Episode 357

Hello and welcome to Unshakeable with Human Design, everybody. I’m your host, Nicole Lano, and we’re here today, just you and me, and we’re going to have a little talk about scaling, being stuck, maybe feeling plateaued in your business. I think the name of this episode is going to be Breaking through business plateaus when you’ve tried everything.

I’ve been hearing this a lot. I ran my Authority Accelerator Masterclass last week and the week before, and I’ve been talking to lots of entrepreneurs. I usually have a lot of calls going on and I hear so much between the Telegram chat that we have open during that masterclass, my own clients who are kind of, Doing that masterclass with us.

And then all the people that are considering joining business by design, which if you are interested in joining business by design, my mentorship, we have three pricing tiers now to make it more accessible for everybody. And if you’re curious about it and you want to know more, you can book a clarity call with me.

Just go down to the show notes and you can book that or go to nicolelano. com forward slash enroll to get information for it. Okay. So let’s talk about. Scaling. Let’s talk about hitting a plateau because this is something that was coming up a lot with the people I’ve been talking about. And I shared my story and I’ve shared bits here, but I don’t know if I’ve ever really gone into, you know, a real deep dive or talked about it at length about when I started my business.

So. I’ve been in business since 2016 in some way, shape, or form. I had a CRM at one point. That was like the start of my entrepreneurial journey. And then I got into coaching about 2016, 2017 on the side of that. And I’ve been coaching ever since. And I think we see people who are doing well. So I’ve mentioned here, I have a multiple six figure business.

I think I’m most proud of the fact that I have multiple six figures in revenue. And I. Make a six figure plus income from my business. Now I’m very proud of that because that has not always been my story. This was a hard one journey. Where I’m at did not come easy, and I definitely fell into the trap or the, you know, unfortunate circumstance of really feeling like everybody was doing well, but me.

It felt like everybody I looked at everywhere I looked online, it was just somebody who was doing it better than me, and why couldn’t I get it? And I felt like I was doing all the things. I felt like I was implementing strategies. I felt like I was following my coach’s orders. I felt like I was listening and I did a lot.

And when I first started to have some success, because I started to make money and then I wasn’t keeping money because I was spending so much money to try to keep this going, right? And that just doesn’t feel good. It hurts your spirit. It puts a lot of doubt in your energy and a lot of fear. Right?

Because you’re trying things and some are working and some aren’t, but when you come back and look at your bank account, it is not growing. And it wasn’t until a couple years ago where I started to really shift that and really make that change. And I wanted to just tell my story here because I know it was really impactful in the masterclass, and I want to talk about plateaus.

And I want to talk about that feeling of I’m doing everything and it’s just not working. I’m not seeing the results that I feel like I should be seeing. You know, my effort isn’t matching the numbers hitting my bank account, the sense of gratification that I want from my business. Just, it feels like a drain.

And not like a reward and your business should feel like a reward. It should feel exciting. And we are our businesses. It is a holistic thing. Your business starts with you. You as the entrepreneur. And if you aren’t aligned with, it’s all happening, it’s all happening, it’s all working and getting better at not making it personal and not getting emotionally wrapped up in your business stuff so that you’re able to make better decisions, you will probably have a hard time.

And I know this because that was how I felt. So even when I started to have some success, when I started to see some movement, I. I took a program. I joined the most expensive program I had joined at that time. I was not making the money to support investing in that program. It was 18, 000 for me to join for the year, which was a huge stretch for me because I think my business was making something like 4, 000, 5, 000 a launch at that time.

It was tough. Like, this was not like, no problem making the payment. And I had to go to my husband and tell him that I wanted to invest in this thing again. I needed to invest in something because it was not the first investment I made, but it was the largest. And I had to go to him and tell him that this was what I needed.

That was a huge energetic step for me. In the past, before that, I probably would have made the investment and not told him. And then there would have been that weird energy between me and him when I go to work on something. So instead though, I didn’t ask for permission. I told him, this is what I need and this is what I’m doing.

I really need your support. So that was step one. Then I got in that program and I learned to launch there and I’m grateful for everything in this program. Don’t get me wrong. I got so much out of it. But I also got PTSD from it because most of what these bigger programs and bigger coaches, if you follow people who have millions of followers online or hundreds of thousands of followers online, and they have these huge multi seven figure businesses and all that, they most likely, I will pretty much guarantee, have a large team behind them.

Or lots of contractors, at least, but most of them are going to have a full time staff making that company run. And that was how it was with this particular coach that I had hired. She had a huge team behind her and she gave us everything they were doing, which was wonderful. It’s great to hear. It’s great to know what they’re doing and what’s working for them.

