The Sweet Spot

Hey guys, this is Julie. Today I want to talk to you about the Sweet Spot. I came back from the Digital Insiders Mastermind. For those of you who don’t know, it is a mastermind of high-level entrepreneurs who want more support, networking, and collaboration. They want to build their funnels. They want to get to a million dollars in revenue. I had this moment where I was talking to one particular Insider. She started the program. She was making about $10,000 a month when she started and over the course of her year in the Insiders, had shot up to 50k and this is when this discussion of the Sweet Spot came up

So, here has been my experience and it’s not just my experience. I see it in other entrepreneurs, as well. We see big numbers. We say, “I can’t wait till my business makes a million dollars or $10,000,000” or whatever. Even $500,000.

When we’re at that really low level of making, let’s say $5,000 or less a month, we see those big numbers and we long for them. We see the tip of the iceberg, right? We see the top line revenue. We don’t see underneath what’s really going on. All the logistics, the infrastructure, the systems going on. And so for this particular Insider, she was having this moment where she’s like, “okay, I reached a 50k a month. I hit this number that I never thought I’d hit, but it doesn’t feel the way I expected it to feel.” And that’s because when you hit certain numbers, you now are faced with the logistics issues that go with that kind of top line revenue. Logistics in terms of how many people it takes to run your business and logistics in terms of how many customers and people you’re affecting on a daily basis.

And I was thinking about this, about how, when you’re little in terms of influence and you go online, you do a Facebook Live and you say something stupid or whatever. A few people notice, but it’s no big deal. But then once you hit this certain level, it’s like all of a sudden the vibrations and the ripple effect is so much greater.

So we don’t think about that when we’re looking at the revenue. We just think about, oh, wouldn’t it be cool to make $50,000 a month? So she had this kind of crisis and I said, “you know, you haven’t identified your sweet spot yet.”

And so here’s what the sweet spot is in business. It’s basically defined as the maximum amount of revenue you can earn in your business while still maintaining your ideal of what your personal lifestyle and business looks like.

So again, it’s the maximum amount of revenue that you can reasonably earn, while maintaining what you see as your ideal lifestyle. I know this because this happened to me. I had a business partner a couple years ago and the business grew really fast and the Sweet Spot for my partner Madelaine at the time, it had far outgrown her Sweet Spot and she didn’t want to work full-time. She actually only wanted to work 10 to 20 hours a week. She definitely wanted the digital nomad lifestyle. She wanted to travel and the business was becoming a company. A true company with employees and the revenue was growing. She outgrew the Sweet Spot that she wanted to stay in. And so if you feel like, “I want the freedom lifestyle, I want to work from home. I don’t want to deal with more than one or two at most team members. I want to have my laptop, I want to travel. I don’t want to work more than 20 hours a week.”

Your Sweet Spot is probably going to max out at about $20,000 a month. Now, It depends. Some people can do more. It depends on how high-end your services are. But I would say reasonably speaking, for the majority of people, 20k to 25k is a Sweet Spot where you don’t need a ton of team members. If you have a high prices and you do services or consulting, things like that, you can hit the 20k mark without working like a dog. That works out to be about $250,000 a year, which is more than the majority of Americans make. So it is a Sweet Spot. In the entrepreneur world, it may seem small. In the regular people world it may seem like, are you kidding me? That’s crazy.

It’s also a great top line revenue to be able to say, “Okay, after taxes and expenses, I still have around $10,000 a month or so.” Which for most people in most of America you can handle. However, once you level-up, there’s this grimy middle and I would say I’ve identified that basically $30,000 a month to about $60k to $80k a month.

I’m going to coin this phrase, “The Middle School Business Years” because I feel like you’re not big enough yet really with the top line revenue to be able to handle massive scaling of hiring people and systems and spending that money on marketing. But you’re not really small enough to be chilling on your laptop with one assistant. And so this particular Insider was in this position where she was like, ah, this is so uncomfortable.

And I’m like, you’re right, because you’re not in a Sweet Spot. And so you’re in like the upside down for my Stranger Things fans. You’re right in that grimy middle. So the question for her was do you want to go back down to about 25k where you don’t really have to worry about obscene amounts of customers and you have more time and freedom and you can be on your laptop? Or do you want to double down and do you want to sprint as fast as you can to 100k where you hit that next like stride? And so that was the question she had and it was funny because we were talking about it together and then everyone else in the room started to think, yeah, where’s my Sweet Spot? Because for some people their Sweet Spot is, I want a company that outlasts me.

I want a building in Manhattan. I want to build this legacy, right? And so their Sweet Spot, they’re going for it because they’re willing to build the infrastructure, the systems, the people that they need to really build that company. There are other people in the room whose Sweet Spot was, you know what, I just want to make a good living and I want to be able to pick up my laptop and go to Bermuda whenever I want. And so their Sweet Spot is probably around 20k.

I find very few people have Sweet Spot of 30 to 60k because it’s just awkward. Then there’s also business models that handle certain Sweet Spots, like agencies. It’s very hard to create a $10,000,000 agency. You can create a million dollar agency but 10 million that might be hard, right? Just because of the amount of people involved in the profitability and scaling and all that.

Even my business right now as it stands in its current form, probably caps out at about $3 million. That is probably the Sweet Spot. I’m going to be doing around 2 million this year and so 3 million after that. It would definitely be like alright, if we’re gonna go past that, we really need to change a lot of what we’re doing. And so every business model also tends to have a cap.

So I would encourage you to think about your Sweet Spot. Think about what kind of lifestyle you want, think about what kind of business you want and what your business is doing for you. And then you can kind of identify where your sweet spot is. And for some of you who are like, you know what, I just want to make 20k to 25k a month. Then you can orchestrate your business to accommodate that. And if you’re ready to go big and you want to go to a million and you’re stuck in that grimy middle, now’s the time to double down. Find a mentor, find a coach and push forward.

For those of you who have only known me for a little while, the Digital Insiders is a place where I’m really helping people to identify their Sweet Spot and help build and grow their business. Whether it’s a $250,000 a year business or a million a year dollar business or more. If you are interested in applying for the Digital Insiders and you’re currently in business, you can always go to Juliechenell.com

If you want to apply, there are requirements. There is a waiting list. It usually takes about a month to get approved, put on a call and onboarding, but I’m looking for a very specific type of entrepreneur. If you are an agency or you are a course creator or coach or consultant, does the two businesses I’m interested in serving.