3 Moves That Made Me A 6-Figure Business Owner

Marketing TipsVisibility

Jul 12

Written By brandmerry

3 Moves That Made Me A 6-Figure Business Owner

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

Eager to hit the first 6-figures in your business? I was too back in 2016 and in 2017 and I did it! Today, I'm sharing 3 move that I credit to my first 6-figures and beyond. | brandmerry.com

I know why you're here. You saw that title, six figures, and my guess is that you are really close to it or you have a goal to reach in a short amount of time.

I'm so excited and honored to talk to you about the three moves, and ultimately shifts, that led me to create a six-figure business within one year of signing my first client.

First, I want to make one thing clear: you are not going to learn about some strategy that's going to turn you into a six-figure business owner overnight. I am not about that 10K-in-10-days life for new entrepreneurs who need to do the work.

The things that I'm going to teach you today are going to require energy on your part and they're going to require some work. But guess what? If you want to create a sustainable and scalable business as an online entrepreneur, you've got to be in it for the long haul.

I know so many entrepreneurs are right there at the cusp of it. Or you're sitting there at your desk and you've got a post-it in front of you that says SIX-FIGURE BUSINESS, in all caps!

I'm not saying that six-figures is the end all be all. I want you to, and I hope that you want to, continue to scale your business past six figures, but this, for many of us, is the very first hurdle.

I know that was true for me.

MY JOURNEY TO SIX-FIGURES

I started my business in 2016 after the birth of my son. I was working a nine-to-five at the time and I got this crazy idea that I wanted to start my own business.

I'm not an entrepreneur by trade, I don't come from a family of entrepreneurs, so this kind of came out of left field.

As I began to expand and grow my business and invest in different things, I learned very, very quickly that there were three major shifts that needed to happen in order for me to actually sign clients and create revenue.

I went eight months without signing clients in my business, but after I signed that first client and these shifts started rolling out, I hit six figures in just one year.

It is my goal to support you in getting to that milestone and then continuing to use these shifts that are going to serve you for years and years to come.

1. MASTER MY MINDSET

The first move that I made in my business was to get in true alignment with my goal.

No one told me that being an entrepreneur was a fast track in personal development work. But you quickly realize that as the CEO, in the beginning as pretty much the only person on your team and a one-person show, that you've really got to have your head in the game.

If your head's not in the game, the strategies won't work. All the things that you're doing just won't work.

That's one of our beliefs over here at Brandmerry, that you have got to have strategy and mindset in order for both of them to complement one another.

But I didn't know that in the beginning and since strategy comes very, very easy to me, it took me a little bit longer to get my mindset to match.

There were two specific areas that I had to focus on when it came to mindset.

Number one was my money mindset, and number two was my mindset or my belief around perfectionism.

MONEY MINDSET

Now, when it came to my money mindset, there were two pieces that I needed to focus on. One was looking at the past beliefs and stories and chapters that I had gone through that were contributing to my current beliefs around money.

This belief was that people who made money were bad people.

There was a lot of work that I had to do to ultimately redefine what success and having money meant to me. I quickly realized that by having more money, I could ultimately contribute more.

I could hire a team and support a team, I could support my family, I could have more of an impact in the world. It's taken a few years for me to really get to this place of feeling really confident in saying that to you.

In order to get here, one of the first things that I had to do was go back and journal on my beliefs. I specifically asked myself three questions.

What are the beliefs that I'm carrying around money?
What was I taught as a child?
What did my teachers say to me about money?

I grew up in the nonprofit sector. I worked in the nonprofit sector for a very long time, and the work we did was amazing, but ultimately the pay was not. I was carrying some of those beliefs with me as I began to grow my business.

One of the beautiful things about being an entrepreneur, but also one of the hardest, is that there's no ceiling. We can ultimately make as much money as we want because we are fully in control of bringing that money in with the right marketing strategies and mindset.

I really had to shift into that place so that I could have more of that expansive energy. In an episode I did on my lifestyle podcast, The Beautiful Climb, I go more in depth with my money story and some of the specific things that I did to help me shift. Listen to the episode here.

PERFECTIONISM

The second thing that I needed to do was release the beliefs that I had around perfectionism.

I grew up as a die-hard perfectionist and I am still in the process of recovering from this. Thank you, Brene Brown, for all of your amazing work. I don't know if I would be here without you.

I loved Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, but any book by Brene Brown is truly incredible if you struggle with perfectionism. I also talked about perfectionism in this video and how detrimental it can be to entrepreneurs.

When I was starting out, I would wait to post a video, I would wait to send emails, I would sit and edit my website over and over and over and over again.

But as an entrepreneur, you have to be visible.

If I wasn't showing up, I wasn't bringing in community members and I wasn't making any money.

