Episode 54: Scaling Past Six Figures with Intention

  📍 Welcome to the Creative Minds Smart Money Podcast, where we turn financial confusion into creative confidence. I’m Samantha Eck, bookkeeper and fractional CFO for creative entrepreneurs. Each week I’m sharing my financial expertise and actionable strategies to help you build a thriving creative business. Plus, you’ll hear from industry experts who bring fresh perspectives on growing your business beyond the numbers. Because building a successful creative business starts with strong financial foundations. Your next chapter starts now.

 You are listening to the Creative Minds Smart Money Podcast, and today we’re talking about what comes after six figures and why hitting this milestone is only the beginning because you need to know how to lead your business after the confetti clears. Of course hitting six figures is a huge milestone, and so many people talk about how they hit six figures.

Now when I’m talking about six figures, I’m generally talking about revenue. But so many people talk about six figures and how they hit six figures in revenue, but nobody really talks about what comes after you hit six figures. Like what happens?

Like what happens when you’ve hit six figures and now things just get so much more unclear? Can I actually afford to hire? Is there room in my budget for this conference that I want to go to? Can I purchase a new computer? Because of course, hitting six figures is the easy part. Knowing how to make money is the easy part.

The hard part is always and always will be. Does it actually make sense? So

nobody really prepares you for. What comes after six figures? You’re, you should be thrilled when you hit that number, but it feels really weird, like really unstable, because of course you’re making money, but you’re also thinking like, am I making mistakes? Because maybe your net income is really low.

Maybe you feel like your expenses are high, whatever it is, whatever you’re feeling. It’s not failure, it’s just you’ve reached a different threshold. You’ve scaled past that point of DIYing things, and now it looks completely different. So this episode is here to help you just name that feeling, normalize it, and navigate it with clear and defined strategy.

I wanna be clear that six figures is not a finish line. Once you hit six figures, it’s not the end game. The end game comes after you hit six figures. It comes after everything has happened and after you’ve really thought about it. It is a new game with new rules. Now, you might be someone who’s like, Samantha, I’ve never been that ambitious to hit six figures, but honestly, sometimes it just happens.

You are working on your business, you’re doing so well, you’re growing. All of a sudden you’re there and it’s just a different, it’s a completely different game, completely different rules, and you just need someone to help you make sense of it all, because it’s a lot. I had a client last year who hit her first six figure year, and she came to me with completely messy books.

She was overwhelmed. She really didn’t understand if she could hire someone. She didn’t understand. If she like, you know what I was talking about? If she could understand if she could afford a new computer. She didn’t understand if she could go to this conference that she’s always wanted to go to, but she told herself she wouldn’t go to unless she hit six figures.

But she’s looking at her bottom line and she’s saying, Samantha, I really don’t think I have the money for this. And I don’t know. Her first emotion wasn’t joy. It was pressure because now she’s like, okay, I’m making six figures, but. Like, what do I do with the six figures? Like how do I manage it? What do I need to continue to do to grow my business?

Things like that. Of course, now of course, she did feel joyful because. That’s a huge milestone, but it’s also something that was intensely scary and intensely pressure filled because a lot of people think that once you hit six figures, you’re in this sort of like financial safety zone, like automatically making more money is gonna make you feel secure and make you feel better and make you feel really good about your business.

But it’s a lie. It’s a lie sold by a lot of Instagram coaches and online summits. ’cause they’re like, once you get to a six figure biggest nest, you know you have freedom, you have time to do whatever you want. You can walk away from your business. But it’s a lie because there’s so much more that goes into that than just making six figures.

Six figures does not equal financial safety and it does not equal freedom and just. Overall joy and excitement because once you layer in everything that comes with that, you’re gonna get that your expenses likely grew faster than your margins. So you know, you wanna make sure that you’re actually making a bottom line.

I’ve talked about this before, but when you see all those coaches online who are like, Hey, I made six figures last year. I made 200,000, 250 K, they can say they make 250 K all dang day. If they don’t show you your bottom line. And I, I’m not necessarily saying they need to show you your bottom line, but if they can’t tell you that they are actually profitable, then you should not be listening to them because they’re not actually like they can make 250 K, but if they’re $50,000 in debt, they’re not the person you wanna be listening to, nor the person who should be guiding you to grow your business because you could end up in the same place as they are.

The other thing is you’re working more, not less. So you know, you’re starting to make a lot more money. You start to work a lot more. You have a lot more things that are going on in your business now. You have to delegate things. You have to do this or you haven’t delegated anything. And then of course, suddenly now that you’re making these six figures, especially if you’re a solo entrepreneur, you are the boss, you’re the owner of your business, and you are the bottleneck, like I said in the last episode, and I know.