That’s amazing. Incredibly valuable, but she made us feel like we had to do everything that she was doing. And she gave us this sheet, you know, this marketing domination checklist. And when you went down the list, I mean, it was, you needed to be everywhere. And I burnt out and I was doing it. And I really felt like I needed to do it all.

And I’m a manifesting generator. I have the energy for this. I wasn’t seeing, I was making money, but I was also spending all of that money. So I had a 70, 000 launch under that woman’s program. It was amazing. But then launches started to get smaller. I had a big bang once and then they got smaller. Why?

Because I really didn’t have all the pieces of my business put together. I didn’t really get it. I had one tactic that worked once, and then it would work after that, but not to the level that I had at the start from my first launch. My first launch was 70, 000, which was amazing, absolutely amazing. But then I could not recreate that success for another year, right?

I had to get better at understanding. What a plateau was, where it came from, and what I needed to do at those points. So let’s talk a little bit about what a plateau is. And you know, the whole reason I’m telling this story is because I want you to know that you’re not alone. That where I got to. And where I am right now and where I’m going, and I know for certainty I will get there, is because I am able to sit in the moment when things are not working and analyze what is happening and make strategic moves and energetic moves within myself to raise my energetic frequency to where I want to go and then resist the urge to break it all, burn it all down.

Grab other tactics and strategies willy nilly, but to actually make sure it serves my business. Everything is about do less, but better. Everything is about preserving my energy. And like I said, I’m a manifesting generator. I’m able to do a lot. I can only imagine what the projectors in that program and in other programs feel like.

Like, it has to feel so overwhelming. So you might hit, feel like you’re hitting a plateau all the time if you’re a projector. So, let’s talk a little bit about a plateau, because we often think that we’re stuck. But the truth is, is that plateaus are normal. Entrepreneurs, we tend to grow at a really fast rate.

If you look at startups, most of the time, not profitable for years. They just take in more funding, they get more money from other people, but not because they’re making more, not because they’re making enough, because they want to grow. And they know that growth costs cash and they don’t expect to be profitable for a certain period of time.

Now, I don’t recommend that when you have to eat. Right? They’re still paying themselves in those startups that are not profitable. In fact, they’re sometimes paying themselves quite a lot. They get that. Entrepreneurs, we tend to grow very fast. And we need to because we are the direct recipients of our results.

So if we’re not making money, then we’re not eating, we’re not supporting our families. So there’s a survival aspect that comes with this. But plateaus are normal. Plateaus are flexion points in our business. And what they do often is they cause panic. And they used to do this for me. I used to get freaked out.

Oh my God, it’s stopping. What do I have to do to get to the next level? And then I frantically would look around to figure out like, what do I need to invest in? What do I know? I need a mastermind. Now I need this. Now I need that. That’s not what typically will lead to the results that you want. Doing anything from frantic energy or from a place of lack will usually get you more of that.

It will get you more chaos, and it will get you more lack. You will watch your money disappear, like I did. But that doesn’t mean that no investments are right. Investments, strategic investments in areas where you feel you need growth from an energy of I know that this is what will take me to my next level.

I make this investment with total confidence. I know on a deep soul level that this is what me and my business need. The answer. It isn’t usually in these situations to add more tactics. It isn’t about necessarily adding a whole lot to your business. Remember, the biggest lesson I learned was how to do less but better.

And the way that we do less but better is by refining our approach. With both energetic alignment and strategic systems, we have to be able to look at what our business is doing, what are we doing in our business, because you’re probably going to find that some of them are not necessary. If there are some things that are draining you and they are not producing, which so many people are putting energy into things that are draining and not producing, then you have to be able to look at that with just objectivity.

We get very emotionally attached to things. I’ve got to be here. I’ve got to be doing this. That was how I felt. And my biggest shift when I decided to shift to making my podcast the center of my business, that came at a point of a plateau. And plateau is when I say flexion point. Flexion point is just a point where change must occur.

If we want to continue to rise, we have to assess what change needs to occur in us and around us, in the things we are doing, or the way that things are set up within us and around us. To get us to that next level, because like there are three main causes for a plateau energetic misalignment, which is working against your design, which is maybe having triggers.

That are causing you to go in chaos energy when something happens rather than be able to weather a storm to be in the energy of what you want versus what you don’t want. We have to look at those things. Some examples of energetic misalignment are going to be projectors working like generators. Because what happens when a projector is working like a generator and it’s not working, so they’re doing all the stuff, but it’s not working, they’re saying, I’m already doing too much.

I’m tired. I am burnt out. I know I cannot sustain this. And if I want more, I’m going to have to do more. And I can’t do that. So in their mind, it means I’m never really going to get what I want. Because getting what I want means doing more and I can’t do that, therefore I will not get what I want. And that’s not true.

