AG #010: I Turned Off $300,000 to Build Something Unproven

AG #010: I Turned Off $300,000 to Build Something Unproven

She walked away from $300K in recurring revenue. Here's the framework that made it make sense.

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Anti-Generic with Anna Powers, host Anna Powers maps out the five seasons every business goes through - Grind, Grow, Pivot, Breakthrough, and Scale.

You'll learn why the hardest season burns the most fuel for the least distance, how to know when it's time to pivot, and why scaling is optional - not inevitable.

Question of the Day

Which of the five seasons - Grind, Grow, Pivot, Breakthrough, or Scale - are you in right now? Drop it in the comments.

Key Take-aways

• Your revenue today reflects work you did 1-3 years ago, not what you're doing now
• Growth and scaling are not the same thing - one is optional
• Pivoting doesn't mean starting over - your experience transfers forward
• Only 2% of your cold audience will ever become a client - plan accordingly
• Believe in your offer fully before you attempt to scale it

Timestamped Outline

00:00 - Welcome to episode 10 of The Anti-Generic
00:48 - Why calendar seasons sparked this framework
01:13 - Season 1: The Grind and making $50 in year one
03:53 - Why most marketing claims online aren't truthful
04:26 - The airplane takeoff metaphor for starting a business
05:24 - Season 2: Growth and raising prices 5x
07:18 - Season 3: Pivot and turning off $300K in revenue
10:05 - Season 4: Breakthrough and finding your aligned offer
13:07 - Season 5: Scale and why it's optional
17:03 - Recap and closing thoughts

Links & Resources

• Subscribe to The Anti-Generic with Anna Powers → https://www.saraannapowers.com/anti-generic

Connect & CTA

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🎁 Every week, Anna shares how to stand out in today's modern economy using AI responsibly - human-first, AI-amplified: https://www.saraannapowers.com/anti-generic

