The next level moves for multi-6-figure CEOs

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

[00:00:00] Here’s a truth bomb. The strategies that got you to multi-six-figures are not the same ones that will take you to seven. In fact, if you keep running your business the same way you have up until this point, you will actually cap your growth. In today’s episode of the podcast, I’m gonna be talking about why a lot of multi-six-figure business owners get stuck and what you can do to break through that income plateau.

Welcome or welcome back to The Clare Wood Podcast. My name is Clare Wood and I’m a business profit coach who specializes in helping six and multi-six figure business owners to scale strategically to seven figures, but in a profitable way. I work with all kinds of service space business owners, [00:01:00] including creatives, from interior design agencies, through to digital marketing agencies, and even people in the medical space.

In today’s episode, I’m gonna talk to you about how to really shift your mindset from being that of like a six figure business owner to really stepping into that million dollar mark and being very mindful in that process around how you can be growing it in a way that’s actually gonna leave you with more money for you to enjoy.

So let’s start here. Why do a lot of business owners get stuck at that multi-six-figure mark? Something I’ve noticed is that there are, there are a little plateaus or places in business where it’s kind of really easy to get stuck, to be plateauing out. And the multi-six-figure mark is one of them. And there’s a couple of key challenges that happen at this stage of business growth.[00:02:00]

Firstly, what happens, like in the early stages of business, you are, you know, down in the weeds, you are doing it all. You are doing your marketing, you’re doing all of the bits and pieces, and then you kind of start to step into that, that six figure mark. You might be getting a bit of help in a few different areas, but you are still really involved in the day-to-day operations of the business. You’re still kind of thinking, okay, what do I need to do? What do I need to post? You know, who do I need to reach out to? And you are still maybe stuck in that hustle mode rather than really starting to think about how can I be leveraging my income so that I can really step into that next level.

And then there’s almost this paradoxical way that you might get stuck, which is that either, you are, you are too just doing it all. Or alternatively, you start to think, okay, [00:03:00] I need help with my socials. I need help with my accounting. I need help with this. I need help with this. And so you are hiring all of this help, but what you are finding is that your profit margins are shrinking as your revenue is growing.

So maybe you’re seeing that the sales are going up. But you’re like, I’m still hustling hard and I feel like I haven’t actually got any extra money left over once I pay all of these bills. Once I pay the team, once I pay these extra expenses and the long term strategy of let’s just sell more, more, more, and hire more people, it isn’t leaving you feeling like you are creating any more wealth, that you’ve got any more money left over.

Now I do wanna say this if, if you are struggling with any of these things, I just wanna say, if you’ve got to this [00:04:00] level, a huge congratulations because there’s only a very small percentage of business owners that ever make it to this stage, and I think that you need to celebrate that because it means that your business model is working.

But if you have dreams, if you have goals that you want to create, even more profitability, even more freedom in your business, it is time to evolve the way that you have done the things that you’ve always done. So there’s gonna be some key shifts that you need to make to move from being, you know, a, a successful, a six or multi-six-figure business owner to really stepping in to that million dollar CEO energy.

The first thing that needs to shift, is you need to stop doing and start delegating. So this [00:05:00] is about building. This isn’t about just like higher, higher, higher. I’m gonna, you know, outsource everything I possibly can. It’s about building a high performance team. So this means getting the right people, working the right amount of hours.

You can’t afford to be micromanaging at this level. You’re gonna need to have the right people and then focus your energy on learning how to lead rather than how to manage all the things that they are doing. Part of what this looks like is removing yourself from being a bottleneck in terms of decisions moving forward.

Now I know I’ve definitely been the bottleneck in my business many times. You know, the, the landing page can’t be finished or the email can’t be sent because I [00:06:00] haven’t had a chance to look across it yet. Now, stepping into this next level looks like, you are a leader and you don’t need to approve every single decision anymore.

