindsets that you will see the most successful business owners, entrepreneurs, creators. They are all doing these things.
04:22
every single day and they're noticing when they're kind of falling out of these energies so they can realign with them. So let's get into the three mindsets. Of course there's way more, but for the purposes of this episode I want to keep it short and sweet and just share with you the three most juicy mindsets I want you to embody on your creator journey.
04:52
testing. So if you are a newer business owner or brand, this is where you are spending probably most of your time right now is experimenting and testing and seeing what works, seeing what offers you want to put together. What do you want to price them at?
05:11
who's your ideal client. Like in the beginning stages of growing a business, it is all experimentation and testing because that's how you're gonna learn and grow. Now what I wanna tell you as a person who's been in business for 14 years, the experimentation and testing is actually a skillset and a mindset that you must carry with you throughout your journey. And I'm gonna give you an example. So my dance studio business,
05:37
doing great, very well established, multi six-figure brand, tons of leads, you know, just a fantastic team of support I have at my studio. I have a studio manager, incredible instructors, and right now we're testing out a new offer, which is a date night.
05:56
lesson, okay? And I share this with you because it's an example of throughout 14 years, you better believe I have tested out many different offers and many different packagings and prices and titles and positioning and messaging. And I continue to do that 14 years later. And so this never stops. So
06:19
If you can embrace this mindset of experimentation and testing, it will really help you out in a couple different ways. One is it will help you to kind of break through some of those perfectionist blocks. So many of us, if you're listening, are high achievers. We have very high expectations of ourselves, of our businesses.
06:40
and we want it to happen now, right? Like we're not the most patient people. We want the success now. We wanna go implement all the things and then see the success right away. And what, yeah sure, that can happen sometimes, but most of the time what you need to do is you need to be in that experimentation mode and get curious, like why is this working and why isn't this working? And continuing.
07:08
to ask those types of questions. And as you get more and more information and data points, you can start to pivot your strategy. So for the example of Instagram, what I want you to think about is I want you to run a report, go to your professional dashboard and look at your content.
07:28
that you posted in the last 90 days, and I want you to see which pieces of content did the best for you, which got the most views or the most saves or the most likes, or just look at the different analytics and see which one popped off the most for you, and then get curious about it. Why did this piece of content perform better than other pieces of content? And I want you to get curious about
07:55
all of the elements, okay? So not just one thing. So I want you to look at how long was your video? What was the setting? Like for me, when I used to film content in my bathroom, it never did as well as when I would film content in my kitchen. I would never have even noticed that if I didn't have this experimentation testing mindset going on.
08:19
Okay. So you want to look at length, setting, lighting, getting curious about the lighting and like actual quality of your video. Like, Oh, that's interesting. In this video I had really awesome lighting and in this video I was, it was like more, you know, I was in a shadow. Oh, interesting. Or in this one I was wearing a red shirt and it did better than when I was wearing my black shirt. You know, just getting really curious about that. Also did you use a trend?
08:49
trending audio or trending music or did you just have your own original audio? So just getting really curious about all of the elements and then seeing what worked and recreating that. And when I say recreate sometimes I'll literally post the exact same content again. Sometimes I will take a piece of content and then take the same idea and just sort of tweak it a little bit and then post it
09:19
Okay, now this is hysterical. As I'm recording, it's like a full hailstorm outside. I have no idea if you can hear this, but it's happening and also someone drove by honking their horn. Okay? This is life, you guys. All right, moving on.
09:33
The second mindset that I want you to embody is create your own metrics of success. Now for this, we could talk about this really generally, but I want to zoom in and talk about Instagram.
09:50
So a lot of times one of the questions my clients ask me is, how do I know if my content is doing well? Like how do I even measure my success on Instagram? Okay, there's so many different ways to go about this. And what I coach my clients to do is to create your own metrics of success. So one, when you go into your professional dashboard on Instagram,
10:18
you can start to look at some key performance indicators, KPIs.
10:23
And those are actual measurable statistics that Instagram does for you. So they'll look at your reach, your engagement, your follower growth, and you can kind of tap into all of those, kind of dive deep into those, and it will show you percentages, whether you're growing, whether you're losing more followers than you're gaining, or whatever it is that's going on, okay? So yes, that is one way of tracking your success.
10:53
is to me the most important, which is, is there any conversion? Are people listening to your podcast? Are they grabbing your freebie? Are they DMing you for a free call? Are they doing the next step with you? And if they're not, that's something to look at. But.
11:10
For the sake of our mindset and energetics work today, what I want you to do is create your own metrics of success that are totally unrelated to the algorithm, okay? So these are the ones that are in your control. So I did this in my Hot Reels 12-month Instagram content lab recently with my clients in there. And I'll give you a few examples of different ideas of how you can create your own metrics of success.
11:41
One of my clients in there is a self-proclaimed over thinker. She's always overthinking her content to the point where she just won't even post it. Or she'll post it and she'll immediately take it down, right? And so her own metric of success would be, when I get an idea, I'm gonna create it, I'm gonna write the caption and I'm gonna post it.
12:04
I'm not gonna overthink it and be an analysis paralysis. I'm gonna take action and I'm gonna post the content. So if she did that this week, she is achieving her own success, right? And what I love about this is that it helps you to really unhook from the outcome and take the big view or the long view, right?
