MBA2577 Why You’re Stuck at $10K a Month and How to Break Through

0:00$10 ,000 a month. This is where most businesses hit a wall. Why? Because you're treating your business like a job. Today, I'm going to show you how to break through that$10 ,000 ceiling and shift your mindset to grow your business into something bigger, something better, something more profitable.

0:22Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zenholm, where I give you practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, to help you start, grow and scale your business. In today's episode, we're going to be tackling a challenge I see way too often. Getting stuck at that$10 ,000 a month mark. And I'm going to show you how to break through and how to change a few small things, small but significant things in your business that will make all the difference. This isn't just theory. I've been there. Hitting that$10 ,000 a month feels great, but it's also where many entrepreneurs get stuck.

1:01They're just in a rut. They can't get out of it. We're going to talk about why this happens and how to reframe your thinking and give you some practical steps so you can take the next step forward. You can reach the next level in your business and not just get stuck on 10K. You go to 20K, 30K, 100K, a million a month and beyond. So let's start with why people get stuck at$10 ,000 a month. Well, there's two main reasons why most entrepreneurs stall out at that point. The first reason is many people, they see this as a milestone to quit their job. They say, OK, hit 10K a month. You know, maybe that's revenue and your profits like 7K, 8K.

1:43And you're like, hey, that's as much or more than what I was getting paid at my job. Makes total sense, right? You have enough to kind of pay yourself to pay your expenses and like live the dream, right? But what happens next is where the problem lies. Once you start paying yourself a decent salary, when you're making 10K, that doesn't leave much profit left for you to reinvest in your business and continue to grow. Think about it for a second. In this hypothetical situation where somebody leaves their job at the 10K mark, the month before, let's say they're making 9K and let's say their profit was 7K, $7 ,000 being reinvested in that business the next month to allow it to grow.

2:24You leave your job, you pay yourself. Let's say you pay yourself a salary of 5K. Now you're reinvesting the 2K you have left. So obviously your business is going to stall out. It's just not going to grow, if anything at all, because you're not reinvesting enough to see it move forward. It's like you're starting the business all over again with no traction, except now you're playing defense instead of offense. Believe it or not, the second reason why people get stuck is even worse because it's a really bad habit. And if you don't kick this habit early on in your business, it's very hard to kick down the line.

3:00And that's doing all the work yourself. Here's the thing. Most of us come from a job. I came from a job. I was an educator. I was a teacher for 10 years. And in a job, you get rewarded for doing more. So when you hit that 10K a month mark in your business, we just start to think, I just need to work harder. I need to do more. And then I'll grow. This is the wrong mindset. You don't need to ask yourself, how do I do more? You need to start asking yourself, who can do this for me? The how versus who mentality is the difference between an employee and an entrepreneur. And that's just the bottom line.

3:41Business owners, entrepreneurs, they understand that they're building an asset and they want to eventually not do any work and let the asset make the money itself. And this is why you have to start very early on in your business, learning how to get somebody else to do the work other than you. Don't worry. In this list, I'm going to show you how to do this. I'm even going to show you who your first hire should be, what they should be doing, all that stuff. But the mindset is more important because if you don't get out of this mindset of I got to do it, I got to figure it out, I got to make it happen.

4:15You're never going to grow big. You're never actually going to get out of this rat race. You're going to be self-employed instead of building a business that earns a living, earns wealth for you for the long term. You want to start building an asset. And the best way I can illustrate this is with an analogy, with an example. One of the best ways to understand this and shift your mind is to think of your business like a basketball team. OK, think of your favorite basketball team. Let's say it's the Chicago Bulls in the 90s or something like that. When you're just starting your business, you're in stage one.

4:48And in stage one, you are the star player. In the beginning, you're doing everything, right? You're playing offense, you're playing defense, you're running plays, you're scoring, you're doing everything you can to win. You're like Michael Jordan, right? You're all over the place. You're on the court, you're hustling hard. And this is fine when you're starting out because you've got to start kicking up some dust and make something happen, create something out of thin air is going to require that kind of effort. But quickly, when you start making some money and your business starts becoming a valid business, you validate your idea and your product.

5:20And, you know, you're around that 10K mark. You got to get off the court, right? You got to start becoming the coach, which is stage two. OK, stage two is to become the coach. So as soon as possible, you need to stop seeing yourself as the star player. You need to start seeing yourself as the coach. And the coach isn't allowed to play on the court, right? They have to create the game plan. They have to put the right players together. there. They have to put them in the right position. They have to guide the team to victory, right? That's what a coach does. And one of the best pieces of advice I got from a coach of mine, Eamon Abdullah, was try to learn to be allergic to work.

