AI Summary
5 min readCharlotte Smith opens this episode of Profitable Mindset with a blunt observation: most farmers, whether they have been at it for one season or 35 years, do not know where to start with marketing. They have no customers, no email list, no website, and no clear sense of what to do first. Smith’s answer is not a complicated strategy. It is a sequence of four concrete steps that she says every profitable farm has done first, in order, before anything else works.
Step one: write down every person you know who might buy from you. Smith insists this is the starting point, even if the list is three names. “Every single farmer I’ve met, including me, we started from zero,” she says. The list is not a mailing list yet; it is a mental inventory of friends, family, neighbors, and past customers. Its purpose is to give you someone to talk to while you clarify your brand. You cannot build a farm business in a vacuum, and you cannot figure out who you help if you have no one to ask. Smith recommends grabbing a free email marketing platform—Kit, MailChimp, any standalone provider—and getting those names into a list immediately. She warns against using the email tool that comes bundled with your website host, calling it a dead end for building a profitable foundation.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (04:10) **Where to Start: The Foundation of Farm Marketing** - Charlotte introduces the four-part series on relationship-based marketing for farmers who have never made money or don't know where to begin.
- 2 (04:53) **Step One: Write Down Everyone You Know** - The very first action is to grab paper and list every person who might buy from you, starting with friends and family.
- 3 (07:17) **Step Two: Get a Website Before Social Media** - A website that sells is essential, and it must come before investing time in Instagram or Facebook.
- 4 (09:08) **Why a Pretty Website Isn't Enough** - A website must be set up to sell, not just look good; most website designers are not marketers.
- 5 (11:28) **Step Three: Build Your Email List** - Your email list is how you make money in today's world, outperforming social media by nearly 4,000 times.
- 6 (13:15) **Why Email Beats All Other Marketing** - Charlotte explains that email is 4,000 times more profitable than social media, billboards, TV ads, or flyers.
- 7 (14:50) **Free Training and Recap of the Foundation** - Charlotte offers a free email marketing course with her best-performing subject lines and setup guidance.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
FREE Two Day Event:
The Farm Marketing Fix - June 2026
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 foc
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