Exactly what I’m like mean with that. You are the bottleneck in your business. You will always be the bottleneck in your business because you are the business owner and you can only see so far as what’s in front of your eyes. You can’t see past what’s in front of you. Because technically as business owners, we have blinders on, right?

Like we’re looking at what’s right in front of us. We’re looking at the smaller picture. We’re not looking at the big picture. We’re not looking at years from now. We’re not looking at six months from now. We’re looking at what’s happening in our business right now. How can I bring in money right now? How can I.

Grow my business. So you’re spending money, you’re making money, but you’re not actually understanding things, and that is why you are the bottleneck in your business. Again, you’re not ungrateful that you’ve reached this six figure milestone, but you’re just exhausted from carrying a business that you were never meant to run alone.

And that’s okay because it happens. Again, you’re not in this space where you’re lost. It’s not some sort of maze. It’s just that we don’t have the resources to figure out what happens after we hit six figures because of course, there’s all these resources out there about how to make money, but there’s no solutions out there for what comes after we make money because there are a lot of symptoms when we reach to the stage.

Again, you. Don’t know if you can afford to hire help, like can you hire help? ’cause you’re done being the bottleneck and you’re like, I need to outsource things, but can you afford it? And you don’t understand that you are afraid to raise your prices because you’re like, well, I’m making six figures. I don’t know if I really need to raise my prices.

But I’ll honestly be a hundred percent honest with you, if you are not uncomfortable with the price that you have, you’re probably charging too little because. If some, if you talk to someone and you’re, let’s just say you’re a copywriter and you offer them $30 an hour for this copywriting project, again, I don’t ever advise you to do hourly.

I always advise you to do value-based pricing, but if you’re someone who’s like, Hey, I’m gonna charge you $30 an hour for this, but, and they’re instantly like, yeah, that’s great, let’s go. You’re probably pricing a little bit lower than you should be. And then of course, you know you’re making more money than ever than you’ve ever have in your entire business, but you feel cash poor.

And by that I mean like you’re looking at your bank account at the end of the day, and you still only have $2 in your bank account, even though your profit loss shows that you’ve made $600,000 or however much that you’ve made. You are still making those gut-based calls and you’re not making them out of strategy.

So when we talked about cutting in the last episode, you are really doing things based off of what’s in your gut. So you see an expense and you’re like, okay, I can just cut that so that I can, up my bottom line. But you’re not thinking about things strategically anymore. You’re just thinking about like, what can I do? And then not really thinking about it, just doing it. Because once you get to that point where you are at six figures and we’re talking about those different rules, now you really need to be strategic about your money. If you wanna stay where you are, if you’re like, nah, I’m okay if I go but back to where I was.

Usually you’re not though. Usually you’re like, my business is successful, I want to grow it. I wanna understand it. So that’s where you need to, you know, start looking at making more strategic calls. And of course the next step is you want support, but you just don’t know. What kind of support you really need, or if you even need support.

So that’s what we call the success hangover effect. So after a major revenue milestone, like six figures or something like that, you start to feel maybe unworthy because you’re like, I don’t know, half this stuff that I can do now. Like, I’m cash poor, I can’t afford do, can I even afford to hire help? Do I need to raise my prices?

You feel unsteady because you’re like, okay, I’m making money, but like. Am I making money? You know what I mean? You’re making money, but are you really making money? And of course that’s where you get to that point where you’re unsure what to prioritize. So it’s like building that two story house on the foundation of a tent.

It’s going to collapse. So of course it, it happens though. Your brain can’t focus because you don’t just need better productivity. You just need a better financial compass and a better understanding because six figures is a lot more money than five figures, or four figures or three figures. It’s a completely different game plan.

Obviously your season and the season that you’re in is gonna determine your strategy. But I have four places that we wanna focus on. And this is going to be like where we lead off of and where you think about. So the first one is you wanna stabilize. So if you’ve gotten to six figures and you’ve never touched your books or you’ve never done bookkeeping, the first thing you’re gonna wanna do is clean them up.

Get accurate reports. Know your burn rate. Understand if you are actually making money, or if you are not actually making money. That’s what the first step is called stabilizing. So stabilize your business. Once you get to that six figure point, the second step is where we wanna sustain. So we want to build systems that reduce manual labor and make your income predictable.

