The Truth Behind Running a 6-figure Business

There is a truth to running a 6-figure business that not everyone talks about. 

Sure, you see the images of the vacations, the time off, the smiling marketing shots, which is all amazing, and not “untrue”...

But what you often don’t see is what MAKES that 6-figure business what it is. There’s actual work that goes into building that business, as well as a team of support that helps you get there. I’m all about pulling back the curtain and truly showing you the good, the bad and the sometimes ugly parts about running a business. Because it does *get* to be easy, and it does *get* to be what you want it to be, but I think it’s incredibly misleading to show people the perks and make it seem like it’s all fun and games when really there’s a lot more to it than that. Let’s chat about that, shall we? 

Different Hats

Many business owners at the 6-figure level do have some support in place, however, they also still wear a lot of different hats. And wearing a lot of hats means carrying a lot of responsibility.

Sometimes that hat changes from DOING the admin work to overseeing the results of the admin work. So, there’s still a level of responsibility there that doesn’t go away just because you have support. 

And the more hats you wear, the more stress you carry. But don’t get me wrong, that help does help, but as the CEO you’re still the one in charge of the final outcomes.

It’s Still Risky

When your business hits that 6-figure mark, you’ll still have to take risks. Whether those risks are in who you hire, what programs/people you invest in or putting out a new offer. And you feel that danger in each one. 

If you hire wrong, you could completely create chaos and stress for yourself that, then, impacts your business performance, your energy, and your results. 

If you put out the wrong offer, you could negatively impact the whole of your success by creating months where you have a marked reduction in sales that impacts your year-to-date revenue. 

Risks are inherent at all levels, and are so necessary to grow and scale - but you still *feel* them at the 6-figure mark in business. There’s not a point in business where taking risks stops and you don’t feel that fear and anxiety, you just get used to that feeling and have the past truths and success to lean on to reduce those fears.

“Unsexy” business 

Oh yeah, you see the Insta-worthy shots and think, “That’s what I want!” You see the manicured hands, the nannies, the well-put together look. It’s all fabulous and made possible by doing “the work”. 

But what you don’t see is the “unsexy” side of that work. 

You don’t see the stress holding up an empire puts on a business owner. You don’t see the daily overflowing task list. The things that bleed from one day to the next because there is ALWAYS more to do.

You don’t see the pressure of decision-making (and decision fatigue) that goes on. The systems and processes, organization and structural support that have to happen to keep a business running. You typically don’t start a business to do those sorts of things - they’re not fun and sexy, but they are necessary for success.

Sure, you get to work with clients you love AND you get to be somewhat more creative in your business. But you also have to take the unsexy with that if you want to keep the ball rolling. 

Day-In & Day-Out

Those 6-figures are a direct result of the consistent, day-in and day out-actions you take - and making sure those are business building activities vs. nonessential tasks. 

That’s right. If you are bored with the day-in & day-out of running a 5-figure business, don’t expect it to go away just because you’re making more money. You will still have to be the face and driving force behind your marketing and showing up.

You will still have to review the day, see what went right and what went wrong. 

You will still have to flesh out new plans for the future. 

The list goes on. Do you have help? You do. But you are still…the owner/operator. And these things still fall on your shoulders. 

Now, I know this post makes it look like I’m bashing 6-figures, I’m SO not. It’s AMAZING to have a 6-figure business. But, it’s easier to have IF you know what to expect. Because I don’t want you to give up. I want you to know that you were made for this, and it’s SO worth it. Just think of this as a whole-picture assessment that helps you walk in with a more attuned sense of awareness.

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Katelyn Hamilton is an Online Business Manager and Get Your Sh!t Together Strategist. She helps busy entrepreneurs organize, strategize and prioritize their business to go from overwhelmed to out-in-front.

After spending 6 years in the corporate world working with multimillion dollar companies, top-rated chefs and celebrities, she launched her own business to find more flexibility and freedom. She matched her corporate salary in just one year of starting her business.

Katelyn is also a wife, stepmom, dog mama of three furry friends, fitness lover, sports fanatic (Go Dawgs) and dreams of living at the beach.

Click here to book a free call to talk more about your business goals and to see if hiring an OBM is the right fit for you.

How Workflows can Transform your Business

I don’t know about you, but I’m a huge fan of the “set it and forget it” mentality. I appreciate it when I can set something up once and trust that it’ll work for me again and again. I look for things that are recurring tasks in my business that I can automate whenever possible. One way I’ve been able to do that is through workflows in one of my favorite platforms, Dubsado. Dubsado is a business tool that can function as a CRM, and/or a great onboarding platform for your business. I help many of my clients set up Dubsado because while it's not the most intuitive platform in the world, it’s so helpful for creating automations in your business.

