Struggling to hit consistent $10k months? This is probably why…

In my most recent audience survey there was one thing that kept coming up: “I want to hit consistent $10k months in my business”. Based on what I've seen with my students and clients, there's 6 common things that could be holding you back from reaching consistent $10k months. In today's episode, I'm sharing *why* you're not able to hit that target consistently right now and what you can do to change that.

– How trading time for money by working directly with clients may be impacting your ability to reach your next-level income goal.
– The two main ways to increase your income.
– Why getting into your ideal client's head will help you to hone your messaging (and what questions to ask yourself so you can do so).
– How reaching your ideal client strategically (and how you're selling to them) will influence conversion rates.

 

 

6 common things that might be stopping your business from hitting consistent 10K months.

When I sent out my survey to my email list at the end of 2023, there was one big thing that kept coming up over and over and over again when I asked, what are your goals for 2024, and that was, “I want to hit consistent 10, 000 months over and over again.” So based on what I have seen with my students, with my clients that I've worked with, there are six common things that could be holding you back from reaching that consistent 10K months goal.

And it could even be that your goal is a little bit further on from that. It could be that your goal is a little bit earlier than that. But regardless of what your goal is, until you sort out these six things, you're going to struggle to reach that next level in your business. And, you know, it could be that if you're struggling to get to that next income level, it's just that you need to make a little tweak to one of these things.
You don't need to do all of the things. It could just be one or two little tweaks. And then you'll move on to that next level. Now, at each level, when you get to each new level in business, you do need to remember that what got you to this level won't be the same thing that gets you to the next level.
What got you here won't get you there. And usually it's not a matter of just doing more, more, more to get to that next level. So if, for example, podcasting three times a week got me to where I am now, podcasting five times a week probably isn't going to be the thing that gets me to the next level.
Instead, there might be other tweaks that I need to make to grow my business to that next income level. So let's look at each of those six things.

 

1. What you sell.

So your offers, your services, your digital products, if you have courses, memberships, programs, anything like that, and any other offerings that you have in your business.
If you are at the stage where you are still working just directly with clients, that is the only way for somebody to buy from you. You're trading your time for money. It'll be a struggle to reach that next level income goal because you're too busy delivering for your clients, too busy working with them to spend your time working on your business.
And once somebody has finished working with you, then what's next? If they have solved the problem that they came to you for, now you can't really help them anymore. So I see people at this point getting stuck in a catch 22 where they know that they need to create some kind of leveraged offer, some kind of offer where you're not necessarily trading hours in for dollars earned, you're not trading that time for that money.
Some kind of leveraged offer like a course or a program where you can teach or coach a bunch of people in a group. And they know they need to do this to free up their time and scale their income. But they don't have the time to create or sell anything new because they're too busy working with their clients.
And then once they finish working with the client, they need to get a new client in to replace that other client's income. So it becomes this vicious circle of I need more clients to make enough money to keep the lights on. But now I don't have time to go and create the offers that are going to free up my time.

 

2. How you price your offers.

If we think about it, there are really only two ways to increase your income. The first way is to get more clients. And if you are already at your capacity, this is going to be really hard because you then have to just work more hours to be able to work with more clients.
The other way is to increase how much each client spends with you. And there are two ways that you can increase that. Firstly, you can add different offers. So you're increasing the lifetime value of that client because they are coming back. To work with you again and again and again, and you get to help them in a deeper way.
You get to help them solve more problems. The other way that you can increase how much each client spends with you is to increase your prices, right? So you can take on more clients. You can get your clients to come back and work with you again and again, or you can increase your prices. And if you are not charging your worth for your time and you are trading time for money, you're going to find it really challenging to reach that next level income, without either adding more offers or taking on more clients. And if you're stuck, because you don't have enough time, then you're not going to have time to create those offers or take on more clients. And it becomes this big chicken or egg catch 22 situation where you get stuck there.

 

3. How you communicate what you sell.

If you are struggling to get clients or to sell your offers, you're struggling to get any interest in what you are selling, it could be a messaging problem. The starting point for this is how well do you know your ideal client for this offer? Your ideal client is one person. It's not a target audience.
It is one ideal client. And if you don't know them very well, you will struggle to communicate how you can help them. In a way that makes them see the value and makes them want to invest in working with you. So you need to get into their head. You need to find out what is going on in there. What are they struggling with as it relates to what you sell?
What are they struggling with? What are their problems? What are their dreams and desires? And then how does your offer help them to solve this problem or achieve that desire that they have? What does your offer make possible for them? And how is it different to what they have tried before? Because chances are they have already tried to solve this problem and they failed at it.
So how is what you are offering them different to what they have already tried? Previously, I shared 7 questions to get crystal clear on your messaging and stand out online.