So monthly recurring revenue, hiring out contractors if you can. And then of course beginning forecasting because now you’re at six figures. You want to understand your business and you want to be able to forecast. And a lot of times, when you’re a really successful growing business, what we’ll do is we’ll look and say, okay, historically, you’ve grown 10% month over month. We’re gonna forecast that. That’s go trend is going to continue. How is that going to continue to impact your bottom line as we continue to grow? And that’s where you look at that forecasting. Again, that’s very CFO level mindset, so sorry if that’s right over your head.

But of course, again, that’s where we’re talking about sustaining the third step. Or a season is scaling. So getting strategic with your hiring. Maybe you’ve only hired contractors, maybe you need to hire employees now. Pricing decisions backed by margin data. So you’ve really analyzed your margin and you understand that your pricing needs to go up X amount because.

In order to protect your margin, your pricing needs to be here. And then of course, cashflow planning is gonna become a non-negotiable in this season, especially if you already have bookkeeping. You’ve already done everything, you’re just ready to scale, so you really need to focus on that cashflow.

Planning. The fourth season is strategizing. So now is the time when your past six figures where A CFO is really helpful because not only are they going to help you track KPIs, they’re gonna help you analyze profitability, plan your growth. And I wanna just take a moment to describe what A CFO really is.

A CFO is very similar in essence, to a coach, but we do it backed by a lot of financial data. We’re not just looking at , how can we grow your business with social media, things like that. We’re really looking at your finances and analyzing. Okay, so for example, let’s say that you have an item and you’re like, okay, Samantha, like, how do I make this more profitable?

We’re looking at that and we’re analyzing it, and we’re saying, okay, what is your margin on it? Okay. Is there a way we can make the margin tighter if there’s not a way we can make the margin tighter? Can we raise the price? If we can’t raise the price? Do we need the product? Is it profitable?

Really looking and asking all those questions, because that’s how you really think about and plan your growth and strategize is when you have someone on your team who thinks with that financial mindset. Of course, strategizing again, is just optimizing, not just surviving. So now we’re optimizing our business to really get to the point.

So those are the four seasons that happen after you reach your post six figure growth, you are stabilizing, you are sustaining, you’re scaling, and then you’re strategizing. So again, just to do a quick little recap, stabilizing by getting your books in order, getting your reports, knowing what your business is doing, sustaining by starting to build systems.

Making income predictable, forecasting, scaling by hiring, raising your prices, starting to cashflow plan ’cause it’s a non-negotiable. And then strategizing by starting to analyze everything and really grow your business with profitability and KPIs and optimizing.

So again, it’s not about doing more in your business, it’s just about. Seeing things on a clear level. So there’s new skills that come with, of course, having post six figures. After you get to six figures. It’s making decisions with your numbers, not just because you want to make those decisions. Because once you have a team to pay, once you have people, that are backing you up, once you have things that are going on, now you need to make decisions based off of cash in your bank account, not just based off of what you think you can afford.

Trusting team support, trusting your team and giving them the tools to success without worrying about it. And then knowing your offers are profitable before a launch. So making sure that your margins are there and being like, yep, I’ve got my margin already in there. We’re good to go. Let’s launch this offer.

Let’s launch this product, whatever it is, and knowing that you’re profitable. And then shifting from urgency. So running your business out of urgency to running with intentionality because. Once you’ve gotten to six figures, usually you’re making enough money that you’re able to support your family. But now it’s like, how do I grow my business without stressing myself out?

So that’s something that we really wanna focus on. I know I’ve talked a lot about what happens when you hit six figures, but it’s so important. The milestone isn’t the summit. So hitting six figures is not the summit of the mountain. It’s really just the base. It’s a new base.

You didn’t do anything wrong to get here. You, in fact, you were amazing. You hit six figures. You’ve just , graduated from making money into managing it, and that’s a skill you were never taught. If you’re ever like Samantha, I’m at that point where I’m past six figures. I just need help. Please reach out.

I’m here to help you. You can book a strategy call. We have a free discovery call. We can talk about things and really just get into it. Or I can even talk with you and point you into one of the four stages that you might be in. Especially if you’re over six figures and you’re not sure where you’re at.

You’re like, I don’t know if I can hire whatever it is. I can help you figure out what season you’re in. That way you can start to focus on what you need to. Again, that’s always free. Feel free to message me. I’m here to help you out. 📍 As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend.

Leave her of you comment. And let me know what you wanna see more of using the form in the description box below. Of course, don’t forget to share and leave a review. It helps other people to find the podcast and learn more and grow more. . And as always, I hope you learned something today and that you feel really good about your business because what you’re doing is amazing and you deserve to feel good about it.

We’re just here to make sure that you get the strategy and the confidence you need to grow your business intentionally. As always, I wish you the most amazing week, and we’ll see you next week. Farewell fellow travelers.