The Visionary Files

7 Key Areas of Excellence to Get to 7 Figures

• Adriane Galea • Episode 89

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The fact is, most businesses don’t get off the ground. Which begs the question - why does it work for some and not for others? 


Well, the bigger your business gets, the more complicated it becomes, and the more complicated your life as a business owner becomes, as well. And while almost everybody sets out wanting a seven-figure business – most people aren't willing to do the work that it takes to get there. 


In order to grow and scale, you must uncomplicate as much as humanly possible. Start here: putting in the work to develop excellence in the seven key areas required to grow a healthy, sustainable business that's working for you. 


Quick overview of what we cover:


  • Why you’re better off applying for jobs than running a business if sales + marketing makes you uncomfortable
  • Why the type of mindset work necessary to get your brain on board with growing a 7-figure business has nothing to do with manifestation or journaling and everything to do with mirrors
  • How to tame your limiting ego and feed you expansive ego
  • How you’re delivering your product matters as much as its quality
  • What a healthy business is reliant upon (spoiler alert: it’s NOT you)
  • Why great team members are necessary for increasing the impact your business has (rather than for the great work they do)
  • Why developing a solid operational capacity is the key between functioning at the level you want to be known for, and then doing it at scale
  • How to maneuver away from hiring ‘babysitters’ for your business and find awesome ‘co-parents’ instead
  • Why so many business owners who are good at making money stink at keeping it (or spending it wisely)
  • The two true boss strategy moves of serious CEOs
  • PLUS - exciting FREE BONUS - click here if you would like Adriane's personalized business strategy take on where your business might be stalled out!

RESOURCES: 



LET’S CONNECT: 


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This episode was first published at soulpreneur.co/089


Speaker 1:

It is such a powerful thing to be able to do, to have the money to spend in ways that you choose the impact that you can make Because you are. Whether you're putting more money in your own pocket so that you can do good things with that money, whether you want to put that money into your community, into causes that you believe in, into investments, investing in your future, your kids future, your partner's future, your retirement, all these things like. I love that concept of when good people make good money, they can do good things and that it just increases your impact. Welcome to the Scaling Lounge, a podcast for established service-based business owners who believe in working smarter, resting often, playing always and dreaming bigger. I'm your host, adrienne Gallia, and I want to help you create time, financial and lifestyle freedom by scaling with systems, strategy and the support of a team, so that your business is able to grow, with or without you. Let's get to it. If you want to scale a business, you cannot do it without acquiring both hard and soft skills to get you there. What do I mean by that? We're going to talk about that in a minute.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of people who say they want a seven-figure business. I ask people a lot like on intake forms. If you join, if we have like a free challenge or something I'll ask in the Facebook group. There are a lot of different places where I will ask people what are your goals, what are your aspirations? I cannot tell you how many people have said it's to have a seven-figure business and I'm going to tell you right now, most people flat out are not willing to do the work it takes to have one, and this is fine. This is completely, 100% okay because, to be super clear, you also don't need a six-figure business. You definitely don't need a seven-figure business. You don't need anything. You can do just fine, bringing in a few thousand every month, and have every single thing that you need. You can run super lean and super profitable, have everything you need.

Speaker 1:

In fact, the bigger your business gets, the more it's going to get complicated. That's just sort of inevitable. Like my philosophy on growing a business, we want to uncomplicated as much as humanly possible. So that's definitely something that we would work on. But in general, like you're going to get more, your business is going to get more complicated, your life as the business owner is going to get more complicated. The bigger that it gets, the more responsibility that you're going to have, etc. Etc. Etc. And most people are just not willing to do the work that is required and develop the skills that are required, both the hard and the soft skills that are required to actually get to the point of having a seven-figure business.

