Scaling your business needs to feel normal

I call myself a Next Level Business and Mindset Coach. That means, whoever is reading my posts, listening to my podcast, or working with me directly, knows they are at their needing next level, that next level could be anything. For some people, it's charging for the first time, for others, it can be charging thousands for the first time. For some, it can be going out and being visible on videos and podcasts, while for others, it could be writing a book. For some, it could be consistently earning, and for others it could be taking themselves out of the business and hiring a team to scale it, so they can go off to the Maldives for six months of the year.?

Scaling your business from wherever you are now, takes some courage. It takes clarity and courage, but the trouble is, we get stuck. I call this a ‘next level limiter’ because we get stuck on our current limit. It's a bit like when we do repetitive tasks all the time; if I'm procrastinating, I'll end up doing some data cleansing or sorting out my stationary drawer and underwear drawer. I mean, my underwear drawer right now is so clear and tidy because I've been procrastinating about something. If we find ourselves doing mundane but safe tasks, that's how we know when we're stuck at a level. We go and do easy stuff because we want quick wins. The fear of change is real.

The main challenge with going to the next level or scaling our businesses, is knowing we need to leave a certain little safety bubble. Even if that safety bubble isn't very comfortable, it's safe. Safe and comfortable don't live together either, but safe is not scary. Safe is certainty, and as you know, that's what the brain wants to serve first, always.?

It doesn't matter who you are, until you learn that success is what you want to serve and not safety, you will always stay in that safe bubble.?

The first thing we need to do is help your unconscious mind understand what happens at the next level. It's a bit like, Who am I going to be? What will I do? How will people perceive me? What if I change my marketing message? What if I change my products? What if I put the price up? The unconscious brain doesn't like all that, it’s so uncertain. We always need to know where we're going to go, so what we need to do is imagine it into reality…

This is the easiest and most joyful experience if you allow it. I don't mean imagine the shit storm, I mean imagine the joy. Imagine how amazing it will be when you get there. Most people will catastrophise, they'll be thinking things like, Oh god, what if my husband doesn't love me when I'm earning ￡10,000 a month? What if my children think I'm up my own arse? What if none of my friends like me because I'm slim??

Whatever is your next level self, you will be perceived differently and your brain already knows this. Your brain is always terrified. You know things change constantly,? regardless of our desire to syay the same! Things change when we become a parent. Things change when we go to University or don't go to University. Things change when we get a job. Things change when we get married; you get the gist of it. They change when we stop going out and getting drunk. They change when we start to consistently earn money. They change when we create new boundaries of “No thanks, that's not acceptable”, or “No, I don't want you as a friend”. All these things are essential in different variants to reach the next level, so we know that we're going to have to do change, but we're simply scared.

We know we can't do what we've done on this level and get to the next level. We're going to do something different, and that something different is so unknown. We also put a lot of pressure on ourselves, especially if the next level is going from where we are, to over VAT level - that one is the trickiest one for most business owners, because we're going to wipe out 20% (if you're a UK business, of course). You're going to wipe out 20% of your profit, literally overnight, as soon as you have to register for VAT. So we need to make sure the brain can go quicker to that next level to be able to warrant that l, otherwise, we'll just stay stuck.?

Most businesses will stay stuck under the VAT threshold because they’re just terrified of going over it. Or the owners of the business will stay stuck at what they used to earn. If they used to earn ￡30,000, they’ll think that’s a good amount to earn in their business. I shared a reel recently because I saw a guy saying that ￡60,000 was the new normal salary, and it's true. If we started a business 10 years ago, we think ￡30k is a good salary. It's really not! It's not enough to live. He broke down what he spent, and yeah, there was a few that were more than ours and a few that were less, but on the whole, I pretty much agreed with what he was saying.?

So, we stay stuck in what we know. It's a bit like when we do certain processes in our business. I have to admit here, I've got a spreadsheet I've been doing for ten years that I probably shouldn't be doing anymore, but it's what I know. I feel this real kind of safety in this spreadsheet. Like, if all of a sudden all my systems went down, I've got this spreadsheet. I mean, if the spreadsheet went down, I don't know what would happen, but I save it in different places - it's my little safety mechanism. There's a part of me that just needs that spreadsheet in my life, to be able to let go and grow. So we need some safety.

When we haven't got safety, we've got fear. We can't have the two things - they don't sit together. So if we haven't got safety, we've got fear. Lots of people will say it's fear of failure, but in my experience, it's not really ever fear of failure because with the best will in the world, we've all failed at something. Relationships, friendships, exams, driving tests, other jobs, learning to ride a bike; we've all failed at something, so we know how to handle failure.?

What we haven't learned to handle is huge levels of success. We don't really know how to do that. We're used to moaning, worrying, thinking, procrastinating, catastrophising - all these things. The brain loves problems to solve, so we find loads of problems to solve. And actually, if we get into real high levels of success, the brain thinks, well, I won't have anything to solve.?

I'm not saying any of this is conscious, by the way, because it sounds crazy, right? We all want a nice, free life where we don't have to worry about anything, and yet, actually, we don't. The brain does not know what that is, because we've never had it. The trick is to get the brain to understand it, and the biggest hack I can give you for this is to spend as much time in your dream state. And when you're in your dream state, don't just think of the positives, think of the negatives.?

When I run a big event, my dream state is all about the event. It's not just, oh, won't it be lovely? I’ll be stood on stage in front of 1,000 people, helping them to change their lives and their businesses, and everybody will think it's amazing. The food will be great, the music will work, the tech will work. I think about what happens if a speaker doesn't turn up? What happens if I don't feel well? What happens if no one comes? So my brain will do both. It’ll look at the positive and the negative because that way my brain will go, well, we've looked at every eventuality, so we're okay. We can do it. We know how to solve it all.?

The brain wants to be able to solve problems. If you're thinking about leaving a partner, for example, think about all of the different eventualities. If you're thinking about starting a business, stopping a business, dropping a client, or scaling your prices, think about every eventuality because once the brain has put lots of time into that, the change starts to feel normal. And that's the trick to scaling - it needs to feel normal.