What it takes internally to grow a 6-figure business.

Welcome to The Empowered Edupreneur podcast. My name is Michelle Smit, and I am an ex-teacher turned online business coach for edupreneurs, the owner of Digiteach and a six-figure entrepreneur. I am in love with empowering educators, just like you to create freedom filled online businesses and lives they love.

If you are looking to uplevel your skills, your finances, your mindset, and change the trajectory of your life as an educator. Then you are in the right place. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of business and mindset development to help unlock the infinite potential within you to play bigger with your life and go after your dreams.

We are going to have so much fun together. So thank you so much for pushing play today. Now let's dive in. 

Hello, hello beautiful people. Welcome back to my podcast. As always, so happy to be chatting to you today. I hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful day. I previously recorded a podcast episode all around like my simple strategy for hitting six figures. I think it was podcast episode 41. So if you want to listen to a more strategy-based podcast around just the strategy of how to hit six figures, then definitely go listen to podcast episode 41.

But the strategy can only get you so far. A lot of people think, a lot of the educators, and just everyone really who comes into my world and that I just see a lot in my experience, is a lot of people think that strategy is the main thing that they need to focus on, and a hundred percent, especially in the beginning.

Actually, always, always in your business, you want to be strategic and intentional and think about everything strategically and intentionally, not just willy nilly and winging it. That's why I'm always like find a mentor someone who's done something before you and learn from them, let them guide you because there really is a lot of strategy that works and instead of having to reinvent the wheel and stuff.

So I'm all about strategy. You know, I love a bit of strategy. But strategy cannot outperform your beliefs, identity, mindset, and behaviour and just general character. Strategy cannot outperform your beliefs, identity, mindset, behaviour. Your internal world is the foundation upon which the strategy must be built.

Okay. I want you to think of building a beautiful palace. In order to build a strong, sturdy palace that you can live your best life in forever, you need a strong foundation to build upon. So, if you went and started trying to build your palace on wet ground that couldn't hold, every time you tried to build your palace bigger, the palace would crumble because the foundations weren't in place.

And no matter what you do to build your palace, what material you use, or what strategy you use, if the foundation is faulty and not strong, then it won't be able to hold, it won't be able to work. This is the same for your business, okay? And... In an online business, you are the foundation. The business is built around you, your life, your vision, your mission, who you are.

It's a lot of personal branding. A lot of that can come into it as well. If you desire to grow a six-figure business, you need to become the type of person who can grow and hold a six-figure business. So this brings me to this episode. Where I'm not going to be diving into strategy, but I'm going to share with you the six internal, character traits, slash mindset, slash ways of being that you all need to cultivate or have in order to hit six figures in a online business. In order to actually hold six figures in success, so that you can actually grow your business with more ease and joy.

Because as always, I see a lot of people working and focusing too much on the strategy and not enough on who they are being behind the strategy and their belief system and their ways of thinking and they're just. character traits and stuff like that. Like all of this, I know you are born a certain way and we all have strengths and weaknesses, but I do really believe that we can all grow and cultivate parts of ourselves that maybe aren't so strong.

And I did that. I'll share with you how in this episode, but in a lot of ways I have grown many of these characteristics and ways of thinking, ways of being through just, this entrepreneurial journey, I didn't start out with the stuff. I didn't have really many of these things, but I cultivated it.

I grew, I grew and I expanded and I worked on it and I created awareness around it and I just evolved into being someone who does just have these ways of thinking, ways of being. And that's because I changed on a very identity level to being an entrepreneur. And that is just who I am now. And this is just how, how.

You know, I can relate to all of these things that I'm going to share with you. So yeah, just wanted to share that. I'm really speaking about the internal stuff here and the internal stuff is the foundation upon which you can then say, okay, I'm strong internally. My foundation is strong. You know, I'm, I'm aligned with where I want to go.

I'm believing things that are incongruent with where I want to go working on all of these areas. And let's find strategy and then let's work on a strategy. And then when you have both the internal and the external, so the strategy and the internal, it's like a beautiful, magical recipe for success.

It's definitely two clear parts to growing an online business. It's internal and it's external. The more work you do on yourself the better you are at being able to handle and thrive as an entrepreneur. So handle entrepreneurship and thrive. This is why entrepreneurship is the most powerful personal development journey that you can go on.

Because without developing your character, your identity, your ways of being. You're not going to be able to easily grow and scale your business. Your business can expand at the capacity to which you can expand. Your business can hold more success at the capacity to which you can hold more success internally.

So if we are not seeing the results in our business, we really also want to look at, okay, who are we being? Are we being the type of person to have these kinds of results? Are we showing up as the type of person to have those results? Or are we just saying we want these results, but we're not acting or being in alignment with it.

It's always very helpful to ask yourself that question. And yes, sometimes it can be quite triggering or. It can be quite what is the word, just really harrowing to be like, okay, you know what, I'm saying I want this thing, but I'm not acting in alignment. It can call you out a little bit. And you know, every now and then we need to be called out because if we really want something, then we're going to do what we can to get it right. Okay.

I had a tough time deciding all the important characteristics and sort of ways of being, but I've selected six. There are more, but these ones came to mind. Quite prominently. I think these are all really important. Okay. The first one is drive and hunger. Okay. Hunger for change driven for change. You are so hungry that the pain of staying in the same situation is worse than the pain of changing and facing your fears and being uncomfortable in the change. So the pain of staying in the same situation is worse than the pain of changing.

This is what is a common moving point for people. Once you hit a pain that is so great, you are then forced to change. And often with entrepreneurs, in order to be brave, and in order to actually do scary things, you really need to have hunger for change. Either you are hungry because you're just very ambitious to build a life that you love with more money and freedom.

So you're very driven by that or you're hungry to escape a pain that you are currently in and you're so hungry that you would rather go and You know, push yourself out of your comfort zone, do scary things, you know, sell a course, whatever it may be, just because you are so committed to be moving away from that pain.

Say it's a job, say you're just burnt out in your teaching job and the pain of your teaching job is so great that it brings this drive and this hunger for you to make a change in your life. Which really drives you in being brave and, you know, launching a course and things like that. So I can really identify with that.

I was in a painful place in my online teaching job and I was so hungry and driven to change that. I was also very driven to create freedom. that's a value of mine. And I was both, I was hungry for. Creating the freedom, but I was also hungry just to get away from the pain.

And I was very hungry. Either way you want to have the drive. The drive it's in you. You want it, it should be coming from you. It should not be coming from anyone else. It has to be very internally driven. You don't want someone to have to remind you to work on your business or tell you to work on your business.

You. Are driven to work on your business because you value freedom and you are just hungry to make it work. That I can really identify with especially starting up in the online business space. You need drive and hunger. Now motivation, I see a lot of people talking about motivation and motivation is great.

But motivation is also temporary, it will fade. You will be motivated for a period of time and then you will stop being motivated. That's what will happen. You'll start your business and you'll be rearing to go, you'll be super motivated and then when things get tough you will lose motivation and you will just potentially fall off the wagon and stop.

We don't want to be focusing on motivation because it is fleeting. What you want to have is drive. Because drive does not go away. You don't just lose your drive easily unless you have a big life event that really shakes you to your core. But really, if you're driven for something, you're driven for something.

And that is a very important trait. And that's something I saw in myself at the beginning. I was extremely driven because I really was hungry to change my situation. And for those people who are very driven and hungry to change, I see them. Going harder and I see them going faster and making it happen.

For example, when I started, I would wake up at 6 AM in the morning, it was wintertime. It was still dark and I would literally be studying my business courses. I will be taking action. I'll be doing all sorts of stuff in my business. No one had to tell me to do that, I just did it myself.

And that's because I was driven, and I wanted to make money, and I wanted to make it quickly. And so, that's one of the reasons why I was able to hit six figures and quit my teaching job within a year and a half. So, drive, drive, drive, drive. Are you hungry for change? If not, what's going to, what's going to help you get hungry for change?

What is, what, what, why can you tune into to sort of pull you and sort of call in that hunger? Maybe you've got children and you really want to give them a great life. Maybe that's going to drive you. Find the thing that's going to drive you and make you hungry. and use that. Okay. The next thing that you want is grit.

Okay. Grit, otherwise known as resilience or perseverance as well. So grit is really crucial for building business, especially a six figure online business because it, it, it, it just allows you to have the resilience to overcome challenges and the perseverance to consistently keep going. So with consistent effort to continue and to keep going no matter what.

Grit is a characteristic trait that I would say that most successful entrepreneurs have. It is a very passion driven, determined, almost like relentless stubbornness. It's all of those things, I would say. And having grit will allow you to be resilient and face the challenges that come with entrepreneurship, because there are going to be many.

It's going to help you be more consistent in your effort. So consistently keep going. It's going to allow you to sustain delayed gratification. That is something when you are in online business, if you have to work hard in the up in the beginning, but you're working for your freedom in the later point, but a lot of the time you have to.

Delay gratification. An example of that would be when I would launch, every time I launched, I would take the money and I would reinvest it back in the business. I never bought anything and I never paid out a salary to myself. And we, we delayed that gratification because we wanted to scale our business quickly.

Grit will help you do that because you're determined for it. You're determined to make it work and you're going to delay present gratification for future gratification. Okay. It's also going to help you manage the uncertainty of entrepreneurship. And overall, at the end of the day, grit helps you stay the course when the going gets tough.

And I promise you the going will get tough at some point. And many points during your online business journey. It's not a smooth sailing process. It's not meant to be smooth sailing. Building a business is not meant to be a piece of cake. And the opposite to someone who has grit would be someone who probably just gives up very quickly.

If you give up quickly, you're not going to grow an online business. You're most certainly not going to hit six figures, seven figures, whatever. You need grit. It's an important one. There's actually a book called grit. I believe it's called grit and I can't remember the author, but read it because this is some very needed stuff for actually building a business that makes money. And people who don't hit six figures are the ones that often are stopping. 

They just give up. They quit. If you're willing to quit, then it's not going to happen, right? So the only way for you with certainty, build an online business that's going to give you the freedom you desire, is with certainty never to give up. And to never give up means you will have grit. You will be able to stay the course. So yeah, that's that. 

The third thing is courage to do things wildly outside of your comfort zone. Courage is a big one. Being brave. You have to be courageous. If you aren't brave and courageous, then building an online business is most likely not going to be the path and hitting six figures is not going to happen because in order to hit six figures, you need to have.

The balls to do a lot of moves and take a lot of action that is in alignment with building a six figure business and those actions are scary. They are scary. It means getting in front of bigger audiences. It means having bigger launches. It means building bigger email lists. It means speaking live in front of more people.

It means more eyes on you. It means investing more in advertising. That's a big one. Spending more money on ads or spending more money in your business or spending more money on mentors and coaches, because that's what often it takes. To hit the success you want and have the success. All of those action steps they require courage.

And it is possible to cultivate courage and to become brave. I wouldn't have classified myself as very, I was courageous in the sense that I was like a traveller. I would travel the world and I a little bit risk averse. Because I was just a bit of a free spirit.

And I would go and work on cruise ships and travel the world. Then I went and backpacked and then I worked in Vietnam. Like I did a lot of stuff. I was courageous to a certain extent, but when it came to work and career and stuff, I was not courageous. And I definitely wouldn't have said I was courageous.

So, but I will say I was driven. I was driven and hungry to change my life. And as I started the journey of online business, I cultivated courage and I became brave through baby steps. I used to be incredibly fearful of things and I would, for example, going live on camera, but I, through just doing it, I developed an exercise, the muscle of courage and being brave.

And to the point where it just became who I was, I just became very courageous and brave. That's what I'm saying. You can cultivate these things in yourself over time until that is just who you are being. That is just you on an identity level. And that's what you want when you're growing a six-figure business.

You want on an identity level to become the type of person who can hold and create six figures. In order to hit six figures as well, you're going to have to launch, you're going to have to put yourself out there. You're going to have to fail a couple of times maybe. Sometimes you're going to have a bad launch.

Sometimes you're going to have things happen to you. That is just part of owning a six-figure business. No one has a six-figure business or any type of successful online business whatever the amount is, without being courageous and brave and doing things and failing.

People fail all the time. All of the successful people that are making cash money today have failed. All of them. It's just part of the journey. It is just part of the package. You cannot have the one without the other. And so, courage is something we need. Without courage... We will never start. And without grit, we will never continue.

We need the courage and we need to be brave to at least get started and take action and be doing things that make you uncomfortable, no matter how fearful you are, just doing them to exercise that muscle and start learning and building confidence and all that. And then we need the grit to actually stay the course and not give up, because people give up too soon.

If you have one launch that doesn't go as well as you want and you quit after that, then it's not going to happen. You're not going to hit the freedom business you want. If you're going to give up after your first launch, then you might as well not even begin, in my opinion. Because the first launch is literally just the test and you have to keep relaunching and you have to keep getting better and I am really testament to that.

My first launch was not good and I kept relaunching and relaunching and relaunching. And here I am. I'm walking the talk. If that is the saying that they say. Walking the talk. Yeah, I think it's walking the talk. Yeah, All right. That was number three. 

Then number four is self-belief and self-worth . I believe this is very important. As you develop more self-belief and self-worth . And you start to truly believe in your work and believe in your offers and believe in how you can help change people's lives in some way, then you will come across with a much more powerful energy and energy of conviction and confidence.

And on top of that, you will charge higher prices because with confidence, with self belief, with self-worth , you will then raise your prices. It's just by nature because you are seeing the worth in yourself and you're more confidently able to back the higher price. All of these things are really important in the journey of making more money and actually hitting six figures.

I saw a big correlation with my income and my self-belief and my self-worth . I started my business very unsure. I lacked a lot of belief. I didn't think I was very good at stuff. I kind of didn't know what I was doing. I didn't feel confident in myself. I felt insecure in a lot of areas. I kind of viewed myself as below average.

 On an identity level, I identified as someone who is a bit average. Like with most things. And I got this from my schooling because at school I was average or a bit below average. I wasn't really good at most sports. Although I was very good at swimming. That was the only sport I could do.

But everything else I was pretty average at or pretty crap. And then on most subjects until only when I was 18 and I wrote exams, I did well in those exams. But mostly for my schooling, I was actually below average. I was very bad at math. I was not good at Afrikaans. I'm terrible at science.

 I was not very good academically. I mean, I did get better when I got older. I was a late bloomer. I did not peak too soon. But compared to all my friends and stuff at school, they were all getting crazy, crazy results. And, I don't know, like seven A's and everything was just like they were so good at everything and I wasn't right.

That stuck with me. I remember everyone getting awards and I didn't really care to be honest. But I definitely identified as, I was a bit of a party animal, but I definitely identified as someone who was not very good at things. And that kind of trickled through into my adulthood where I was just not really driven on much stuff career wise, work wise. I was kind of just a free spirit, traveling spirit.

And then when I started the business and I had to learn to launch, obviously I was very insecure. But I was committed and hungry. I had the hunger and I kept relaunching and I just knew that if I kept doing it, I would get better. And launch by launch, things grew, things started happening. Then by the fourth launch we had that $40,000 launch and I quit my teaching job.

And then now, which is years later, I'm a different person with different energy. And my identity on my belief system is very different. And I see a lot of value in myself. I see that I can change people's lives. I see that I have a lot of self-worth . I have confidence in myself.

And because of that, my prices have increased because I have become better at what I do. I've spent a lot of money acquiring a lot of skills. I'm very good at helping people and I can fully back myself because I see my value. And because I see my value, I can confidently sell things. I can sell higher ticket stuff.

And because of that confidence that grows. And the higher prices and all of that, it means your bank account is going to grow and making money is going to be a lot easier. To hit six figures, you actually do want to start cultivating self-belief and self-worth . And if you don't fully have it right now, just know that as you launch and as you go on this journey of business It's going to come with time. Just create awareness around it and focus on it so that you can foster the kind of environment that it can grow in you. Make this something that you want to develop in yourself.

I want to develop more self-worth . I want to develop more self belief. I want to be able to confidently make decisions. I don't want to have to rely on other people. I want to feel like I can trust myself. Develop that in yourself. And that will be quite extraordinary for your business. Okay. 

And then the fifth one is a six figure identity and belief system. A lot of people want a six-figure business or a successful business, whatever it looks like. Whatever amount it is. They want a certain number amount of money per month, say it's $10,000 a month or $5,000 a month. That's what they say they want. But then they are not operating internally at that level at all.

The stories in their head are saying. Oh, I'm not good enough. I suck at making money. I have to hustle and grind to make money. Being rich makes me a bad person. Having excess money makes me a bad person. Charging higher prices makes me a bad person. There's so many stories that people have.

Or I'm just not good enough, or I can't have six figures, or I can't make that money because I'm just a teacher. There's so many stories that we carry with us and believe to be true. I'm not pretty enough, I'm not special enough, I don't have a good accent. Whatever the stories are.

 It's complete BS most of the time. It's just stuff that we've made up and we've just believed to be true, which we can also just change the stories and believe new stories to be true. If on an identity level, you are not aligned with whatever goal it is you're trying to manifest, whichever is the bigger cash months, the whatever, whatever.

If you are not aligned with that, you're going to struggle to hit the goal. You're going to struggle to manifest it because your identity and your belief system is the foundation. It has to be congruent to where you want to go. It has to match the thing you're trying to attract and create. The question to ask yourself is: who do I have to be in my business right now to hit those bigger cash months. 

How do I have to think? How should I feel about money? What is my relationship with money? How must I show up daily? How must I feel in myself? How must I view myself? What is my perception of myself? What stories am I telling about myself? What do I choose to believe true about my abilities?

