Scale Like A Girl Ep 1 — 7 Years Of 7 Figures, All Inside School Hours. Here's How I'm Adding Another $1M

Just last week I made a public declaration on Instagram, and I'm not going to pretend it was casual. It was pretty major, and it was very terrifying. I said out loud in public where everyone can see whether I actually pull it off that I am adding an extra million dollars to my business in the next 12 months. Now, Instagram gives me about 90 seconds per reel, so there was a whole lot I did not have room to explain. The why underneath it, the rules I've put around it, and the 7 years of backstory that made me finally decide to do it, plus an overview of the steps I'm gonna take so you can steal them too. And that's what I'm getting into today. Build it, automate it, scale it. This almost feels too easy. Time to build a grown-ass business. The Doing It Online podcast. Here's your host, Kate McKibbin. Hey, hey, I'm Kate McKibbin from hellofunnels.co and welcome to a very special pop-up mini series of the Doing It Online podcast. This is Scale Like a Girl, episode 1. Over the next couple of weeks, I'm doing something I don't normally do, multiple episodes a week, all deep diving on one topic, scaling. Not the version where you hire 14 people and start having meetings about meetings. Not the version where you just spend thousands and thousands of dollars on ads and cross your fingers and hope you get it back. The version where the business gets bigger and more profitable without asking more of you. So put your big girl pants on because we're going deep. And before I get into the whole thing, let me tell you who I think is listening to this and who this is really for. So some of you are still building the foundation. You've got a great offer, your clients get results, and you're personally dragging every single sale over the line every time. You want the thing where sales just happen reliably. Preferably without relying on you. I've talked about that a lot and I will keep talking about it, but some of you already have that bit or a version of it. You've built something that works, it's consistent-ish, it pays you, it's real, and you're sitting there going, okay, so now what? Because every time you try to make it bigger, it just seems to get harder. More content, another launch, more time in your DMs, and you're looking around at people who seem to be growing without any of that., and you know for a fact they're no smarter than you are, and they're definitely not working harder than you. So what's missing? That's the bit nobody is explaining properly, and that is what this series is all about. So my public declaration. A few weeks ago, I was at a mastermind retreat in Thailand, and I came home with a bit of a fire under me. I decided to set a really big goal, and to do that, I wanted to connect it to a really big why. The goal is an extra million dollars in my business in the next 12 months. The why is my family home. I want to pay off my mortgage. I want to be mortgage-free. I've always said I'd be mortgage-free by 45. I turn 45 next year. Now realistically, I probably won't get completely there by my actual birthday, but if I'm somewhere in the range, I'm still going to be really happy with that. And full transparency, there is another reason behind this one. The world is changing pretty fast right now. I've been in business nearly 20 years, so I've watched a few things shift. And look, I'm not sitting here in a bunker. I'm not panicking. This will very probably all turn out completely fine, but nobody actually knows what things look like 3 years or 5 years from now. So I'd quite like to own my home outright and know that my family is solid, whatever happens. That's the whole thought. Less the sky is falling, more let's just take this one off the table while I can. And that's the goal. That's the why., but here's where it gets interesting. And this is a bit that wouldn't fit into 90 seconds because a goal like that on its own is just a number. Anyone can pick a number and a timeframe. The thing that makes it interesting is the rules I'm putting around it. And this is the bit you're gonna want pen and paper for. Okay, 3 rules. Look, I'm not the kind of person who goes, right, I'm gonna work 15-hour days, grit my teeth for a year and get there. Not anymore. No, no, no, absolutely not. This extra million dollars, it has to happen inside my criteria, and I've got 3. Rule number 1, it has to be done within school hours. Quality time with my family is not on the table. I'm not sacrificing that for any dollar amount, any. So whatever the plan is, it has to fit inside the hours that I already have. Rule number 2, it has to be work I actually enjoy doing. I've been in business way too long now. I know what I like, I know what I don't like, I know what I'm good at. Yes, there's stuff you just have to do, taxes, admin, whatever. But I know myself well enough to know that if I commit to 12+ months of something that drains me, something I freaking hate, I won't do it. Not well anyway. So it's just not gonna happen. And rule 3, it has to be profitable. Not revenue, profit. Because the whole point of this is that I wanna pull most of that money out of the business and put it onto my mortgage. And yes, I know, I know I'll pay a bunch of taxes, but we'll get over that.. So a million dollars of revenue that costs me $900,000 to make does absolutely nothing for my house. So those are my rules. And honestly, the rules are the hard part. And I recommend if you're setting yourself a big goal, you sit down and have a good think about what your rules would be too, because plenty of people can add a million dollars or hit a big target if they're willing to blow up their life to do it. For me, doing it inside school hours on work that I like with profit actually landing in my bank account. That is a different problem entirely, and it requires a totally different strategy. And that's what we're gonna be engineering and what I'm gonna be sharing in these upcoming episodes. Okay, so that's the goal, but there's