So what does setting up Dubsado do for you?  It saves you time, and in the long run, that’s what saves you money. By setting up a workflow in Dubsado,  you don’t have to worry about the back and forth, or remember what you did the last time to create the same experience the next time. You are truly focused around creating standard processes for your business.

Here are four ways that workflows will transform your business:

1. Standard offers equal simplicity. 

Identify the standard offers you provide in your business. For example, if you are a business coach, maybe you offer one-on-one business coaching, courses, intensives or VIP days, etc. If you are a service provider, such as a VA or an OBM, I’ll use my business as an example, maybe you do a standard monthly hourly package, one-off projects, and an intensive. If you’re not currently offering “standard” services, meaning you instead customize each proposal for your clients, I would highly recommend you identify at least a couple of offers you can make standard. If you're constantly needing to create a new proposal or come up with new pricing for whatever your offer is, it won’t simplify anything in your business, and will in return create a lot more work for you, and not to mention the time spent in the backend of your business. I usually recommend two to three offers that are your go-to, that you can talk about and share, and really have those fine-tuned for your potential clients. Why do I believe in standard offers so much? If you don’t have standard offers, you can't do as much with automation. And what does automation do? It gives you some simplicity in your business. 

2. Save time with automation by the push of a button. 

If you have standard offers, such as business coaching, hourly services, and intensives, you can create workflows for each of those three things to help automate these processes for your new clients. So where do you start? Start thinking about from the time somebody wants to connect with you, to the time that they're onboarding as your client. What does that look like? For example, say we get on the phone, they say yes to working with me, I have this automation set up, it's called a workflow in Dubsado, where at the touch of a button, all I have to do is put in their information, including their name, their business name, their contact info, and click start on this automation. The first step in the automation includes sending them their contract and their invoice. Once their contract is signed and the invoice is paid, it automatically will send them an email with the next steps to book their first call with me, as well as a link to fill out a questionnaire. I don't have to worry about going back and forth with the client to do that. I don't have to remember what I said or go find a previous email to copy and paste. I don't have to go back and forth with the time to schedule a call. I also don't have to follow up with them for future invoices. I have it set up for say a six-month coaching client to send them a reminder to pay their next invoice three days before it's due. And then another email to go out if they don't pay it two days after it's past due. All of that is done for me at the touch of a button. A similar workflow happens for my other offers. This really simplifies the onboarding process for both you and the client.  

3. Positive Client Experience. 

Workflows create a positive client experience, as it feels seamless and easy to your new client. Your new client is not waiting on you to create the invoice or to send it over once they sign the contract. This is particularly important if you're in different time zones, or maybe they sign your contract at night after you've already stopped working. This way, they don’t have to wait on you to send the invoice over and waste another day before getting paid. It creates the ability for them to do the next step in the process on their time versus waiting on you. If this is the first time they're working with you, they're going into this relationship seeing how smooth the process is, which makes them feel good about the relationship moving forward. Creating the simplicity for them will make them feel more confident in their work with you. 

4. No need to reinvent the wheel. 

Every time that you onboard a new client, the process is the same. You're not coming up with a new way to do the same thing. You're not having to think about “Oh, what did I do last time?” You don’t want different workflows based on different scenarios. Instead, these workflows should be your go-to, every time you onboard a client. You don't have to make it harder than it already is or needs to be. It creates standards for your business and frees up space to focus on delivering kick-ass results to your clients.

As you can see, workflows are truly transformative for your business. It saves you time, and you probably don't realize how much time some of these things are truly taking you. When you sit down to create this standard, it will create that space in your brain to not have to worry about it anymore. You can also outsource some of these things, such as the onboarding of a new client, to a team member because you’ve put this standard into place which will allow you to be more productive in other areas of your business. 

If you have any questions, you can always feel free to reach out to me on Instagram. If this does feel overwhelming to you, you can also book a system and systems intensive with me. My Systems with Speed intensive is designed to help you run through this process, figure out what this looks like in your business, and I can set up Dubsado (and potentially another platform in that same intensive) for you to truly transform your business. If you are more of a DIYer, check out my course, Automate Everything, that will assist you in getting Dubsado set up on your own.

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Katelyn Hamilton is an Online Business Manager and Get Your Sh!t Together Strategist. She helps busy entrepreneurs organize, strategize and prioritize their business to go from overwhelmed to out-in-front.

After spending 6 years in the corporate world working with multimillion dollar companies, top-rated chefs and celebrities, she launched her own business to find more flexibility and freedom. She matched her corporate salary in just one year of starting her business.

