7 Lessons In 7 Years Building a Multi-Seven-Figure Business

After seven years of building a business from $0 to multiple seven figures, I’ve learned a lot and not just about marketing or funnels. I’ve learned what really sustains growth, what burns you out, and how to build something that actually fits your life.

In this episode, I’m sharing the seven biggest lessons I’ve learned in the last seven years, lessons about mindset, simplicity, evolution, and chasing your version of success (not someone else’s).

Whether you’re just getting started or wondering if you’re still on the right path, this episode will give you clarity, encouragement, and a few reality checks I wish I’d had earlier.

Topics Covered In This Episode:

1. Define your version of success—or you’ll chase someone else’s and still feel empty.
   
   
   
2. Your business should evolve as you evolve. If it no longer fits, adjust it.
   
   
   
3. Simplicity scales. When in doubt, simplify.
   
   
   
4. Consistency—not luck—is what drives long-term success.
   
   
   
5. You don’t need a team of 10. You need aligned support, clear goals, and space to grow

Find the full show notes at:  https://brandimowles.com/258

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Additional Resources:

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Transcript

7 Lessons In 7 Years Building A Multi-Seven-Figure Business

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Brandi: [00:00:00] Hey. Hey y'all, and welcome back to another episode of the Serve Scale SOAR podcast. My name is Brandy Miles and I am your host and on the Serve Scale SOAR podcast. We are talking all things start, grow, and scaling your freelance ad management business. And no matter if you have a freelance ad management business, you are a service provider or you're even a course creator, this episode is going to be for you.

This month marks seven years since I started my business, and if you would've told 2018 Brandy that it would turn into a multiple seven figure company with a top ranked business podcast and a brand that has helped thousands of women change their life. I can honestly say, I probably would've laughed at your face and immediately Googled what is a funnel and not the kitchen type.

But here we are, and today I'm doing something a little bit different. I'm pulling back [00:01:00] the curtains and sharing the seven biggest lessons I've learned in seven years of business. These are the truths that I had to live through to really understand, not just the highlight reel, but the mindset shifts.

The hard decisions, the identity pivots and the moments that changed everything, whether you're just getting started or you've been doing this for years. I hope this helps you see, there's no right path, only your path, so grab your coffee, pop in those earbuds, and let's talk about the lessons that have shaped this wild, beautiful ride of entrepreneurship.

Okay, so seven lessons in seven years of building a multi seven figure business. I wanna jump right into this and lesson one is success. Is borrowed until you define it yourself. I think this is one of the biggest lessons I learned and one that a lot of people haven't [00:02:00] learned, even the biggest gurus that you see in the online space.

I truly believe that some of them haven't learned that they're on borrowed success. And so at first you chase income goals, audience size, what other people call success. But the real breakthrough happens when you define success based on lifestyle values in the season of your life. And when I started my business, I feel like when a lot of us start our business, we actually do define success on our own terms because we're starting our business for a reason.

So when we start, we're like, yes, success for me when I started was $2,000 a month. So I could buy formula, so I could buy diapers so I wouldn't have to go to the grocery store and swipe a credit card and hope that it wasn't declined. Being able to do that was success for me, and we define that success and we start working through it, but then something happens.

We start looking around [00:03:00] at what other people are doing. We start listening to the gurus, all the podcasts, and we start to hear that success at 2000. That's not success. That's baby. That's like baby goals. And we need to have these big, lofty goals of 10 K months, a hundred K years, million dollar years. And unless we're doing that, we're not.

Successful. So then we start to doubt our success and we start to borrow their success. We start to borrow their definition of what success looks like. So then we start thinking we need a $10,000 a month business or a hundred thousand dollars. Or a million dollar business when in truth, a lot of us, that's not why we started our business and we're not at the point where that's our success.

That isn't even our goal that we really want, but we start hearing it enough and we think that's what success looks like. And if I don't have that, I'm not successful. And we start doubting. [00:04:00] If we are successful or if we can even be successful and we start changing other people's versions and we start chasing other people's versions of success.

But what that leads to is big misalignments in your business and in your life. So what I learned is that when we actually chase our version of success, success flows easily. It comes, it feels good. When we chase other people's version of success, we're usually left feeling incomplete, not worthy. Our confidence dips let me share with you actually a story I. So when I started, I told you my goal was to get to 2000. We were broke as a joke. And so that was a big goal for me and I hit it and it was like, oh my gosh, our life started changing and then I got bigger goals and then I really wanted to hit $10,000 months.