Credits

Host: Anna Powers © 2026 Sara Anna Powers. All rights reserved.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, it's Anna and welcome back to episode 10 of the Anti-Generic Podcast. Now, this week's episode is all about seasons and seasons in business and what you can do to navigate them with grace and keeping your sanity intact. So as we head into the high summer, priorities are shifting for a lot of people. I'm a mom, I've got a toddler, and there's so many little activities. She's got these various different camps, and the schedule is just different, right? So there's more light, and that can lead you to want to go, go, go, right? So maybe your kids are home, you're doing various things with them, and then there's just more light, more time the day to get stuff done. And so it feels like there's more opportunity for activity. And with the change of the season calendar-wise, I've also been thinking about the seasons that we face in business. And I thought it would be pretty useful for me to go through all of the seasons that I have noticed over my last 12 years in growing a digital business and just have some time to reflect on which season you're in and how you can most gracefully and successfully navigate that season. So first there is the grind season. Now, someone asked me the other day how long it took me to make my first $100,000 year. And the answer to that is three full years. Someone else actually asked me how long it took to make my first $100,000 month. The answer to that was eight years. Okay, so it took me three years to get to $100,000 a year. And it took me eight years to bring in my first $100,000 month. So just by nature of that, you can see that there is an element of a grind to growing a successful business that has a significantly, you know, shelf life of longer than a decade, right? Which my business does at this point. So even though I wasn't making money in the beginning of my business, like it took me an entire year to make my first $50. And I made that $50 in December of 2015, which was my first full year in business. Even though I wasn't making a lot of money, I was actually working, I would say harder than I work now, which is wild when you think about it with how much money the business brings in now and how much it has brought in over the last couple of years, primarily. When you compare that to how hard I was working in 2015 and how much time I was putting in and energy and sweat equity, it's like, well, that doesn't even make sense. How are you able to make so much more now than you did that first year when you were working way harder then? And the reason is, listen, I was still working so super diligently toward my goals in 2015. But your revenue right now is really not a reflection of what you're doing right now. Your revenue right now is a reflection of what you have been doing the past one to three years. So that very first year of my business in 2015, my revenue was highly reflective of the fact that I had been working as an attorney in a big firm for several years and not putting any thought into my business or any time or energy into my business for the three years before 2015, right? So sometimes there's a lag and your results take a little time to catch up to your efforts. So I tell all of my clients, when you're in the very beginning of your business, um, the business is not a reflection of what you're doing now. It's a reflection of what you've been doing for the past one to three years. So you can expect that the work to get the business stable is gonna be probably the hardest you'll ever work in your business and you're gonna make the least amount of money. And I like to be really upfront with people about that because otherwise you can get into running a business and feel like you're just doing it wrong. There's a lot of people who are making big marketing claims online and they're just not sharing the truth. And unfortunately, unless and until someone files a lawsuit, you're not gonna get the truth. You're just gonna get what they're saying. And again, a lot of it is not gonna be truthful. So I've always been very vocal about, yeah, the first year of my the whole first year of my business, I made $50 and I was working really hard. So a metaphor that I love for getting a business off the ground is a plane taking off. So think about when you've been on an airplane, most of you probably have, when you've been on an airplane, the amount of fuel and energy that has to be used to get that plane off the ground. And then once you're in the air, it's like the plane was built to fly. You know, it's aerodynamic, it's shaped in the right way to fly smoothly through the air. But man, when you're getting off the ground, there's so much energy. And that's also one of the most dangerous times for you to be in that plane. Like takeoff and landing, those are the two really tough times when the most accidents are likely to occur. So think of that in your business as well. Like if you can just make it through that first grind stage, which granted does take grit to get through. But if you just have the grit to stick it out through that stage, when you do, you will be greatly rewarded because after grind, you can move into growth. Now, the grow season is honestly one of my favorite seasons in business because this is where you found your groove in business. You're making a healthy income that provides for you and your family. And it's just time to plant your roots even deeper. So, like you have already planted the garden and now you're just watering it. You're giving those roots time to sink deeper into the soil, and you're basically enhancing something that's already there, that's working well, that's great. Okay. So the example that I give of my own personal growing season and business was the time period from 2018 to 2021. Now, in that time period, I raised the price of my mastermind from $500 a month to $1,500 a month, and then all the way up to uh $2,500 a month. So that's a 5x increase in the price of my high-level mastermind. Actually, that increase occurred between 2018 and 2020. Okay. Um, so I was doing the same thing. It was the same mastermind. Obviously, some of the deliverables changed, some of the topics changed as I grew my own knowledge and wisdom and expertise. But really, um, it was the same type of group and a similar size group, but I was able to 5x the rate for that because I was going deeper. I was growing, I was getting better at the way that I delivered that that group. I was able to facilitate a higher level of results as I move forward in my own business. So the growth season is really fun because you're basically taking something you're already doing well and you're elevating that. Okay. Now, sometimes growth can lead straight into scaling. In my case, I went from a growth season into a pivot season. Now, a pivot season can be really sticky because a pivot season is when you realize, hmm, what I've been doing while it's been great, maybe that's not what I'm ultimately called to do long term. And that can feel also just really scary because you're giving up something really good for the hope of something that you don't 100% know if it's gonna pan out. So my first major pivot season came in the spring of 2021. And that was when I shut down my faith centered group coaching and mastermind programs, and I built my copywriting certification, and I built that certification from the ground up. And basically, I had to turn off $300,000 a year in recurring revenue to clear my calendar, to make the space, to sit down, create the program, and record all the videos. It's like more than a hundred videos inside our clickworthy copywriting certification. So the thing that made it really scary is that I went from serving general online business owners who love Jesus to serving specifically people who want to get the skill of copywriting and either use it at a very high level in their own business, or primarily I was working with people who want to become freelance copywriters. So I had this really broad audience for the first couple of years of my business, and then I went super niche, like I'm only for you if you want to learn how to be a copywriter. And that's a huge, huge, huge pivot. And it meant that the audience I had built, a lot of my like the majority of my audience was no longer going to be a right fit for my offers, which meant I have to like almost create a whole new business. So again, it can feel really scary because you're letting go of what's been working to make space for something that you're not 100% sure of yet. Um, but when you're in this season, the important thing to remember is that you're actually not starting from scratch. Even if you're building a whole brand new business, you've already built a successful business. There's so much that I knew about building a business from the ground up in 2021 that I had no clue about in 2015 when I did it the first time. So it was a major pivot. It felt a little bit like building a new business, but it wasn't. It was much, much, much, much easier because I already had a reputation in the industry, a good reputation in the industry. I already had some clients who were going to be the right fit for the new, the new offer, and I already had a knowledge