Speaker 1:

I'll sometimes say it's one of the little sassier things that I'll say is like everybody wants a seven-figure business but most people aren't willing to do the work that it takes to get there and that's just the fact, and it's okay, because not everybody needs to get that. So I want to walk through the seven things that you, honestly, you must develop if you want to grow to seven figures and not be stressed out and all over the place and complicated as all get out Like. These are the seven things that you need. I'm going to talk about it in stages because you can reverse engineer a lot of this what you need in the beginning, what you need to grow, what you need to scale. So, even if you're nowhere close to the seven-figure mark, this is hopefully going to give you some insight, and I don't know how many of these I will have left, but I'm doing some strategy sessions where you can give me some information about your business and then I will record some strategic advice for you based on what I've seen. It's a relatively. It asks for some information. There's a decent amount of information, but if you fill that form out, I will give you some free strategic advice. And it's based on I go through a little bit in a different way about these seven different pillars what you need to get to, seven figures, and I'll offer you some free strategic advice. There is something like if it makes sense for us to work together, I'll let you know at the end of that. But there's no pressure to buy anything. I'll just be like a loom video that I send back to you so you can go to solepreneurco strategy or use the link in the show notes. But there it's a. It's going to be a finite amount of them that I am going to be able to do, so I don't know how many I'll be able to actually get through. It might say like they're closed for now, but I'm going to throw that out there that if you would like me to give you some strategic advice, I would love strategies, my jam. So let's do it. So.

Speaker 1:

I've worked with hundreds of business owners at this point. Most of them never make more than a few hundred dollars lifetime or a few thousand dollars lifetime here there, wherever. The bulk of people that I work with now have established businesses, though In the beginning it was not that way and most people like never passed go, and I beat myself up a lot for this. Where I was like I know how to build businesses, I know how to give good advice, I know that I know like it's working. Why does it work for some people and not for others? It's just most businesses don't get off the ground. Most businesses never make more than a couple hundred bucks or a couple thousand bucks, and so it just is what it is. But now the work that I do is far more with people who have established businesses and I have some laser clarity on what the signs of bottlenecks are and how to establish them. So these are seven areas where you can develop bottlenecks, but these are also the I call them like the seven areas of excellence for seven figures. So these are the seven different areas.

Speaker 1:

If you want to get to having a seven figure business, first and foremost you have to be able to sell and market. If you want to get anywhere with a business. You have to learn to make sales, you have to learn to convert people. You're like I don't want to be salesy. You got to get over it. You got to learn how to make sales. And the second thing is marketing. I cannot tell you how many people have said to me like, how can I grow my business? But not like, not market it. I'm just not aligned with learning, I'm just not aligned with marketing strategy.

Speaker 1:

Then go get a job. To be honest, like that's kind of that's. That's harsh, but it's the truth. If you don't want to learn to sell and market, if you don't want to do the work required to get like you are never going to have a $2,000 a month business. If you don't learn the basics, the baseline for sales and marketing, if you don't want to do the work to get to that point to learn to sell and market, go get a job. I don't mean that as a mean thing, it's just the truth.

Speaker 1:

Like you've got to make money, you know, maybe you don't, maybe you've got a partner that provides everything you need and that's amazing and there's no judgment to that at all. But assuming you're a person who who either needs to or wants to contribute to their household expenses, you've got to find a way to make money, unless you've got, like, investment accounts and you can live off your investments or you've got whatever. But if you need to make money, you've got to learn to sell and market. And if you don't want to do the things required to be able to do both of those things and if you've heard anyone who's like super in the spiritual business space and they're like, oh, I manifest your way to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I guarantee you, if they're actually making money in their business, they had to learn to sell or market. They might be talking about, oh you, just, you manifest your way there and you can do this, and they know how to sell and market a thousand percent.

Speaker 1:

And I cannot tell you how many people I've spoken to on the flip side of this that are like we wasted so much time, money, energy, et cetera, resources on trying to just like journal our way and script our way and blah, blah, blah our way into making money. And now that we're on the other side of that, we realize, like the coach that we were working with was so sharply strategic but didn't teach strategy, just taught like, oh, do all the woo things and the feminine things and the whatever, but they are sharply strategic. They just don't teach it and they don't say that that's what gets you there. So maybe I'm not saying that everyone is like that, but you need some strategy. You need sales and marketing strategy and if you're averse to this, you're not going to make it. Just that's where we're at Learn to sell in market. There's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with it and, honestly, like, the most basic jobs are about sales. If you've ever worked in retail, if you've ever worked in hospitality, that's about selling. They do the marketing for you, if you like.