Now, I know this might freak a lot of you out if you are a, a type A, if you are someone who likes to manage the process, manage every little bit of it if you’re a perfectionist, but part of your next level is being able to feel comfortable taking on a reasonable amount of risk, you need to go. I, I recognize that I cannot be in every single decision, every single bit of detail if I want to be leading at this next level. And the second component of this, which will help you to mitigate some of that risk is by having systems in place. So let me pick [00:07:00] an example of how your system enables you to not need to be approving every single decision, but that you can still feel comfortable that your, you know, your team aren’t gonna screw things up and affect your business reputation.

So let’s just say that you own a, a digital marketing agency. And up until now, you have approved every single Facebook ad that is ever created in your agency. But now the business is growing, the team is scaling, and you are just finding that you are the bottleneck because you know, you finish all of your work at the end of the day, and then you’ve got this huge list of approvals and you just simply aren’t getting through it.

So what you can do to mitigate the risk is create a system around it and a system looks like, here are other things that need to be checked off before an ad can be set [00:08:00] live. And it might be okay, we have a second person who does a spelling and grammar check. We double, we get a second person to crosscheck the audiences that we are putting in there.

Et cetera, et cetera. So what happens when you have these systems in place is that people aren’t waiting for you as this, you know, guru of all things Facebook ads. They just simply work through the process and check that things are being done. Now, if you are a perfectionist, you’re probably gonna be freaking out already.

You’re like, but what if they don’t do the things? Now, of course we can never mitigate all risk, but what you can do is again, have a process around what that looks like for you to feel comfortable with it. So maybe the, the cross tech is that you have someone else in the team look across and check that they followed the system.

Or maybe at the start, like this is what I do early on when I’m working [00:09:00] with someone, I, I guess I micromanage a little bit. I wanna see everything, I wanna read everything. I wanna check everything. And then when we’ve got to that level where I’m like, yes, I feel really comfortable that you have a great handle on my tone of voice or on the aesthetics around how I like things designed, then I can start to really step back and not have to, you know, be micromanaging or be in the, the nitty degree of it. So at the start, it looks like, okay, we’re gonna be working really quite closely together. And it’s like, fab, okay, you get it. Now I’m gonna empower you to go off and I trust that you are going to, you know, do the right thing and, and complete things the way that we do things around here.

The key thing that I want you to take away from this is that your role needs to become a CEO, not the person who’s doing everything as you step into this next level. Okay, if you’re a longtime listener of the podcast, I know I sound like a broken record about this one, but I ain’t gonna stop [00:10:00] shouting it from the rooftops.

I’m sorry. This is my whole passion. This is my jam. And this is something that is very, very, very, very, very important as we step into this next level of growth, which is that you can’t keep the focus on revenue. You have to shift to a profit focus. I’m on a mission. To completely rewrite the online glorification of the Million Dollar Business, because businesses aren’t defined by sales.

Your real indicator of your success and growth is your profit. It’s what’s left over after you’ve paid your bills. So let me share why the focus needs to shift from sales into profit. I personally would way rather [00:11:00] have a business that makes $180,000 of profit of $300,000 worth of sales then to be running a million dollar business that has nothing left over.

Now, maybe you listen to this and you feel a little bit triggered. Maybe you’re not at that stage and you think as if someone earning a million dollars a year can spend it all. Well, trust me, I’ve seen it again and again and again and again. People with wildly successful businesses that are burning through the money as quickly as it’s coming in.

And if this is you, it’s not your fault. It’s just that you haven’t got the processes in place to ensure that you are doing it in a profitable way. A lot of businesses get tripped up because they forget, Hey, that money that comes in, [00:12:00] I’ve gotta pay my expenses, and I’ve also gotta pay tax on that. And on the face of it, you might think I’m a $60,000 month.

I can damn well hire that person if I want to. But all those little incremental decisions add up. And a lot of times at this mark, we see our profit margins start to be squeezed. So really as you are starting to step into your, your CEO level, shift your focus from sales and revenue into profit. And that leads me to the third shift that is required for that next level of growth is that we need to stop thinking about short term, desperate sales tactics and shift to long term strategy.

