A $5k vs $10k vs $50k+ monthly business: The surprising differences behind the scenes

The reality is that your business will look very different as you move through each income bracket, because each stage requires different foundations and processes to grow to the next level. What gets your business to $5k/month won't get it to $10k, and what gets it to $10k won't get it to $50k/month unless you intentionally set up these foundations. In today's episode, I'm sharing the surprising differences (behind the scenes) with each of these business models.

– How understanding $5k, $10k and $50k+ monthly business models will help to clarify where you're at and what needs to change so you can grow to the next stage.
– The differences between the sales processes for a $5k/month business vs $10k and $50k/month businesses.
– Why using different marketing strategies is necessary for different business models.
– How daily operations and delegation differs between $5k, $10k and $50k+/month businesses.
– Understanding yourself as a business owner and the personal growth required to move you to $10k/month or $50k+/month.

 

 
Today, I'm looking at the key differences between an online business that's generating $5,000 a month versus one that's generating $10,000 a month versus one that's generating $50,000 or more a month in revenue. Because I've noticed that these seem to be three pretty distinct stages, and as your business navigates through these different stages, it's going to look quite different at each different stage.

Now, the differences that I'm sharing are ones that I've noticed from observing students in my courses, clients that I've worked with, my own business, as well as a lot of my friends businesses at these different levels. And some of the things I might share might sound a little bit tough love.
I want you to know there's no judgment behind what I'm saying. I have been through all of these stages too. And when you are in that stage, it's really hard to see what you aren't seeing, right? It's hard to see those blind spots and identify what needs to change for you to get to that next level. I do want to note that I'm talking specifically about solo experts, consultants, coaches, solo service providers, content creators. So anyone who is in a business where you are essentially selling your expertise, whether that be in a time-for-money format or in a digital format like a course or a membership or a program, this blog is going to be relevant for you. This isn't going to be relevant to you if you are running an agency or an e-commerce business or a bricks and mortar, basically in person real life business, because those are fundamentally very different business models to an online business. Also, I do want to note that you can begin to put those foundations in place for that $50,000 monthly business, while you are still at 10K months, you can start to put those foundations in for a $10k monthly business while you are still at $5k a month. And this is actually the best way to do it in my opinion, because it means that you aren't left scrambling to catch up and feeling overwhelmed when it grows. It sets you up for faster growth because you also now have that focus. You have that direction. You have the systems, the structure to get you to that next level.
And then it just becomes a matter of pulling the different levers that are going to bring more people in and grow your business.

The things that are going to get your business to 5k probably aren't going to be the same things that get it to 10k. And what gets it to 10k a month isn't going to be what gets it to 50k a month and beyond, unless you set up these foundations intentionally.

 

Business model

Let's start with the first big difference and that is business model. So I'm going to look at this area by area of your business. And the first thing I want to look at is business model. A 5,000 a month business is usually going to be trading time for money. This is what I see most of the time and offering maybe one, maybe two different ways to work with you, but generally just one way.
And it's generally going to be time for money. Somebody who's running this kind of business isn't a hundred per cent clear on who their ideal client is. They are usually trying to talk to quite a broad audience, thinking that if they can try and resonate with everyone, that's going to get them more clients.
They're also not charging their worth. They haven't thought about the strategy behind their pricing, and they are usually basing their pricing on what others in their industry are charging, or what they believe their clients are willing to pay. At this stage, they haven't thought about how they're going to scale their business.
They haven't thought about the long-term vision. Right now, they are just trying to get enough clients through the door and make enough money to get their business off the ground and to stay in business. Once somebody gets to that 10,000 a month business at this stage, their business model is where they're probably still working with clients in some capacity, but there might be a little bit more selective with who they're working with and they're probably charging their worth at this point.
They might've started adding or they've at least started thinking about adding some more leveraged offers into their business. So ones that are not directly trading their time for money, for example, courses, programs, live workshops, memberships, but also things like voice message coaching or email support for past clients.
So things that are not just them jumping on a zoom call and charging by the hour. They typically have more than one way to work with them. And their offers flow really nicely. So once somebody has worked with them once, they have somewhere they can go next. They have a way to come back and work with them again and again.
And they have some kind of idea of what their vision is and how they're going to scale. But they still often, unfortunately, prioritize those short-term wins over the things that are going to bring their long-term vision to life. Because at the end of the day, they're not at this point where they feel completely financially secure yet.
So they're still bringing in short term cashflow at the expense of long term freedom. At that 50,000 monthly business. Clients at this point are paying a premium price to work with them. If these people even work with clients at all, they have leveraged offers. So offers that they can sell that are not directly tied to the time that they put into delivering them.
They have a beautiful offer suite with different ways that you can work with them. So you're not just working with them once and then leaving. Their clients are coming back over and over again and their office suite takes those buyers on a journey. Those clients, those customers, whatever you want to call them, it's taking them on a journey.
Solving multiple problems over time and delivering one big overarching transformation through those different offers. For example, my big problem that I solve for my ideal client is I'm helping them to build an online business that's profitable when they're offline. And there are different stages in this.
So the very first step is Offer Less, Sell More. Where they're mapping out their offer suite. And then there's Boost Your Brand Superfans, which is helping them to grow their audience. And these are not directly solving the problem of building a business that's profitable when you're offline, but they are components of that problem.
And as a result, I have so many students who come back and buy multiple different offers. I have a couple who have bought literally everything that I have sold.

