Being in Business

Why 80% of Online Entrepreneurs Get Stuck at $5k Months

• Caley Dimmock • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Most online entrepreneurs struggle to break through the $5k monthly revenue ceiling due to fundamental issues with pricing, boundaries, selling comfort, positioning, and environment... not lack of talent or effort.

In this episode we cover:

• Pricing too low and fearing rate increases even after proving your value

• Giving detailed strategies for raising rates with both existing and new clients

• Setting clear boundaries around scope of work and charging for anything extra

• Understanding why selling feels uncomfortable and how to reframe it as simply informing and inviting

• Creating relationships intentionally with people who expand your vision

• Finding the right niche balance, specialized enough to be seen as an expert but broad enough to have sufficient clients

• Positioning yourself as a specialist publicly while potentially offering additional services to existing clients

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Speaker 1:

Do you think that business is all about impressing the client? But no, it's about doing the work that was agreed to within the scope that it was agreed to, to the highest standard. Today, on being in Business, we are going to chat about why 80% of online entrepreneurs stay stuck at 5k months. Now I want to preface this by saying I don't know if that's an actual stat, so don't quote me on that stat, but it certainly feels like it. I would say the vast majority of online entrepreneurs are stuck at 5k months, whether you are a done-for-you service provider, freelancer, coach, consultant, course creator, etc. I first want to say that usually, if you're stuck at 5k months, it's not a question of you not being good at what you do. That is very rarely what's going on here. Usually what it is one or a combo of these four things that I'm going to talk about with you here shortly. So, first of all, if you are one of these online entrepreneurs who is stuck at 5k months, just know you're not alone, and it's not laziness. I'm sure you're doing all the things. It's not lack of talent, you are capable, you are smart enough, and there's just a few things that you might be falling into that are keeping you stuck. The first thing I'm going to talk about is pricing you stuck.

Speaker 1:

The first thing I'm going to talk about is pricing. Most online entrepreneurs start off too low. Now there are times where I do think that underpricing is strategic when you're starting out, because you need to get proof that you're good at what you do, so sometimes it does help to underprice ever so slightly so that you can have an easier time getting those initial clients in, so then you can get the case studies, get the testimonials, etc. All that stuff, all that social proof, is going to help you sell better in the future. Okay, but the trap is that most online entrepreneurs start too low and then they have fears around raising their rates, even once they have proof that they're really dang good at what they do, and this goes for whether they are raising their rates for future clients or even their current clients, and all of your people-pleasing shit is going to come up, and it can be really tough for people to move through that. So if that's you, please know you're not alone. I have this conversation with so many of my clients and mastermind members.

Speaker 1:

The fact, though, is that being underpriced in today's market is a race to the bottom. There will always be somebody else who can beat you on pricing, and, trust me, they will. This is not a game in 2025 that you want to be playing. I think many eons ago it could have been, but we just have so many options now available, and if you're really trying to beat the competition by being the most affordable option, you're never going to win. Please, don't play that game. Instead, be really dang good at what you do which I trust that if you're listening to this episode, I trust that you already are and then, once you have proof that you can do what you say you can do, price accordingly. Okay, put your rates up, even with existing customers. There's a way to do this where your existing customers. Sure, might somebody walk away? They could but there is a way to do this strategically that will minimize that risk.

Speaker 1:

And I used to do this in the beginning, when I myself was underpriced and I had to raise my rates quite rapidly. And one of the things that I would do is, first of all, give your clients notice. Don't just tell them hey, your rate's going up in two weeks. Give them lots of notice. So I usually like a couple of months of notice, to be honest, and if the price increase that you're implementing is 20% or less of your current rate, you can make that increase at once. You can give a client a notice, hey, in order to best serve you and value my time and be more aligned with market rates. This is a change that I have to make. If you are severely underpriced and you're in a situation where you might have to raise your rates by, say, 50 percent, you might want to do a stepped increase with your current clients. Ok, so same methodology, but you can let them know, hey, in three months from now, it's going to be this, and then in another three months it's going to be this, so that I can make sure that I am priced where I need to be in order to continue to deliver the quality of service that I need to deliver.