Katelyn is also a wife, stepmom, dog mama of three furry friends, fitness lover, sports fanatic (Go Dawgs) and dreams of living at the beach.

Click here to book a free call to talk more about your business goals and to see if hiring an OBM is the right fit for you.

Creating an effective On-boarding strategy

On-boarding new clients is exciting, but if you don’t have a good system in place, it can take up a lot more time than necessary.

You want to make sure you’re making this process as easy and fast as possible to save you time, and get your client started off on the right foot.

These tasks are often things that you do repeatedly and can automate. It’s one of my favorite things to help my clients with first because it can truly transform so much of your business by taking these simple steps.

1. Write down your process

The first thing I recommend you do to create an effective onboarding strategy is to write down your process. Write down every step from the time you have a call with someone and they say they want to work with you, to sending a contract/invoice to the emails you send after that and the first steps you take once they’ve paid. Just doing this step alone may open your eyes to where you could cut or combine steps, or find a better way to do something.

2. Find a system(s) that can help you streamline

One of my favorite systems that is really comprehensive for all your onboarding needs is Dubsado. Instead of using a few different systems to do all of the things, why not focus on one system that can help you do EVERYTHING? Talk about efficient, right?

What I love about Dubsado is that once you add your client everything from that point on is as simple as clicking a button. Dubsado is always one of the tools I help set up for my clients during our 5-hour intensives because it can seriously transform your business in a matter of hours. You have the ability to set up packages, canned emails, contracts, questionnaires, workflows, payment gateways, reminders, etc. that once you do once, will save you SO much time in your business when onboarding new clients. It also helps to keep everything for your new clients in one place.

3. Create Templates

Templates are a LIFESAVER. When I think of templates I think of a few different things. First, I create templates in my project management tool, Asana. You can create a new project and then add tasks that outline each step that should be done when onboarding a new client.

For example that could look like this:

• Add client to Dubsado

• Start the workflow for Service XYZ

• Create client Google Drive folder and share the link with the client

• Set up/get added to Asana/Trello

• After Strategy call assign next steps in PM tool

Once you had that template set up you can simply copy and paste as a new project when you add a new client. That way you’re not forgetting a step each time and you don’t have to retype every step out each time you bring on a new client.

Another way templates help me is for content planning. I have a content planning template I copy and paste each week to plan out my content and inform my VA as to what needs to be scheduled on social each week. It’s really helpful to not have to recreate the wheel with my content. I use THIS blog post and break it down into bite-size pieces mixed in with some promo posts and personal posts each week. It’s efficient and has helped me be consistent with my blog and social posts.

Finally, the last way I use templates is CANNED EMAILS. This is something you’d add in Dubsado but it really helps if you’re sending the same intro email to a client each time you bring someone new on. Instead of wasting time copying and pasting from a past email, you can set up a variety of canned emails to simply click, add a little personalization if needed and hit send.

4. Set up Automations/Workflows

Remember how I said Dubsado was seriously a game-changer? I wasn’t kidding. Workflows will make your life SO much easier. What is a workflow? It’s an automation that you can set up to basically do the “next step” for you. That’s not the official definition, but that’s the simplest way to explain it in my opinion. For example, if you have a service that costs the same every client such as a coaching package, you can add the package cost and contract into Dubsado and then create a workflow so all you have to do is add your new client and click Start Workflow.

Here’s what a workflow could look like:

• Send contract immediately after the workflow is started

• Send invoice as soon as contract is signed

• Send email “Next Steps” as soon as an invoice is paid in full

• Send Questionnaire “Testimonial” 30 days after the last step was completed

All of that is done automatically without you having to check-in or press send, or follow up. Genius, right? Now if your prices aren’t standard, it doesn’t mean there aren’t some things you couldn’t automate. Every business is different but there are ways you can use workflows to not have to recreate the wheel each time you onboard a new client.

Do you have an effective onboarding strategy? Where do you find yourself spending the most time in your onboarding process?

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Katelyn Hamilton is an Online Business Manager and Get Your Sh!t Together Strategist. She helps busy entrepreneurs organize, strategize and prioritize their business to go from overwhelmed to out-in-front.

After spending 6 years in the corporate world working with multimillion dollar companies, top-rated chefs and celebrities, she launched her own business to find more flexibility and freedom. She matched her corporate salary in just one year of starting her business.

Katelyn is also a soon-to-be wife, stepmom, dog mama of two furry friends, fitness lover, sports fanatic (Go Dawgs) and dreams of living at the beach.

Click here to book a free call to talk more about your business goals and to see if hiring an OBM is the right fit for you.