Master Your Mindset to Thrive in Retail with Jamie G. Smith

What's the next question? So I got a lot out of this episode and I know that you will too. Jamie G Smith is my guest today. I just love her. We're in the same mastermind together. That's how we met. And ever since we've just really connected, have the same beliefs, and she's just an incredible human being.

And in today's episode, we're talking about some of those invisible barriers that we have and how to identify them and what the common ones are for us, small business owners and tools to help us overcome those barriers. We also talk about energy management, and I really love how Jamie talks about this. Why it's so important, how we can reach our potential, the steps we need to take to get there. Like our true full potential. I got so much out of this episode. I know you will too.

Before we dive in, here's a little bit more about my guest. Jamie G Smith empowers entrepreneurs to shatter the glass ceilings of self doubt and limitation, propelling them into a realm of unstoppable success as a renowned business and lifestyle elevation strategist, speaker, and content creator. Jamie is the founder of LUXE Everyday. LUXE stands for Leading a Unique, eXtraordinary, Existence every day. And she truly helps retailers do this and business owners do this.

You're going to see it just a glimpse of it in today's episode. You're going to love it, I can't wait for you to listen. Let's dive in. Welcome to Rooted in Retail. I'm your host, Crystal Vilkaitis. Here, we have engaging and informative conversations with successful indie retailers and industry experts. Together, we learn, connect, and grow. Alright, here's today's episode. Jamie, welcome to Rooted in Retail. I'm thrilled you're here.

My autoimmune disease was like escalating because I was under so much stress and pressure. And then on top of that, I was living in some shame, blame, and guilt just from the demise of my divorce. And if I jump back to 2011, where it all actually started, I was actually living the life I wanted to live my dream, but also my divorce was happening. So on the outside, it actually externally looked like a hot success. On the inside, it was a complete mess because of everything that was happening.

But I was at the time I was traveling the globe. I was traveling to China and to Sweden, I was an international fitness presenter. I was being flown to New York for photo shoots, to LA for video shoots. I mean, it was the thing that I loved, right? And it was, I was getting paid for my passion. And if you've ever done the thing that you love and you're getting paid for it, you're like, "Oh my God, this is amazing." And yet.

Because I was in the midst of a divorce and because there was so much other internal turmoil going on in my life, everything else was a hot mess. And what I want to just bring to you is sometimes we look like a hot success on the outside, but internally we have things going on that are actually holding us back. Back from being a success in every area of our life. And that's one of my biggest things is during that, I call it my hot mess decade, Crystal.

Because during that time, I did learn a system for myself that actually would help me moving forward to be able to handle any environment, to handle any situation, no matter what the chaos was going on, like in the world that we live in, it's so unpredictable right now, there's so many uncertainties. We can't control what's truly happening.

And so what I did is, during that time, I learned a system that helps me be able to elevate into my top version of who I am and when things are hard and, as we know, things go crazy sometimes and we have doubt, we have disappointment, we have overwhelm, burnout. And so I've learned this system. But because of that, I had to go through I learned it because I had to go through this hard time.

So I just want to encourage you, if you feel doubt and disappointment or you're overwhelmed or you're right overreactive. There is hope you just need a strategy and a system to get you out of that. And that's why I became so passionate about mindset about different strategies. I'm totally, I call myself an elevation strategist because it's truly, you need strategies to live your best life, to produce your best work, to have the retail business that you really desire.

And when you handle all the things inside of you, the outside shows it. And that's why I'm so passionate about what I do.

I think the most challenging thing for retailers when it comes to social media is knowing what to post. We don't always feel creative. We don't always have time to think of something to post. We have a million things going on. And so what ends up happening is we just post the same type of content all the time, or we don't post. And you know that in order to make social media, grow your business, you need to be consistent. You need to be consistently showing up.

So to help you come up with those ideas on what to post my team and I've created a free download for you. This is the 365 content ideas. Plus you're getting 24 customizable Canva templates that are completely versatile, that you can make your own, that matches your brand, but these resources are here so you have no excuse of not knowing what to post on social media ever again. We're giving you an idea for every.

Single day, plus these customizable Canva templates to help elevate your content and make it easy on you. So to get this free resource, you can go to crystal media, co. com slash three, six, five ideas. That's it. It's crystal media, co. com slash three, six, five ideas. Get that free download, start posting, use it every single day and stay consistent with your social media so you can see it help grow your business.