Speaker 1:

And for raising your rates in between clients, a lot of people will recommend to do these huge jumps. So let's say that you're priced at I don't know $700 a month for social media management and you know that, realistically, you need to be at least $1,500 a month. It can feel really dysregulating to go from $700 a month to $1,500 a month because your nervous system doesn't know what it feels like to sell at $1,500 a month, so please don't feel pressure to increase your rate like that. I very rarely recommend doing a rate increase like that. I do recommend doing small increases. So if you're at $700 a month currently, then maybe the next increase you do is nine hundred dollars a month, which is actually really nice because it's behind the pricing threshold of a thousand dollars a month, so that's going to be an easy breezy increase. Most people who buy at 700 buy at 900. You're probably going to see barely any change in conversion rate, if anything at all, and then from 900, maybe you could do to 1200, and then 1200 to 1500 over time.

Speaker 1:

There's no problem with doing things in steps like that. It helps to keep your nervous system feeling safe, which, in the online business world and, honestly, just the world that we're operating in today, I think there's nothing wrong with doing that. I think it's the best way to do things, because you don't want to put yourself on a path where you're riding on adrenaline and cortisol and then you end up in burnout. The next area that I see people getting stuck in is just not having boundaries, whether that's with themselves or others, and that includes their clients. So if you're in this boat, you'll know because you're constantly going over and above, because you think that business is all about impressing the client. But no, it's about doing what was agreed to according to the scope of work that was agreed to by both parties in a contract. If you're not using contracts, please be doing that. It's about doing the work that was agreed to within the scope that it was agreed to to the highest standard. Okay. So the work that was agreed, agreed to to the highest standard. Okay. So the work that was agreed to, but to the highest standard.

Speaker 1:

Anything extra that you're doing that's unpaid is just keeping you from making more money, okay. And if it's your client who's asking for extra, I'm going to tell you that nine times out of 10, when your client asks for extra that is above the defined and agreed upon scope. If you tell them, hey, happy to do that for you, it is going to be an extra fee. Here's what that would look like. And if it's a reasonable fee, nine times out of 10, they're going to go for it. It's so much more work for them to go and find someone else to do it for them. And if they can't find someone else to do it for them, trust me, they probably don't want to do it themselves. So please make sure you're defining the scope of your work what's included, what's not included. This goes for communication too, frequency methods, and then anything outside of that scope is separate to what has been agreed to.

Speaker 1:

Next up feeling uncomfortable around selling. I see this in a lot of people who are not just stuck at 5k months, but even stuck at 10k months, sometimes even a bit above that. I'm still seeing this, and most people who feel uncomfortable around selling do so for one of three reasons. These are the ones that I see most frequently. Either their message is unclear, they don't know how to speak about what they're selling, they don't know how to talk about it, they don't have the right words, and so they have to do a little bit of work around that. Or they don't actually feel that lit up or excited by what they're selling. Maybe it's just not something that they're feeling super gung-ho about. Maybe it's something that they developed a while ago and it's lost its spark for them and they're no longer feeling that excited about selling it or even fulfilling it, delivering it. If you're not excited about fulfilling a service or delivering a service. That ends up coming back to how you feel and how you're selling it as well, and it will be pretty apparent there as well.

Speaker 1:

The third reason is that they might have had some experiences where someone else made them feel uncomfortable when they were being sold to. If you're listening to this, I'd love to ask you that question have you ever been in a situation where somebody was selling to you and they were doing so in a way that was making you feel uncomfortable or pressured? And if you've been in that situation, there's a good chance that you don't want to make anyone else feel that way, and that's totally understandable and I absolutely love that. Actually, I think that we should all be selling in ways that feel good. So to get around this feeling uncomfortable in selling, you really want to make sure that you're pretty clear in how you're speaking about your offer, your service, make sure you're creating offers you feel excited about delivering and selling, and if you don't, instead of ditching everything, maybe there's something that you can change about what you already offer. Right, maybe there's some piece of it you're feeling resentment around that you can just make a little edit and adjustment and then release the pressure to sell. You don't have to sell like a sleazy salesperson like you've been sold to before. You can think of selling like inviting Okay. So your job becomes simply to inform people about what you have to offer and help them make the best decision for them, not pressure them into it at any cost. So if you're feeling jazzed up about what you're offering, there's a need for it in the market and you're not shying away from recommending it to the people who you know it would benefit. Trust me when I say that you will make sales.

