7 Most Common Obstacles to Making Six Figures And the Exact Steps You Need to Take to Overcome Them for Good

Business is a tricky game, especially when you’re like my clients and running a solo online service-based business doing work you love.

You have to be good at the work you do PLUS understand business, marketing, social media, copywriting, sales, and so much more. You’ve got to have the right mindset, keep your finances organized, and turn on your A-game most days. It’s a tall order!

Even when you have all of the pieces lined up and perfect, you can still get stuck. Your income can fall short. And you can’t quite get to your next goal.

Talk about frustrating!

Well, if you’ve ever been stuck or feel stuck now, today’s post is for you.

Know This: There Is a Gap

Last week I walked you through a strategy that can instantly help you make more money. You learned two different approaches for doubling your rates with integrity, without having to work twice as hard.

And if you watched the entire free training (I hope you did!), you then saw that simply doubling your rates isn’t always easy, even when you know exactly how to do it.

So how do you get past this hurdle?

Keep reading, and we’ll deconstruct the reasons you’re getting or have gotten stuck and exactly what to do about them… so you can shift things upward right away.

Reason #1: You Don’t Have the Right Strategy

To get from newbie to making some money you need one approach. To get from making some money to making great money, you need a totally different approach.

Basically, whatever got you to this point of success won’t get you to the next one. If you’ve been stuck at the same place for some time now, it’s because you’re missing the strategy that will take you to the next level.

How to change it:

To get the right strategy, you need to understand how to think about your business from a higher level. That could mean re-tooling packages and offerings, increasing prices (like doubling your rates, as we talked about last week), fine-tuning marketing messages, and more. The list of areas that require adjustments is long and the specifics depend on each unique business.

The key point here is that you can’t make this strategic shift alone. (Even I can’t do this alone.) And it’s important to know that this isn’t a shortcoming on your part! It’s okay that you don’t know what strategy you need, and you shouldn’t feel bad that you don’t know. You simply can’t know because you haven’t been there yet.

To see what the right strategic shift is required for your business to get to the next level, you need help from someone who has the higher-level, outside perspective you need. They’ll be able to see what you can’t see and show you what needs to shift and how.

On a personal note, this is why, after my January launch, I hired a coach to help me with this exact thing in my own business. I reached and and have remained at my current level of success based on what I know. To get to that next level, I knew I needed insights that can only come from someone operating at a higher level, someone who could help me see the shifts I need to make.

This is why, to get to the next level, we have to keep reaching for the hand of someone who is at that next level so they can help guide us upward and give us that much-needed strategy.

Click to TweetTo get to the next level, we have to keep reaching for the hand of someone who is at that next level so they can help guide us upward.

Reason #2: You Don’t Have the Skills

Just like how the strategy that got you here won’t get you to the next level, the skills that got you here also won’t get you to the next level.

For example…

• Copywriting for a $199 product isn’t the same as copywriting for a $1999 product.
• The sales process for a $1500 package isn’t the same as the sales process for a $3000 package.
• The structure and delivery of an offer priced at $2500 needs to be very different from the structure and delivery of an offer priced at $5000.

And, to use a different example, the customer experience at Target is different than the customer experience at Nordstrom. So as your prices go up, the customer experience must, too.

How to change it:

The answer to “how to change it” is pretty straightforward: you’ve got to close your skill gaps!

However, it can be precarious to close this gap. Before you sign up for another random, one-off course, make sure that it will give you the information you need to operate at that next level.

To continue with the example from above, you wouldn’t want a course on the Target customer experience when you’re creating the next Nordstrom. You need to make sure you’re upleveling to the right place, the right way.

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Reason #3: You Don’t Have the Right Schedule

By now you should be catching on…

The schedule that worked for you as a new business owner isn’t the same schedule that will work for you as you build your business further. As you grow, you need to shift where and how you spend your time.

First, you must become more focused and less distracted. Second, you spend more time strategically planning your next actions, as opposed to just trying everything. Third, you need larger chunks of time to work ON your business, not just work IN it.

How to change it:

To create the right schedule, you first need to know the strategy that will get you to the next level, because without the big-picture view of what needs to shift and how in your business, you can’t properly plan for growth. And if you don’t have a plan, then you don’t know how to schedule your time.

But with the right strategy, you’ll know how to spend your time and what schedule will help you make it all happen.

Reason #4: You’re Don’t Have the Right Systems

Not only do systems get more complex as your business grows, you also can’t get by without them!

Disorganization, chaos, inconsistency, and reinventing the wheel regularly will completely inhibit your business growth. Streamlining everything from your social media to your client intake to your backend procedures is essential if you want to grow your business to the next level.

