One of the biggest reasons that entrepreneurs plateau is because they've just made things way too complex in their business. They often come to me stuck at six figures. They're exhausted, and it's really obvious why they're feeling exhausted when I see everything that they're juggling. One of the very first things that I help them do, typically, is to simplify. And that not only reduces their workload, but it creates the focus that they need in order to then go on to scale to seven figures. They're really often surprised at how simple scaling to seven figures can be, and they realize that they were overcomplicating so much in their business. So today I want to talk in depth about that, and I want to share five areas to focus on simplifying in your business. I refer to them as the five Ps of an unshakable model.

And they're going to help you simplify in order to then go on and scale. If you want to scale your revenue, your impact, your freedom, the answer is not doing more. And I know that it can sound, it can feel so counterintuitive, but simple is what you need to focus on. Creating that simplicity instead of a really complex business is what's going to get you to that next level, to that milestone of a million dollars or more in your business. There's a quote by Myron Golden, and he says it's easier to make a lot of money in a short period of time than it is to make a little money over a long period of time. And I wholeheartedly agree, first of all. And yet, so many business owners aren't experiencing that.

They don't believe that that's even true. They are just making their businesses so complicated. And again, I think it's counterintuitive. They make their businesses complicated in order to grow the business, in order to reach their goals, when it in fact does the opposite and it limits their growth. So again, we need to look at these five different areas to simplify your business. The first is person. This is the audience that you're targeting. It's who you're really here to serve.

And this is really about the difference in not just limiting who you're serving. That's an important piece, for sure, but the difference in being vague or crystal clear about who it is that you're targeting so that you can speak to them specifically, so that you can tailor everything in your business to them. If you are trying to target a lot of different people, I want you to think about how that spreads you thin, how it spreads your business resources thin, your team, your money. When you're targeting different people, different types of people, you have to find those different people with your marketing. You have to spend more time and money in order to reach those people, in other words. And then you have to speak to them in different ways, to say what matters to them, to make them want to take action. And then you have to customize delivery on the back end as well for those different people. So the complexity here isn't just on the front end, and it's not just something nice to say.

I know you've heard it a million times to get really clear about who your ideal audience is. And that can be really boring work in some ways because you've done it before and you don't really want to do it again. You don't think you need to refine anymore. But I'm telling you that every little nuanced level of refining the person that your business is based on reaching will exponentially simplify your business. In any little way that you can narrow it down, you get to narrow that down across your marketing, across your sales, across your delivery. And so it just pays for itself over and over and over again. And not only that, it works so much better to focus all of your time, all of your messaging, all of your energy on one type of person. I had a client once who came to me serving two completely different audiences, doing the exact same type of work, but for two niches where the marketing had to be completely different.

The processes in terms of how things were structured, the nuances within the work itself, although the work was very similar, still were different for these different industries that she was speaking to and serving. And when we looked at the two different types of audiences, the other piece was one was very profitable and one wasn't. And so it was a hard thing for her to hear, but I recommended that she actually focus completely on just one of the audiences and let go of the other side. That's exactly what she did, and she was able to scale up her business very quickly past the million-dollar mark and then continue from there as she let go of that other side of the business. The next area to simplify in is product. You need a simple, scalable offer suite. And this is all about clarifying what makes your product scalable versus custom and complex.

The biggest mistake that I see with the business owners that I work with is that they make so many exceptions, and they care so much about their clients, which is not a problem. That's a great, incredible thing. I'm sure you do too. I'm sure that you care about your clients so much, but then you over-customize. You make exceptions constantly for your clients on the sales process. You might tailor the scope of your work to be able to land the client. And again, it adds all of these nuances and layers of complexity. It makes it really hard to delegate the work without you being involved. And we really need to flip that around and have a very simple offer suite that is, again, scalable and not so custom.

We need an offer that can be packaged up with the same amount of support, the same deliverables in the container for every client. If each and every client has a little bit of a different level of support or a different focus, different deliverables, then everything that's done day to day for you and for your team has to shift. And it may just be in small ways, but those small ways mean that your systems have to be worked around. It means that there's additional conversations that have to be had. It means that you can't rely on automations and resources that you've already created and systems that have already been put in place because they need to be tailored to the changes that you offered for that client. And so we really need to make sure that not just that you're doing similar work, but the exact same work, that there's a set package with the same scope of work for different clients. There's still room for nuance within that, for strategy, for clients to use that support in different ways, to cover different topics, but without going completely around all of what makes delivery scalable for you in terms of simplicity. The other factor is having too many offers in general. For every offer that you have, you have to think through and create the systems, the assets, the standards you have to set up, the onboarding, the delivery, the offboarding, and everything in between.