They have to operate differently. So these are some subtle tweaks that we make inside my program where I start getting you working as who you are. One of my clients shared a story inside, she gave a testimonial during our workshop, and she was saying she’s a mental projector, and she had so much deconditioning work to do, and she’s worked with human design for years, she teaches human design even, but she came into our program and I Kept calling out some things that I was seeing in some shifts that needed to be made.

And she started to dive into our deconditioning library with our tappings and, and other resources that we offer. And she started to feel movement and she started to operate and honor herself as a projector more. And what happened? I swear this happens all the time with projectors. I always say it’s annoying.

I mean that with the most love, because it’s annoying because you guys, can be so successful so easily, you just make it hard on yourself. You are just making it hard on yourself. Every time I work with a projector, when they start to get into alignment, then suddenly invitations start showing up. And then the minute they go into frantic work mode and shifting, okay, well now I got to do all of this.

Then the invitations dry up and then they question everything again. You have to get into the habit of really being a projector and honoring that. Manifestors who show up in people pleasing energy, Clea, my other client, she shared her story during the masterclass as well, where she was saying she went from having no work, no clients, nothing in the pipeline, to fully booked in two months.

All we did with that Was shift her manifesto energy. She was showing up to sales calls and she knew it. She was like, there’s something I’m getting nose in every sales call. I think there’s something there. We worked on shifting her energy. She was in people pleasing energy. She was not believing in herself.

And I was like, that is kryptonite to a manifesto. They’re not going to respond to you. You need to walk in and inform you need to walk in with that bold energy that they feel they can get behind. Right. These shifts can break a plateau. Right? It’s not always just this, but there’s usually some element of alignment that needs to happen.

We either need to attach to a new vision and really see it clearly. And the way I work in my program, we have visioning exercises and things that we use to help you identify the blocks that you have before you encounter them in the real world. So I have you envision in a very specific way what you want to achieve, and then we’re looking at the roadblocks that come up in your ability to really see it, and we’re attacking that with our deconditioning tools.

And we’re going after those beliefs that come up in your vision. So by the time you encounter anything in real life, you’ve already worked through it. This is how we start to move really fast and we start to create what we want in this life. So, the other thing that happens is, you know, we’re learning about human design, we’re learning about manifestation, but we’re not integrating.

We’re being book smart, but we’re not really integrating and implementing the things that we learn. Okay? But the second plateau theme that we have, the second reason that people plateau, is Is strategic disconnection, the things that they’re doing in their business. And this was me those years ago with that coach, when I had the marketing domination checklist and I was doing all of this stuff, I was doing a lot, but none of it really had synergy.

None of it was really well thought out enough because I was so obsessed with getting it all done that I wasn’t getting it done right. or efficiently. This is where we have like a disconnection between like our marketing and our sales and our offers and all of these things, or we’re manually trying to crank out all of this work, but it’s not really getting all the way through the funnel.

So we have to look at the disconnections in your funnel, and that’s why I use more of what I call an ecosystem approach, where everything that you do serves everything else. Everything should have connection to it. It should have connection to you and your energy and who you are and your gifts, but it should also have a connection to your deeper message and how your offer solves problems.

If you listen to this podcast, every single episode is selling my offers. Even if I’m not talking about the offer. It’s always building demand. I’m always talking about a problem that you have or a desire that my audience has and how what I do solves it. Then it’s up to them to decide if I’m the one for them or if they truly want to fix what it is that they are struggling with.

They have to make those decisions, but I’m always giving them something to chew on and something to work with so that they’re at least considering me as the solution to their problem. The third way that people cause that people plateau in their business is a messaging misalignment. They’re not really speaking to the right problems.

There’s offer misalignment, meaning usually, I mean, right when you start in my program, we have you go through and I take you through just a quick and dirty tutorial on problems and desires. And I show you very, very quickly in like a 15 minute video. This is how you tie it to an offer. If you have an offer now.

I want you to look at this and see if it’s really solving this type of problem. If it’s not, can you tweak the offer to solve that problem? Or can you tweak the messaging to that offer so it solves the problem? Most of the time it’s positioning. It’s just not positioned to sell. And that’s a key. So we have to realize, are we speaking to the right problems for the audience that we want to attract?

Is our offer aligned with those problems? Is it such a no brainer that if you have this problem, this is the thing that will solve it? And, yeah, is it positioned to sell or are you positioned as the expert? Those are the three main reasons that I see people plateau. They hit this kind of ceiling and they can’t break through.