And that was my version of success, but it was [00:05:00] still borrowed 'cause I didn't know what that would look like. But it was borrowed success. And I'm not saying borrowed. Success is always a bad thing. It can help you get to the next goal when you're not sure what the next goal could look like. But we need to call it what it is at $10,000.

Yes, it would be nice. My FA family was secure, but it wasn't anything that like. At 10,000, nothing was gonna change, you know? But when I decided that I wanted to bring Austin home, and we had to do the math of what that would look like and how much my business would need to bring in, and it was $20,000 a month, and we were only, I was only doing services, so I was running at a 82% profitability.

So like we were keeping the majority of that. And so I needed to bring in 20,000 in revenue each month. To be able to bring him home. That's what that broke down to. That created my level of success because there was something behind it. I needed to do this so I could bring [00:06:00] my husband home. That was a bear calling.

Then, hey, I just wanna do 10,000. Like there was nothing that would change it. 10,000 now after that, um, and we did that. I started racing to a million. And that was a success level for me. That was totally like a metric vanity metric thing. Of course, my life is gonna change at that point. We were gonna have a very successful business.

We were gonna be helping other people live their best life through that because we were getting them results. But it was a total metrics play and it probably was borrowed success. And I got to a million and it was so cool, like we can link up the episode of celebrating my Million dollar Year.

It was so stinking cool, but then it left me feeling at the end of the day like, yes, we celebrated, but then it gave me a lot of anxiety. What does this mean? Now? Do I have to maintain this? Like, what if I can't maintain this? What if it changes? What if it all goes away? Like now, do I [00:07:00] need to have a team?

Like no one tells you that when you chase someone else's version of success, when you hit it, you don't feel complete. You don't, because it wasn't your goal to begin with. But bringing my husband home, oh man. That felt complete, creating a plan that was like, Hey, I wanna pay off a hundred thousand dollars in student loans.

That felt complete after I did that, and I paid it off. That was complete. Buying our house that twice, buying and selling our house, and then buying the new one. Like that felt complete because they were my definition of success. If my business can do this, then I am successful. But when I hit a million, that was a total vanity metrics.

This was borrowed success. It was cool, but like it wasn't my version of success. And so what happened? I felt empty in. Confused and like, what the heck do I do now instead of feeling empowered [00:08:00] with my other goals? So as you're sitting there, I want you to think about what is my current goal? Does this align with my version of success, or is this borrowed.

And there's nothing wrong with having borrowed definitions of success, especially if you don't know what success could look like for you. But I will tell you, when you get there, it's not gonna fill some hole or void. You're having, and I've talked to so many friends that have experienced this, but when you have a goal that you set that defines you as successful, like, this is what I want, and then you achieve it, you will feel complete.

You will have this like, oh man, I did this. When we're living off borrowed success definitions, usually what it leaves us is empty. Like, we're not worthy. We can't do this. Something's wrong with us. And so what I want you to do is really take time to focus on. Where are your goals now? Are they borrowed or are they truly [00:09:00] your definition of success?

And get clear on what your definition of success really looks like. Okay, so that was lesson one. Success is borrowed until you define it yourself. Two, community will take you further than strategy alone. A course tactics strategy are helpful, but with the right people in your corner. That's what helps you keep going when things get hard.

Investing in relationships and Mastermind has always been a priority of mine through my entire business because it's what keeps you in the game when none of the strategies, tactics feel like they're working because there will come a time in your business. It's not the course, it's not the tactic, it's not the strategy that's broken.

It's something in you that's broken. And usually it takes a community of close peers or mentors to be able to define what that piece is and how to fix it. It's not always the tactics that are [00:10:00] broken. Sometimes it's the mindset. Sometimes it's something you're going through in your family. Sometimes it's unrealistic expectations.

Sometimes it's a client problem. And so when you have community to lean back on and really create friendships, that's where the magic happens. And an example of this is after having Bodhi. I have a whole podcast on this, but after having Bodhi, I invested in a mastermind and at that time we were having a down year after I had him, and I did not have the money to invest in this, and I did because I had before.

But I knew that that point I was at a low. And it wasn't the business tactics or anything. It was what was going on at home. I was navigating. Business with a newborn at a very different level than when I started this business with Riley. She was five, six months old when I started this business with her.