Speaker 1:

The last point I want to talk about is your surroundings. This is a sticky one, because it's a crossover between personal life and business life. So you might not be surrounded by anyone who is very expansive for your future. When I say expansive, I mean expanding the possibilities of your future. You might be surrounded by folks who maybe they don't even think what you do is a real business. I think a lot of people have heard that from someone in their life oh, you don't have a real job. Is that a real business? Or your little business, these little comments? You're a product of the people that you surround yourself with, the people that you spend the most time with. And I'm not saying here that you need to go trade in your friends and family. I think this is where maybe some boundaries can come into play. But I am saying that if you don't have people in your life in some way shape or form whether that is friends, a mentor, a community, anyone like that who, when you're around them, you just feel things open up. It really is almost like a feeling that you get right when you're with them and you're flowing and you're talking and you're sharing ideas and goals and you're hyping each other talking and you're sharing ideas and goals and you're hyping each other up. You need people like that in your life. You absolutely do, I know.

Speaker 1:

For me, I've always had really good people in my life, but I did go through a phase where my main friend group was all spending their time doing things that were not conducive to my growth, my future or even my health, to be honest. And even though these were quote unquote nice people and they would have done anything for me, I knew that if I continued to spend all of my time with them, I was going to be on that path too, where I was only living for the weekend, living, to party, all of that stuff. And as soon as I stepped away and got more immersed with my own goals and started creating relationships more intentionally, so many things shifted and so many things opened up. And even to this day, to be honest, I am so ruthless about who I surround myself with and who I give my time to. And another thing that I do is I pay to put myself in rooms, and I know there's a lot of people out there who think, oh, you shouldn't have to pay to put yourself in rooms and to make connections. But, especially in business, let me tell you when it is worth its weight in gold to be in the right room at the right time. Okay, I lied. Bonus fifth thing that I see, because I was just editing this and I was like, damn, no, there's one more thing that I have to tell y'all.

Speaker 1:

So another thing I really see that's super common for people who are stuck at this 5k month mark is they are often either over niched or not niched enough. They're either total generalists, so people like when I started out I was offering graphic design, social media management, ads, seo, copywriting, email marketing everything under the sun, within that umbrella and on the other end of the spectrum, sometimes we see people who are overly niched. So this is where you're in a niche in terms of what you provide as a service. Let's take email marketing as an example. So you're an email marketer and then you're an email marketer for specific people and the specificity within that is super, super narrow. So let's say you're an email marketer for physiotherapists. That's way too narrow.

Speaker 1:

The sweet mix in there is to either be specialized enough in the service and then you can be specialized in who you offer it to. So your core archetype that you like offering your service to, as long as it's somewhat broad, like as long as there are enough people within that. So email marketer for online course creators cool, tons of people in there Perfect, that is a fantastic niche. But in general, you want to be niche. I definitely see more people overgeneralized rather than over specialized in the beginning and I know for me, if I wanted to grow my business way faster in the beginning, I would have definitely specialized a lot sooner. Faster in the beginning, I would have definitely specialized a lot sooner Now. I was a bit of an anomaly. I was able to grow my business to about 150k a year without niching. But as soon as I niched into a specific service, the very following year I think, I was at 240k or something like that, and then now I'm nearly doubled.

Speaker 1:

It can help you immensely to niche early on. It's really good for SEO purposes, it's really good for brand building, it's really good for referrals. It's just so good for so many things. And a lot of people get stuck at that 5k a month mark because they're too afraid to position themselves as a specialist so early, because they want to be everything to everyone. But trust me, the sooner that you can position yourself as a specialist in something, the sooner you're going to build your business, and then you can generalize and add on other things in the future. Or even there's another option you can be specialist, forward-facing in your marketing.

Speaker 1:

And then behind the scenes, let's say that you do offer email marketing. Oh, you're noticing that some of your clients need website copywriting and that's something that you can do Cool, offer it to them behind the scenes. But that doesn't mean that you're going to be positioned as a website copywriter. Okay, your specialty is still email marketing and maybe you provide copywriting within that. But then you have the beauty of having these behind the scenes offers that you can upsell to your existing clients. Okay, cool. All right, that's it for this episode. Another quick listen. I hope that you've pulled something from this and if you have, I would absolutely love to hear about it. Please hit me up with a message and if you haven't already done so, please hit, subscribe or follow and rate this podcast. It would mean the world to me, and in future maybe I'll do one where people are stuck at 10k months or 15k months as well. If you're listening to this and you are a little further along in business, all right, I'll chat soon.