Scale Like A Girl Ep 8 - The 4 Things That Stop Women At Exactly This Level. One Of Them Is Yours

So today I wanna tell you a story about me that you've definitely never heard before. Almost 20 years ago, maybe closer to 15, I invented Pinterest. Yep. Before Pinterest existed, I actually invented it. Hear me out. So at the time I was running a fashion blog and I had this idea. So me, my cobbled together WordPress site, and a guy I found on Upwork built this custom functionality where readers could save images they found anywhere on the internet and turn them into their own inspiration. They could then share those boards with friends and family, and it even automatically added affiliate links in the background wherever one existed, which by the way is exactly how Pinterest used to make a chunk of their money. Bet you didn't know that. I called it Love It, Share It or something lame like that, and I was so excited about it for about 2 weeks. Then I moved on to the next shiny idea, and about a year later Pinterest launched and exploded, and I sat there going, that, that's what I built. I have the Upwork receipts. It's still taking up space on my website. But here's the thing though, the difference between my version of Pinterest and actual Pinterest was never the idea. The difference is that they got clear, they got focused, they went all in. They also happened to raise millions of dollars and they grew the one thing. Meanwhile, I was already 3 other half-finished ideas down the road. And I'd put money on you having a version of this story, like everyone does, right? That invention you thought of that came out a few months later? Because it's actually not the idea that's valuable. It's the focus and the execution that make the difference. And the exact pattern is the first one of 4 things that stop women at exactly this level. So it's 4 patterns, not 10, 4. And they've got nothing to do with how talented you are and nothing to do with how much you're working, how much effort you're putting in. The women who keep circling this level are usually working harder than those who have momentum. So today, for the final episode of this series, for now anyway, I'm walking you through all 4 and I'm giving you my honest answer to each one. And that's exactly what we're doing 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 there. I'm Kate McKibbin from hellofunnels.co and welcome to a very special pop-up miniseries of the Doing It Online podcast. This is Scale Like a Girl, episode 8, the finale. And it's a big day around here because as of 7:00 AM this morning, the doors to Scale are open for waitlist members. More on that in a bit. One instruction first. A few episodes back, I gave you a checklist and told you to count down how many you already had. That was the episode's job. This is not that. Do not score yourself out of 4. Look for the one that feels like a gut punch, that feels a bit too close to home. That one's yours, because you can't fix a pattern you haven't named. And once you've named it, the fix is usually closer than you think. All right, number 1, you already know this one. The first thing that stops women from getting to that next level is having too many possible next moves and no clear way to rank them. Also known as the thing that cost me Pinterest. And let's be clear about what this isn't. It's not a lack of ideas. In fact, it's the opposite. At this level, ideas are coming out of your ears. You could do more with ads. You could finally sort out your AI situation. You could rework the offers, build the funnel, hire someone, hire another person, fix retention, put your prices up, put your prices down. And every single one of those could be the right answer. You could defend any of them to me. And I'd probably nod along. That's not the problem. Because when everything is defensible and nothing has a clear way of getting ranked, you're gonna do the logical thing here because you're a logical person, and that is you're probably gonna do a little bit of everything. A few hours here, half-built project there, everything inching forward a centimeter at a time. And a centimeter at a time is exactly how a business stays the same size while its owner works harder than ever. So here is the honest answer. The woman creating momentum at your level or the next does not have better ideas than you. I promise. She's just ruthless about one question. What moves my number next? And then she puts a disproportionate, almost rude amount of attention there. Not more things, fewer things, bigger. That's what actual Pinterest did to my Pinterest. And it's what you need to do to get to your next level. But notice what that ruthlessness runs on. You can't rank your moves just by vibe, and you definitely can't rank them by whatever Instagram is yelling about this week. You can only rank them when you're able to look at your actual business objectively and do the maths on what each move is worth to you. And if you can't do that yourself, you need to get someone who can. Pin that. I'm going to come back to it. Okay. Number 2. The second thing that stops women at this level is What they do when they hit a ceiling. And you will hit a ceiling. You'll hit many ceilings. Let me say that louder for the overachievers. You will hit a ceiling because nobody, absolutely nobody grows in a straight line. Real growth looks like this. A bit of growth, a small jump, then a plateau that hangs around just long enough to mess with your head. Sometimes you slide backwards a little, which is honestly rude. Then you unlock the next thing and you jump again. That's the pattern, and you repeat it all the way up. The women doing 6-figure months hit exactly as many ceilings as you do. So the ceiling itself was never the problem. What separates the women who unlock that next jump from the women who sit flat and then potentially even slide backwards and then slide some more is what they do at that ceiling. And there are 2 default responses. I've done both, so please no judgment. The first is more. More traffic, more content, another launch, feed the machine. The second is new. Maybe the offer's wrong. Maybe I need a new funnel. Maybe I should burn the whole thing down and start again because it's not moving as fast as I want. Both feel like action. That's what makes them so seductive and so dangerous. But more buys you the same result, just usually at a higher price. And the currency is the time you're spending on it. And new is actually worse. You're throwing away months, if not years, of proven assets to go and stand at the starting line once again. With a brand new, shiny, fresh guess. The woman creating momentum, she doesn't do either of those things. Instead, she focuses on upgrades. The offer that's proven itself but run out of steam, she doesn't replace it. She adds the piece that makes it worth more. The bump, the upgrade sequence, the next step offer, one at a time, stacking, compounding. Nothing gets thrown out if it's proven itself. Nothing new lands on her plate. We are not starting again at zero. You get focused, you get