3 Money Blocks And Self-Sabotage Tactics To Overcome For Biz Growth
You’ve created a profitable business. You have a full roster of happy clients. You bring in a healthy income each month. But no matter what you do, you can’t seem to move past that plateau. Your business growth has slowed or completely stopped, and it feels like there’s an invisible ceiling that’s keeping you stuck.
What gives?
There’s a good chance that the thing that’s standing in the way of your business growth is… YOU.
In the years of working with countless small business owners and entrepreneurs on their finances, there’s one thing I’ve noticed. When folks reach a certain income level and don’t see much business growth beyond that, the main obstacle they’re facing is themselves.
Money mindset blocks and self-sabotaging behavior can limit your business growth more than you realize. In this article, I’m sharing the three most common money blocks and self-sabotage tactics that are hindering the growth of your business – and how you can move past them!
1. Money Mindset Block: Not Investing in Your Business
Take a second to think back about your business expenses in the past six months. How much did you invest in your own business? If you’re feeling proud about the fact that you didn’t “waste money” investing in your business, I have some bad news for you.
Not investing in your business is costing you your business growth.
Sure, you may have saved $500 by preparing and filing your own taxes, but consider – how much did that cost you in terms of time spent (10 hours? 15 hours?)?
What if you had done some client work in that time instead? Billing at a rate of $150/hr, you could have made $1,500 in those 10 hours you spent doing your taxes. From this perspective, you didn’t save $500 by doing your own taxes – you’ve actually made a loss of $1,000 in your business!
Knowing when to outsource is key to being able to grow and scale a profitable business. When you become the bottleneck in your business, that’s a sure sign that you need to hire help or implement systems to ease that bottleneck.
As a CEO, a good motto to adopt in running your business is “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” Whether it’s doing your own accounting, building your own website, or writing your own social media captions, you may be able to do these tasks (and perhaps even be good at them!). But are these tasks really the best use of your time, energy, and effort?
Move Past Your Money Block
Invest in your business to hire the help you need. Hire that accountant, that web designer, that copywriter. Invest in the systems and processes necessary to streamline your business and run it more efficiently. You can start small if investing in your business feels uncomfortable but start doing it.
Aim to invest 20-30% of your profit back into your business. The thing about investing in your business is that it will always produce a positive return. By freeing up your time, mental space, and energy, these investments allow you to focus on the revenue-generating activities in your business.
2. Self Sabotage Tactic: Working into Burnout and Overwhelm
When you first started your business, you were likely doing everything, everywhere, all at once. That’s normal for a solopreneur starting out, but as your business grows, it can quickly become unsustainable. Trying to juggle all the balls in your business will lead you to burnout and overwhelm. Additionally, a lack of clear boundaries in your business can also contribute to small business owner burnout and overwhelm.
Working yourself into burnout and overwhelm is a common trap that small business owners fall into. Instead of producing the results that you want to see, it leads to self-sabotaging your success. The reality is, if you feel like your business is not growing or moving forward, the answer often isn’t to work more.
Burnout does not benefit your business.
When you are burned out or overwhelmed, you cannot think clearly about your business, your big goals, and the steps that will allow you to move forward. You are stuck in busy work and spend most of your time and energy trying to stay afloat rather than steering the ship.
It’s no wonder that you cannot move past your income limit!
Stop the Self-Sabotage
Burnout and overwhelm are common among entrepreneurs and small business owners. Luckily, by setting clear boundaries and implementing a few small changes in your business, you can address these issues and stop self-sabotaging your business.
There are a few areas to consider to avoid burnout and overwhelm as your business grows.
- Think about your structure
Take some time to assess your company structure. What tasks are you performing? How many team members are you managing? Can some tasks that you do be delegated to your team members, automated with systems or software, or even outsourced? Is it necessary for you to be involved in every single activity or decision in your business?
By evaluating your company structure, you may be able to see areas where you can reduce your workload. This will help ease your burnout and prevent overwhelm, leaving you free to focus on high-level CEO tasks and/or revenue-generating activities.
- Consider your calendar
This is one of the key aspects of building a sustainable business, one that does not drive you into overwhelm and burnout. Time is a finite resource for all of us, and as small business owners, we often have many competing demands on our time.
Being intentional about your time can help prevent burnout and overwhelm. Try setting some boundaries around when you schedule meetings, how often you check your email, and the amount of time you spend on tasks that drain you. Explore blocking off time for yourself – for rest, self-care, leisure, pleasure, and fun. Build in breaks, whether that’s a morning meditation session, daily lunch break, or time for movement as well as vacations, holidays, and time away from your business. By factoring the things you need to sustain and nurture yourself into your calendar, you can keep burnout and overwhelm at bay even as your business grows.
- Review your budget and client work
As the CEO of your business, you will need to make tough decisions. If you are feeling overwhelmed and burned out with the amount of work you are putting into your business, it may be time to review your budget and client work.
Are you getting paid enough for the amount of work you are doing? Are your clients aligned with your mission and your financial goals? Is your cash flow increasing as your business grows?
You may have heard the saying “what got you here won’t get you there”. This applies to the clients you work with too. As your business grows, the clients you worked with when you first started out may no longer be a fit for you now. Being mindful of this, as well as your own capacity and limitations, can help you be more intentional around your client work and corresponding finances.
3. Money Block that Results in Self Sabotage: Settling
Be honest now – how much do you love the offers you have in your business and how much do you love working with your clients? If your answer was anything less than 100%, you may be falling into the trap that’s keeping you from taking your business to the next level: settling.
This is something I see so often in business owners and it happens in two ways.
1) You have the wrong offer: Maybe it’s something you excel at but it doesn’t light you up, or it’s a service you started providing but it drains your energy. Perhaps, something just doesn’t feel aligned. It’s not the right offer for you to provide but you feel like it serves you because it makes you money.
2) You have the wrong clients: These clients are not the right fit for your business as it is now. Perhaps they don’t bring you joy when you work with them. Maybe they stress you out or require a lot of effort to manage, or it takes you more time and energy to deliver your service to them. It may just be that they are no longer your dream clients because the focus and goals of your business have shifted. Yet you continue to work with them and it’s not the best fit.
When you settle for what you have – just because you have it – whether it’s the service you provide or the clients you work with, you are blocking yourself from reaching your highest potential.
We don’t want to give up the good to go for the great. But by not doing it, we will never allow ourselves to reach that next level that we’re striving for.
Break the Cycle of Self-Sabotage and Stop Settling
It can be scary to think about giving up something that is working. It is challenging to end relationships with clients who are not a good fit. It is always worth it.
Take some time during your CEO day to review your offer suite and dig deep into your business. What is the work that lights you up? What feels easy and brings you joy? What kind of clients do you want to work with?
Getting clarity on your offers and your clients will help you take aligned action towards releasing the things that are no longer serving you so that you can invite better things into your business. Working with a coach, mentor, or accountability buddy can provide you support as you navigate this.
Overcome Your Money Blocks to Make More Money
Being a business owner is a never-ending journey of self-discovery, self-improvement, and getting out of your own way. As a fellow business owner and entrepreneur, I am right here with you on this journey.
Overcoming your money mindset blocks is not easy but having the right support and community makes it easier. The Exceptional Business Membership could be the support you need to move past your money mindset blocks and step into your role as CEO of your business. Learn more about your Money Archetype and how to work alongside it as well as tips on how to build out a solid financial foundation for your business as you grow and scale. Sign up to be a part of the Exceptional Business Membership community today!