This is why it took me eight months to sign a client. I had to really start working on this idea of perfectionism and start peeling back the layers.

The number one thing that I did was just hit the button.

I remember that first email, after days of agonizing over the process, I was like, "Oh my gosh, they don't even care. I'm just going to hit the button." I hit it and I was like, "Oh, okay. This is fine. If I just keep doing that over and over again, eventually it will become super easy," and that's where I am today.

There was a lot of internal work that I had to do in order to make money in my business, and those were two of the main areas that I had to begin with and really dive into.

ACTION STEP: Think about your relationship with money and the negative feelings you are carrying around.

2. BUILD A SOLID FOUNDATION

The second move that I needed to accomplish before I could hit six figures was building a solid brand foundation.

Because of this experience and my success, I now have an entire course called You! Branded. I also teach this inside of my free class, Build a Better Brand Method.

But when I started, I skipped the entire process. That's why I'm so passionate about it.

I watch entrepreneurs skip their brand all of the time.

I thought that if I could just glaze over it, that I would know who my ideal customer was and I would understand what a brand really meant and I would have clear messaging.

It turns out that by skipping over it or even skimming it just a bit, you don't build a solid foundation and there’s nowhere to scale.

When you're thinking of building your business, I want you to think about building an actual building. You're setting a strong foundation at the base, that's your brand. Then as you continue to scale, add offers, new marketing strategies, all of that stuff, you're supported because you've taken the time and the energy to build a solid foundation.

I skipped this crucial piece and so for eight months I didn't make any money, but as soon as I got into the nitty-gritty, as soon as I really solidified and got specific with my niche, I understood my story and my brand story and how that played a role, I got super clear on who I was speaking to, I understood how to create consistent messaging, and I tapped into my emotional branding, that is when my existing community started to respond.

Those first clients that I signed weren't new to me, they'd been around for months, but suddenly I was speaking so clearly and connecting with them on such a deep level that they were ready to invest.

I created a video for you right here on emotional branding that I definitely want you to check out.

It's going to be really beneficial for you in your journey.

ACTION STEP: If you don't know what a solid brand foundation looks like, I do have a free class for you, it's called the Build a Better Brand Method. You can sign up for that at betterbrandmethod.com.

3. BUILD OUT SYSTEMS

The final move that I made, when it came to building a six-figure business, was getting my systems in place.

I'm kind of nuts about this now, it's one of the things that I teach inside of Brandmerry Academy because I recognized very, very quickly how much time I got back by having my systems in place.

Sometimes we postpone putting our systems in place, I'm talking about your content creation system, your client onboarding system, your SOPs for behind the scenes on how you launch a new podcast or launch a new product, for example.

We wait to do that because it does take some time commitment and a little bit of work, but the long haul and how much time you actually save yourself months and months down the line is incredible.

One of the systems that I put in place really early on in my business was my content creation workflow. I've really embraced the art of repurposing.

I started mastering my weekly workflow early on because, as I mentioned, I was working a nine-to-five, I had a new baby, and then I was also trying to scale this business.

I understood that I needed to just show up and get visible and create content so that people could find me, but I only had this much time, so I wanted to make the most out of that time.

I put together this repurposing workflow, this system for my business, and I've continued to use it and scale it even today. This video that I'm recording is one of three that I'm recording in a one-hour time increment because I'm bulk scheduling, which is part of my process.

Five years later, I'm still using the same content workflow system as when I first started.

When I first started implementing these systems in my business, not only did I find myself working more efficiently, but I had way more time to do the things that I love to do.

ACTION STEP: Download my Repurposing Guide to learn how to create your weekly content workflow and set up one of your most important systems.

CONCLUSION

One of the things I don't think is talked about a lot is as you're growing your business, especially to the six-figure mark, is that it's going to take a lot of time and energy.

Anywhere where you can free up pockets of time, you can actually have fun and enjoy the journey, is going to mean so much to you.

So when you look back, you don't want to say, “Oh my gosh, I never slept, I never ate, it was horrible."

You want to look back and say, "Dang, I did that and I'm really, really proud of what I did because I also had the capacity to enjoy life," which is always the goal, right?

Why have a successful business, if you can't also enjoy the rewards, reap the rewards and enjoy the life that comes with that?

Those are the three moves that I had to make in my business to hit 6-figures and I continue to use them today as I move to new income goals and growth.

Make sure that you watch the Build a Better Brand Method masterclass. It is so important, no matter where you're at in your business, that you make sure that all of those little spots are filled in because it will have an impact on your scalability moving forward.

Remember, it's not just about hitting the first six figures, it's about continuing to do that over and over again and scaling to the million-dollar mark and it starts with your brand.