Scaling Past Six Figures with Intention
You hit six figures… but now what?
In this episode of Creative Minds Smart Money, we’re talking about what really happens after you cross the six-figure mark and why making money is just the beginning. You’ll learn how to shift from reactive, DIY mode to strategic CEO mode so you can lead your business with clarity, not chaos.
This episode walks you through what happens after six figures and how to create a business that actually feels profitable, sustainable, and aligned with the way you want to live and lead.
In this episode, we cover:
✅ Why six-figure businesses still feel unstable behind the scenes
✅ The “success hangover” and how to name what you’re feeling
✅ How to tell if you’re ready to hire (or raise your prices)
✅ Why you're making more but feeling cash-poor
✅ The 4 key seasons of post-6-figure growth: Stabilize, Sustain, Scale, Strategize
✅ CFO-level moves that help you make decisions with confidence
✅ How to shift from panic-mode decisions to intentional growth
Whether you’re newly six figures or multiple years in, this episode is packed with strategy, encouragement, and grounded financial wisdom. You’re not doing anything wrong you’re just playing a new game with new rules. Let’s get you the clarity and tools to win it.
🎧 Press play and step into your CEO era with confidence.
Connect with Samantha:
Website: https://www.firestormfinance.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firestormfinance/
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@firestormfinance?hl=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-e-8796b6176/
Newsletter: https://firestormfinance.myflodesk.com/ajmiv1kyt1
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Transcript
samantha-eck_2_02-20-2025_120206: Welcome to the Creative Minds Smart
Speaker:Money Podcast, where we turn financial confusion into creative confidence.
Speaker:I'm Samantha Eck, bookkeeper and fractional CFO for creative entrepreneurs.
Speaker:Each week I'm sharing my financial expertise and actionable
Speaker:strategies to help you build a thriving creative business.
Speaker:Plus, you'll hear from industry experts who bring fresh perspectives on growing
Speaker:your business beyond the numbers.
Speaker:Because building a successful creative business starts with
Speaker:strong financial foundations.
Speaker:Your next chapter starts now.
Speaker:You are listening to the Creative Minds Smart Money Podcast, and today
Speaker:we're talking about what comes after six figures and why hitting this
Speaker:milestone is only the beginning because you need to know how to lead your
Speaker:business after the confetti clears.
Speaker:Of course hitting six figures is a huge milestone, and so many people
Speaker:talk about how they hit six figures.
Speaker:Now when I'm talking about six figures, I'm generally talking about revenue.
Speaker:But so many people talk about six figures and how they hit six figures in
Speaker:revenue, but nobody really talks about what comes after you hit six figures.
Speaker:Like what happens?
Speaker:Like what happens when you've hit six figures and now things
Speaker:just get so much more unclear?
Speaker:Can I actually afford to hire?
Speaker:Is there room in my budget for this conference that I want to go to?
Speaker:Can I purchase a new computer?
Speaker:Because of course, hitting six figures is the easy part.
Speaker:Knowing how to make money is the easy part.
Speaker:The hard part is always and always will be.
Speaker:Does it actually make sense?
Speaker:So
Speaker:nobody really prepares you for.
Speaker:What comes after six figures?
Speaker:You're, you should be thrilled when you hit that number, but it feels really
Speaker:weird, like really unstable, because of course you're making money, but you're
Speaker:also thinking like, am I making mistakes?
Speaker:Because maybe your net income is really low.
Speaker:Maybe you feel like your expenses are high, whatever it
Speaker:is, whatever you're feeling.
Speaker:It's not failure, it's just you've reached a different threshold.
Speaker:You've scaled past that point of DIYing things, and now it
Speaker:looks completely different.
Speaker:So this episode is here to help you just name that feeling,
Speaker:normalize it, and navigate it with clear and defined strategy.
Speaker:I wanna be clear that six figures is not a finish line.
Speaker:Once you hit six figures, it's not the end game.
Speaker:The end game comes after you hit six figures.
Speaker:It comes after everything has happened and after you've really thought about it.
Speaker:It is a new game with new rules.
Speaker:Now, you might be someone who's like, Samantha, I've never been that
Speaker:ambitious to hit six figures, but honestly, sometimes it just happens.
Speaker:You are working on your business, you're doing so well, you're growing.
Speaker:All of a sudden you're there and it's just a different, it's a completely different
Speaker:game, completely different rules, and you just need someone to help you make
Speaker:sense of it all, because it's a lot.
Speaker:I had a client last year who hit her first six figure year, and she came
Speaker:to me with completely messy books.
Speaker:She was overwhelmed.
Speaker:She really didn't understand if she could hire someone.
Speaker:She didn't understand.
Speaker:If she like, you know what I was talking about?
Speaker:If she could understand if she could afford a new computer.
Speaker:She didn't understand if she could go to this conference that she's always
Speaker:wanted to go to, but she told herself she wouldn't go to unless she hit six figures.
Speaker:But she's looking at her bottom line and she's saying, Samantha, I really
Speaker:don't think I have the money for this.
Speaker:And I don't know.
Speaker:Her first emotion wasn't joy.
Speaker:It was pressure because now she's like, okay, I'm making six figures, but.
Speaker:Like, what do I do with the six figures?
Speaker:Like how do I manage it?
Speaker:What do I need to continue to do to grow my business?
Speaker:Things like that.
Speaker:Of course, now of course, she did feel joyful because.
Speaker:That's a huge milestone, but it's also something that was intensely scary and
Speaker:intensely pressure filled because a lot of people think that once you hit six
Speaker:figures, you're in this sort of like financial safety zone, like automatically
Speaker:making more money is gonna make you feel secure and make you feel better and make
Speaker:you feel really good about your business.