The systems that run a five-figure business aren’t the same as the systems that run a six-figure business or seven-figure business.

How to change it:

The first thing you need to do is look at everything you do repeatedly in your business and notice what isn’t systematized. Then, you need to put a system in place for everything on that list.

Consider systematizing things like how you collect testimonials, how you schedule new clients, how you use social media, how you delegate to your assistant… pretty much anything and everything you do more than once.

(Need help? Grab my newly updated System Flight Kit to help you get those systems into place.)

Reason #5: You’re Don’t Have the Right Mindset

It’s easy to get down on yourself in business. From your competitors’ wins to giving something your “all” and not seeing it pan out, or simply waking up on the wrong side of the bed on a random Tuesday… Life constantly throws us curve balls, ready to take us down in an instant, if we let them.

But if you want to go from just getting by to making a great living, you must adjust your mindset accordingly.

For example…

• The thoughts that six-figure business owners have about themselves and about business aren’t the same beliefs that newer business owners have.
• The risks successful business owners take are bigger, more calculated, and more public.
• The thoughts and feelings you have about having money, managing it, and charging higher prices have to change if you want to make more money.
• Next-level business owners have a stronger belief in the value they provide to customers and communicate that value with greater conviction and clarity.

How to change it:

I find that the best way to change my mindset is to first notice what I’m feeling that I don’t like feeling.

When you feel something you don’t like feeling, it means you’re thinking something that’s not supporting you.

Click to TweetWhen you feel something you don’t like feeling, it means you’re thinking something that’s not supporting you.

Yes, that means if you’re feeling embarrassed, overwhelmed, frustrated, frozen, scattered, afraid, or anything else, you need to adjust your thinking and create a more supportive mindset.

So then the question becomes, how do you adjust your thinking?

The simplest way to think about it is a strategy that my friend and Master Life Coach Bev Barnes teaches my clients: find a thought that supports what you want to feel (instead of attaching to a thought that makes you feel like shit).

This isn’t about plastering affirmations on your brain or believing life’s all rainbows and unicorns. It’s about finding supportive thought patterns to replace the destructive ones.

The good news is that when you learn to shift your thinking, you shift your feelings. When you shift your feelings, you shift your actions. And when you shift your actions, you show up in the world differently and create from a higher level… and get better results.

When you have the right mindset, executing your next-level strategy becomes nearly 100% doable and achievable.

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Reason #6: You’re Don’t Have the Right Support

Getting your business to the next level can’t be done alone—or at least not easily!

With a growing business to manage, clients to serve, social media to engage on, blog posts to write, guest posting, list-building, and more, all waiting to be done, you need help.

But who do you hire and for what tasks?

How to change it:

What you need in your business depends (surprise!) on your strategy. Although I think everyone can benefit from having a VA support their business at least a few hours each week, who else you hire and for what work depends on where you’re headed, what you need help with, what you love to do, and what you don’t like doing. Basically, your strategy!

The awesome thing is that as you get the right support, you start to love your business even more. You delegate the tasks that don’t light you up and focus on what you’re great at doing. You’re in your genius zone, loving your work, and loving your business even more.

The BIGGEST REASON of All

Now that you’ve read through the reasons you might not be ready to make more money, it might feel like this conversation keeps going back to one thing: having the right strategy.

And it’s true. You need the right strategy to know what skills to develop, what schedule to create, what systems to implement, who to hire, etc. And this is what keeps some of the smartest women from ever making the leap to six figures or beyond; they just don’t have the right strategy.

The bigger problem, however, is that this problem isn’t solved by taking one-off classes or hiring a coach to give you a cookie-cutter blueprint.

When you’re looking to take your business to the next level, you need a holistic and customized, big-picture strategy for your unique business.

You need to understand, look at, address, improve, and adjust all aspects of your entire business ecosystem at once. Every single part of your business directly connects with every other part of your business. Adjusting one impacts the others.

You simply can not take one piece out and work on it independently any more. You’ve got to look at and work on all of it at the same time. And truthfully, you can’t do it alone. As I mentioned at the beginning, you can’t see what you can’t see, and you can’t know what you don’t know.

And this is the biggest shift of all.

This is why I’m so excited to be working with an intimate group of tenacious women this year, demystifying the strategy required to succeed in business and get them to six figures and beyond. Because when you really SEE the big picture and what needs to change and how, BIG things happen.

Are You Ready to Make More Money?

After reading through this list today, I’m curious where you are in your business and if anything needs to shift for you.

What shift do you need to make to earn more money?

What action steps are you committing to taking this week to start making those shifts?

What other insights did you have from today’s post or from your own experiences?

Fill me in and share your stories in the comments below.

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