a much bigger backstory here, and that is really what I wanted to dive into today because the truth is I've been running my business on cruise control for about 7 years. Anyone else feel that? But for me, it was actually deliberate. So let me rewind. Before 2019, I was stuck. I was in that $20-ish, $30-ish thousand a month slump for a really long time. I felt like I had a super hard ceiling I could not bust through, and it was so frustrating because from the outside that still looks like a successful business. It is a successful business. It just would not move, and I really wanted it to. And I'm doing a whole episode on that one topic later in the week because it's a real ceiling and almost nobody talks about how to bust through it. Then 2019 happened. I had a massive growth year, my first 7-figure year actually, and it wasn't luck and it wasn't the market because most of this actually happened before COVID It was because I structurally and fundamentally changed how I was running my business. I was about to have my son and I knew going in that I wanted to be available to him. Now, I was never going to be a full-time stay-at-home mom, no shade on that, it just wasn't for me. I love my business too much. I love solving the types of problems that it solves. I needed that type of brain stimulation that comes from something other than just being at home with my kid. But I also wasn't willing to do this just an hour or two a day for either side. I wanted to actually be there for my son properly, for quality time. So I made a decision about childcare. I went with the absolute bare minimum I could personally accept. And I want to be really clear, that was my choice. It's not everybody's choice. There's no right or wrong answer here. But it meant I was walking into 2019 with a very small, very fixed number of working hours. So I built the business around them. The way that I sold, the way I marketed, the way I delivered, all of it is engineered to fit inside the time and the energy I actually had. And here's the honest bit, I didn't know if it was gonna work. I mean, it felt like a good idea at the time, but I sort of winged it. Then COVID hit, 2 years, and I was so grateful because everything just kept ticking along. Then we had that strange period in the online business world where everything shifted and everyone had to recalibrate. We shuffled some things around, we actually moved house, then we came back out the other side and settled right back at that same locked-in level. Every single year since 2019, within about 15 to 20% either way, up or down, my business has brought in pretty much the same locked-in level of revenue. 7 figures every year, like clockwork. And a lot of people went backwards in that hard window. We didn't. We course-corrected, came out the other side stronger. And look, it hasn't been a smooth 7 years. There've been stretches where I was the only one earning and carrying the whole family. We've had 2 years of lockdowns with homeschooling and 3 ADHD kids. I had a frozen shoulder that left me basically one-handed for a year. I literally could not use my right arm. And through every single bit of that, the business just kept chugging along. That's the thing I am most grateful for, not the number, the fact that the number didn't need me to be okay for it to be okay. And honestly, that is the whole point, isn't it? That's the thing we're actually trying to build. That is what real scaling looks like. So here's where I am now. My son is at school, and any parent will tell you that school hours are not full-time hours, especially if you're the one doing drop-off and pickup. Now realistically, I'm at about 60% of the capacity of a full-time person, so still capped, still limited, but freer than I've been in years. And if there was ever a moment to take my foot off that cruise control and put it back on the gas, it is this one, which is why I'm doing this series, which is why I set myself the challenge, because I spent years talking about the first part, the foundation, the pieces that make sales reliable and get you off the hamster wheel. I'm proud of that work. I'll keep doing it. Our clients have got phenomenal results, but there's a second part I've barely talked about publicly. The pieces I've built quietly over the last 7 years that turn a business that works into a business that grows and keeps growing and then maintains that level of growth and profit throughout everything the world has to throw at it. How you grow it, how you sustain it, how you do all of it so it fits around your family, your criteria, your life, and how you keep it properly profitable. Because otherwise, what's the fucking point? That's what these next episodes are. I'm gonna walk you through the actual pieces, The offers, the systems, the sequences, the AI, all of it. Not theory, the stuff I am using right now to go and get that extra million. So that's a shift I want you to sit with today. Building a business that survives without you and building a business that grows without you are two completely different jobs. Most of us stop at the first one. I did for 7 years, and there is nothing wrong with cruise control, by the way. Cruise control got me through a pandemic, a newborn, and a year with one working arm., but it's a choice. And at some point you get to make a different one. Now, one thing before I go, this is a pop-up series, which means it's short, it's fast, and there are multiple episodes a week. So the easiest way to make sure you don't miss any of it is to make sure on my email list, because that's where I'll be sending you nudge every time a new one lands. Just click the link in the show notes below, pop in your details, takes about 10 seconds. And if you wanna see the actual Instagram post that started all of this, the link is in the show notes too. Alrighty, that's it for today, guys. I'll see you on the next one. That's it for this episode. Now go build it, automate it, and scale it. I love the show, guys. You're awesome. For more strategies and resources, visit hellofunnels.co.