5:53I know that sounds really weird because we're all hard workers as entrepreneurs, but this concept of if I can't work, how do I make this happen? If everybody else has to do the labor, how do I still build a business that works and is profitable? Well, I got to get other people to work. I got to manage. I got to coach. I got a train. Eventually, team starts winning, your business starts winning and you start hitting stage three, which is the general manager. Right. You're the general manager. The GM builds the team. They focus on hiring contracts, strategy. Right. They're looking for the right talent to scale their team success.

6:27Right. The GM is thinking a little bit further ahead, not just a season, but next season, five seasons from now, 10 seasons from now. What are we going to be looking like Like if we draft a player today, are they going to be a superstar in five years? Same thing for you as a general manager. Now you're hitting a different revenue mark in your business. You're starting to see your business as a vehicle that can help you win not only once, twice, but consistently. And you're less involved in the day to day. You're not sweating on the court, right? You're not breaking clipboards and trying to motivate your team as a coach.

7:02You got somebody else, a manager doing that for you. you're orchestrating this and putting the right people in place and giving them the power to do their job right. Stage four is becoming the team owner. The team owner really sees the absolute biggest picture, right? They invest in the team. They make sure the team works for them, right? Not the other way around. The owner's role is to ensure the team is an asset that grows in value, right? That every year this business is worth more and more and more. And guess what? The team owner is sort of an investor. They see themselves as an investor in their own company, and they might have other companies or investors in.

7:41They might be the majority or the 100 % stake investor. But the point here is that they're totally removed from the day-to-day operations, and they're really just all about vision and strategy for growth. So this was all to say and to illustrate, if you want to break through the$10 ,000 a month mark, you need to stop playing and start building your team. Now, I understand that you can't make five hires right now to replace all the things you do right now. You know, you're only making$10 ,000 a month in revenue. Totally get that. But it doesn't mean we don't do anything at all. We take the first step and make our first hire.

8:17And this first hire is critical because we want to offload as much time-intensive tasks that we do that don't make us money, that don't directly impact revenue. So let's start with step one, which is to make your first hire. And I call this hire a virtual assistant. They may be not virtual. They might be local to you, an assistant, administrative assistant, whatever you want to call it. But at the end of the day, you want somebody that can do a lot of administrative tasks that you can just offload off your plate. So what could a virtual assistant handle? They can handle things like email management, scheduling, invoicing, customer support, any kind of simple website management, scheduling blog posts, scheduling podcast episodes, uploading videos to YouTube, even maybe editing some short editing that you need.

9:08Social media management on and on and on. These things take a lot of your time right now. Imagine not having to do that anymore. These tasks don't really directly make you money, but they eat up a lot of your time. So most importantly, when you offload these tasks, you now are free to focus on revenue generating activities like sales, marketing and product development. So your first hire shouldn't be you, actually, because this is a low cost, high value hire, because this person alone might allow you to double your revenue and allow you then to pay yourself. So as an action step, hire a VA. OK, you don't even need a full time one to start with.

9:50They can start part-time and then go full-time, like 10 to 20 hours a week. They can start small and you can scale with them as they start learning all the things they need to do. A part-time VA can start at$500 a month. One of my favorite job sites to find VAs in the Philippines is onlinejobs.ph. Really good talent to be found there. And in my experience, because I've made a lot of hires to that site, overall, very hardworking people that are ready to learn and ready to go. Now, word of warning, because I know a lot of you right now and thinking right now, I'm going to make this higher. This is going to be very time consuming because I have to train this person and show them how to do it.

10:27It's just faster for me to do it. Time out. Time out. Time out. All this thinking you're talking about right now. OK, this is dangerous because this is going to stop you from growing. By the way, you hiring somebody and training them. This is business. OK, this is what building and growing a business is all about is recruitment is training is coaching is building systems. So you're documenting the training, documenting what they're doing, the standard operating procedures, the SOPs. This is what's building value in your business. This is what entrepreneurs do. What you're talking about, I don't want to hire a VA.

11:03I want to do it myself. This is what employees do. So I'm telling you right now, if this is what you prefer and you just want to do yourself, just quit right now. I'm telling you right now, just go back to your job because you're going to earn more. You're going to earn more and have less risk and less responsibility by just being an employee. And there's nothing wrong with being an employee. It's fantastic, especially if you enjoy your love. But if you want to be an entrepreneur and you want to build wealth, this is what it's going to take. It's going to take you breaking this mentality and saying, OK, yes, it's time consuming for me to train them.

11:32But once I train them once, then it's easy for me then to get the next person in and the next person in and next person in. And one of the biggest, easiest hacks you could do is when you're training them, you could just do a screen recording computer, what tasks you want them to do one by one. Get them to create a documentation, a document on Google Docs to document the steps of that procedure. You check that document, you check the procedure, and then you tell them, OK, go ahead and do the tasks. And they do the tasks based on the right procedure. Guess what? Next time around, you're going to get them to do the documentation.