Somebody who is in this business at that 50,000 monthly mark, they know exactly what their long-term vision is for the business. They are spending more time working on the business, they are spending time on the tasks that deliver long-term growth, long term wins, and they are sacrificing the short-term quick wins as a result of that.

 

Sales.

A 5, 000 monthly business doesn't really know the difference between marketing and sales. They kind of lump them together and they call them promotion. “I'm promoting my offers. I'm promoting my business.” There's a very distinct difference between marketing and sales, and they don't see the difference yet. They assume that growing their audience means they will get more clients without realizing that there is actually meant to be a bit of a sales process in the middle.
And they are missing that. They sell by talking about the features and the benefits of their offers. Sometimes they'll talk about the transformation. But they're talking about features benefits, not the problems that their ideal client is struggling with. And they're talking about these features and benefits to their cold and warm audiences before these people are even ready to buy.
They don't have a great understanding of their ideal clients, so they're not thinking about the magician's gap. The gap between where somebody in their audience is today and where they need to be to be ready to buy. Which means that a lot of the time, their audience doesn't even know why they need it. They're not thinking about what questions their potential client might have or what hesitations they might have.
So somebody who potentially could be a great fit for this offer isn't buying because they're not sure if it will work for them. They are trying to sell by getting people excited to work with them. This might work for those who are super engaged, but that's not scalable and it doesn't convert that well.
And any sales process that they have is usually done via email inquiry or discovery calls or messages in the DM. But when they're doing those discovery calls or the messaging, they're letting that potential client run the call or the conversation. They're asking them, what questions do you have for me?
How can I help you? And I see these. This person in this stage often giving away a lot of free advice in these calls in the hope that the person they're talking to is going to see how much they know and how much value they can deliver and then want to work with them as a result, but it backfires and these calls don't convert as well as they could.
Somebody at the 10,000 monthly business stage, their sales is a little bit better. They're starting to get a better idea of their ideal client. They're starting to understand that magician's gap and they're starting to talk more about the clients, the ideal client's experiences, the problem that they are dealing with and how they can solve that.
However, they often will speak to the expert-level problem. So they will speak to the problem that they as the expert know, not the problem that the ideal client is experiencing in their terms. For example, let's say you are a marketing strategist. The problem you are solving for your ideal clients is that they don't have a marketing strategy.
But to them, that's not a problem. They don't understand that this is a problem yet. They're not aware that they need a marketing strategy. So if you say to them, Hey, do you need a marketing strategy? They'll say, No, I'm good. But the problem that they are experiencing that you can solve for them is that they're not reaching their ideal clients.
So then your content should actually be around how that marketing strategy helps you to reach your ideal clients. And that's the bit that somebody at this stage in their business is typically missing. They might at this stage have incorporated some more scalable sales processes. They might be doing some live launches or webinars, email nurture sequences, but these sales processes are not quite where they could be dialed in fully yet.
They are starting to bridge the magician's gap. They're starting to address the questions and the hesitations, but they're not fully dialed in yet. And somebody at this stage might be starting to think about things like upsells, downsells, and selling to previous clients, but a lot of the time thinking about these things just leads them to feel even more overwhelmed.
Then once we get beyond this to that 50, 000 monthly business, they know exactly who their ideal client is for each offer that they sell. And they are regularly doing research to uncover what's going on in this person's head. They want to know what problem are you experiencing. And how are you experiencing that?
What problem are you experiencing? How are you experiencing it? What else have you tried to solve it? How do you feel about that desired end result, that transformation? And because they know their ideal client so well, they can speak to the exact problem that they are experiencing in the ideal client's language.
Most, if not all of their sales processes are scalable. So they are probably live launching a few times a year. They might have some evergreen funnels in the background ticking along and they are selling to their audience regularly. They are getting people into those sales processes where they can then convert.
They have a very clear customer journey and they have clear sales processes to move clients into each next step in the journey. So once somebody has worked with them, there's another step in the journey and they know how they are moving clients into that.