4. How you are reaching your ideal clients.

I have seen a lot of people get to 5,000 months or around there just through luck and through, I guess, initial momentum. So they've had friends and family who've signed up to work with them or who've told their friends about it.
So they've got a bit of word of mouth. They might have signed up people who are in their existing network. So that's how they've got their initial couple of clients. And then they get stuck. And they think, well why can't I get more clients? I've managed to get some of them, but where do I get the next lot for?
And why does the Instagram algorithm hate me? Why can't I reach new people? And this is because they haven't thought about how they're going to intentionally get in front of their ideal clients. Getting in front of your ideal clients means putting yourself out there. It doesn't mean passively sitting back and hoping that if you post the right thing, Instagram is going to show it to the right people.
Instead, it means going to events and meeting people in real life. It means speaking at events. It means pitching podcasts to be interviewed on as an expert. It means writing articles to pitch to the media. All of those things will get you in front of your ideal clients rather than just sitting back and relying on social media and waiting for social media to put you in front of those people.
Again, what's got you here, the friends and family, the word of mouth, your existing network that has got you to the income level you are at. But it's not going to be what gets you to the next level. You need to change what you are doing. You need to try a different approach and it helps if you can start with the strategy rather than the tactics.
So rather than starting with, Oh, Instagram reels are working for lots of people. So I'm going to do Instagram reels. We want to start with, why am I doing this? How is it getting me in front of the right people? What is going to get me in front of the right people as well, rather than thinking, Oh, everyone else is doing Instagram reels. So I should be doing that as well because it must be working.

That's the difference between strategy versus tactics.

 

5. How you are selling to a cold audience.

Once you start getting in front of colder audiences, you're going to find that they need a little bit more nurturing. And this is where consistently sharing free content, like what I do on this podcast, can be really helpful for that. And they will likely need some kind of sales process to convert them from your free content to being a paying client.
Something like a sales call, if you're working with a one-on-one client or a webinar, if you're selling an online course, those are both sales processes where you can address the hesitations they might have. You can answer any questions they might have because if they still have questions, they're not buying from you.
And they're going to have standard hesitations like can I trust this person? Will this work for me in my specific situation? Is this worth the risk for me? So if you are struggling to convert interest into buyers you need to take a step back and look at how am I selling to my audience? What is that process, that journey that I'm taking somebody on from when they first come into contact with my brand through to when they buy from me and how am I making sure that they are nurtured, that they have answers to all their questions, that all of their hesitations are addressed before they buy from me.

 

6. Where you are spending your time.

Something that came up a lot in my survey over and over again was that you are all feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, demotivated, you have a lack of focus, you are procrastinating, you are chasing shiny objects.
This is all caused by a lack of structure. Or systems. If you are missing the key systems and structure, you have to pedal a heck of a lot harder to get the same results, the same outcomes. Structure doesn't have to be this big fancy thing. It's your long-term vision. It's things like your medium-term goals, your short-term action plan.
Each month, each week, what am I working on? What am I working on today? What am I meant to be working on right now, this hour? Something like calendar blocking can create extra structure. And when you have these things in your business, it's a lot easier to know where to focus and it's a lot harder to get distracted.
You need to start with this top down approach of where is that long-term vision that we're heading towards? And what do I need to achieve to get there? Rather than doing the reverse way of sitting down at your desk and be like, what do I need to work on today? I have no idea. Let me just open up my inbox and action what needs to be actioned or let me do the thing that feels the most urgent right now, rather than what is the most important thing that's going to move me closer to that long term vision. And then when I talk about systems, I don't mean the most complicated automations and you're spending all this time setting up all this tech – I mean the systems that make structure easy and these can be really simple. Starting with things like a project management tool or task management tool and the things that save you time. Xero for invoicing and then automatically following up invoices rather than manually creating them in Canva or Google Docs and then emailing them and then manually following them up.
Calendar booking tools, so you're not having to go back and forth constantly to figure out time zones and find a time that works for both of you. Password management, a tool that keeps track of all of your passwords. So that you can share them when you bring in a virtual assistant or you start to hire other people.
And so that you're not constantly having to do the whole forget password, email thing. Email marketing tools, something that you can use to send out automated emails. Those are just some of the basic systems that will save you a lot of time and will help you to grow your business a little bit faster.
And you might think, well, that's expensive, right? I will invest in those when I have more income coming in, but unfortunately it's a bit of a chicken or egg situation. And if you try to scale your business and scale your income without the right systems or structure, it's going to scale your stress or your overwhelm.
If you are already at the point where you are so busy, you don't have enough time to set up systems and set up structure, then how on earth are you going to find the time when you have that? More clients when you are selling more, when you have more work to do, and once you have those right systems and structure in place, this is going to amplify the results that you get from literally everything else in your business.
For example, once you hire a virtual assistant, if you already have those systems and structures and processes in place, your virtual assistant can get a lot more done and you don't have to spend all of your time explaining everything to them because everything's already documented. Everything's already set up.
Or if you are growing your audience, once you have the automated email nurture sequence, for example, you've got that in place. Then when you grow your audience, you can nurture them a whole lot more effectively and without putting as much time into it because they are going into this beautiful automated journey, where they are getting nurtured without you having to manually do all of that. So there you have it, a couple of things that might be holding you back from hitting that next income level. I have been there as well, so if you can relate to all of these, it's totally normal and I would be looking at what are some of those low hanging fruits that you can start to implement.
What are some of those first changes that you can start to put the structure and the systems and the business model in place to then hit that next level income goal to free up a bit more of your time.

 

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