#83 - Q: Stuck at $100k + can’t scale, help!

It's the same kind of thing as by having this focus, it allows you just to continue to refine, to continue to get better. But also it means that you're kind of, you're sticking your flag in the ground and saying, this is me. This is what I'm an expert in. This is what you come to me for.

This is the doing it online podcast with your Host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier, and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hello. Hello, everyone. It is Kate here from HelloFunnels co. And welcome to episode number 83 of the Doya online podcast. Now, today I am answering a question from one of our lovely Instagram followers. This is a DM that slid on into our inbox and it's one that I've seen a lot. It's something that I personally have experienced myself and it's a really, really juicy topic. So I thought, we have to do a whole episode on this. A simple reply will not work. So that's what we're talking about today. And that question was, help. I am so stuck at the 100k mark, and I have been for years, and I can't seem to smash through it. I really want to scale, I really want to grow, I want to help more people, but I'm stuck. What do I do? And you know, if you're a regular listener of the show, you would know that. Last week we actually talked about why so many people can, you know, absolutely hustle their butts off and never hit six figures. This is actually perfect kismet because now I want to talk about that next roadblock. So I would say, like, cracking that six figure mark is roadblock or milestone number one for a lot of entrepreneurs. And you know, you have to do certain things, get a certain ducks in a row to get there. And then once you hit that, what I think a lot of people don't realize is that now you're on this new level, then a whole bunch of new stuff comes up. You can't just do what you were doing and expect to continue to, to grow and move forward. There's new skills as new things that have to be put into place. This next roadblock, I'd say it's anywhere in the low hundred thousand. So a hundred k, 200k, even up to 300k. Depending on your offer, depending on your niche, a lot of people like you, they might get some great momentum getting there, but they just find that they just keep, like, there's like a ceiling there, and they keep banging their head on it, and it doesn't really seem to matter what they do. They can't push through it. And, you know, as I said, I. This is where I got stuck for a couple of years myself. And it's a weird place to be because you've had some success, you know, and probably when you started your business, this was probably where you, you know, you couldn't have even dreamed as you're making those first sales, like to be making 200,000 a year, 300,000 a year. It's probably more money than you've ever, you know, air quotes earned before. And the reason I say earned is because obviously there's expenses. Isn't all going into your bank account, right? But, you know, you definitely don't have the lifestyle you probably thought you would have at this earnings point. Now, some people do. Some people, the way they structure it, they keep everything lean and simple, and you can have a really profitable business here. But I'm. This episode isn't for that person. It's for the person who's like, but I want more. I. You know, my goal is either you've moved your goalpost or you just set one further down the road anyway, to start with. And both are great. And you. You want to hit high six figures or seven figures, or you're sort of here and you go, I want to serve more people. I want to show up bigger. I want to do bigger things. And you just kind of can't at this spot. You're. You're quite tired. Like, your hands are quite tired because your time is obviously finite. Your Reese's, your resources. Sorry, not your Reese's. I'm thinking Reese's Pieces here. I've also got chocolate on the brain. Chocolate and peanut butter. Like, genius combination. Anyway, you know, you're wanting to move forward, you're wanting more, but you can't. You don't have much wiggle room. There's not much more you can give. And you're trying lots of different things. And as I said, it's just a frustrating place to be. And I said, and it's a weird one because, you know, you are successful, but it probably doesn't look like what you thought it would look like, right? And you're starting to realize that actually, hey, to have that business that I wanted and to serve the people, like, I wanted it to do the things that I wanted, actually. Gosh, I'm going to need a much bigger business that maybe you originally thought this episode is all for you. Like, right now you have a lot of puzzle pieces in place and you should feel super proud of yourself. But now it's about knowing, well, there's a few more puzzle pieces you need and then knowing which order to put them on the board. There's some real shifts that need to be made. And to be honest, people in this spot are some of my favorite people to work with. And I love it when they come and join us inside, of course, Empire. Because when you already have these wins on the board, making these shifts that they're not always like, simple, but once they're done, that is like the momentum that can come afterwards can be insane. Like, this is where you have people going from 10k months to 60k months in a couple of months and then keep going, like, because they already have an offer that sells. They already know their market. They've gone, you know, they've got the foundations laid. Now they just need to know how to grow and how to scale. And that is what we're going to talk about inside this episode today. Now, before we dive into the juicy stuff, I want to share something that I am so super excited about because the doors are open right now for our Six Figure school, which is a six day live workshop. And better yet, right now, tickets are just $27. Can you think of anything else that's just $27 that can completely change your business? I don't think so. So we blew people's minds last time we ran this workshop and I still get people messaging me with the amazing results that they've gotten. So we are so, so excited to be running it all again. It all kicks off on January 31, Aussie time, which is January 30 for most other people. You can grab