12:31
Because if you're so tapped into each individual little statistic of, oh no, my reach is down, or my engagement is down, it really gets in your head. Okay? So it can help you to really unhook from those if you can set some goals for yourself that are completely unrelated to the algorithm that are totally in your control. I'll give an example of a goal for me.
12:57
I am wanting to create more direct to camera reels where I'm speaking and teaching and really adding value with my voice. Okay, those direct to camera reels.
13:09
Since I don't do those a lot, they take me a little bit longer. And so as a result, sometimes I overthink them and I tend to not post them as much. So my metric of success is can I post at least one of those direct to camera reels a week right now? Can I do that consistently every week?
13:29
So when I do it, yes, I achieved that goal. So I invite you to take some time and think about what is something that you can create as your own metric of success for you. And that is so important, so that way you're not putting all of your growth on an external thing, which is the algorithm, which you have little to no control over.
13:56
The third mindset is be willing to play the long game. Okay? Be willing to play the long game. In my personal opinion, most people give up too easily. They give up too easily. If you wanna be successful in business, you have to be extremely resilient and you have to relentlessly pursue your goal and your dream. Does that mean it's easy every day?
14:26
Absolutely not. Does that mean you're gonna have days where you're like, I don't even know what I'm doing? I like, why did I even do this in the first place? Absolutely, you will.
14:38
But at the end of the day, the number one strategy in mindset is just don't give up. Keep going and keep that vision of your ultimate goal in front of you and allow yourself to tap into that, tap into your why. Like why am I doing this? Really plugging into that and staying committed to showing up regardless.
15:05
of if you see the results today or not. Because the truth is, building an Instagram account takes time. Building a brand takes time. Building a business or a brick and mortar, it just takes time. One of my business coaches said, it takes what it takes. And the most successful people are the people that don't give up and they keep going and they play the long game.
15:35
I want to tell you a quick story. When I first was on Instagram, both of my accounts were stuck at very low numbers. My dance studio account was stuck at 650 followers for years. My personal brand account, I was growing it to a thousand followers and getting to a thousand followers was like pulling teeth. Like I posted a reel every single day.
16:02
I was really working so hard and I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm still like at this number. Like this is crazy. But guess what? I stuck with it and I kept going and I kept creating and I kept refining my content, learning as I went. And as I started to do that more and more, I finally started to have some videos pop off, go viral. And before I knew it, I had thousands of thousands of followers coming in. And these are.
16:32
ideal dreamboat client followers. So you could be one video away right now from your next viral reel that will pull in hundreds of new client prospects into your sphere. But you must always remember that in order to get to that place, you've got to put in your reps. You've got to practice. You've got to fail. You've got to suck at what you're doing.
17:00
before you're gonna get to that next level. So you must be willing to play the long game. You have to remember that you also don't always need to be in audience attraction mode. And what I mean by that is a lot of people that come to work with me, one of the first focuses they have is I wanna grow my following, which is totally understandable. And that is super important, right? Like the first step of marketing is attraction.
17:26
and building that audience of ideal client prospects. Yes, that's the first step. But remember, you right now already have an audience. Even if you have 50 people following you or 200 Facebook friends, you have an audience. And so if you are not converting, it's likely a messaging issue. Like if your offers are not selling,
17:53
it's probably a messaging issue, meaning that you're not activating your target audience. So they're eager to say, yes, I wanna grab that, I wanna buy that, right? And messaging is a whole nother thing. And that's something I love working on with my clients and my private coaching programs, because that's where I can sit down with you and really get an idea of who it is that you're wanting to work with, who it is you're wanting to call in.
18:23
I look at your offer suite, your pricing, your strategy there, and I help you to really speak the language of your target market so they will be like, yes, I want to grab that. I want to buy her course or invest in her coaching program or book her so she can help me sell my next house or whatever it is. So I have a free gift for you today, which is if you are interested in private coaching with me.
18:51
I'm opening up three spots and I love, love, love these containers because I get to know you and not only of course refining your whole Instagram content strategy, but we do this work. We do the mindset, the energetic so I can spot you on where you're getting stuck and help you break through those barriers 10 times faster than you would on your own. So if you are interested in private coaching with me.
19:21
Your next step is to apply for a free Instagram breakthrough session with me where we will meet on Zoom face to face and I will learn about your business and what your goals are. And if I'm the right person to support you, I will let you know about the different options of private mentorship with me. And if I'm not the right person, I will point you in the correct direction that will best support you. If you wanna grab one of those free Instagram breakthrough calls,
19:50
then you're gonna go to elizabethmarberry.com slash application, again, elizabethmarberry.com slash application, and then you'll take five minutes, fill out an application so I can learn a little bit more about where you're at and where you wanna be, and then my team will reach out with my calendar, and we will hop on a call and connect.
20:14
I'll also of course link that down here in the show notes. And if you're over on Instagram, you can also DM me the word apply, A-P-P-L-Y, and I will have my little robot assistant send you that application as well. So I try to make it super easy.
20:47
To recap the mental game of being a successful business owner, entrepreneur, or creator, these are the three mindsets I want you to play with this week and forever moving forward. One, embrace experimentation and testing. Two, create your own metrics of success. And three, be willing to play the long game. I am so excited for you to go.
21:11
Try these on and practice these. I am rooting for you. You're doing great and I cannot wait to see you back here next week.