 

Marketing

Somebody at the 5,000 a month stage, again, they don't know the difference between sales and marketing, and they don't really know what they are doing. They have no strategy behind the way that they are showing up. There's no planning. There's no structure. They're just looking at what other people are doing, and they are emulating that.
They look at the person that they follow who has lots of followers and they assume is making lots of money. And they'd see, Oh, that person's doing reels and they're doing their reels in this format. So. That must be the thing that I need to do. Without questioning, why am I doing this? What is the purpose? What is the strategy behind it? So they're leading with those tactics first, rather than leading with the strategy, they're not thinking about how it ties in with the bigger picture and how it's leading people to be in their audience and how it's eventually leading them into sales processes and then becoming clients.
They are probably blaming the algorithm for why they haven't been able to reach the right audience and they're relying heavily on social media to reach new people. They are struggling to stand out online. And this is usually because they don't know who they are talking to most of the time. They don't know their ideal client well enough to stand out and resonate with them.
They are trying to fill their audience with literally anyone. They don't care whether the people they are reaching are their ideal client or not. They just want to get more people into their social media following, into their email list, wherever their audience is. They are typically very inconsistent with showing up.
They will show up all the time or they will then be really busy and not show up for a few weeks and they get quite demotivated when they show up for a few weeks with a lot of energy and they don't see results so they stop or they stop when they get a little bit too busy and don't have the time.

Whereas somebody who's at that 10,000 a month mark, they're starting to do things more strategically They're starting to look at that bigger picture and asking why am I doing this?
So they're being a lot more intentional with where they spend their time. They're starting to see audience growth as something that they have to intentionally do, rather than sitting back and hoping that the algorithm is going to magically show their content to the right people. They are doing things like going to events and speaking.
They are showing up and being part of communities. They are teaching to other people's groups. They are doing podcast interviews. They are reaching out to the media. Guest writing articles. And as a result, they're starting to build their audience with their ideal clients. They're also building their email list because they know they can't rely on social media alone. ─
They're becoming a lot more consistent with how they show up, but again, as soon as it gets busy, sometimes it goes out the window because they don't necessarily have the systems and structure in place to keep them consistent. They struggle with knowing what to post and they're still struggling to stand out a little bit.
And they might have started delegating a little bit. They might have hired someone to help them with little parts of their marketing, like designing graphics and scheduling, but it's not quite ticking along as smoothly as it could.

Someone who's at that 50, 000 mark, they are leading with their strategy first. They know exactly who they are trying to reach, how they will reach them, and how they're going to move that person into the next step in the sales process. They are regularly looking at their numbers. They know exactly what is working, what is not working, and they are willing to stop doing anything that's not delivering results or a return on the time or the money invested.
They're not getting distracted by the shiny thing, the latest shiny trends. Instead, they are asking, how does this fit with our strategy? And is this going to be worth our time before they jump on a trend? Their business wouldn't take a big hit if social media disappeared overnight because they have their own audience on a platform that they own, like their email list.
They are consistent with where and when and how they show up. For example, this podcast, I show up three times a week. Rain, hail, or shine. I am showing up three times a week on this show. And somebody who is at that level has the clear systems and structure that makes it easy for them to be consistent, which is how I'm able to show up three times a week, even when I'm travelling, even when we're in the middle of a launch, even when there is so much else going on.
They likely have at least one person in their team managing a significant part of the content production and repurposing process. And they also know why they are posting what they are posting. Everything that they are sharing, there is a strategy behind what they are sharing. And what they are sharing is valuable without removing the need to work with them or buy from them.
The content they're sharing is remarkable and as a result of that, they stand out really easily.

 

Operations and team

Somebody who's running a 5,000 a month business, it's a hot mess. And I'm not judging here because I went through this stage too. And you know, my business has had several points where I know this is a hot mess. I need to get on top of it. This is the most common stage though, where you're going to be winging it. You've got few systems, if any systems at all. This is probably the person who is still creating their invoices using Canva and then emailing them manually to clients and then following them up manually, right?
There's not even a bookkeeping system or they're keeping their to-do list on a notepad on their desk or the notes app on their phone or in a paper diary. No digital systems. They're spending a lot of time in their inbox. They're struggling with client boundaries. You know, they're over-delivering. When a client asks them to do something extra, they struggle to say no and they don't charge extra for it.
And they are reluctant to invest in software because it's too expensive, but they are willing to put in the time to do it manually. And they think, well, I can't afford to hire anyone to help, so they're doing everything themselves and they are wasting so much time trying to figure it out because they don't yet see the value in their own time.

