Top therapists use this secret to scale their business

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the show. So I am joining you to talk all about growth today. I'm gonna go over the signs that your coaching business is ready for growth. Now, this is not the kind of growth that people on Instagram are talking about. Just get more clients, just run ads, just scale it, just add a mastermind. No, I wanna talk to you about real growth. Sustainable growth, the type of growth that is not going to break your nervous system. It's not going to impact your relationships, your social life, your marriage, your relationship with your kids, your integrity. It's not going to impact any of that as you grow your coaching business. Because here's the truth, not every business that wants to grow is actually ready to grow. And now that's not a judgment, it's just data. It's just information. Most people think that readiness for growth is just about metrics. They're ready to make more money. It's about revenue. It's about audience size. And I want to have more followers and I want to have more leads. But growth alone is not unlocked by numbers. I have a lot of people who come to me and they're like, Carly Hill, I'm ready to scale my business. But they don't even have firm foundations in place. I think the word scale is thrown around way too loosely. It's thrown around way too much in the coaching industry. I always think of business in 3 layers. You're either in the foundational stage of business, you're in the growth stage of business, or you're in the scale stage of business. And there are signs in each one of those stages that you're ready for the next stage, you're ready for this up level. So growth to me is Unlocked by capacity. And today I want to walk you through real signs that your coaching business is ready for that next level. And also we're going to talk about a few signs that maybe it's not ready, not yet. Let's pause. Let's get our ducks in a row first. And that's okay too. So we need to be smart about growing and scaling. I mentioned this in a previous episode that I actually have a Google Drive folder that is labeled Scaling Smart, and it's full of spreadsheets and profit margins and mentors I'm gonna invest in next. And it's very parallel to the different phases of business and also the seasonality that we have in life. And I'm going to talk about that a little later in today's episode. So first, let's dive in and talk about what growth actually means. And when I say growth, I don't just mean more money. That's usually what people think when they're like, I want to grow my business. What they really mean is I want to make more money in my business. But growth, there's a layer underneath of that that is all about more responsibility. Maybe that's hiring more people. Maybe it's firing some of the team members that you have and replacing them. Maybe it's organizing your team and your org chart. Maybe it's delegating more. Maybe it's more visibility, which means you're adding different channels. Now you're really becoming omnipresent in the online world. It's more regulation, setting firmer boundaries, getting your legal ducks in a row, more leadership, more decision-making, more people projecting their shit onto you. Yeah, that means more trolls, more impact. And with more impact always comes more weight. It's a lot of responsibility to make a large impact, and I never take that lightly. Basically, scaling a business is going to expand everything that I just mentioned, including parts of you that have not yet been stretched. I always say that our business is a mirror. If there is something that you need to work on, it's going to show up. As you try to grow and as you try to scale. And that's why growth without this capacity, it feels chaotic. And growth with capacity, it's going to feel very grounded. It's going to feel powerful. Now let me slow this down for a second because you might be wondering, well, what do you mean exactly by capacity, Carly Hill? When I say capacity, because there's this thing that people get wrong, okay? Capacity is not how motivated you are. It's not how badly you want it. I know you want it badly. I know you're motivated. You wouldn't be sitting here listening to this episode if you weren't a go-getter. It's not about how smart you are, how talented you are, how good your strategy is. Capacity is about your ability to hold more without fragmenting. Capacity is your ability to hold more without fragmenting. It's your ability to hold more clients, more responsibility, more money, more visibility, more opinions, more pressure, more decision-making without your nervous system hijacking the whole operation. Capacity is very much emotional. When I'm talking about growth in this way, it is psychological, it is energetic, it is logistical. It's whether your body— and when I say body, I'm going back to your identity— your systems, your self-trust contain the next level, not just access it? Because you can access it, you can hustle your way there, but can you hold it without everything fragmenting? Can you access it but then keep it? Here's what I see all the time. People don't actually fail at growth. Like I said, they hustle their way there, they figure it out, but they outgrow their capacity faster than they expand it. So the business grows, but their boundaries don't grow. Their revenue increases, but their regulation doesn't. Their audience expands, yay, but their sense of safety to be seen doesn't. And they still have those visibility wounds. So when growth starts to feel overwhelming and you're going too fast because your capacity hasn't kept up, it's starting to feel overwhelming instead of expansive, it's starting to feel heavy instead of exciting, chaotic instead of powerful. This is a sign to halt and check yourself. One of my mentors back in 2020 told me, Carly, your business will never outgrow your consciousness. And that always stuck with me. I knew if I wanted a big business, which I did, which I have, I had to keep expanding my consciousness because your business will never outgrow your consciousness. And with that comes capacity. I needed to continue to uplevel my state of conscious, my emotional home, keep my vibrational state high so that I could hold what I was about