Achieving business success! It is SO exciting when you start reaching levels you dream of, see that you can earn, have clients that love what you do for them! And then, there is often STUCK. Yes! Stuck after success. I’d call them plateaus.
I remember my first BIG plateau. It happened when I finally started earning over $100,000 a year. I was stuck. I could not, for the life of me earn more than that.
I had two clients hit this plateau of stuck. One has lifted the veil. She has an amazing brand, a topic she’s developed beautifully, a talk that drives the audience to want to work with her, and she’s doing the “old job” instead of this one. Another has had the “owning value, charge what I am worth” breakthrough. She has revamped everything to align with her new mindset. Even planned her calendar out a year in advance to achieve that money….and now she’s “waiting.”
Achieving business success and these kinds of plateaus are interesting! Intellectually you know you want more. You know you deserve it. You are ready for the crazy good that comes with next level success.
Yet, you are stuck.
I think these kinds of plateau’s stuck comes from one of two places. The first isn’t that different from last week’s post on achieving business success. It comes from changing how we think. Or better yet, more like what I talk about in my book, The Influence Factor. The story we tell ourselves that has become a truth.
This is what it was for me. I realized I had a story that stopped my earning. When I first got out of college, $100,000 seemed like a TON of money. I could recall telling myself: “if I ever earn $100,000 a year, I am SOOOO, good! Then I can live the life I want!” This story, became my “truth”. When I started earning $100,000 a year in my business, the mind body connection stepped in. It said: “You did it Ann! Check that one off the list! You are good. You can live the life you want.”
The problem was I wanted to serve MORE people. I knew now that I had a mission. I knew now that I deserved to be compensated for it. To do so I had to rewrite that story.
Do you have a story that has caused your stuck plateau? If so you need to rewrite it. Now I say that earning 6 figures is a privilege based on those I serve. That my potential to earn is limitless!
There is a second reason we get “stuck plateaus.” It relates to something I frequently see: more people are afraid of success than they are of failure. And it’s a pattern in achieving “successes” (success is progressive, true?)
Marilyn Ferguson, a futurist in her time, said: “It’s not so much that we are afraid of change or so in love with our old ways, but it’s the place between that we fear. It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to.”
When you finally know with everything in your being that you can charge more, you enter this space. When you are at the edge of being KNOWN in a badly needed field as THE ONE to go to, you are on that space. Just like the trapeze. Or Linus without his blanket.
I believe this is why one client went back to doing what she knows how to do so well. Because becoming this amazing keynote speaker getting paid big bucks….her blanket is gone. That’s why the other client hasn’t told the world “my program is worth this much.” She is between the trapezes.
When you plateau in your success and feel stuck, could it be one of these 2 reasons for you? Do you need to pick up my books and uncover stories that have become your truth? Or do you need to deal with this unknown space? The place where we are blind. Where we have to have faith instead of stay where we are sure. Confident.
I love working with my clients on overcoming what gets them stuck. One client, Sherry Prindle said: “There are many coaches who say we will work on mindsets, and never really do. Ann’s program does this work and more.”
