Why Hitting Six Figures Didn't Give Me Freedom (And What Actually Did)

I used to think hitting six figures would fix everything. The stress, the money, anxiety, the constant hustle.

Then I hit it and actually nothing changed. And that's when I realized I've been chasing the wrong thing.

Hi, my name is Burhan and I've been running a marketing agency for 11 years. Worked with over 220 coaches and consultants, and I can tell you this, hitting six figures didn't give me what I thought it would. I thought it would mean freedom, you know, spacious days, time to travel, the ability to say no to work.

I didn't want. But here's what actually happened. I was working more than I ever did. I couldn't take a vacation without my phone glued to my hand, and I was saying yes to clients that I didn't wanna work with because I was terrified that the money would dry up. I had the revenue, but I didn't have the freedom.

And I kept thinking maybe if I hit 200,000, maybe if I, if I just land one more big client, maybe if I just optimize my funnel [00:01:00] or whatever. But the problem was the business, it was me. And more specifically, it was how I saw myself in the business, the identity I was holding onto the traps I didn't even know I was stuck in.

And here's what I learned after 11 years of doing this, both in my own business and with my clients. now there are specific patterns that keep six figure entrepreneurs trapped. Not tactics, not strategies, but identity level traps. This is exactly what we are working through inside Growth Circle right now. A free community where we're running our. Five day challenge to identify and break those patterns together.

but let me show you what those traps actually look like, because once you see them, it would be impossible to unsee them.

The first trap I had to face was scarcity. I've probably heard this before, but even when I was making good money, I was operating from fear. Fear that the clients would dry up. Fear that if I raised my prices. People would leave fear that if I said no to bad foot [00:02:00] work, that I'd regret it. Here's a specific example.

A couple years ago I had a client I'd be working with for about a year and a half, and when I started with him, things were great. I was grateful. I was happy he was a successful coach. The retainer was solid and on par with what I was charging other clients at the time. But as I grew, my rates increased right with other clients.

My system improved. I started working with bigger clients. And then suddenly I realized that he became my lowest paying client. The work he needed was taking just as much time, if not more, as my higher paying clients, but I was getting paid half as much, so I had to confront him. I explained my new rate structure, I showed him the value I was delivering already to him, and I gave him a couple options, but unfortunately we couldn't come to an agreement.

And here's with scarcity, almost won. I almost said. You know what? Nevermind we can keep things the way they are, but I [00:03:00] was scared. Scared that letting him go meant losing that income. Scared that I wouldn't replace it. but I let him go anyway. And lemme tell you what happened. Within a week or two, I landed a client paying double what he was, and I kept running the same playbook. Pretty much I let go of barefoot clients raising my rates, trusting that better work would come, and they did. So here's what I learned.

Scarcity keeps you small and it keeps you saying yes to the wrong people. It keeps you stuck in work you've outgrown. But scarcity isn't just about money. It's deeper than that. It's about tying your identity to being needed.

This one took me longer to see. I got validation from being available, from bringing the go-to person, from clients needing me. So when a client said, I don't know what I'd do without you, I felt valuable. When they messaged me at 10:00 PM or later and they responded immediately, I felt important. When I was the only one who knew how to run their campaigns, I felt [00:04:00] indispensable.

But here's the trap. I wasn't building a business. I was building a dependency there on me and mine on being needed. This is something I've worked on, no matter what rate you're charging. If you are continuously improving, learning new skills, building new systems, getting better at what you do, there's always gonna be a pull towards seeking validation.

But here's what shifted for me, right?

When I got to the point where I had leverage, meaning I had multiple clients when I had systems that worked, when I felt confident in the value I was creating, I couldn't let go of clients who consumed more time and energy than I was willing to give, and I was okay with it. The shift happened when I stopped putting all my eggs in one basket.

When one client wasn't paying me the majority of my revenue, I was in a far better position to let go of that validation hit. And here's what changes. When you see this clearly, You stop tying your worth to how much people need you in the [00:05:00] room. You stop tying it to the value you create, whether you are there or not.

but even when you start to see this, you can still feel trapped if you don't have boundaries. I used to have a hard time saying, no client asks for one more thing. Sure. They're gonna add something outside the original scope. Okay. They need by tomorrow evening, even though we agreed to next week. Yeah, sure, I'll make it work. And before I knew it, I was doing twice the work for the same price. And here's a recent example.

A couple of weeks ago I had a client and we agreed on a specific scope and we wrote it down. It was fairly informal, but we had clarity on what I was delivering. Then a couple days later, she asked for additional work. Now the old me would've said, yeah, I can fit that in, no problem. But I went back to her and I said, look, that's gonna cost extra. It's not in the scope. We agreed on can we discuss it. And so we went back and forth for a few days and she pushed back and well, I just held my line and eventually she agreed because this [00:06:00] was something she really, really wanted.