to create. So let's dive into the signs. Sign number 1: that you are ready to grow is you're no longer asking the question, how do I make more money? Because you figured it out. And yeah, okay, there's room for more money. But early on, the primary question when you're in the foundational, even the beginning of the growth stages, I would say the primary question is, how do I get more clients? You're still figuring out your lead generation. Maybe you're trying to replace your income from whatever other job that you were doing. You're like, how do I make this work? But when your business is ready for true growth, the questions that you're asking yourself, they start changing. You start asking yourself, how do I do this sustainably? I've built this, it works, but it's not sustainable. How do I create offers that don't rely on me burning out? How do I lead more people in a room? Without having to be in every single room? How can I lead people without taking up my time? How do I build something that can hold me, not just take from me? How do I build something bigger than me? So when your questions start to evolve from survival and just making it work, getting clients, making the money, etc., and they start evolving to structure operations, this is a sign that you're ready to grow. You start revamping the infrastructure of your client fulfillment, the backends, your automations, your systems. Sign number 2 is you're starting to feel friction with how things currently run. This one surprises people. Discomfort doesn't always mean something is wrong. It's actually a good sign. Sometimes it means you've outgrown the container that you've built for a previous version of you. I remember a huge state of friction in my business a few years ago. I was crying on the couch in my office. My husband opened the door and he was like, what is wrong? I felt like my business was breaking. I was feeling this discomfort because it required so much of me, and I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulder. But really what was happening was I had outgrown the container I had built for a previous version of me. So I hired, I delegated, I got my systems in order. I was feeling friction with how things currently run as I was trying to continuously scale. Something had to change. So if you're feeling this friction, whether it be in your team, your operations, possibly your clients, maybe your offer suite, your offers feel too small, they feel too tight. Maybe you're repeating yourself constantly. Maybe you're overdelivering because there's no clear boundary. Maybe your calendar feels heavy and it's not justifying your revenue. Maybe you've outgrown your clients and the work doesn't light you up as much. That friction is not failure, it's feedback. Okay, something needs to change. It's your business saying this system worked for you before, but it's not going to take you where you're going next. Let's Shift it. Sign number 3 is you can get results, but you're doing it through pushing, pushing, pushing, effort. You're not doing it through leverage. This is a sign that you're ready to grow. We need to shift to leverage, not just effort, or you will burn out and you will want to burn your business down. If you can generate income when you push, great, but if things stall when you stop pushing. That is not a motivation problem. Obviously you're a go-getter, you're a trailblazer, you know how to make quick cash in your business. But this is a leverage problem. This is often where people are constantly in the DMs themselves. They're booking clients through those DM conversations. They're manually explaining their value over and over again. They're being the glue that holds every single department together. Or they are every single department. They're doing heavy launches all of the time. They're doing all of the backend work. It's draining. So readiness for growth shows up when you start craving this cleaner positioning or crystal clear messaging. Clients are not confused. Confused buyers don't buy. Offers that sell without you having to convince. It's just a full-body yes for them. We make it very easy for them to pay us. Things are evergreen. You don't have to live launch all of the time. You have an inbound lead generation system that gets you booked calls and clients and sales every damn day. A team who can have conversations for you so you're not sucked into the DMs all the time. Systems that don't require your constant presence. Wanting leverage doesn't mean that you're lazy. We're building a business for freedom. This is a lifestyle business. It just means that your leadership is maturing and we need to put proper systems in place. Sign number 4 is your nervous system can tolerate more visibility than before. You're ready to be seen more. This one matters more than most people want to admit. Growth equals visibility. Visibility equals exposure, and exposure equals nervous system demand. Let me break it down. If posting no longer feels like a threat because you've worked through it, being seen no longer sends you in a spiral because you've worked through it, you can handle praise without minimizing it because you've worked through that, you've worked through your imposter syndrome, you can handle the haters and the criticism without collapsing. That's readiness. You don't need to be fearless because it's always going to be a little scary to take a stance for things, ruffle some feathers, post some vulnerable post, but you just need to be regulated enough to stay present while simultaneously being seen. A business cannot outgrow the nervous system of its leader. Just like I was saying earlier, your business will not outgrow your consciousness. If you have an itch for more and you've worked through those visibility wounds, it's time to go all in on your content. No more hiding. You can handle it. Number 5 is you're less attached to being liked and more committed to being clear. This is a huge maturity marker. Early on, people want to be liked, they want approval, and I'm not saying likability isn't part of the sales cycle, but early on, coaches want validation. They want to be understood by everyone. When you're ready for growth, clarity matters more than this comfort zone of being liked. You start thinking, I'm okay with