Speaker 1:

I worked at Chili's for a really long time. Chili's did the marketing, I did the selling for them. I was the server, I was the bartender, I was the. Oh, you want the fajita trio. You want to add guac for 99 cents? I wish guac were still 99 cents to add. I'm assuming at Chili's it's more than 99 cents now. Can you get guac added on for anywhere for 99 cents, like it was my job to? Hey, welcome to Chili's. You want to start off with a Presidente Margarita? That I can't believe. I don't remember the whole script. It's not worth getting into. I should be able to rattle off that script Like it's in my sleep. The script changed from time to time but I did the selling for them, they did the marketing. But most basic jobs are about that.

Speaker 1:

You, when you go to the, when you go to certain retail stores, and you go to the counter and they're like who is famous for this? Charlotte Roos. I think Charlotte Roos used to do this or I don't remember there were a bunch of Abacromby Hollister. Like you'd go in and you'd make your purchase. You'd be like here's my pair of jeans, here's my top. And they'd be like would you like some perfume? Like, did you smell any of our perfume? Today you walk into Hollister and you smell. You definitely smell their perfume. But you know, like that and that's marketing, by the way, the fact that it smells You're like what is that? Oh, it's our signature scent.

Speaker 1:

I don't, I don't. Actually I've never worked in retail, to be honest. I've done a lot of time in hospitality, so I feel like I've done my time in in customer service, customer facing, in customer facing jobs. I have so much gratitude and so much. This is not at all where I wanted to go in this episode. I have so much respect for people who work in hospitality and retail industries because man, dealing with people is not fun.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you have to sell. You have to learn to sell. You have to learn to sell If you want to make tips and you are in the United States and because you got to make, you got to make tips in order to make any money as a, as a, as a bartender or some. Some places pay their bartenders hourly, but you want to. Definitely, if you want to make money as a, as a server, you got to learn to sell, sell, upsell. So you got to figure out how to do this and then you have to learn how to do it at scale. So you've got to learn to sell in market. And then, at every fit, when you want to grow, you've got to learn how to grow your sales and marketing. And when you want to scale, you've got to learn how to do your sales and marketing at scale. So those are the first two. Those are the first two areas of excellence to get to seven figures.

Speaker 1:

The third thing is, if you want to get anywhere in any kind of healthy way, it's mindset. So what I say is in the beginning, when you're just starting your business, you've got to learn to sell and market. Your only jobs are wanting to sell, to market and to get your brain on board with your ability to do both. That getting your brain on board that's the mindset part. It becomes more and more and more important the more you grow.

Speaker 1:

Nothing is more confronting than growing a business. Let me tell you, I've grown many of them and still I woke up this morning and I had a pit in my. There's a couple of things going on that like I just don't have answers to and I had a pit. I still have a pit in my stomach. It's gotten better cause I'm sitting here talking about things and they're not really now I'm reminding myself of them, but like I get nervous about things, there is nothing more confronting than growing a business. There's not going to be any better mirror for all your shortcomings. Take that for what you will. Your shortcomings, your shortfalls, your downfalls, your all of the things. They're gonna be held up to you. Like that mirror, like there's a reason a lot of people don't like doing this and that, in the long run, are not really cut out for it and I don't mean that as a knock at all at all, at all at all.

Speaker 1:

Some people just like don't enjoy that, like they don't enjoy the inconsistency cause. Let me tell you it is inconsistent. You get to the point where it can be consistent, but even then, like, you can still have ups and downs and there's a lot of like. If you are on a launch model, imagine your entire paycheck for half of the year is dependent on one week out of the year because you've got a one week launch and you've got that with. Like, god forbid, something crazy happens in the world and everything goes like. There's so much up and down, there's so many reasons that there are a lot of people who are not. They're just not made for business ownership, entrepreneurship, but a lot of it is also because it's super confronting and ego tends to show up in very tricky ways.