12:05You shoot them the video. They're going to then write the documentation. You check the documentation. All good. Go do the task over and over and over. It might take twice as long for you to get the tasks done now. But once you do that once, that's it. Forever, they're going to be doing it. All right. Time back in. Had to just get that out there. Step two, let's focus on revenue generating tasks. OK, once you have your VA that clears all your busy work off your plate, now you can focus on tasks that drive growth. This is tasks like sales and marketing. This means double downing on your best performing sales channels, whether it's email marketing, content creation, maybe it's webinars.

12:42Focus on bringing in more revenue. This should be the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning. How do I make more money? That's what you do as you're the leader of the business. Number two, improving your product or service. The better your products, the happier customers, right? The more referrals you get and the higher prices you can command. Okay. So spend time refining your offer, refining your product or service. What's the third thing you need to work on now that you have some free time because the VA is taking so much off your plate after you've trained them, right? Raising your prices.

13:16If you're stuck at 10K, chances are your prices don't reflect the value you provide. Okay. And as your business improves, as you improve, as you improve your product, as you improve your service, the price should go up because now you're offering more. There's more value. Therefore you can charge more. One of the first businesses I had when I was a full-time entrepreneur back in 2012, was a business consulting firm where I build websites for people. And I was able to create these websites for bloggers, influencers, e-commerce businesses. And every time I had a client, I would get better and better at building websites.

13:51So I could command more for the gig, for the job. So every time I got a new client, I started to increase my prices by 50%. And I just kept on doing this until somebody would say no. And when they said no, I knew, okay, I hit my limit. That's fine. We're not for each other. I'll kick it back a little bit the next time I have a client until I get better again. So don't forget your job now is to focus on revenue generating tasks. Stop being busy and start being productive. Next step three, change your mindset. Okay. This all works here. This all happens up here first. The hardest shift is your thinking.

14:29This is what I've been trying to do this whole lesson, this whole episode. You need to stop seeing yourself as an employee in your own business. You're not self-employed, okay? You're starting to act like a CEO. This is what you do now. So what does this mean? It means you're not a doer, you're a leader, right? I know we have this badge. I've had that badge a long time. I'm a doer. I'm a hard worker. No one can outwork me. But that's very deadly because that's not sustainable. What you need to start doing once you've got some traction, you got some revenue, it starts transitioning into a leader.

15:03You build systems, you hire great people, you set the strategy for growth. Here's a quick tip when it comes to that. Every time you're about to do a task, ask yourself, could someone else do this for me? If the answer is yes, delegate it. I do this to the day. If I'm doing something or I'm about to enter a new project, I first ask myself, who can do this for me? Where I can just manage and just say, yep, change this, do this, This is my opinion. This is my thoughts. But the bulk of the work, 90 % of the work, 95 % of the work is done by somebody else. To prove this point, let me give you an example.

15:36I built websites for a living. Like I mentioned to you before, that's what I did in my business consulting firm. When we just did a redesign for the$100 MBA, I could have easily said, I can do that. I've done that before. I'm a professional web developer. Nope, that's not who I am. I'm an entrepreneur. I don't do it myself. I find people that are better than me to do it. I got a designer who's world-class, Rafal, love you, man. I got Sonny, amazing engineer and developer. He's worked with me for years. They both work together and they build out the site. They do all the technical stuff. I just look all over.

16:10I like this, change this. That looks great. It's incredible. I can then focus on making money for the business. I don't have to go and tinker with the website. That is not who I am. I find the best to do the best work for my business. Step four, reinvest in growth. The reason why you're stuck at 10K is because you're taking everything out of the business, right? You got to stop and you got to start reinvesting in your business. And that starts with that first hire, the VA, right? Then you got to start investing in some better tools or systems to increase your efficiency, right? Maybe invest in marketing to attract more customers.

16:45Not maybe, you should. I really believe that marketing should be the majority of your budget, if not all your budget, once you have a great product. Because if people don't know you exist, you don't exist. And the best way I could put this in a succinct sentence is treat your business like an asset, not a job. Listen, hitting 10K a month is a huge milestone. A lot of people don't do it, but it's just the beginning. If you're stuck, remember, stop trying to do everything yourself. Hire a VA to offload those low value, time intense tasks. Focus on revenue generating activities like sales, marketing and product development.

17:21And shift your mindset from star player to coach to GM to eventually the team owner. This is how you break through that$10K a month ceiling and set your business up for long-term success.

17:56hit that subscribe button and you get our next episode automatically. Remember, we publish every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to make sure we help you grow that business you want. I'll see you in the next episode.