You have such an incredible system now and you help on several different ways too. And so as we think about our independent retailers, who are very busy people, most of them have a brick and mortar storefront. So they're wearing a lot of hats. I want to talk about energy management because you help entrepreneurs manage their energy and our retailers need this.

So will you share two to three practical strategies or techniques that retailers can use to increase their energy levels and productivity?

And how we expand our capacity to be able to go to the next level, to be able to handle the hard things, to be able to maintain the level of success that we want to. We have to pay attention to our physical and our mental capacity, our energy. And because what happens is, and I'm, if you're listening and you can't see me, I have a hand above my head and a hand below my chin. And the hand above my head is your potential. The hand below is your potential. Your capacity, your energy, right?

It is your mental and physical energy. And if you're not taking care of that first, then your potential has to come down. So my hand is lowering from my head and it's coming down to my chin. It has to come down to meet what your physical vessel can actually accomplish. That's your capacity versus. If I have the hand above my head, which is my potential. And now I am first focusing on and prioritizing my energy management, my mental capacity, my physical capacity.

Now I have every ability to take it up to my potential and continue to increase that capacity. That allows me to increase the amount of success. That allows me to have the ability to even be motivated to be creative, to be more productive, right? To be less reactive. This is how important capacity and energy management is.

So on that note, just a couple of really quick tips. The first thing I would assess, and I always believe that awareness is really the place to start with anything. If you start with awareness, then you have the feedback and the information to make the changes, to decide what's important next. And so I would start with, where is it that you want to be? What is the level you want to be at for your retail store? What level of success? What personal level do you want to be at?

You have to start there. And what does that person need? What support do they need? What level of physical abilities do they need? You have to start there. Get very clear on what is that success level, who is that person that has that success level? And then from there, let's think from that level. What does that person do and what does that person not do? What does that person allow in their life? And what does that person not allow in their life?

And many times when we're going to a different level, Crystal, so say your real retailers want to take it from 1 million to 2 million, right? Whatever that looks like for you in your profits, in your business, in your personal life. We have to go to that level of what does that person operate like? What level of support, what level of boundaries, who do they allow in their life? What environments do they produce? What podcasts are they listening to, right? What TV shows?

Are they wasting their time on Twitter? On you know, all these things? On Instagram? Because what happens is mentally, just a quick side note. Mentally, when you're spending your time, say, for example. An hour at bedtime, watching Twitter or watching Instagram or watching stories, whatever it is that actually what people don't realize is that takes a mental capacity and you're making decisions every single time you're watching, you're choosing to watch it, not watch it. Say yes.

Say no. You're right. That actually steals your mental capacity. And so even little changes like that, your sleep is ginormous. So making those choices of what new levels of support do you need to stay there, to get there and to be that person. And also what do you need to let go of? What no longer serves you? Cause so many times we are focusing on where we want to go.

And we forget that there's all these things that are left over from the old version of us, the old version of what we were accomplishing. We need to let go so we can make space for the new. So that's number two, I would do that. And then number three, then you start to implement it, right? Make choices, as far as what would be the most powerful things you could let go in your life that are holding you back from that next level.

And what are just even a couple things that you can start to bring in, draw in more of, and it might be people that are going to that next level with you. For example, I know that you have a whole community that supports that. That it's a positive community, right? Crystal, and I would say, get around like minded people that are doing the same thing you're doing, right? Get around environments that produce those that level of success, those cutting edge technologies, innovations.

So you need to put yourself in those places to be successful and to have more capacity.

I mean, I love how you laid it out for us, Jamie, because it makes it very clear on why this is important. How I'm going to get where I want to go. And it doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy because you might have to make some hard decisions like you said, you might have to cut things and that might be scary or hard, you know, but in order for us to really reach that potential and have the energy to go there. We got to do it.

So then the scientists remove the barrier to allow the pike to these, but they were surprised to find that he didn't move. He actually sank to the bottom was depressed, sad, hungry, even though he could have gone and ate the little fish now. And so his environment changed, but he didn't.