Speaker 1:

And when I say ego, I think there's a difference. There is a limiting ego and then there is an expansive ego and it's ego that's like you must do all the things. If you don't do all the sales calls, no one's gonna wanna buy from you. That's not true. That's ego that's getting in the way. There might be a person here or there who's like what I don't get to do a sales call with the business owner, like, who do they think they are? Most people are not going to be that way, though Most people are gonna be like, oh my gosh, you actually do your own sales calls. I was just talking to a client about this last week. They were like, oh my gosh, you do your own sales calls. Like you don't need to. There's nothing that you need to do. There's so much stuff that your ego gets in the way. On that's limiting ego.

Speaker 1:

Expanding ego is the one that's like I know I can do this. I am confident, I am cool, calm and collected that this is all going to work out. It's always, always, always working out. For me, it's always this or something better, like whatever you're showing up for in that way. That is expansive ego, so, but limiting ego shows up in all kinds of tricky ways, and the way to mitigate that is through mindset, and most people just don't know what it's like to build a successful business. I am a broken record about this. Most people do not understand what it means to be a successful business owner. Most people do not understand what it means to run a six-figure business. Definitely, people do not understand what it means to run a seven-figure business. Did you know that?

Speaker 1:

I saw this statistic the other day and I don't remember where I saw it. It is, of all women-owned businesses, only 1% of them ever hit seven figures. Only 1% of them. Now 50, about 50% of all people try to start a business. Only 10% of those women will ever get their business to six figures, rather. So, if you think about it, half of the population and I don't know if this is based in the US or whatever. If it's based on more developed nations or whatever, I'm going to assume that this is depending on where you're at this number is going to be different. So just take this, for what it's worth is, if about half of the women in the world know so, that's roughly 4 billion people only 1% of them ever get to the point of having a seven figure business. That's still a decent amount of people, but how much of your network are business owners? How many of them are women? How many of them are ever going to get to have a seven figure business? There are so many opinions that you are going to have to deal with your own opinions and other people's opinions.

Speaker 1:

Mindset work is the thing that's going to keep you from spiraling. Where I said earlier, I had some things that I woke up with and was all I've had a pit in my stomach about some things. I went back to mindset work. I talk about CTFAR. Can you search the podcast? I did a podcast episode way. It was probably back. It was when we weren't numbering those episodes. When I was doing mindset episodes I wasn't adding them as numbers, they were just bonuses, but it was probably episode 14-ish. It was way early on. I did one on CTFAR.

Speaker 1:

I probably talked about CTFAR in other places. It's circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, results. I'm not going to explain what that is right now, but this morning I was like, okay, what's the neutral circumstance? I'm getting all worked up about this stuff. What's the neutral circumstance? I went back to the neutral circumstance is X, then in the other thing that I was freaking about, the neutral circumstance is Y. Then the other thing that I was freaking because there was a bunch of stuff that I was all over the place this morning about. The other neutral circumstance is Z or Z if you are elsewhere in the world that brought me back to a place of neutrality. It didn't 100 percent bring me back.

Speaker 1:

I'm still a little worked up about a couple of things, but by and large, you have to have tools to get you back to a place of neutrality Mindset. Work is only it's. You need it right from day one, but especially if you want to grow in a healthy way, you need mindset. That's the third area of excellence. Then, if you want to grow in scale now we're getting into numbers four, five, six and seven Delivery, team operations and finance Delivery you could go back to the beginning and say if you don't have a quality product to deliver, do not pass go. You need to have a quality product to deliver, but you need to be able to deliver the product at scale at some point. How you are delivering things matters.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to come back to this in a minute because I want to go to team and operations first. This is where I would start to prioritize in the growth phase. This is going to be your biggest addition is where can you start growing a team and building sustainability in through your operational structure? Team people are resources. Get support for yourself, get people who can help your business grow, who can help move things along even when you're not there. That is your first big area of growth when you're ready to grow, and don't do this unless you've got some intent behind it and some strategy behind it. But team is going to be huge in helping you grow, whether it's one key person or you want to lead a whole darn empire.