ruthless, you get strategic, and then the thing that you've already built is gonna start producing more, which is why ceilings don't actually faze me anymore. A ceiling isn't a sign that something's broken. It's a sign that something is ready for its next upgrade. Now, quick one, because today is the day the doors to Scale opened at 7:00 AM this morning, Australian Eastern Standard Time. That was to our waitlist members only. So if you are on that list, Stop what you were doing if you've missed it. Go check your email. There's a special link in there and you want to be clicking on it because there are only 20 spots. And based on just how many of you there were on that waitlist, I do not expect them to hang around for long. Now, if you're not on the waitlist, details are at the end for how you can make sure you don't miss out next time. All right, number 3. The third thing that stops women at this level is she's making decisions for the business she has instead of the business she actually building. This one is very sneaky because it doesn't look like a mistake. It looks like just being sensible. The offer is priced for the audience she has now. The delivery is built around the client numbers she has now. The systems are, and I mean systems is probably being generous. It's mostly, you know, her, some duct tape, a whole lot of Post-it notes and about 17 different Notion docs, right? But it works at this size. It all works. That's the trap. The $20K a month version of a business will happily tolerate things that an $80K a month version cannot. So here's my favorite question to ask a business owner at this level. If this worked 4 times better tomorrow, scrap this, 10 times better tomorrow, what would break? Actually answer it. 10 times the sales starting tomorrow morning. Does the delivery hold? Do the margins hold? Or does more sales somehow become not that much more money? Does your calendar survive? What about your mental health? Are you the bottleneck on every decision by Thursday? Whatever you just flinched at the most, that's what your ceiling is currently stuck under. And the honest answer is the woman creating momentum makes decisions against the business she's building, not just the one she's running. She fixes the margin problems while it's small. She builds delivery that could hold 4 times, 10 times the clients before they actually arrive. She puts the infrastructure in, the systems, the AI layer, the numbers she can actually see. And no, I'm not talking about dedicating months to writing out endless SOPs. That such a waste of time at this point. It is about systemizing strategically the stuff that actually supports you while you grow your business and doing it while it is still optional. Not all at once, in the right order. So when that growth starts showing up, because it will, it has something built to hold it. Growth only breaks the businesses that were built and designed to stay small. And number 4, I saved for last because the one that took me the longest to admit to myself. So the 4th thing that stops women at this level, she is the smartest person in her own business. And I mean that as a compliment. It's true. You built the bloody thing. Nobody sees the whole picture like you do. Nobody knows your clients like you do. But at some point, and this level is usually exactly the point, being the person with all the answers can become a ceiling. Because think about where those answers are coming from. They're coming from your lived experience so far. And think about where your decisions actually go. Everyone on your team is looking to you. You can ask your friends, who I'm sure are lovely, but may not necessarily be an expert in what you need right now. You can ask Claude, who of course says every idea you have is freaking genius. You can buy another course, or you can workshop the decision alone for 3 weeks and then land on the same call that you would've made on day 1. But now you've lost 3 weeks of implementation time. What you don't have here is someone who can look at the whole business and challenge what you're seeing and notice what you aren't and say, do this next and here's why. That sentence from the right person at the right moment is worth more than anything else you can buy at this level. And I say that as someone who's been on both sides of it. And this is the one you cannot solve from inside your own head. That's not a knock on your head, by the way. It's just physics. You can't read the label from inside the jar. The woman who keeps growing deliberately gets herself into rooms where she isn't required to have all the answers. She does that over and over and over again, not for cheerleading, for the moment when someone further down the road looks at her business, sees what she can't, and hands her the next move on a platter. So 4 things. Right now you've got too many moves. Your only way through every ceiling is add more or add new. You're building for today's business, not the one you actually want. And right now you are the smartest person in your room. One of those, I bet, felt a little too close to home, and I bet you knew which one it was before I even finished the list. And that is exactly why I built Scale. Scale, in case somehow you missed it, is my brand new high-touch program for ambitious 6-figure women ready to upgrade their business to wildly profitable, mostly automated and actually enjoyable 6-figure months and beyond. And now that you've got through those 4 in your head, look at what it actually is. So we start by ranking your moves against your actual business so you know exactly what moves your number next. Then we show you which upgrades you need in what order and give you everything you need to install them, all on top of the business you've already built. You build the infrastructure for the business that you are becoming, including a locked-in AI layer, As you go. And it all happens in a room where you are for once not the smartest person in it, and that's okay. Instead, you're surrounded by 20 women at your level, all awesome at what they do, and myself and my team all looking at your business with you. And here's where it's at. The doors opened at 7:00 AM this morning, Australian Eastern Standard Time. But this round is just for waitlist members only. So if you weren't on the waitlist, I'm afraid you've already missed out. But if you are, make sure you go and check your email right now. We sent you a special link. You need to click on that link, get in there fast to lock in the best price this will ever be, and make sure you do not miss out on one of those spots. Now, if you missed the waitlist this time, I've popped the link below now and you can join the waitlist for the next round. That's the end of Scale Like a Girl, guys. 8 episodes, everything I know about what this level is and what it takes to bust through to the next one. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you found it super valuable. I hope you go and implement, and I really hope to see you inside Scale very soon. 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.