He had this invisible barrier holding him back. And the whole thing here is that what are these invisible barriers and you do need to evolve. That was sort of an inspiration for calling my conference EVOLVE, because I would often say like evolve or die, the fish didn't. And so I would love to hear from you. Could you describe a couple common barriers you've noticed that often hold entrepreneurs back and how can they begin to identify these in their own lives? Right.

Because what happens when we're in those times is all of our unknown things inside of us, all our old stories, our limitations get unearthed, good or bad, they get unearthed. And it's scary. It's hard. It's like a lot of times we don't want to see them. And the biggest thing you can do is actually look and trust yourself enough to be okay with honesty, first of all. And then I would say you have to look back. I'm just giving you some tools first.

Look back at times in your life when situations didn't go your way. And start to reflect on what really happened. Was there something internally with you that you sabotaged that moment? Because I know when I looked back, I was like, that is the exact thing that I didn't want to happen. And how I reacted was really weird. Or I didn't like how I reacted. So I had to go back and assess why, where was this even coming from?

Because when we can figure out why, then we can start to process it and heal it and clear it. If you can't clear it, then it's just going to continue to come back up and sabotage your success. So some of the things I commonly see as barriers would be things like, for example, and I call it the ostrich.

I have this really fun quiz, Crystal, that people can take but it tells them what is one of their most prevalent ways of, and I call them default patterns, that they're just our normal reactions when things happen that trigger us, right? Because we all have them. That's why it's not a shameful thing. Like we all do this. It is a human quality. And so one of them is ostrich and they stick their head in the sand and they act like nothing else is going on. They don't acknowledge reality.

And they just keep going on with life. Like for example, maybe your finances in your business and your retail business are not good. And you're just like I'm just going to keep working harder. I'm not going to acknowledge the problem. I'm not. So a lot of times I see that, I see ostriches. The other thing too, is a lot of times they make excuses. If you're making excuses, I said this at the EVOLVE conference, you can either have excuses or results. You can't have both.

They're doing, they're doing everybody else's stuff. They're creating 10 to-do lists and not one of them is the most important thing that they're supposed to be doing in their business right now. And many times it's because of fear. They're fearing, right? It's really a fear or a unknown. And so they are resisting it. They don't want to do it because they don't know the next step. And so really thinking through what is just one small step I can do?

That would move me forward, because when you get in action, it really demolishes the doubt. But you have to get in action, right? And then there's just so many, but I do operating systems with my clients and then I call them primal instincts. The primal instincts are your reactions. So what are your reactions? Are you a Viper? Do you strike out when you get angry, when you get frustrated, when you have an unknown situation? Those kinds of things.

And then the operating systems are really the behind the scenes operating system. So are you operating in victim mentality? Is something everybody else's fault? Is there always an excuse? Is it right? So there's all these different things that can really identify specifically, but when you start to get really clear and again, say you get triggered today, why don't you do, I call this, it's a very quick tool that I can share with you.

And it is that awareness piece is number one, write down what was the trigger, right? What was the environment, the person, right? And think in terms of, did something happen that you didn't like the outcome? Did you react in a way you didn't like? Or do you feel a way you don't want to feel from what happened? And these are when you start to write these things down. So write down the trigger, what actually happened? And then number two, how did you react? Because we have to be self aware.

Because if we're not self aware, we're going to blame everybody else and everything else. And then number three, why? And this is one of the most important pieces of information is why did you react that way? And it can't be cause that person pissed me off. That's a shallow, shallow reason. Why did they piss you off? And then why did that happen?

And then why, like you go a couple layers deeper so that you get to the core of what really happened and why it really created a resonant of reaction within you. So those are some really powerful tools that you can just do right now, starting today. It doesn't take a lot of time. You can just be aware.

And the two examples I used was live streaming on Facebook. Why are you not doing it? And the other one was, why are you not emailing your customers? And when you get down to it, you find that root cause that, like you were saying, you have to really find. Figure that out, heal that, clear it, because otherwise you're not actually going to solve it. It's worth it to take the time to ask the wise to really understand you and how you're operating.

So you can clear those things out of your way and you don't have those barriers.

So Jamie, I love hearing success stories on this show. It's always very inspiring when we hear about somebody else and their transformation. So could you share a transformational story of one of your clients where they started and where they are now? Right.