Speaker 1:

A healthy business is not going to be fully reliant on you. Hear that again A healthy business is not going to be fully reliant on you. Now, if you choose to be a solopreneur forever and ever and ever and ever, that's fine. But even a solopreneur can have one key person that's going to help make the business not completely reliant on you as the business owner. That one key person can help lift some of the burden.

Speaker 1:

Because now this is getting into a separate conversation. I think it was, oh, I don't remember who said this. It was a very famous book that was written on business, and the statement that was made was something to the effect of if you could not walk away from your business for a year and have it continue to run, then you are not a business owner, you are a sole proprietor. Now, I think that's a really big statement. The place that I like to get people to is I want you to be able to walk away for four weeks A year is a different, like you're playing a different ball game at that point, but like you do want to have a business that you could walk away from and things could continue to move on for continue to move in your business for at least a certain amount of time. So that's a different conversation for a different day. I've got episodes on that as well.

Speaker 1:

But you know you want someone at least one someone's to be able to help the business move along so that you're not the only person that is actually moving the business forward and being a component of growth, being a proponent of growth and team helps give you impact because they're there. It's like bringing other people on to spread your mission. It's going to help further your impact and your mission because you can get people who have buy in. This is less so when you have just like service providers, although I am a service provider to other people's business and I am fully bought into their mission and absolutely am a proponent of their mission. So it's not to say that like if you hire a service provider instead of contractors or employees. I differentiate that, even though service providers and contractors they're technically all contractors. I differentiate the two, that's. It's another episode for another day. I've I've also got episodes on that at this point. But the the point that I'm making here is, even if you choose to not have an in house team, if you hire people who are like they're running their own businesses and you're just contracting them to, like, do other things for you, it doesn't mean that they will not be proponents of your business for you with you, but not in the same way that running an in house team one not not exactly in the same way. So it's going to build your impact because there are going to be people who who are bought into your mission in a different way. So, team then operations.

Speaker 1:

Operations is looking at marketing, sales and delivery at scale. This is your operational capacity. So if you can figure out, how can you continue to sell, how can you continue to market, how can you continue to stay visible, how can you continue to generate traffic, how can you continue to generate leads and how can you continue to deliver the product at the quality and the standard at which you've become known for and that you want to develop. So, in a mess, how can you deliver them better? How can you do that at scale. That's 1000% reliant on your operational capacity. If you don't have operational capacity, you're not going to be able to do any of those things at scale. So that's your opera, that's operations, that's the operation side of things. It also involves people management, it involves project management, resource management, knowledge management, all the good things. That all contributes to your ability to do marketing, sales and delivery at scale. So those are, if you want to grow in scale, that's number one is figuring out your team and your operations and expanding your operation capacity and to start to bring in, even if it's just one, key person who can help you grow the business.

Speaker 1:

And I take a different standpoint. We don't have to get into all this, but I take a different. I don't necessarily think your first hire should be someone who can just like take over random admin work for you. Again, we're not getting into all that. So team and operations. And then, last but not least at all, is delivery and finance. So delivery, having the ability to give people what's promised at scale, having the ability to do it efficiently and effectively at scale, that's your user experience. That goes into operational capacity as well. But your delivery at some point when you really get to that high six figure, seven figure, especially in the multi seven figure, eight figure mark, like you've got to build a machine around your systems for delivery. That's why I would start to put delivery in its own category, beyond just your operational capacity, when you get to that higher six figure mark, because you really have to develop delivery mechanisms, like beyond scale, to be able to grow that even further so that you're not impacting user experience. And then eventually, if you do wanna go beyond seven figures, then it's constantly learning how to be able to adapt and be able to acquire and retain clients again and again and again and again at scale and be able to continuously deliver them the solid, quality product that they were expecting and for them to be able to get the outcomes that they were expecting, to get the transformation that they were expecting, to have the service or the product delivered on in the way that they thought they were going to. So that's delivery.

