Mike and I have long had a goal to grow our business to 7 figures in revenue, and in 2017 we did it!

While numbers are just numbers and they don’t mean anything in a vacuum, for us, we knew that reaching 7 figures would mean we were putting out better content, serving more people, working with a team we adore, getting super efficient, and overall taking it up a notch.

I used to think that in order to reach 7 figures I would have to work more hours, be more stressed out, and offer higher-ticket items.

But what we learned this past year was that we could work the same amount (or even less) and achieve not only better results in our business, but more connectedness and presence in our marriage, in our life as parents, and in our relationships with our community and ourselves.

For the final installment of this month’s Business Love Series (you can read parts one and two if you haven’t yet), I want to share the 5 strategies that took our company to over a million dollars in revenue in 2017. (These strategies will help you grow no matter if you’re wanting to make your first $1 in business or your first $100 million. Growth is growth. It’s all relative.)

1. Believe

For many years I had a really hard time taking myself seriously. I felt like I was “playing business.” This past year Mike and I both stepped into a new realm of taking our worth as business owners seriously and started seeing our value more clearly. The minute I started believing in myself more, my content started getting better. Bigger opportunities started showing up. I was getting asked to do things by people I never dreamed would ask me to collaborate with them.

I became a lighthouse standing steadfast, shining consistently, rather than running up and down the beach trying to flag down all the ships. It’s one of the most profound shifts I’ve ever experienced. Believing in yourself is a process, not an event, but make sure you’re investing in the process every day because the things that happen as a result of your belief in yourself increasing would be impossible to orchestrate from your personal will.

Believing in yourself is the most powerful way to call in what you want. 

2. Get the Right People on the Bus

We had a lot of shifts in the people we work with this past year, and we have almost all new people working with us as compared to one year ago. The advice to hire slow and fire fast is just plain accurate. It’s not comfortable. It’s not easy. But once you get the right people on your team, it’s worth all of the hours spent searching for your people. And once you find them, treat them like gold because there’s nothing less dispensable than someone who’s devoted to your mission.

3. Do Less

I know it may be hard to believe, but doing less is one of the very key reasons we were able to hit 7 figures. We did less on a personal level, and we did less on a company level. Part one of this Business Love series is all about the 3 key ways that doing less helps you make more so definitely check that post out too, but there are a few ways we did less that I feel directly contributed to our growth.

First, we focused. We narrowed in on who we we wanted to serve and got our messaging and offers organized around it. (Not sure if you should be focusing on a certain niche or not? Read part two of the Business Love Series and get my free Niche Navigator Map to find out.) We stopped doing lots of things and focused on doing a few things well.

Second, we let go. Mike and I let go of the reins and let our team lead and thrive in their own unique skill sets. We sat back. We surrendered. We let things be done differently than we would have done them and were thrilled to find that we don’t always know the best way to do things.

Third, we adopted a “Do Less” filter as a company, and we all continue to diligently ask ourselves: What would be the most “do less” way I could do this? (For example, rather than writing a brand-new script for the Origin™ sales video, I simply used the sales page I’d already written as a script. Such a relief!) Having a company culture focused on getting things done via the path of least resistance gives you more space for creativity, more space for rest, and more space for attracting what you want. It’s awesome.

4. Say No

You can’t grow if you don’t learn to say no.  Saying no to more opportunities than we say yes to is one of the single most important reasons we have the bandwidth to do a few things well. Do I worry that people will forget about me if I say no to almost everything? Yes. Do I worry that I’ll annoy or disappoint people? Yes. Do I worry that I’m going to miss out on things? Yes. But the cost of saying yes to other people’s agendas is never getting to fulfill your own dreams. And I’m not willing to sacrifice my dreams to make other people happy. And neither should you.

5. Have a Bigger Vision

Mike has been encouraging me to think bigger from the time we met. He always saw big possibilities for our business when I was happy just “getting paid to journal” as he called it.

And then suddenly, about a year ago, I began to see the kind of impact we could have and the kind of organization we were capable of growing. It didn’t hurt that we hired someone to help us run our company – Madame President, Licia Morelli – who saw something bigger for us from day one and continues to lead our company toward that vision every day.

Bigger can mean whatever you want it to mean. I thought thinking bigger would mean more work, so I was afraid to let myself dream beyond what I thought I could handle. But then I figured out that creating something bigger isn’t something you do on your own. You link arms with people who have the same vision, and you all do the part that you do best, allowing everyone else to do the parts that they do best. And together, your bests all mixed together are pretty spectacular.

So whether you want to grow your business so that your income is greater than your expenses, or you’re shooting for 6 or 7 figures or beyond, know that while dedication and focus are required, sacrificing your physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing as well as the health of your family and relationships is NOT required.

I don’t believe we can have it all, but that’s okay because none of us really wants it all. You can have what you want, though, whether it’s a 7-figure business or something else, and if you take the strategies I’ve laid out here to heart, you can have it sooner rather than later.

Did you feel some excuses bubbling up as you read this post about why you can’t have what you know you want? Perhaps you don’t have any previous business experience, or you’re afraid of what your friends and family will think? Or maybe you’re afraid you’ll have to sacrifice your entire life in order to be successful in business? Whatever is coming up for you, please watch this free video from my friend Marie Forleo that will melt your excuses and allow you to move forward with grace.

OVER TO YOU:

Which of the 5 strategies I laid out above resonates the most with you? How will you specifically implement this in your own business? I’d love to hear in the comments!