At the 10, 000 monthly mark, they are starting to get some systems in place. So they might have a task management tool, maybe an accounting or bookkeeping tool like Xero. They've probably got a checkout to collect some payments, calendar booking software, so they're not going back and forth, scheduling calls. They're probably feeling a little bit overwhelmed because their business is growing, but so is their to-do list. And they don't quite yet have all the systems and structure and team in place to manage it all. But they don't have the time to put all of these things into place to keep growing, right? So they may have hired their first VA. They may have started delegating things, ─ but it's usually pretty ad hoc. It's usually like, Oh, Hey, can you please do this for me? Rather than having clearly documented processes and recurring tasks so that their VA just jumps into their project management tool, their task management tool, and they know what they need to work on each day. They often get caught out at this stage as well because they hire a VA expecting that VA to be the expert in everything.
And unfortunately, most virtual assistants are like the rest of us. We have a few areas that we're good at. They also have a few things that they're strong at, but they're probably not going to be the expert at both copywriting and graphic design. So you've got to pick the person who is right for the job and not expect them to be an expert.
And somebody at this stage might also be expecting that person to read their mind when they are delegating to them.

At the 50, 000 monthly business, everything is much more structured and streamlined. Everyone knows what they need to be working on and when they may have somebody in that operations manager role or the integrator role overseeing everything and all of the other people in the team.
There's regular planning to ensure that everyone is on board. They know what they're doing. There are processes for all of the recurring tasks that are clearly documented.

We had moments over the break, over the Christmas break, where one of my team members was away, and a task that she's been doing for so long that I've forgotten how to do, I had to jump in and do it because it had to be done, we couldn't schedule it in advance. And I actually had to go through that process myself and tick off each step because I couldn't remember how to do it. So having those processes documented so that literally anybody could pick it up and do it. That's what you're seeing at this level of business.
They are also hiring experts where necessary. So if they need a new brand strategy, they're not figuring it out. They're hiring a brand strategist. If they need copy written for their launch, they're hiring a launch copywriter rather than figuring it all out themselves, because at this stage they have the cashflow and their time is more important.

 

The person who is running the business.

At a 5, 000 a month business, the person who is running it, they don't know where to focus at any given time because they don't really have any specific goals or planning. They're getting distracted by shiny objects, overthinking everything.
They are finding themselves stuck in constantly planning, planning, planning rather than taking action towards the vision, the goals, they're allowing fear to dictate their decisions. So they are making their decisions based on what they are trying to avoid rather than what is possible. They are worrying about what others are going to think of them.
And they're probably going to prefer spending their time learning how to do something rather than investing money in learning quicker through a course, right? They're learning from free content rather than paying for the step-by-step course or the software or hiring somebody else to do it. And a lot of the time we might see them blaming external things for why they are struggling.
I don't have enough time. People just aren't spending money right now. The Instagram algorithm sucks. They're blaming these as the reasons why their business isn't getting off the ground. Someone who's at that 10k monthly mark, they have some focus. But they can still be pretty reactive in what they do each day.
So for example, if an email lands in the inbox in the morning, they might lose half of their day taking action on that email. They are still overthinking, but they're starting to take a bit more action towards their bigger goals. They're starting to do the scary things. They're starting to do a lot of the mindset work because they've realized this is what's been holding me back and they are willing to invest sometimes, but they often don't take accountability for their results.
And we see this when somebody says, well, I have too many courses and not enough time or I bought that course and I just couldn't complete it. That coach didn't help me. We see that a lot of the time rather than taking accountability and saying, well, how can I get the most out of what I've invested in?

At that 50k monthly business mark, that person is taking action. They are realizing that failure is a great thing and they're looking for the lesson in everything that they're doing. They are willing to invest. They're willing to take accountability for their own results. They're willing to take accountability for their business.
They realize, this is all up to me. What I have built is because of me and I can change it if it's not working. Only I can change it. And they make decisions based on what feels aligned and inspiring and good for them rather than what feels safe or what they are trying to avoid.

So those are a couple of the really big differences between the 5,000 a month business, the 10,000 a month business, and the 50, 000 plus a month business.

Whatever stage you see yourself at, I really encourage you to start looking ahead to that next stage and asking yourself, how can I start to implement some of these things from that next level? Where am I not aligned with that next level and what can I start to implement so that my business is set up for that growth.

 

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