the ticket, your ticket today. Just go to hellofunnels co school. Grab your tickets. It's only 27 bucks. You do not want to miss out. And I can't wait to see you inside. So now go do that. Hit pause. Go grab your ticket. Done it. Great. Okay, well, now let's dive in to today's episode. So there's a few things that really stand out to me that people need or don't need to break through this point and to get that movement, you know, to get the pieces in place to get the momentum going. So the first one is a lot of people who are at this point, it's when it is time to really get focused. So usually to get to around about this earnings level or this level of revenue, you've probably created a bunch of different offers. Maybe you're doing some one to one stuff. Maybe you've got a group program, maybe you got, you know, a couple of programs. You're probably quite reactive. You're like going, oh, my audience has asked for this. I'm going to create a thing for it. And so there's probably a bit going on. Like you probably have a few, you know, pots on the boil to get the momentum that you want to just for this next, I'd say like six months, even possibly 12. But this is where you need to kind of like cull away some of the dead weight and really, really focus in on preferably just one offer. But one to two, I wouldn't do any more than that at this stage. That and just go all in on them, like find the ones that are the best fit the most Hells yes offers that you have. And a Hells yes offer for anyone who hasn't gone through our program or hasn't been in six figure school or isn't in six figure school, that's an offer that is, you know, when your ideal client sees it, they say Hells Yes. And it's a Hell yes for you as well. Because not only is it really easy to sell, it's also profitable. It's a delight to deliver. You know, it's going to tick all the boxes as far as how you're going to structure your work and it's going to be something that you can deliver to as many people or as few people as you want. So it's about, you know, it's finding that, that right offer. And if you have a couple, it can be a tricky dance. But you know, spend a bit of time, dig into your data, you really feel into it and think, okay, what is going to be, you know, my signature offer, You've probably heard people say, signature off rights. It's that, that one that is going to be the one that you are known for. It doesn't mean you won't have other offers later. It doesn't mean you can't use your offers to bundle them up and chuck them in as bonuses or do things like that. But to really, really get this momentum, you need to have the focus. And similar to what we spoke about in the last episode about how, you know, not getting distracted by shiny new marketing tactics, it's the same kind of thing as by having this focus, it allows you just to continue to refine, to continue to get better. But it also, it means that you're kind of, you're sticking your flag in the ground and saying, this is me, this is what I'm an expert in. This is what you come to me for. It becomes a lot clearer to your audience. It makes it easier for them. You don't really ever want to have an audience. Like if they're going, we don't have people in your audience ever going, oh, I don't know which one I should buy. Do I need this one or this one or which one should I do first? You want them to be, I've got this problem, they can help me with this problem. And this is the thing that they offer to help me with this problem. Like, it just needs to be that clear. The going all in, the getting focused, it makes a big, big difference to you and to your audience. And it also means that because you're focusing on one thing, you're talking about that thing a lot more often. You get better at learning how to talk about it. You get better at your messaging, but also your audience hears about it more. It just starts to sink in and seep in and all of that stuff. In such, in the crowded, crazy world that we live in where people are being bombarded with marketing messaging around the clock, they need to hear about things a lot, a lot more than they used to. So it helps to build that level of trust, that level of desirability of your office as well when you have just one or two offers that you are talking about, not six, not three, not 10, just, you know, no, I've got to anyway, just any more than two is too many. And to be honest, one's probably the best. But I know that it doesn't, isn't always easy to do. So that's number one, getting focused. Number two is that like once you've figured out what this offer is going to be, you need to know and have a scaling plan that is suitable for your type of offer. Because again, I think this is something a lot of people just assume is like, okay, well I've got an offer and I've sold it pretty well. Like, you know, maybe you launches are starting to do better or maybe you even have a funnel. And if you do, congrats. And it's, you know, it's ticking all the mile, hitting all the right milestones and you know, doing all the numbers it should and like, okay, now let's grow it, let's Scale it. So let's just go and spend money on ads. Right? That's what people usually assume scaling means. They go, okay, here's my scale plan. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna spend money. That's. And that's not actually a scaling plan because this is what happens when you try to scale. And again, this is where, this is what happens and what forces people to get stuck hitting against the ceiling for certain offers. Well, actually for every offer, you will find that as you spend money, you will get to a point where actually, just because of the way Facebook ads work in that Facebook, once it's, you know, once your ads are running for a little while and it's gone through its learning phase and stuff, Facebook normally delivers you the best people, the people most likely to convert first. Just spending more doesn't necessarily mean you'll get more of those people. And this goes for all ad platforms. It doesn't mean that they're just going to, that you're going to go, all right, here's 100amazing customers. Now I'm going to spend double. So I'm going to get 200amazing customers. No, what it means is usually you're going to get 100amazing customers and 100 not quite as perfect customers. So it starts