Every offer really does just add so much complexity, and offers need to be added intentionally and strategically. The goal is not to add a million different offers. It's to have a very simple offer suite and to lead front-end with one core offer that you really are driving everyone to. And then as that scales and is completely systemized and not dependent on you, then of course you can add other offers. You can have a backend offer to upsell. You can have a downsell offer that's added into the mix. But trying to create all of those, especially when they're all customized, all have a different scope of work, don't have systems, assets, and team to run it, and they're all dependent on you, makes scaling very challenging. I had a client who came to me with probably about ten different offers that all divided her and her team's focus, their resources, their time, their energy. And when we evaluated each of those offers, it was really clear that some of them were bringing in little to no money. Some of them may have brought in some, but then the expenses outweighed it, so they weren't even profitable.

While there was one core offer, front-facing, that was extremely profitable, that brought in the majority of revenue. And then there was another offer that would be a great downsell, but didn't need the same time and attention put in on the front end. From a marketing perspective, if we funnel everyone to the other offer, the higher-ticket offer, then we could downsell from there. And for some of you, it might need to be the opposite, and you have an offer that you drive to, but then you upsell to a higher-ticket offer. The point here is that we simplified the business model, cut out offers completely that were draining her time, her team's energy, draining money from the business, and she was able to scale to a million dollars that year. The next area to focus on is position.

You need clear and specific positioning for your business. And this means that the problem and the promise that you solve is very specific, detailed, and consistently what is talked about, focused on in your messaging. You're not bringing in some clients who want to do one thing and other clients who want to do something else. Everyone has a commonality. They all have similar problems and similar goals. And when that's the case, whether the work is done-for-you work, one-to-one work, whether it's group work, especially when it's group work, there's such a benefit to having those similar problems and those similar goals. A lot of business owners think that they really need to try to stand out by being louder, and they think they just need more marketing. But when you dial in your positioning, what you're doing is you're actually getting clearer.

When you're focused on a specific person and one core front-facing offer, and then you nail your positioning for that, you're just so crystal clear. It makes it really hard for someone to say no who has that problem. Because you're so specific in your messaging, you're saying exactly what they need to hear. You're saying to them all of the things that they're experiencing every day. And when they realize that you know their problem better than they do, when they realize that you know what's possible for them, you've accomplished it yourself and you've helped other clients accomplish it, and all of your messaging centers around that, again, that level of simplicity amplifies your results. This is also about making sure that your positioning is focused on the problem and the promise and not selling the features, the support, the access.

We want all of those things, the deliverables, the features, the support, to be building blocks that are interchangeable, movable, and really only there to help clients get results. And at any point that there's a better option or it's no longer required to get results, it can be changed without clients being upset, without ruffling feathers, because they didn't buy for the features. They didn't buy for the access to you or for the support. They bought for the result. And if your positioning is around the problem and the promise and not access to you, that also simplifies your business and makes it more scalable. I had a client who was leaning more on the support side in her positioning and really underplaying the results that were possible. She was a little nervous to overpromise what was possible. And just like you're an expert, she is an expert in her world. She has gotten her clients results, and she was still skeptical and scared to position around those results. And so again, she leaned too heavily on the access and what was included.

She was thriving in her business up to a point, making multiple six figures. But then she got to a point where the needle stopped moving and launches weren't outperforming prior launches. They actually started to become this dip. And so we looked at her positioning. We tightened it up. We simplified it, made it really obvious what she needed to focus on in her messaging. And she's had not just one record launch following that, but multiple record launches that just keep outperforming her prior ones. She knows exactly what to say in her marketing. She might mix things up and talk about things from different angles, but the core problem and promise that she's solving is the same. And she leans in heavily to the results that they want and solving one specific problem. And it has worked.

And like with all of the other examples that I'm sharing with clients, she was able to scale from multiple six figures to over a million dollars in her business and maintain that year after year. The next area that you need to simplify is path. And path is all about your customer journey. Your customer journey also needs to be simple. This is talking about the journey that a customer takes from the point that they first notice you, become aware of you, all the way through buying from you, working with you, recommending people to you, ultimately moving on and completing their work with you, all the way from beginning to end. There's a customer journey, and a lot of businesses have friction in their customer journey. Let's look at the buyer journey specifically. If there are too many steps, if there are unclear next actions, if there are all of these disjointed pieces of marketing and sales and not a clear process, then your buyers don't know what steps to take, and they need to be told what next step to take.

And if you're not telling them and they're having to figure that out, then you are leaving money on the table. So we want to look at your customer journey and, again, from beginning to end, and simplify. Make it really clear at each step what is the ideal next step for them. And this isn't about making or forcing everyone to go through this linear journey, but about making sure that everything that you do is in an ecosystem that does lead to the next step. Ultimately, it's about making sure that the effort, the time, the energy, the investment in one thing, whether that's marketing or sales or something in delivery, makes a difference and increases the conversion and results and demand every step of the way. There's no point in increasing demand with your marketing if your conversion rate isn't performing. And there's no point in increasing your conversion rate if, once they come in, your clients aren't getting results. So we need to make sure that we're not overcomplicating each of those things by doing too many things, but to do less, but better, and make sure that first the full path, the full customer journey, is connected and working, and then optimize one step at a time. Another client that I worked with came to me and had all these different pieces of marketing going out.