With Bodhi. I already had a million dollar a year business and now introducing him into it was very, very different than [00:11:00] starting a business with a six month old. And so I was feeling down and out. We were having low months. And so I joined the Mastermind because a lot of my peers and friends were in there and I was doing a hot seat and I was talking about how I needed to get rid of expenses and I needed to maybe get rid of team members and things like that and this, and I had friends sit down with me and they were like, Brandy.

You don't need to get rid of team members. You need to restructure things and restructure the offers so you can still be present with Bodhi and you can still have support. 'cause right now you need support more than anything. And they prevented me from getting rid of Janessa, which is like, she's amazing.

She's been with me for six of the seven years. And, but in that moment I was just trying to think of the quick fixes to get rid of expenses. I. That wasn't the solution. The solution was how do we create more revenue? How not, how do we [00:12:00] get rid of expenses? 'cause the expenses weren't that high. It was, you are in a down place right now because one, you have hormones going like crazy.

This was three months postpartum with Bodhi and. You're learning how to be a mom with a million dollar business and breastfeeding full time. How do we restructure? And from that conversation, I got really clear that we were gonna shut down, serve, scale, soar the membership, go all in on conversions for clients.

I was gonna create a certification and I was gonna start taking on one consulting client at $10,000 a month. That's what came from that conversation is how do we create more revenue? Not how do we get rid of support, but without that community, without those peers, without that mastermind, that would've not been what happened.

I would've been in the moment, in the emotions, in the hormones, and made a really bad decision for my business. So community will take you further than any strategy alone. Okay, three, lesson three. Your [00:13:00] gut knows more than your coach or online guru. I've had amazing coaches that I've invested in, and I've invested in some pretty crappy ones too.

But no matter how good the coach was, you know yourself and your business. Better than they do. You have to listen to your gut and your intuition more than anyone. Your gut and intuition is the number one coach and mentor. And so here's the deal. So many of us take what our coach or mentor says, and we take it as like.

The rule of the land, and that's what we have to do. But if your gut, if your intuition is saying, no, no, no, that's not what we wanna do, that's not the strategy for us, that doesn't feel an alignment. And there's a difference between something not feeling in alignment and you being. Fearful of the results.

Fear is actually an indicator that we should actually move forward. But a gut feeling, an intuition saying like, Ugh, this doesn't feel right, this feels [00:14:00] icky, or this doesn't feel in alignment. That's your gut, that's your intuition, and we have to listen to that. I've had multiple coaches tell me that I need to hire more people, that I need to grow a team.

If I wanna scale, I need to do this and that. And every, the first time I did this, y'all. It was so bad, like so bad. My intuition and gut was telling mere, that's not in alignment with the business you wanna run. That is not in alignment. They're telling me you need employees, you need this, and it just all felt like really ick in my body.

But hey, they're my coach. I'm paying them $30,000 a year. They must know what they're talking about. So I hired and I got employees and it was the worst decision, y'all. It was like I, I mean, legal got involved, everything. It was so horrible and it was just the universe being like, Brandy, listen to your intuition because if you don't, I'm gonna throw the boulder at you and y'all, I got the [00:15:00] boulder.

So when you know something in your body does not feel right, your gut is telling you, do not take this advice. Don't take the advice you have that right. Mentors and coaches are there to help guide you and give you advice, but it is your job to actually filter that advice through. Does it align with your values, your vision for your business?

And if it doesn't and you feel that in your body, then don't do it. But also remember, there's a difference between being fearful of a decision and it being a misalignment. Fear is a good thing. That's what pushes us outside of our comfort zone. But a gut feeling, intuition, this misalignment that's different.

And when your gut does not align with the coach's advice, it doesn't mean they're a bad coach, it means that's not the right advice for you. But I'm sure they have amazing advice on other. Thanks. Okay, so your gut knows more than your coach or [00:16:00] online guru. Four. There's no big break. Just a lot of small brave moves.

No email, no launch, no client, major business. It's a consistent showing up. Experimenting, failing, adjusting and trying again and again and again. Getting your butt up when you fall off the horse. This is what it's all about. There's no big break coming your way. No one is coming to save you. It is the small, intentional, brave moves.

You make on a daily, weekly basis that add up to the big stinking wins. And one thing I never want y'all to do is let a client, let someone a coach, make you feel like your wins are their success stories. So I had a coach slash client that back when I [00:17:00] was starting my business pretty early. And they, I got on their podcast, it was a big deal.

I got some clients from that. Um, then they hired me to run their ads. This was a big deal. And then they coached me and they inspired me to con create conversions for clients. But that was my idea and. I was the one that took action. I was the one that showed up. I'm the one that created the course. I'm the one who like got on the discovery calls with the people who booked me from the podcast.