to get more and more. You start spending more. And because you're now then therefore getting people who are not quote unquote as perfect, it starts to actually get more expensive. So maybe it costs you a hundred dollars to make a sale before and you go and spend double, thinking you get double the sales, but actually you only get one and a bit more sales. And now all of a sudden it's costing you $170 to make a sale. And every, and you know, obviously that's just made up numbers, but every offer, every market will hit this place at some point. If all you are doing is running ads to the setup, to the offer that you have, there's always going to be a ceiling on it where Facebook just runs out of good people and just starts spending your money, showing you to whoever you need to have a plan that's more than just spend money on ads. And that what that plan looks like is there's lots of different ways of doing it. And that's a whole other episode. And actually it's a whole program. And it's what we do inside Equals Empire and I get. And luckily inside six figure school we actually have more time. So I can break it down for you and show you some of the different paths, but you Know you need a plan that's suitable for your type of offer, your type of market, how you you want to promote. Like are you doing live launches, are you doing funnels, are you doing a combination? What type of funnel, what type of launch, what is your price point, who is it like all of these things will change exactly how you set up your offer. Are you using all paid traffic or as a combo of paid and organic or is it all organic traffic? You there's, there is no one size fits all here. You have to know how to scale and how to do it in a way that is not just let's just spend more money, but in a way that means you can, you can continue to grow. You can do it well beyond what your current goals are, but you can do it in a way that is still profitable. That so you're not just spending more money to eat to get less money back, you're spending more money and how getting more money back because that's, you know, that's what you need to do to be able to grow. Like, even if you are not at all revenue motivated, Even if you're 100% like, I just want to serve as many people as I possibly can. And most of us are a mix of the two, right? Like, and some will be more of one and more of the other. And again, no wrong answers here. You do everyone got to be know who you are, own it and it's all good. But when even if you were that pure altruistic person who's like I just want to help as many people as humanly possible, if your business isn't profitable, if money isn't coming back in that you can then reinvest to grow that business, you know, into getting more team and all other stuff you'll need as it grows, and we talk about that more in a second, then you're going to run out of money. And therefore you can't serve more people because you can't get in front of more people because you can't continue to run your business. So your business has to be profitable even if profit isn't your number one objective. And the strategy, the scaling strategy of just spend more on ads means you will run out of profit eventually. You need a better plan. So that's number two, you need a plan that is to scale profitably, that is customizing is going to work for your offer. Number three, and this of course is one of my favorites because I am a systems and automations nerd. But at this point in business you've probably been able to get along so far with very little systems and automation. Like to get to the 100k mark, you can do a lot of stuff yourself. You can do it without SOPs, which means standard operating procedures for anyone. You can do it without automations, you can do it without, you know, getting more, more systemized and more streamlined. But this is where you're hitting that. You're running out of time. There are not enough hours in the day, you're running out of energy. You now need to systemize and automate as much as you can and the three areas that are most important.

And doing these, you can do this in whichever order, but you need to have a system for your delivery. So that is from all the touch points when people are getting onboarded, how you do that, how you welcome them, you know, and this can be done partly automated or just by having, you know, some great canned responses and things like that, a step, you know, checklists inside tasks being set up. When someone joins all this stuff helps to reduce down the amount of mental effort it takes to do each task and also reduce down the amount of time and also to make it more, make it more reliable, make sure that your, the level of service you want to be giving is more consistent. And also means that you can probably get team members in to help you out to do them, which is the big goal. Your delivery, every sort of touch point, every way that you speak to or reach out to or interact with your client should all be systemized and preferably automated if possible. Then next your sales needs to be automated, which is funnels. And not just funnels, but also the combination of finding that right mix of some kind of sales funnel and also rinse and repeat launches. Like at this point for people who are trying to go from a low 100k to, you know, the low six figures up to mid high, even through the seven figure mark, you need to be launching pretty regularly. I would say four times a year is a minimum. My personal preference is if people have the capacity, if they've got the systems in place and they have, you know, one or two team members to actually be launching every 60 days. I know that seems like a lot, but it's a great way to get momentum and then have your funnel running in the background in between. And these launches are repeating launches. This is not coming up something new every time it's going, I know how to launch this. It works well. I just do it again and again. It's so it makes again a whole, I do a whole, whole a Whole podcast episode on rinse and repeat launches and how to set them up. We die. Like, this is one of the things I love helping people do inside our ecosystem program. But it's, it's finding that, it's finding that marketing calendar, that rhythm that again, works for you, works for your offers, how often you're going to launch, what