There were launches, there was a funnel, and there was no cohesion to how they worked together. There wasn't really clarity in how one offer led to another. There weren't clear processes for how to onboard clients, how to renew clients. And all of that meant that they were just leaking customers and therefore revenue and profit. And so we cleaned all that up, and we made sure that there were systems for the entire customer journey, that it was very simple, very streamlined, that her team was trained on it. And at every step of the way, from marketing to sales to client success, we saw improvement. Because now there were predictable, repeatable strategies and systems in place to increase demand, to increase conversions, to increase client results, therefore renewals and referrals, within just a matter of months. She made the comment that it felt like her business was a completely different business.

It felt, and not in a way that everything was a new offer, new audience. It wasn't actually a different business. She was doing the same work, but it felt different in terms of it running more like a well-oiled machine. It felt like they had made more progress in a matter of months than they had made for years. And her revenue was able to very quickly increase from there because of the predictability, the repeatability, and the ability to delegate to team to manage things. There was more off of her plate. She had more freedom, but results were still consistent and reliable. And so they were able to scale up from 300k to over a million. The fifth area to focus on is priority.

And this is what you and your team are focused on. It's about the goals that you have and the projects that you have, and more specifically, the number of goals and projects that you have in the works at any one time. Now, I get that you're a visionary and you have a lot of ideas, and they are brilliant ideas, which is what makes it even harder. That's what makes this just really challenging. Because it's not like you have a million ideas and they're awful ideas, and so it's really easy to say, no, we're not going to do that. They're all really incredible ideas, and you want to move quickly, and you want to delegate them to your team and start talking about them and get them in the works. But the problem is that starting on too many things and having so many priorities at one time means nothing gets done.

It means nothing's the actual priority. And so you have to intentionally hold off on really good ideas to make sure that others get done. Because it's not about how many things you've started. It's about what you and your team get done. We need to simplify the number of things to focus on so that you can get more accomplished. There's certainly a mindset aspect to this as well, because there can be a feeling that you need to have more going on to feel better, to feel busy, to feel like there's some excitement. As a coach, it's really fascinating for me to watch my visionary clients create, unintentionally, but still create chaos in their business. And again, we don't want you to stop having ideas. That's not what I'm saying here.

It's your job to have ideas. We need you to have ideas, but we need the team to be able to focus. We need you to have space to think and come up with all of these ideas, and we need your team to be able to focus. And so we need a step in between to really analyze the ideas, simplify, and make sure from a mindset perspective you really get on board with the benefits of focus, simplicity, doing less, but better. I had a client who, again, was a visionary like most of my clients are and had all of these ideas. And before she came to me, she had started all of the ideas to the tune of having multiple businesses within each business, having different target audiences, different offers. They were all interrelated, but completely different focuses, different business models within each business, requiring different types of team members, different types of systems, different types of delegation.

And there was just so much complexity. And there were certain things that she was really excited about but weren't revenue drivers. There were other things that maybe felt boring but were actually what were making a difference in the business. And that's another key piece here. Oftentimes a really profitable, sustainable, scalable business model is going to feel boring. And there's ways to work around that. There are ways to bring excitement into it. For my visionary CEOs, you need that.

But the business, in many ways, kind of should be boring. It should be simple and repeatable, and your team needs to know what to expect and not have a lot of change day to day. For that client, she had, again, so much going on. And so we basically had a conversation and decided to not focus on growth for several of the businesses that she had, just to maintain, keep those running. We're not going to stop what was working. I wasn't going to force her to shut something down or quit anything. So keep that running.

But let's focus our work on this one business, and even within that business, on this one offer. She went from 200k to a million dollars in less than a year. And then that freed her up to focus on the next priority. But the key is one priority at a time. One goal, one project, one priority. If you have too many things going on, you are stretching yourself and your team thin and dividing up all of your resources and not moving the needle like you could in the one area that would make the biggest difference. So you don't need to add more. You need to simplify. Because simple is what scales. You need to simplify in these five areas: the person you're serving, the product you're promoting, the position that you're taking to message that around, the path for your customers, and the number of things you're focused on in terms of priorities. Person, product, position, path, priority.

Simplify your business in those five areas wherever you need to. You might already be simplified in some of them, but look at where you're not. Simplify across all five of those, and you will set your business up to scale faster. You will create demand faster, you will convert sales faster, your clients will get results faster, and you will have more freedom. Your team will get better results. They will be happier. I'm telling you this: simplifying makes so much about business better, not only in the business, but for you and your life as well.

Trying to do more is not helping. It's not getting you closer to your big goals. You think that it is, but it's not. Multiple offers, multiple audiences, multiple of any of these five categories—essentially, I want you to treat it like it's having multiple businesses. Until one business, one person, product, position, path, priority—until each of those, one of those, is running smoothly, is not dependent on you, is complete, whatever it is depending on the category—I want you to stay focused and then add only if you want to. But if you do, then you can add, simplify, scale it up, know that it's working, and then add to it.

A simple business model scales far faster and far more sustainably. So where do you need to simplify your business? That's what I want you to think about, and I want you to remember and take away today that simple scales.