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Marketing

Marketing Barriers That Are Keeping You From Scaling to 6 Figures

Hitting 6 figures in my business was like the holy grail of business income goals. I knew that at that level, I would be bringing in a solid profit and able to invest in my business, grow my team, and start to realize my vision as a CEO.

When you break it down, making 6 figures means you only need to be bringing in a little over $8k per month.

Let’s put that into some easy terms. That’s only around:

  • 8, $1k retainer clients
  • 16, $500 one on one coaching clients
  • 4, mid-level $2k retainer clients
  • 32, $250 per month group coaching clients

And those prices are probably a bit on the low side!

The point is, though, that it doesn’t take a lot of clients to create the kind of income that helps you scale your business up.

What it does take is the right focus, strategic hustle, some big-picture thinking, strong mindset, and purposeful alignment.

So, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about what’s keeping you from reaching that coveted 6 figure goal and what you should be doing instead.

Table of Contents

Focusing on Perfection Instead of Progress

Recently I came across a Reel on Instagram—it’s actually in the motivation section of my Instagram story highlights—because I loved the message so much that I wanted to keep it close.

The man was speaking about practice and perfection and progress.

He led with a question: Practice makes what? He was asking the people listening what they thought, and, of course, we say perfect. We’re taught that practice makes perfect.

But he challenged the people listening to him to dismantle that belief. Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes Improvement, and I want to challenge you to do the same thing that he was doing.

I want to challenge you to dismantle the belief that practice makes perfect, because what you’re doing by trying to focus on perfection is you are halting your progress.

You’re stopping it in its tracks.

Any movement, forward or backward, helps us walk better.

Trying to Do It All Yourself

Trying to do it all and be it all yourself, especially when you’re running a business, is a recipe for burnout. Even if you’re just starting out, you’ve got to have some type of system in place or you will burn yourself out.

I know.

When I was starting out as a freelancer years and years and years ago, I had so many clients at one time that I was losing track of who needed what and when. I was missing deadlines, I was constantly having to come to my clients to explain why I missed an important detail, and it didn’t feel good to not be able to bring my best self to my work.

Back then my system was a filing cabinet with a file and notes on every client that I served, and I added tasks and events in my calendar to keep track of deadlines.

Thankfully, now my systems have evolved beyond the paper filing system, and my printer and ink budget are very grateful for that.

But every time I grew in my business and scaled up in some way, I almost had to find a new system. Or worse, create one. So my suggestion to you is to start thinking about what kind of structure you need to operate now, as well as what you can put in place today so that your business seamlessly scales with you as you grow, and you’re prepared for tomorrow.

Things to focus on right now are systemizing your offer, systemizing your packages, automating as much of your onboarding process as you can, and getting a task management system like Trello or Clickup in place.

As you’re going, make sure you’re documenting everything. Record Loom videos of repetitive tasks you do often, even if they seem really simple, and start a running SOP (Standard Operating Process) to document your systems and processes for the day when you need help.

Jot down the steps to how you do everything in your business. This way when you do start to hire on help, you don’t have to take the time out of your insane schedule (and it will probably be insane when you’re ready to start hiring, if you haven’t already) to put all of this together.

And lastly, hire the right people. Stop looking for unicorns who can do everything, and hire specialists who can do a group of similar tasks very well. Start small and grow your team over time, offloading more and more as you’re able to invest more and more internally.

Focusing on Just Consistency

One of the biggest complaints I see out in the wild is people saying, “I’m showing up every day, but I’m not seeing results.”

And it makes my heart break just a little bit because I see this marketing message spread everywhere. It’s the idea that if you just show up consistently money will flow to you, but the reality is anything but that.

If you’re doing the wrong thing consistently, you’re simply not going to get good results.

The key is to show up consistently with the right strategy. Especially in marketing.

You want to be asking yourself, “Is this the best way for me to show up?”

If you’re going live every week in your Facebook group, publishing a weekly podcast, blogging, sending emails? two crickets? This may be a big barrier to your 6 figure success.

Instead of just focusing on showing up consistently without any real thought, I challenge you to dig in and get really clear about these important things:

  • Your message
  • Your story
  • Your overarching goal
  • Your customer journey
  • Who you’re talking to
  • Your offer
  • Your sales process

Not Aligned to Your Purpose

Likely the biggest barrier to your 6 figure success in this list is that your actions are not aligned to your purpose. This could be as simple as a disconnect between what you’re doing and your end goals, or it could be as complex as deep-seated mindset issues.

Only you will be able to decide what the case may be for you, unless you’re working in a group coaching program or one-on-one with a coach.

And this is one of the reasons that I’m such a big proponent of working with a coach. I truly believe every business owner should work with a coach in some capacity at all times, or at least be enrolled in some type of group coaching or networking program. It’s hard to clearly look at our business in a vacuum by ourselves.

But I digress.

Some of the biggest root causes of this misalignment are that you’re selling instead of serving your audience, you’re primarily teaching instead of telling stories on social media (and that’s a huge one I see far too often), and you’re having transactional conversations instead of building genuine relationships.

It’s so important to really dig in, think about your purpose, and align your actions to that purpose. Think about your overarching goals, your 6 figure income goals, and make sure you’re playing the long game to get there instead of focusing on superficial, short-sighted tactics.

Tiffany Barry