Before I made my first million, I remember looking at other 7 and 8-figure course creators thinking: they must do everything perfectly…
I assumed they hit every monthly revenue goal, they never made costly mistakes, and that they were fearless in everything they did.
After I made 8-figures in course revenue – I realized that was a bunch of baloney.
Scaling a course to consistent, reliable, multi-million dollar revenue isn’t about being perfect – it’s about letting go.
I wish someone told me that when I first got started – so now I’m telling you.
Today, I’m sharing four things I had to let go while growing my business.
And if you’re growing your own course business right now this episode is going to feel like a breath of fresh air.
Because you don’t need to do everything perfectly to grow.
You just need to let go of what no longer serves you.
Alright, let’s get into it.
My name is Caitlin Bacher, CEO of Scale With Success®, and I’m on a mission to help course creators all over the world grow their business in a way that is profitable and scalable. I’m sharing revealing insights about what it really takes to scale an online course business to millions of dollars per year. Join me here to discover the tough decisions I’ve had to make, the biggest failures I’ve had to bounce back from, and the learnings that emerged every step of the way. I’m so grateful that I have the chance to tell you everything right here on Scale With Success®: The Podcast. Let’s get started.
When running a business, pain is inevitable – but suffering is avoidable.
Let’s be real, starting and growing a business requires you to get out of your comfort zone every single day, make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes can feel painful.
But, failing to let go and move on from that mistake turns that temporary pain into ongoing suffering.
Taking accountability and learning from mistakes is good, but beating yourself up over them is useless.
So let’s start with the first thing I had to let go while scaling my course business…
1. I let go of the expectation that if I didn’t meet my goals every month – I was failing.
When I first started selling my evergreen course, I had no clue how to set revenue goals. I’d read about how much another course creator was making and then choose that as a goal – and 99% of the time, I’d fail to meet it- then fall into a shame spiral shortly thereafter.
Needless to say, all that shame spiraling wasn’t exactly helping things go faster.
The more I talked to experienced course creators, the more I realized: they’re ALSO not meeting 100% of their goals…
…but they also weren’t being as hard on themselves about it as I was.
It wasn’t that they didn’t care, it was that they knew wasting time feeling ashamed of it was a luxury they couldn’t afford.
Their focus? Moving forward – even when they missed a goal, had a bad webinar, or forgot to connect the cart so nobody could buy their course (ok that was my mistake – not theirs).
Over time, I got better at meeting goals because I got better at setting them.
I stopped basing them on what other people were doing and started thinking about what made sense for me – a busy mom with no team who was attempting to do something I’d never done before – build a million dollar business.
I began tracking my revenue on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. This gave me a better understanding of the bigger picture.
A bad month doesn’t mean a bad year – if you learn how to track the right data so you can solve the right problem.
Now setting and meeting our goals each month is a regular occurrence – but it’s not a perfect process and there are still times when I don’t meet my goals…and that’s ok.
Your first million dollar year doesn’t require perfection, it requires resilience…which leads me to the second thing I had to let go of.
2. I let go of my expectation that I had to get everything right the first time – or I’d never get it right.
I made so many mistakes with my first funnel.
…I tried repurposing my live launch content into an automated funnel.
…I posted a bajillion times a day on social media to promote it.
…I wasted time solving the wrong problems because I didn’t know which data to track and which to ignore.
…AND YET I continued to grow – not in spite of my mistakes, but because of them.
Your funnel doesn’t need to convert perfectly IMMEDIATELY in order to grow your business. Everyone makes mistakes – even if you have the best coach, the best tech, and the best audience – you will make mistakes.
Trying desperately to avoid making them is a waste of time and will likely keep you stuck inside the cozy confines of your comfort zone.
Look, taking imperfect action, being willing to make mistakes, learn from them, and move forward doesn’t always FEEL GOOD. In fact, sometimes it can feel downright uncomfortable or even temporarily painful.
So, how do you “get over” the pain of things not going exactly as planned?
Instead of viewing mistakes as evidence that you’ll never get things right (which simply isn’t true), start seeing them as evidence of your growth and your willingness to get outside your comfort zone.
Mistakes are nothing more than an opportunity to get stronger.
Doing this prevents you from panicking so you can solve the problem and not get sucked into a bunch of drama that leaves you feeling emotionally flooded and worst of all – stuck.
This leads me to the third thing I had to let go of…
3. I let go of my desire to blame other people when things went sideways.
I used to put a ton of pressure on myself to get everything right the first time, so when things went left – I felt a tremendous amount of shame and embarrassment.
“Why did I do that?”
“I should’ve known better.”
“Why do I keep messing up all the time?”
When the shame felt like it was too much to bear, I’d look for someone else to blame. It was a way of protecting my ego from feeling like I did something bad or wrong.
So, I’d be hard on myself – then shifted gears to be hard on someone else…neither approach was helpful.
I knew something had to change so I started asking myself:
What if making mistakes or doing things wrong is just part of the process? What if it doesn’t mean we’re bad, it means we’re successful at picking ourselves up and trying again.
Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I’ve never blamed anyone ever…I am human after all. But, I’m good at catching myself when I feel like doing it and then asking myself what I’m feeling ashamed or embarrassed about.
Blaming others wastes time and energy, plus it prevents you from moving forward. Instead of working through the unexpected challenge, you’re complaining about it. No one is entitled to growth without challenge and the more you intend to grow, the more challenges you can expect to encounter.
But, moving forward when circumstances aren’t perfect doesn’t always feel easy, which brings me to the fourth thing I had to let go of…
4. I let go of the idea that I had to wait around for things to be perfect BEFORE taking action.
This one is a recipe for disaster. The key to being a successful course creator is moving forward when things aren’t perfect – so, there’s no time like the present to get started.
I know it can be easy to get sucked into the belief that conditions need to be perfect in order to take action, but doing so is putting your success in the hands of outside circumstances, which is NOT the right mindset to grow and sustain a business.
Being successful means you need to move forward EVEN WHEN things are uncertain and that takes courage.
Gathering the courage to move forward in the face of uncertainty builds confidence over time. The more you do it, the more confident you become.
When people say they’re waiting until they feel confident, what they really mean is they’re waiting for fear to disappear – but, fear never really disappears. It’s a normal human emotion just like happiness, doubt, contentment, worry, excitement, and a million others. Feelings are fleeting and if you’re like me then you experience a gazillion different feelings in a single 24 hour period.
Courage isn’t a feeling, it’s what you have to move forward no matter WHAT you’re feeling. I mean, just think about all the hard things you’ve had to do in life – that took courage!
Were things perfect? No, but they didn’t have to be.
So let’s zoom out for a minute.
When you look at an 8-figure evergreen course business from the outside, it’s easy to assume it was built on being perfect and everything (and everyone) around me being perfect..
But here’s what actually built it.
I let go of the expectation that I had to meet my goals every single month – and stopped beating myself up about it.
I let go of the expectation that I should get everything right the first time.
I let go of blaming other people when things went sideways.
I let go of the idea that conditions had to be perfect before taking action.
If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this episode, it’s this:
Consistent growth is built on repetition, resilience, refinement and taking imperfect action – even in the face of uncertainty.
So if you’ve missed goals…
If you’ve made mistakes…
If you’ve blamed someone and then caught yourself…
If you’ve waited for perfect conditions…
Good – let it go.
You’re not behind and you definitely aren’t broken…you’re building.
And the more you practice letting go, the more inevitable your growth becomes.
I appreciate you being here and be sure to tune in next time for another episode of Scale With Success® – The Podcast.
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