There’s some sort of block that they have energetically, there’s something in their funnel that needs fine tuning, or they have some messaging misalignment. Here’s what’s beautiful about being in that place, is if you have all of these pieces, if you’re already doing these things, it doesn’t really require more of you.

In fact, most of the time, I think that we’re, instead of adding things, we’re subtracting. We’re taking away some of the things that you do that you don’t need to do anymore. We’re figuring out how you can do some things better. Most entrepreneurs aren’t analyzing their numbers enough and it’s not, doesn’t sound sexy, but to me it has become sexy because it’s what allows me to not work as much and to make more money.

How can I do the same thing, put in the same effort or less and get better results from it? I will do that work any day. That is sexy to me, baby. I will 100 percent take the time to do that work. Why? Because it drastically improves my life. The other thing with the plateau that I want to just mention, this is just kind of a saying that’s out there that I think really fits this, is what got you here won’t get you there.

If you’ve gotten to this point and you’re at a plateau, there’s kind of two directions. So there’s sometimes we think that we can lone wolf it and do it ourselves. The times where that works, where you’re like, yeah, I have all the tools. I’m going to do this myself. I’m not going to hire somebody. I’m not going to get help.

Where that works is when you truly have all the tools, you have nothing in you that’s standing in your way from doing them, from taking advantage and taking action with these, you know exactly what needs to be shifted, you know exactly what needs to change, you really know, and you have no problems actually implementing those changes.

It’s very rare that we are in that place. Because usually what happens is we might have the tools, but we’re not using them. And that’s something that needs to be addressed. And a lot of times we feel so confused that we’re so obsessed with how am I going to fix it that we end up doing nothing or we invest in the wrong things.

So what you have to do is get over this stuck cycle of trying something new. Not seeing an immediate result, abandoning that thing, and then trying something else. You’re wasting energy, you’re reinventing the wheel, or you’re doing the same thing, not getting the result, and not changing anything. So, you’re sort of stuck in this pattern of this isn’t working, this isn’t working, this isn’t working.

That’s where I was several years ago with launching, where I had that big launch, and then I could not recreate that success again. And it was like, Oh my God, it’s not working. It’s not working. It’s not working. Guess what? When I’m in the energy of it’s not working, I got more of it’s not working. I had to work on my energy and attach to something.

I had to believe in my energetic field that it was working. I had to do that. And that’s why I’ve developed all of these practices and all of these tools, to help you get over yourself while you take the right action, correct action. To get the results that you want, without working more, without killing yourself, without burning out, so that you have a better life, and you get to keep more of your money.

You’re not investing in 800 things. You don’t need a huge team. I do all of this with one person and a podcast producer. That’s it. It’s amazing. And I hope that this helped you see if you’re in a plateau. Are you at a point where you feel like I’m somewhere between where I’ve always been and the next level, and I don’t know how to get to the next level?

I hope you consider Business by Design. I hope that you consider at least having a conversation with me about whether this is right for you. It’s not right for everybody. I’m not right for everybody. But I am honest with people about whether I am right for them or not. Whether this program is right for them or not.

They have to make the decision about whether I’m right. So if you’re interested in that, DM me the word clarity on Instagram and we can do a clarity call or we can talk about whether this really is the right fit for you or whether any of the tiers, like I said, we have split business by design into three tiers so that we have a spot for everybody at every place in their journey and at different price points to make it affordable based on where you are and what you hope to achieve.

So I hope that this inspired you to take a look at what you have. To be a little more discerning about where you jump in. And to see the possibility to do less but better. To be more efficient in the way that you work. That maybe adding a bunch of things isn’t what you need to hit that next level. You just need to do some of the things that you are doing right now.

Better, if you have a podcast that’s not growing, then maybe you need to look at what you’re producing on that podcast, shift your messaging on that podcast, and maybe there is some promotion change that you make. But we can do that without adding a lot to your plate. Maybe you need to reposition an offer.

Maybe you need to start to test your message before you go building something new. So many people will go build something new without ever testing it with their audience and then they wonder why they don’t buy it. Save you a lot of time and a lot of effort if you just spend 20 minutes writing a few emails that will test your message.

Okay, we can be more strategic. You can look at your business with the, and make changes with a scalpel and not a sledgehammer. I hope this inspired you to take that critical eye to your business without emotional connection to it. Can you be objective and just look at it and say, yeah, I think I know what we need.

And if you decide that the Business by Design mentorship seems like a place, or at least something that you want to explore, reach out to me and I’ll be happy to chat with you about it and see if you’re right fit. Okay. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you. And remember, in order to have an unshakable business, you must first become an unshakable human.

So thanks for letting us help you become unshakable with human design, everybody. We will see you next time.