this not being for everyone. This isn't for everyone. I don't want to be everybody's cup of tea. I know this is not everybody's cup of tea. I actually want to repel XYZ type of people. I would rather be respected than universally liked. That's when your messaging really sharpens. Your audience is going to deepen, your conversions are going to improve, you're going to have more of these dream clients even if your reach doesn't explode. Because it's not always about reach, it's about quality versus quantity. Resonance beats mass appeal every single time. We want people to read our shit and be like Whoa, go deep with the people who see you, who want to learn from you, because there's always going to be naysayers. There's always going to be people that don't like you. Sign number 6 is you're willing to let your identity evolve. This is a no-brainer. This is a non-negotiable, but it's something worth reminding you of over and over again. Every new level of business will require a new level of identity. You know that you cannot build a bigger business while clinging on to old income ceilings, old money beliefs and operating systems, old stories about who you're allowed to be and what you're allowed to do, old roles that keep you safe but small, old stories you're telling yourself. No, growth asks questions like, who do I need to become to lead at this next level. One of my team members said to me this past week, Carly, I'm investing in more training. And I went on it with her because I know where your business is headed is going to require the next level version of me. And I was like, damn, I wish my whole team could have this mindset like you have. She's upleveling her identity as I uplevel mine and as the business uplevels theirs. So ask yourself, who do you need to become to lead at this next level? What parts of you are no longer required and you need to let go of? What beliefs are too small for where you're headed, where you're going? If you're open to shedding these old versions of yourself, even when it's uncomfortable, then you're ready. Claim it. Claim it, sis. Sign number 7 is You're thinking beyond yourself. This is a beautiful thing. At some point, the business stops being just about you. It actually becomes way bigger than you. It's the coolest thing when you build something that is way bigger than you. You have to start refining it. The experience of the client— client fulfillment is always number one in my opinion, but as you grow and scale, you need to continuously refine the client experience to make it the best of the best. The energy of the container is important. Being protective of who you even allow in your world and inside your coaching programs, the ripple effect on your work, the accountability that you have for the clients who come into your containers, the long-term impact of what you're building. So you're not just asking, what do I want? How do I want this business to run? But you're asking Who does the business need to become? Again, it's an identity shift. Who do I want in my business, or who do I want associated with my business? You're okay to repel people, and this shift is a huge shift in leadership. And we know that leadership is the gateway to growth. It is the foundation to growth. So here's a quick reality check as we kind of close this up. I want to say something clearly: not being ready for growth does not mean you're behind. It means you're just in a different phase. Maybe you're in the foundational phase. Maybe you're not yet in the growth or the scale phase. Some phases are about just getting stable. I've had many phases in my business where I'm not trying to make more money. I don't want to hire a mentor. No, I'm not trying to be more seen. I'm just trying to get organized because I know that I'm about to hire my next mentor and shit's about to blow up. So I just want to be stable. Then I go through phases where I'm skill building, I am hiring mentors, I'm learning. Then I go through phases where maybe I need to boost my confidence and I'm working through visibility wounds once again, taking leaps, being bold. Maybe sometimes you're going through a phase of safety, just getting through. When I was on maternity leave, it was about first stabilitation, getting stable. Getting organized, so then I could move into a phase of safety. When I came back from maternity leave, I went into skill building. You see how this works in different phases? Because there's different seasonalities of life. It's not linear. And this is why comparing yourself to anybody in the online world is going to send you in a spiral. It's helpful for no one. They're not in the same phase. They're not in the same season as you. There's other phases which is about expansion and delegation and visibility and power, not just the skill building. So assess where you are, what you need to work on, and know that if your business grew tomorrow and you got more clients, more money, more eyes on you, would your systems be able to hold it? Would your nervous system be able to hold it? Would your identity be able to hold it? What would break? Somebody asked me that question not too long ago. If your business were to blow up overnight, what would break? This is how, as I was doing a whole internal system check, and I was like, wow, what a powerful question. Because growth doesn't require you to just have the desire alone. Growth responds to readiness, and readiness is not something that can be forced. We have to prepare for this. What work do you still need to do? I hope that this episode gave you a lot to reflect on. I hope it left you with deep reflection. And just know, if you need help, this is exactly why mentors like myself exist. You do not have to do this alone. My love is with you, and I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to the Thriving Therapreneur podcast. I hope that this episode has inspired you to reduce burnout, work smarter, and see the freedom potential you have as a therapist. We would love to have you inside the Therapist to Coach Accelerator Facebook group where we have live trainings and cheat sheets on all things marketing, sales, and adding coaching ethically and legally. I am here cheering you on and I'll see you around. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]