And what I will say, and you can probably resonate with this if you're a leader and you own a business is a lot of times my leaders feel alone. They don't have anybody else to talk to, right? Because they are looked at as the responsible one, as the one that's going to leave. They are looked at as they can't mess up, right? So they feel alone and they also don't feel like they can be real. And so what I love about when I do work with my clients is they can be messy and we can also celebrate.

So it gives you the safe space. And so she was coming into me and her exact words were, " I am a hot mess," right? Because, again, like me, she externally was super hyper successful and everybody else viewed her that. And yet internally, she knew some things that were going on that made her feel like a hot mess. And she didn't want anybody to find out.

Cause that's a lot of times what happens with imposter syndrome, when we feel like we have to represent this one identity, and yet we feel like a whole 'nother lower level identity, because again, we haven't worked through, you haven't worked through, right? Some of the things from your past that are actually holding you back for your future 10.0 self. And so she came to me and we worked through it.

And we had to it took a little bit of time and we did a couple of different things with her, but when it really got down to it. And this was, what's funny to me is she actually came to me cause she wanted to do speaking, but when we started having conversation, that wasn't at all what she needed. And she recognized that literally in our first conversation. Literally our first conversation.

And cause I always want to deliver what they were actually needing, but they have to tell me what that is and then we dive a little deeper. And so what it actually came down to is what was filling your back is what's shame, blame and some guilt from past. From her past and it was something she'd never shared with anybody before. And I think I just want you to know if you're listening that if you have any shame, blame or guilt for whatever reason, for whatever it was,

She was like this whole it was almost like these. I don't even know, like these heavyweights lift off her and she was just this, right? Like she could feel, I guess she could feel what everybody else saw. Does that make sense?

And so it's these stories that inspire me, it's watching people unfold into their top level of who they really created to be and let go of anything, any old stories, any old beliefs, lack of confidence that is, that are really, truly holding them back from who they were created to be in their fullness.

Thank you for sharing that story. I know you have a masterclass coming up and I have a feeling that some retailers would be interested in attending that. I think it's, I know about it. It's so good. So will you tell us about this masterclass?

And so I would love to invite you in. You can actually go to luxeeveryday.com/hotsuccess, just sign up for it. It's coming up. So no matter when you're listening to it, it's going to be coming up as we go. And even if I change a couple of things, it'll be something that you'll really enjoy coming to. So I highly recommend joining me in the next one.

Like you can send that to people, to clients, to yourself, just as a reminder, because I have so many clients myself that. They don't have time to sit there and write down everything, but they do have time to speak it in really quickly. And then you can also, it'll transcribe your meetings. If you have a meeting with your team, you can put it on that. You can also import things and it will transcribe those. So I love it. Cause it's super easy, super inexpensive.

I mean, it just did all the bells and whistles that I needed for that.

And when we talked about growth, that is, you know, listening to podcasts, being around, for example, the scale and Crystal's community, right? She has these programs that will help you adapt and be innovative, constantly knowing and learning the things that are working right now. So crucial.

Maybe 3. That you have to get done, everything else can fall aside, but really get centered and present with yourself. So first of all, I would set up that routine so that you're looking at your week, looking at your day, what's coming up, where do you really need to focus? Because when we get really clear, then we can have more clarity and be more powerful in how we move forward. And then at the end of the day, reflect.

Reflect on what happened, reflect on what worked, reflect on what you'd like to change, and then also reflect on the gratitude that you have.

What would be so much more helpful? Like in alignment with your retail business, right? But even in their personal life, what are their struggles? Because maybe there's something that you can do to really bring a release of that pain point for them, right? That would be very valuable for them. So I would ask a lot more questions instead of doing first and then figuring out, oh, that didn't really resonate with any of them.

More quickly and make your life easier. And then also embrace, because the thing that's going to really set you apart in the technology is your relationships. Is how you create an experience, the level of touch you have with your clients, relationship, the level of value, because I can tell you as it moves faster and faster, and there's more stimulus. The thing that people appreciate so much more now is customer service.

Is people listening, using their name, actually having a connection with them, like an authentic personal connection that will set you apart by leaps and bounds, and if you combine that with the AI, with the technology, you will be unstoppable.

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It means the world to me. Don't forget to join the rise and shine newsletter, which is social media news. You need to know sent via email every Monday morning, go to crystal media, co. com slash rise to join and don't miss the newest episode of rooted in retail, which drops every Sunday morning.