 This is about creating and building sustainable systems. Now I get it. [00:13:00] Systems have a bit of an unsexy wrap. Trust me, I am working on mine at the moment, and it’s really tedious when you are implementing system changes. But here’s the thing, if you can’t step back and do the work on the business instead of working in the business, you’re gonna find yourself in that same trap.

Let me give you an example. One of the things systems that I’ve just implemented is having a, a, a systemized private coaching onboarding process. Now, I don’t take on a ton of private coaching clients. It’s a very exclusive, high touch point service that I offer, so it’s not like I’m welcoming in, you know, new private coaching clients every day.

But nonetheless, when someone new did come to work with me, which does happen, you know, relatively regularly, I would have to go [00:14:00] and grab a copy of the contract, save down the contract, read the contract, maybe update the contract if applicable. I’d go and create an invoice. I’d write an email or tweak an email.

Then I would put in a link to book in the calls. That is, you know, a lot of different steps. And now what we’ve done we’ve gone and created, when I say we, I have to give full credit to my beautiful assistant Sally, who actually did all the hard work. But now we’ve got this beautiful, seamless process where, you know, you get sent a copy of the contract and then you go through the next step.

Then you, you pay, then you get the link to set up your calls. It’s a beautiful, seamless process. The system behind it was, you know, it took, it took time. And this is the thing that I’ve, I, I’m having conversations again and again with people at this level. We are having conversations about pricing [00:15:00] models, about mindset, about developing recurring revenue, about leadership.

We are focusing on building scale, sustainable scale, and not just chasing down the next sale. And I guess this is the difference between those earlier stages of business and this stage here, is that you have to shift away from, oh, quick, where’s my Excel? Hustle, hustle, hustle. It’s like I’m gonna have to slow down a bit to actually speed up.

So the conversations that I’m having with, you know, my masterminders with my private coaching clients, they’re of a different level to the conversations that, you know, I’d be having with early stage business owners. My area of expertise is really helping million dollar business owners start to think differently.

To stop being reactive, and start being strategic and proactive. And as I [00:16:00] said earlier, sometimes this means that you actually have to slow down to speed up. People of this level are starting to recognize I can’t keep hustling and doing that anticipating scale. I, I know that I need help to get there. In the form of support in the team, but also in terms of high level mentorship and surrounding themselves with people that are actually doing it.

Because something I’ve noticed, if you try and have a conversation, like for example, if I was to be having a conversation with someone who’s running a hundred million dollar a year business. The way that, that, that the battles that they are struggling with in their business are gonna be very different to the things that I am struggling with in my business right now.

So it’s really important to be surrounded by a network of people who are having [00:17:00] similar struggles, similar growing pains to what you are at the same stage. And that’s why I’m such a huge fan of, you know, of masterminds, of, of peer groups because. The people around you actually really get what you are going through.

And this is exactly why I created my mastermind, the Profit Collective. It’s for those multi-six-figure CEOs, people who are, you know, hitting $30k, $50K months, who are wanting to step into those a hundred thousand dollars month, but don’t know how they’re, they’re finding that they’re just spinning their wheels and they’re stuck.

Inside this container, we are talking high level strategy. We are focused on a building, profit led businesses.

We are talking about CEO leadership. And how to actually be building a team, managing a team, navigating through the challenges that come from having staff. [00:18:00] And the thing is about this level as well, is that you wanna be surrounded by other ambitious business owners who are on the same journey, people who are aligned with their values and are ready to really help you with your challenges as well.

Another big core value inside my Mastermind, the profit collective. Is fun. I have in-person events. We have two in-person events every year, which just is the opportunity for us to really connect on a whole different level. So if you are listening to this and you are at that stage of business and you know you are ready for mentorship and a next level peer group, and you wanna stop hassling and start scaling, come join us inside the Profit Collective.

You don’t have to do this alone. And the next level is much closer than you think. The link to find out more is in the show notes for today’s episode. Or you can come drop me a DM over on Instagram at [00:19:00] Clare clare_wood_coach find out if this container is the right fit for you at this stage of business.

Alright thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Clare Wood Podcast, and I look forward to chatting to you again next week. Adios.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio