In this post, Iâm taking you behind the scenes of my business and share 5 powerful mindset shifts that will rapidly increase your ability to build a 6-figure online business as a yoga teacher or wellness entrepreneur, all of which helped me on my journey to 6 figures.
I want to start by saying that the number isnât important and that I put ‘6-figures’ in the title to get your attention. It really doesnât matter if you earn $2000, $5000, or $15000 per month. Itâs your life, your business, and your lifestyle! Donât get hung up on a number. But also â donât sell yourself and your expertise short and shy away from setting yourself big goals.
The question is – do you WANT to build a profitable 6-figure business? What does profitable mean for you? Your answer will influence how you manage your business, and it will have a massive impact on your life. When you have a â6-figure mindsetâ, you can create a 6-figure business even if youâre new to the industry. You can be the best yoga teacher or healer in the world and still fail if your mindset isnât where it should be.
Here are 5 powerful mindset shifts that will radically increase your ability to build a 6-figure online business as a yoga teacher or wellness entrepreneur:
Mindset Shift #1: Be Willing To Invest
The old saying is true⊠You need to spend money to make money.
Entrepreneurs who succeed in creating an amazing income are happy to invest in their businesses. If youâre only looking at free advice and work with free tools, you are probably spending a lot of extra time and effort, and it will be really hard to scale from where you are!
Paid Tools
For example, when I first started, I used Calendly for people to schedule free calls with me but I didnât want to pay for the pro plan which meant that for a year or so I was manually adding appointments to my calendar, sending out reminders, and so on.
I could have afforded it easily, it was a total mindset block. It was only after I upgraded my plan that I realized how much time and energy that plan saved, that I could now spend on other things.
Education
The same is true with your education, like investing in online courses and masterminds. You can learn a lot for free on YouTube, but if you work with someone 1:1 or you buy a course that provides a clear roadmap for you to follow, itâll save you so much time in the long run.
The first major investment I made was for a course from Amy Porterfield for $1000 ($1200 after using the payment plan). This was a lot of money for me back in 2016 when I wasnât earning any money with my business yet.
Since then Iâve invested thousands of dollars every year in my education. Iâve done B School from Marie Forleo, all courses from Amy Porterfield, Iâve learned how to start a podcast from Jenna Kutcher, and how to launch a high ticket program from Mariah Coz. Iâve done courses on Facebook ads, money mindset, list building, systems, and so much more
Of course, not every investment was a good one. However, others really helped me grow and I know I wouldnât be where I am without having done those programs.
When/if you have a bad experience, it doesnât mean that online courses or working with a coach donât work for you! You have to leave that behind and look for a better solution for yourself.
Paid Ads
The last investment I want to talk about is advertising. Spending money on ads is scary, I get it! But the truth is, there is only so much you can achieve organically. Donât get me wrong, I donât think itâs smart to build a business that only relies on ads, but using advertising on top of everything else you do to build trust and engagement and grow your audience is like gasoline.
Itâs also important to consider that itâs never been easier to reach your potential customers with only a small budget. For example, you could start with just $10 a day that you spend on Facebook ads to promote an upcoming workshop or retreat. What options did you have before Facebook and online advertising? Maybe running an ad in Yoga Journal? Printing flyers? All much more complicated, and expensive.
I strongly believe that itâs a great idea to learn how to run Facebook and Instagram ads if you want to grow your business! The key is to choose your investments with care and to spend your money consciously.
Another example, you canât hope to attract premium clients if you have a website that looks like it was designed in the â90s or with terrible photos. You should consider investing in a website designer and booking a photo shoot.
Hereâs a powerful practice I use so I donât overspend:
I aim to not spend more than 50% of my revenue on expenses. I use this money to invest and upgrade my business.
For example, I pay my virtual assistant, hired a podcast editor, I pay for a myriad of tools, invest in online programs, and I also just signed up for a membership to learn more about Facebook ads, and I started spending much more heavily on ads.
Mindset Shift #2: Focus on What You Have
So often weâre always looking at â âWhat else can I create? What else can I make?â
This is Shiny Object Syndrome! Shiny Object Syndrome is a real thing and it can stop you from building a 6-figure business. The focus should be â âI donât need to create more products; I just need to bring my best work to life in what I have and increase my pricesâ.
I succumbed to shiny object syndrome, and I donât want you to make the same mistake. This is why I tell my students when they launch their first online course to stick with this course for at least a year before they even think about launching something else.
We focus on creating content because itâs safe and we know how to do it. We may also feel we need more products or offers so that people will take us seriously. But really, itâs never a good idea to overextend yourself, because guess what happens when you have a lot of different courses and offers â you need to sell them!
Before you know it, you donât have enough time to give every offer the attention it deserves and youâre not promoting anything as well as you could.
This is one of the reasons why I now focus on my program the Blissful Biz Incubator and stopped selling most of my online courses. I want to bring the Blissful Biz Incubator to the next level and make it into the most incredible result-driving space I want it to be.
My goal for this year â do less, and do it better.
For you this could mean (if you already have an online course), instead of launching something new, look at what youâve created already and make it better. For example, you could add some live coaching elements, update some lessons, add a special bonus, etc.
There are so many things you can do with your existing program before you start something new. Give it your best, you owe it to this thing you created, and you owe it to your students.
Mindset Shift #3: Progress, not Perfection
Hereâs the truth – Iâm a bit of a perfectionist. This sometimes means that I spend way too much time on tasks like updating my website or creating images in Canva.
I think perfectionism all comes down to balance. You want to make sure that youâre not putting out poor-quality content with lots of mistakes because this could reflect on the quality of your teaching. But when you try to make everything perfect, it can stop you from putting out anything at all because you donât think itâs good enough yet.
So, donât put out work thatâs a C or D, but B is fine – B minus is fine. Not everything has to be A-level-worthy.
Trying to get everything perfect doesnât necessarily lead to better outcomes. In reality, scaling back and refocusing energy and effort more strategically may lead to an improved work product â not to mention an increased work-life balance.
For many of us, perfectionism is born out of a mindset that requires working hard at all costs.
âPerfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be our best. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Rather, it is driven by fear of failure â and fuels unproductive thinking, such as ruminating over what-if scenarios, obsessively scrutinizing details, and worrying incessantly about being under-prepared, all of which can lead to procrastination, shame, and guiltâ – BrenĂ© Brown
Another particularly insidious downside to perfectionism is self-criticism, which drives a lack of compassion and empathy for oneself and others â making perfectionists nearly impossible to please.
If you are a perfectionist, what can help you is to shift your thinking to:
“I am a work in progress”.
Embrace your imperfections. You wonât always get things right, and you wonât always have your marbles together, and thatâs okay.
Mindset Shift #4: Set Healthy Boundaries
You cannot serve from an empty cup. Having healthy boundaries is so important, not only in your personal life but also in your business with your clients and colleagues.
Boundaries help you identify and assert how you want to be treated and respected and this is important for your clients to understand so they can honor your space and working process. This took me a while to learn because Iâm a people pleaser.
I used to work in advertising and my clients loved me because I literally would do anything for them. Work late and cancel plans because of a last-minute change? Sure, no problem at all. Work from home while having a really bad head cold? Of course – happened every single time I was sick.
I had to learn not to treat my business as an extension of myself. This is very common for entrepreneurs – to give so much of themselves to their business to the point of no separation, and trust me, this doesnât serve anybody.
What helped me is trusting my intuition. When something doesnât feel aligned, like a big resounding yes, Iâm not doing it. I said no to clients because of this, and I never once regretted it, it was definitely one of the best mindset shifts I made.
If you have no boundaries, youâre taking the great risk of overpromising and burning out, undervaluing your own capabilities, and feeling obligated to say YES when you have every right to say NO. No matter how much you get along with your clients, you both have your own lives to go back to, and your own well-being to protect, which only you are responsible for!
This can mean not answering emails after 6pm, not scheduling meetings early in the morning, or saying no to projects that donât light you up. So make sure that you are setting boundaries early on and create a healthy environment around your business!
Mindset Shifts #5: Stop Focusing on Busy
By this I mean stop trying to do everything like sending out your newsletter, creating posts for Instagram, answering emails, and all those little things that come with having a business. These tasks probably still need to be done, but not first thing in the morning – and maybe not by you.
Just because you are busy, doesnât mean that you are profitable. When you have your own business, you are not paid by the hour – at least not for all your tasks and to-dos. You may have clients that pay you per hour, but thatâs not what Iâm talking about here.
Instead, focus on the tasks that will move your business forward, the business-building tasks, the $1000 tasks. When you have a team or even just a virtual assistant for a few hours each week, you can delegate tasks. I have a podcast editor who edits all my episodes and this saves me probably an hour every week, at least. My assistant then uploads the episode to my podcast host, creates the show notes and blog posts, and shares it on social media for me, which saves me another few hours each week.
You only have so many hours in the day and when you spend them all working in your business, doing all those little things that need to be done, you will never be able to grow because you donât spend enough time working on your business.
Working on your business could include things like creating new offers, making sales pitches, creating a workshop, doing your strategic level planning, and other higher-level tasks. Iâm sure you have things on your to-do list that could easily be outsourced or handed off or even systematized so that you donât even need to touch them.
If youâre not ready to hire someone yet, what also helped me was to focus on the most important tasks first thing, each day. For example, instead of answering emails, I would write copy for a sales page. Work on the tasks that will help you grow your business and bring it to the next level first. This is how you can make a difference and scale.
And there you have it â the five mindset shifts you need to make to take your business to over 6-figures this year.