Speaker 1:

And then blast, certainly not least, certainly not least, is finance. So finance is just because you're good at making money does not mean you're good at keeping it or using it, to be honest, doesn't mean you're good at spending that money either, making wise spending decisions. So just because you're good at making it doesn't mean you're good at using it or keeping it, and you've got to learn how to do both of those things. And if you can't learn how to do those things, then you need to bring someone in who can help you with it, either someone who is in a CFO position and I've really sort of veered off the rails of my impression and my opinion of fractional service providers, so fractional CFOs, fractional CMOs, fractional COOs a fractional person is someone who's not hired in your business. They're a service provider essentially, but they come in as one of your C-suite positions. I personally don't think that that's necessarily the best move. For some people it might be, but the way that I talk about this is like your business probably doesn't need a babysitter, they need a parent. So bringing someone in who's just like half in, half out, they're running their own business, they're running maybe other people's businesses like I don't know if that's the best move, but for strategy, financial strategy, like even if you need to hire someone who is a service provider because you're probably realistically not gonna be able to hire someone as an employee to take over this role until you're way further along, you need to find someone who can help you with financial strategy.

Speaker 1:

Financial strategy and financial systems are the true boss moves. Let me tell you and this is something that I'm only just dipping my toe into, it's something that I have that I've sort of stuck my head in the sand in for too long and not realized how massive of an impact it would make, because I'm not naturally a money person. I had to learn to be a money person and I'm still learning. And I cannot tell you how massively important it is that if you get into how many multi six-figure business owners I've worked with even seven figure business owners I've worked with that their finances were like dumpster fire, hot mess. No judgment whatsoever, because I have been. Let me tell you, I have been there. I have been there. So no judgment at all. But dumpster fire and there's so much shame around it and there's so much like stick your head in the sand because you don't wanna acknowledge it. That's not a good, it doesn't look good in the long run and it's not gonna help you in the long run. So the true boss moves are learning financial strategy, developing financial strategy, developing financial systems, developing profit systems and learning how to make money really work for you and for your business so that your profit can be used to increase your impact. And that means so many different things Like I love the way that Chris Harder talks about this if you know who that is or if you follow him is he talks about like when good people make good money, they can do good things.

Speaker 1:

I think I'm maybe paraphrasing that. I'm sorry if I am, but it is such a powerful thing to be able to do, to have the money to spend in ways that you choose the impact that you can make because you are. Whether you're putting more money in your own pocket so that you can do good things with that money, whether you wanna put that money into your community, into causes that you believe in, into investments, investing in your future, your kid's future, your partner's future, your retirement. There are all these things like I love that concept of when good people make good money, they can do good things and that it just increases your impact. You can do more. The more money you make, the more overflow you have, the more you can offer scholarships in your business to work with people who maybe wouldn't be able to afford it, like you can do so much good in the world. When you like.

Speaker 1:

There's so much ick around money, of the things that we tell ourselves around, money is the root of all evil. That's not true. That's not. It's not. It's not a binary, it's not inherently evil. Money is not the root of all evil. Money can be used absolutely for for positive change and for good things. So we there are a lot of stories that we tell ourselves like money can do so much for you and make such an impact.

Speaker 1:

So those are the seven things, so the seven areas of excellence to get to seven figures sales, marketing, sales marketing. I'm gonna ramble these off sales, sales, marketing, mindset, delivery, finance, operations and team. If you can develop those things, start with sales and marketing and Mindset, and then you need to be able to do those things at scale and then add, start adding on as you go to grow and to scale. And that's what's going to. If you truly develop excellence Around all seven of those areas and you develop that seven figure business, you are going to have.

Speaker 1:

My big stance here is that you will have a relatively Healthy, sustainable Business that's working for you. There are always things to improve on. There are always ways that you can go deeper into this. It's always going to be a game of like how to. A well-oiled machine is only well-oiled for so long and then you've got to do maintenance on it. But you can have that well-oiled machine when you focus on these seven areas of excellence and you and you put intentional effort into continuing to develop and tweak what you're doing in these seven areas. So I hope this was insightful. If you again, if you want me to take a look at what you've going, got going on in your business, I'll for you some strategic advice, some feedback where your bottleneck might be, how to overcome that bottleneck, etc. You can go to the link is in the show notes. So pretty. Or co slash strategy and I will catch you in the next one.

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