So I was happy because I was getting paid fairly for the extra work and she got what she wanted at the end of the day. And here's what I've learned from that. being open and upfront about the value you're charging for, you know, the scope you currently have, and making it clear that increasing scope means increasing investment. It's not just about money. It's about putting the client in a frame of mind where they can't just add things because they feel like it.

Think about it this way. You go to a restaurant, you order a meal, you want fries, and so what do they do? They bill you for that because it's not part of what you originally ordered, right? It's an extra same thing in your business. Scope increases, increase the investment. That's not being difficult, that's just running a business, but even when you set boundaries, you can still feel trapped if you're stuck doing all the work yourself.

Now, this one almost broke me now. I was the one running the ads. I was the one writing copy. I was the one checking the analytics. I was the one [00:07:00] managing the clients, like invoicing, like doing everything. Everything left in my head and I couldn't delegate because no one else knows how to do it the way I do it.

Right. You probably heard that before. You probably say that to yourself. And I couldn't take time off because, well, what if something breaks? I couldn't scale because, well, I'm already maxed out on hours. I was the operator and the operator was the bottleneck. So here's the story that changed everything for me.

A couple months ago, I lost access to my Facebook ad account, some glitch, some login issue. They haven't been able to give it back yet. So anyways, I panicked when it all happened. And I had active campaigns running with my clients, and I had clients depending on those results and depending on me, but something interesting happened, right?

I did have somebody running the campaigns for me, and well, they ran it without me. They adjusted the budgets, they reviewed performance, they communicated, they told me what was going on, and actually it worked. And so that's when I realized that I wasn't the solution. [00:08:00] I was actually the bottleneck. Now here's the shift I had to make.

I had to stop being the operator and start being a leader because leaders build systems, right? Operators execute them. Leaders document the processes. Operators hold them in their heads. Leaders trust their team and operators, they micromanage. I'm still learning this and I'm still working through it, but the moment I started seeing myself as a leader instead of an operator.

It changed everything for me, but there's one more trap, and it's the one, most people never escape

hours for dollars. The more you work, the more you make, the less you work, the less you make. this is a trap that keeps you stuck forever because there's a ceiling, right? There only so many hours you can work and so many clients you can take on. And so many days a week you can work. And so here's what I did to change this.

I switched my entire Berlin model, right? Instead of charging by the hour or even a [00:09:00] monthly retainer, which really is also hours, I moved to a performance based system. so if you think about a sales rep, right? They get paid on commission. now because my business can track performance for my clients, I switch to getting paid a percentage of the sales attributed to my work. This created a huge leverage for me. When things were slow, my clients, clients weren't paying much, but when I helped them grow to a million dollars in revenue, I was getting paid what I felt I was worth without adding more hours.

Of course, there are other things. Using AI to automate certain tasks, using tools to make processes faster, using systems to reduce manual work and employing people to help with certain processes.

But the big ticket shift is this. How can you get paid more without adding more hours? And here's another form of leverage that I learned productizing your work. So instead of selling your time, you sell access to your system, whether [00:10:00] it's a community or a group program, a course, a framework. You're getting paid for the value you've built, not the hours you work.

That's leverage.

So here's what all of this comes down to. Revenue doesn't give you freedom. Systems do boundaries do and identity shifts do. And working through these traps alone is really, really hard. And so that's why I built Growth Circle. It's a free community where we're running a five day challenge to work through these exact patterns together.

Here's how it works. On day one, we talk about the client filter, so you'll audit your current clients, make a decision on ones that are a bad fit, and we'll walk you through how to recognize when scarcity is keeping you stuck. On day two, we'll talk about the identity audit, where we will help you rewrite the value without tying it to being needed.

we look at how validation is keeping you trapped in operator mode. Day three, the [00:11:00] boundaries, right? We set one non-negotiable boundary in your business, so we'll give you the language to communicate it clearly. Day four, we're talking about roles, so you list every task that you're doing that could be systemized or delegated.

We'll help you see where you are, the bottleneck. on day five, we talk about systems, right? We'll document one repeating process. In your business, we'll show you. We'll work together to show you how to create leverage without adding hours. Now, you're not just gonna learn these things, you'll actually do them.

That's the whole point of this challenge in this community. So the link is in the, the link is in the description. Join Growth Circle today. Uh, the challenge is starting soon. So if you're being stuck at six figures, making good money, but feeling trapped, this is how you get unstuck. Hopefully I'll see you in Growth Circle soon. Thank you so much.

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