Do I think I'm good? Really, look at all of that stuff. And then see are you internally aligned with a hundred thousand dollars a year in your business and ten thousand dollars a month in your business if that's your goal. Do you fully believe in every cell of your being that that is possible for you and if you don't, why? Why not? Unpack that story and debunk it, find holes, and then create evidence for why you are meant for it.

Literally actively seek out evidence for your brain to provide a case for why you are a six figure badass business owner who is so good at making money, just look for evidence, search for it, look at why things are working for you, why you're good at stuff and create a case for your brain to believe that to be true.

I know it's a difficult thing to do in the early days. But the more you can do that, and the more that you can actually start to believe that you have the abilities to hold and create six figures. And you're neutralized to that. You're not triggered by it. You're not triggered by having more money.

You're not guilty or in shame or weird about it. You're a bit more neutralized by it. The more you can neutralize it and just become like, oh, this is a no brainer. This is just who I am now. That's on an identity level a change where you can just be like, I'm the type of person to make money easily.

I'm the type of person to work hard and get what I want. I'm the type of person to. Be really good at selling my courses. I'm the type of person to have really big launches. I'm the type of person to invest in my business. I'm the type of person to always have a mentor to guide me along the way. I'm the type of person who never barters with my prices. Lowers my prices, discounts my prices. 

You see how that's on an identity level. If you can become that type of person on a foundational level. It's going to be a lot easier to make money, a lot easier to hit whatever numbers you want to hit in your business. So that's a big one.

I'm obsessed with that. That's what I help with in the Growth Accelerator. My more advanced business program, is really becoming the type of person to be able to hold the success of a bigger business. Like increasing your internal capacity so that you can increase your results externally and it's really, really very much connected.

All right. Number six is adaptability and flexibility. Now the markets are always changing and evolving. Your niche is always evolving. You as a person are always evolving, growing, expanding, and changing. In order to grow an online business that is aligned to you, that can sort of grow with you. As well as hit whatever number it is you want to hit, say it's six figures, then you want to actually be adaptable and flexible.

This is a really positive character trait to have. If you can read your audience well and you can listen and you can hear information from your people and you can pivot and adjust your offers, your launches, your messaging based on that, then that is going to be very powerful because being able to be fluid and adapt and flexible in your business is a powerful trait.

People who are very set in stone in what they want. And are unable to pivot and move and adjust and are not fluid. They struggle in business because growing a six figure business will require. A lot of moving, adjusting, tweaking, adaptability, flexibility, fluidity. Especially in that first couple of years or whatever it is when you're actually learning and just testing things out.

You really want to be adaptable and flexible. Because you will have to adjust based on what's being shown in front of you. If you're seeing things are not happening in your launch, how can I pivot? How can I adjust what can I add? How can I change my offer? How can I bring out another bonus, a surprise bonus?

What can I do to get things moving and shaking? That is important. And I would say it's a big one. If I think about entrepreneurship. I believe adaptability and flexibility is actually a really important one. There are obviously many more characteristics and ways of being that you would want to cultivate to grow your six-figure online business.

Maybe I would make another episode on some other ones. But if you can just start working on these six for now. You're going to be way more geared for success. This is all internal stuff and a lot of it can be cultivated.

I'll just go through them again. We had drive and hunger. Then we had grit. Then we had the courage to do things outside of your comfort zone. Then we had self-belief and self-worth . Then we had a six-figure identity and belief system. So who are you being? Is that an alignment with where you want to go? How are you showing up? Is that the type of thing or type of person that would have a business? Like, who are you being? And then number six is just adaptability and flexibility.

Being able to adjust and be fluid based on what the market is telling you, what your audience is telling you, how your launches are going, how everything is going. Your numbers, and just being able to pivot and move. I would say I've got all of these. I've cultivated some, some I had very little of. 

After a while I definitely developed grit because I still haven't given up. If you've been in business for five years and you haven't given up, then you've got grit for sure. And I do believe all of these things have been really valuable. On a internal level, just to create a foundation for me where I just am more solid and I have more chances of success just by nature of being me and me being the foundation of my business, which you would be the foundation of yours.

I hope this was helpful. If you love this episode. Let me know, send me a message on Instagram or an email. Share with me any 'aha' moments you had. If you are loving my podcast, leave a review on Apple podcasts. That's such an amazing thing because it allows my podcast to grow and reach more people.

Otherwise have a beautiful week and I will chat to you next week. 

Bye! 

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you are a teaching business owner, freelance teacher, or online teacher, and you are interested in creating a digital course or group program to scale your income and impact without teaching more hours, then I have just the thing for you.

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I appreciate you so much and I can't wait to connect with you in the next episode. In the meantime, go create a business and life you love.