I'm the one that landed them. I'm the one that got them results. I did that and that coach made me feel like I owed them something because they allowed me on their platform and that my success was really their success. And that's not how it is. When you are doing the small, consistent things, when you're doing your marketing minutes, when you're getting on the discovery calls, when you're working [00:18:00] with the clients, when you're taking those brave actions daily, weekly, it doesn't matter who you hire, it doesn't matter what client hires you, how many referrals they give you, that is your success, not theirs, and you don't owe them.

And so we need to make sure that we're stepping in our power and knowing that no client, no big break. None of that belongs to them except for you, because people get big breaks all the time and they squander them. It's not that. It's what you do with those breaks, those big breaks, those clients that end up being like a big client and refer you to a bunch of people, but that is not their success.

That is not what continues to get you booked Clients. You have that power by showing up, getting your clients' results, taking daily actions in your marketing, keeping your pipeline full and doing the dang thing. Own your [00:19:00] power, own your success. You're the one that did this, not them five. Kiss. Keep it simple, sweetie.

I've been saying this since episode one of the Service Scale Sword podcast, and we are over 250 episodes at this point, and I have been a broken record about kiss. Keep it simple, sweetie and I have been saying this.

So for the last six years I've been telling y'all kiss. Keep it simple. The simpler the business, the easier it is to run. The easier it is to manage, the easier it is to put profit in your pocket. Growth doesn't come from doing more. It comes from making things easier to repeat. Offers, processes, marketing all benefit from simplification and simplicity.

So I have got really good at keeping things simple, but even me. I make mistakes sometimes, and I need that wake up call. That simple is better. [00:20:00] So an example of this is we have a webinar for conversions for clients. You can go to brandy mouses.com/a hundred K. It's a really good webinar. It converts on evergreen, it converts live, and it does so well.

But you know me, I got bored. Like some of us do. We get bored and we think like, huh, I don't wanna, like, I need to fix something in my business. And we usually fix the wrong thing. We fix the thing that actually doesn't need fixing. And for me it was this webinar. So I spent all this time a month, y'all recreating a webinar, paying $2,500 to have a new slide deck done doing all this stuff, spending money on ads.

And I used someone else's framework because I was like, they know better than me and I get up do this webinar. We have so many tech issues, like we never have tech issues. We had tech issues. It was rough. The webinar only had a 4% show up rate. It caught in the totally wrong person 'cause we changed the messaging.

Then on top of [00:21:00] that, we only had 4% show up. Only 1% conversion. Y'all. Our webinars converted 5%, so 1% conversion's awful, and no one joined on the last day. Like this is what I'm talking about. This is the universe. Throwing the boulder, being like, what are you doing? You have something that works. Keep your business simple.

That's in alignment with how I like to run my business, but instead, I wasted a whole bunch of time creating something new when nothing was broken. Keep your bus business simple, sweetie. When we do that, you'll see the results. The boring for you is what wins the race. It's like the one before. There's no big break.

It's just small, brave moves. When we can be consistent, when we do the boring day in and day out, that's when the wins happen. And so keep that in mind. How can you make your business simpler? Ask myself this each day. How can I keep my business simple? [00:22:00] And when we always come from that question of how can we keep this simple, we do keep it simple and it's fun.

There's no burnout. You make more money. Simple is sexy. Okay, so five kiss. Keep it simple, sweetie. Six seasons of business are normal. Not every year will be growthier. I've talked about this a lot, but I really thought when I started my business every year had to be a growth year, and that can happen for a few years.

It does, but most of the time there's lulls in business. There's months that don't go well. There's years that don't go well. There's maintaining years and there's growth years, and all of those are common hockey stick growth isn't sustainable for most people. And I always like to think about Peloton.

Peloton had like little stair stepping growth each year. They were growing, growing, growing. And then 2020. Happened and they had this massive hockey stick growth. And then in 20, the [00:23:00] end of 2021 going into 2022, their stocks completely plummeted. They had overhired, they had to lay off, a ton of people, sell off warehouses, closed different things, and they were having a big down year, but they didn't count themselves out.

They knew there was a comeback. They knew that they had made some mistakes. They had to learn from this. And now. They're coming back, will they get to what they were in 2020? Who knows, maybe not. But they're making their way back to a profitable business. And so businesses, even the biggest businesses, go through seasons of down, and then they'll go through years of maintenance, and then they'll go through years of growth.