kind of launches you're going to do, how you can make them as systemized as possible so they're not super stressful. Not taking up all of your time and it doesn't feel like all you do is launch. And also having that funnel supporting underneath. You need both of these pieces if you're really wanting to grow. It's very hard to grow if you don't have these. And because if you, if these pieces are going to bring in more people than ever before and because you're going to be probably spending more time doing, delivering the launches and stuff like that. This is why it is also important that you have your delivery side really, really streamlined. Because if you get 100 new people coming in, it needs to be effortless to be able to serve them and serve them well. And then of course you need to also have systems and market and automation. Sorry for your marketing. So your lead generation, how you get new people across the door and these all go together, these all work together, you don't need to do them all at once. My gosh, that would be a lot. But it's something you need to focus on and it's not a very sexy thing, but if you don't have them, you are going to get stuck, you are going to run out of time, there's enough hours in the day, you're not going to get team to come in and help you, you're going to run out of energy. It's just going to suck. So systems automations, particularly around these three key areas of your business, marketing, sales and delivery, are a must. And then the final piece is here is when you need to get some people on the bus, possibly to get to this point. You maybe have either completely done it yourself or maybe you've just done it with piecemeal contractors here and there. You know, hiring someone to do a job here, a job there, to keep growing beyond this, you need to invest in team and you need that team to be dedicated team. I'm not saying they don't need to be full timers, but you need to hire the certain type of person who cares about your business, who has enough, is doing enough hours every week on your business that they know what's going on, that they are invested, that they, you can see the bigger picture and that they are going to become a real asset to your business and grow as you grow. Not just someone who turns up, ticks a box and says, okay, I've done my tasks, I'm done. You need people to start taking a bit of ownership, people to start feeling excited, to start sort of really, you know, they're on the bus with you. It's a very different feeling when you have team who are on the bus versus just having task monkeys at this point and a lot of people what they'll do at this, you know, if you look at your budget, you look at what you can afford to invest in and usually the person, if you don't have them already that you'd hire, it would be some kind of all rounder VA who can come in and free up a lot of the sort of the more basic tasks, the repetitive tasks, things like customer service, looking after emails, scheduling in things for launches, scheduling in social media. So much of that can be taken off your plate and can be taken off your plate by one person. So you want kind of like that generalist at this stage to come in and just take a whole bunch of things. Because that means I personally, I think it's better at this point in business to have less people but have each of those people working more hours than to try and get like six people all doing five hours a week. Because you don't get that level of investment emotionally from them. And that's really the key to a team that is going to support you and a team that's going to help you to grow. Yes, some things that doesn't apply, like maybe you need someone, your website is broken, you need someone who can fix your website. You go and do a piecemeal, you know, you find someone to do that task, tick, that's fine. But anyone who is going to be on your team every week, showing up weekly, you know you want that person to have that on the bus kind of feeling. They're part of the team, they're excited, they're in this journey with you and that's a big shift. And that's why getting those systems and automations in place is so important because it's going to help you to get that person and help to settle that up. But if you do those four things. So I said get focused, get a scale plan and if you don't have a scale plan or still not sure what I'm talking about, then come and join us inside six figure School because we will talk about all this. I'll break it all down for you. So go to Hellofunnels co school, grab your ticket, come join us inside. It's gonna be great. Systems and automations. We talk about that in six figure school as well actually. But it's one of my favorite topics. I talk about it all the time. Like this is funnels, this is systems, this is using the great tech out there to make your business run smoother and make things easier and then finally getting some team on the bus, getting those first team members who've got buy in, who are invested, who are excited and who are going to be on this journey with you. Make those four shifts. You will not help but notice how quickly things start to move for you. So really, really excited. I'd love to know are any of these ding any bells, any aha moments going off? Make sure you hit us up at hellofunnels on Instagram, let us know. And like I said, if you are feeling like 2022 is going to be your year to bust through this six figure ceiling and to scale to multi six figures and well beyond, then you need to come and join us inside our epic new six day live workshop, the Six Figure School. It all kicks off January 31st and inside it I'm going to walk you through. It's a six day fun but intensive and very hands on experience. And we're going to show you exactly what you need to do to market, sell and scale your own multi six figure online course in 2022. It's going to be super valuable. So much fun. You can grab all the details and get your ticket for just $27 at HelloFunnels Co school. Click on over. Grab it now. You do not want to miss out. You will be so kicking yourself if you do. Can't wait to see you inside. Until then guys, keep doing what you do and I'll see you all online.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing It Online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@StealMyFunnel.com.