of how to grow a business, an online business. So remember that all of your experience is relevant to the new kind of business that you're building. And also give yourself a much-deserved pat on the back for being willing to take the risk to shift your business to what you're truly feeling called to, because when your pivot season brings you into deeper alignment with what you know you're called to do, what emerges is often a breakthrough. So a breakthrough season is when you finally find the offer/slash ideal client match, the fit that feels totally right to both you and to your clients. Now, in this kind of season, it almost doesn't even matter how much work you're doing because it flows so smoothly and you feel so awesome about it. So, like in my breakthrough season, I could work 12 hours a day and almost and like not want to stop. Granted, I will admit it was before I was married and had a child. So I'm always like very vocal about that as well because that definitely does shift things depending on what season of life you're in. But in my single season, when I was running the copywriting certification, and that was truly such an aligned offer for me at that time, it was like I did not want to shut the computer because I was just having so much fun building it out, serving the clients, answering their questions, looking for new things that I could fold into the offer, giving them opportunities, et cetera. So in a breakthrough season, things are gonna feel really in flow and you're often gonna start to see revenue levels that you've never been able to hit before. So in our breakthrough season, we started finally doing multiple six-figure launches. To this day, I've still never had a seven-figure launch. I have written for copywriting clients who've had, you know, multiple seven-figure launches. So I've been involved with multiple seven-figure launches, but of my own, the biggest launch we've had was just over 300, around 312,000. Um, but before we had the copywriting certification offer, you know, I might do a $50,000 launch, a $70,000 launch, an $85,000 launch, but I could never seem to break that six-figure launch ceiling. And we went from like an $85,000 launch of a different offer to then when we had the copywriting certification, really having uh multiple six-figure individual launches, like that much revenue being uh put under contract to the company in a matter of four days. And that was just wild. So it's almost like when you're in that breakthrough season, it's just like, whoa, everything's flowing so easily. And I will uh back up, I like to be really factual when especially when I'm talking about anything related to revenue. So we did have a very successful, I guess, technically multiple six-figure launch of one of our masterminds at our live event in 2019. But to me, that's a little bit different because when you're launching at a live event, it's actually a lot easier to make uh to make sales at a live event because people are in the room with you, like they're really fully integrated into the experience. They've been with you for several days, versus what I mean is we had never hit capped six figures in an online launch until I was running the copywriting certification. So I had never had an online promotion, like a challenge or a live launch or a webinar that had done six figures even uh until we started doing the multiple six-figure launches of the copywriting certification. Okay, so let's talk about what happens after your breakthrough season. So after your breakthrough season, you can begin your scaling season if you wish. The reason I say if you wish is you may decide that you're not trying to scale up to multiple seven figures a year or eight figures a year. You may decide, and I know people who've decided, you know what, I make a half a million dollars a year with 60% profit. That feels amazing to me. I have a very reasonable work schedule. Like I'm not trying to scale. But for me, um, I did want to scale. I once I found that aligned offer, I was like, okay, I see the value in this. I want to bring this to as many people as possible because I have a mission driving this business and that I want to create opportunities for people. And so the more people understand how to get this skill of conversion copywriting and apply it in the marketplace, the more people can have the same kind of opportunities that I've had to transition out of corporate, have more flexibility, make more revenue, be more present with their families, and really like set up future generations of their family for success. So you, I wanted to scale, you may want to scale, but not everybody wants to scale. You may not be in a season where it even makes sense for you to tackle scaling. Scaling is when you are rapidly expanding your market share. Now, this can also be a tricky season, kind of like the pivot season, because you're taking something that you feel really deeply aligned with and you're taking it to the masses, to the moon. Like you are exposing it to thousands and thousands and thousands of new people. And not everyone new who comes into your audience is gonna love the offer as much or feel so deeply aligned with it as your original core audience that helped you when you were in that breakthrough, uh, in that breakthrough season. So all these new people, like as you expand, you're gonna be expanding, even if it's to the same ideal client, there's gonna be so many personalities and different factors with those people. And when you scale, you're widening your customer base. And I think we can all admit that we humans, myself included, we are a quirky bunch, right? And when you start dealing with people and customers at massive scale, sometimes people are not always so nice. And so you have to bear in mind that statistically, only 2% of your cold audience is ever gonna say yes to your offer. So when you start scaling, remember that 98 times out of 100, people are gonna tell you no. And sometimes they're gonna say it really mean, right? So just ask yourself and really be honest with yourself before you start to scale. Am I ready to hear all this pushback and feedback and have negative, nasty comments on my ads that I'm a scammer, that I have to delete, or like just be kind of harassed online. Am I ready for that? Because that is part of the trade-off. Obviously, you know, you can delete comments, you can put up boundaries. Um, but when you're scaling to the public, think about any big company. Like there's people who love the company and there's people who like cannot stand them and want a boycott, right? And everything in between. So before you scale, just make sure you're prepared and ready for the mass rejection that you will face in order to reach that 2%. And you gotta cast a super wide net to be able to get a large number of that 2% and expand the impact that you can make with your business. So just make sure you're truly dialed in with your belief in your offer. Otherwise, a scaling season can really shape your confidence. So, again, just to recap the seasons, we have the grind season, the grow season, the pivot season, the breakthrough season, and the scale season. Every single phase has things that are character building and will test your resolve to continue with your business, I promise. Unless you're like superhuman. Um, every business owner I know who's made it past the seven-figure year mark has had a period where they wondered, is this really worth it? And they all have come to the conclusion that it is. It is because most people who have long-lasting success, they really do have a heart underneath what they're doing. They have a mission and they have a drive to make an impact. The money is cool up to a certain point, and it's always important, right? Like it yields opportunities, but ultimately to, I believe, to have a really successful long-term business, it requires a vision that's bigger than just the money. And the money is just the barometer, the mark, the marker of how many people you're actually helping. It's literally just like a tabulation stick of the impact that you're making. Um, so every phase is worth it to make the impact that you are meant to make. I'll say that once more. Every phase of business, the beautiful, free ones, and also the hard, sticky, tricky ones, every phase is worth it to make the impact that you know you're born to make. So I always love hearing from you. I would love to know in the comments what stage of business do you think you're in right now? Um, you can also always email me at Anna at Sarah AnnaPowers.com. Let me know your stage of business, or let me know like what was your favorite stage that you've been through thus far, and how are you going to get back to that aligned stage? All right, that's it for this week. I trust that you have enjoyed this message. You are listening to the anti-generic podcast or watching our YouTube show. Make sure to follow and or subscribe. It really, really helps us meet new people and um get the show out to new people. So thank you so much. You can also always go to Sarah in a powers.com, note H on the Sarah, and you can find all of our past anti generic newsletters and blog posts. All right, I will see you next week, and I trust that you will have a phenomenal week. Talk to you soon.