And so know that your business is no different. My down year we had growth, growth, growth until Bodhi, and then with Bodhi. We had a down year, like a massive down year like Peloton, like my stocks were crashing. If mine was a publicly traded [00:24:00] company, we would've been crashing and people would've been horrible headlines to me like they were to Peloton.

But Bodhi was a down year. Then last year was a building back year, and now this year is a growth year. Those cycles happen. You have to know what season you are in your business right now, and not only your business, but your life learning to leading the into your personal seasons, like new motherhood.

Kids are out for the summer, whatever that looks like. Maybe you're going through a divorce, maybe you have kids going off to college. Maybe you've had kids at home, but now they're going out to school, so you're gonna have more time. Whatever season you're in, in your personal life directly affects the season you are in your business.

Instead of fighting them, get comfortable with them, recognize them in. Adjust your business to suit those seasons. Sustainable success is so much better than constant hustle. You're not gonna win this race by [00:25:00] working more. You have to recognize where you are, what you're capable of now, and what's sustainable.

Not work more work, more work more. Okay, so six seasons of business are normal. Not every year will be a growth year in seven, our final big lesson, you'll evolve, let your business evolve with you. Who you are year one shouldn't be who you are. In year seven, entrepreneurship is the biggest personal growth experience you will ever go through, and so you're gonna grow as a person.

You're gonna learn from your mistakes, your failures, whatever it is. Who you are in year one will not be who you are in year seven, I went from freelancer to service provider to mentor to CEO. Back to offering consulting services. I mean, each shift requires me to shed something. Maybe it's an offer. We started with Surf Scale, soar, and now that's not, and it was successful.

It wasn't until we closed it down, but now we don't have [00:26:00] that. We have new offers. We've shut down beta to Biggie. We had that. I've had the soaring s. Inner Circle Mastermind. I shut down that. Now we have conversions for clients, which has been consistent for since 2020, so five years. We have certified a certification program, which is something I said I would never do when I started.

Conversions for Clients and we have a mastermind, the Strategist Society. All of these sheddings have made these programs the best they could possibly be. Through each shedding, I've learned something new from not working with one-on-one clients for a while to now working with them at a $10,000 a month.

Price point from working with them for 7 97, my first ad management client, to now not offering ad services unless it's a consulting package, which means I'm not even running the ads, I'm just advising on the ads at [00:27:00] $10,000, starting at $15 an hour as a general VA to now charging $5,000 for a four hour VIP day.

Making more like, what is that, $1,200 an hour? I started $15, so, and the person I was one at year one in my business is definitely not the person I am now. My values really haven't changed. Families first, integrity, but I've grown, I've become a better person through this process. I, I'm more positive. I see whenever there's failure.

I don't see it as failure. I see it as a learning lesson. This is all things that have challenged me. I've shared some pr, I've used to be such a private person. And I've shared with y'all about our bankruptcy, about being a mom. I've opened up to inspire other people. So the business I built when I was 27 is [00:28:00] not the business I'm building now at 34.

Life has changed, and that's good. When you allow your business to evolve with you, instead of trying to force it to stay the same, that's when it becomes something sustainable and soul aligned.

Most people burn out not because they're doing too much, but because they're doing what no longer fits what no longer serves them. Your evolution is not a threat to your business. It's a key to keep it going long term. One of our strategist Society members, she's bought an incredible business based on hours over $10,000 a month, but she's burned out.

It is not because she's doing too much, it's because the business she created no longer fits her needs. It no longer fits her goals and no longer fits what she's doing, and we need to readjust those, and that's exactly what she's doing in Strategist Society. She's [00:29:00] repackaging her services in a way that fits her business now with the demand that she has from people.

And so we have to let our business evolve. With us. What you do now will probably not be what you're doing seven years from now. Whew, seven years, seven big lessons and a whole lot of growth in between. If there's one thing I want you to take away from day, it's this, your journey gets to look different.

Success is in a straight line, and it's evolving. And evolving isn't a setback. It's a sign. You're still in the game, still growing and still showing up. And to celebrate seven year milestone, my website just got a major facelift. I overhauled that whole thing with our branding. What we're currently offering, you'll find fresh resources, ways to work together, and more of what you love over brandy bes.com.

So head there [00:30:00] after this episode, take a look around. I think you're gonna love it, and download some of our new fresh resources for absolutely free. Thanks for being part of this ride with me. Until next week, y'all go out, serve your clients, scale your business, and sort into the success you deserve.