Speaker:But it's a lie.
Speaker:It's a lie sold by a lot of Instagram coaches and online summits.
Speaker:'cause they're like, once you get to a six figure biggest nest, you
Speaker:know you have freedom, you have time to do whatever you want.
Speaker:You can walk away from your business.
Speaker:But it's a lie because there's so much more that goes into that
Speaker:than just making six figures.
Speaker:Six figures does not equal financial safety and it does
Speaker:not equal freedom and just.
Speaker:Overall joy and excitement because once you layer in everything that comes with
Speaker:that, you're gonna get that your expenses likely grew faster than your margins.
Speaker:So you know, you wanna make sure that you're actually making a bottom line.
Speaker:I've talked about this before, but when you see all those coaches online who are
Speaker:like, Hey, I made six figures last year.
Speaker:I made 200,000, 250 K, they can say they make 250 K all dang day.
Speaker:If they don't show you your bottom line.
Speaker:And I, I'm not necessarily saying they need to show you your bottom line, but
Speaker:if they can't tell you that they are actually profitable, then you should not
Speaker:be listening to them because they're not actually like they can make 250 K, but
Speaker:if they're $50,000 in debt, they're not the person you wanna be listening to,
Speaker:nor the person who should be guiding you to grow your business because you could
Speaker:end up in the same place as they are.
Speaker:The other thing is you're working more, not less.
Speaker:So you know, you're starting to make a lot more money.
Speaker:You start to work a lot more.
Speaker:You have a lot more things that are going on in your business now.
Speaker:You have to delegate things.
Speaker:You have to do this or you haven't delegated anything.
Speaker:And then of course, suddenly now that you're making these six figures,
Speaker:especially if you're a solo entrepreneur, you are the boss, you're the owner of your
Speaker:business, and you are the bottleneck, like I said in the last episode, and I know.
Speaker:Exactly what I'm like mean with that.
Speaker:You are the bottleneck in your business.
Speaker:You will always be the bottleneck in your business because you are the
Speaker:business owner and you can only see so far as what's in front of your eyes.
Speaker:You can't see past what's in front of you.
Speaker:Because technically as business owners, we have blinders on, right?
Speaker:Like we're looking at what's right in front of us.
Speaker:We're looking at the smaller picture.
Speaker:We're not looking at the big picture.
Speaker:We're not looking at years from now.
Speaker:We're not looking at six months from now.
Speaker:We're looking at what's happening in our business right now.
Speaker:How can I bring in money right now?
Speaker:How can I.
Speaker:Grow my business.
Speaker:So you're spending money, you're making money, but you're not actually
Speaker:understanding things, and that is why you are the bottleneck in your business.
Speaker:Again, you're not ungrateful that you've reached this six figure
Speaker:milestone, but you're just exhausted from carrying a business that you
Speaker:were never meant to run alone.
Speaker:And that's okay because it happens.
Speaker:Again, you're not in this space where you're lost.
Speaker:It's not some sort of maze.
Speaker:It's just that we don't have the resources to figure out what happens after we
Speaker:hit six figures because of course, there's all these resources out there
Speaker:about how to make money, but there's no solutions out there for what comes after
Speaker:we make money because there are a lot of symptoms when we reach to the stage.
Speaker:Again, you.
Speaker:Don't know if you can afford to hire help, like can you hire help?
Speaker:'cause you're done being the bottleneck and you're like, I need to outsource
Speaker:things, but can you afford it?
Speaker:And you don't understand that you are afraid to raise your prices because
Speaker:you're like, well, I'm making six figures.
Speaker:I don't know if I really need to raise my prices.
Speaker:But I'll honestly be a hundred percent honest with you, if you are
Speaker:not uncomfortable with the price that you have, you're probably
Speaker:charging too little because.
Speaker:If some, if you talk to someone and you're, let's just say you're a copywriter
Speaker:and you offer them $30 an hour for this copywriting project, again, I
Speaker:don't ever advise you to do hourly.
Speaker:I always advise you to do value-based pricing, but if you're someone who's
Speaker:like, Hey, I'm gonna charge you $30 an hour for this, but, and they're instantly
Speaker:like, yeah, that's great, let's go.
Speaker:You're probably pricing a little bit lower than you should be.
Speaker:And then of course, you know you're making more money than ever than
Speaker:you've ever have in your entire business, but you feel cash poor.
Speaker:And by that I mean like you're looking at your bank account at the end of the
Speaker:day, and you still only have $2 in your bank account, even though your profit
Speaker:loss shows that you've made $600,000 or however much that you've made.
Speaker:You are still making those gut-based calls and you're not
Speaker:making them out of strategy.
Speaker:So when we talked about cutting in the last episode, you are really doing
Speaker:things based off of what's in your gut.
Speaker:So you see an expense and you're like, okay, I can just cut that
Speaker:so that I can, up my bottom line.
Speaker:But you're not thinking about things strategically anymore.
Speaker:You're just thinking about like, what can I do?
Speaker:And then not really thinking about it, just doing it.
Speaker:Because once you get to that point where you are at six figures and
Speaker:we're talking about those different rules, now you really need to
Speaker:be strategic about your money.
Speaker:If you wanna stay where you are, if you're like, nah, I'm okay
Speaker:if I go but back to where I was.
Speaker:Usually you're not though.
Speaker:Usually you're like, my business is successful, I want to grow it.
Speaker:I wanna understand it.
Speaker:So that's where you need to, you know, start looking at
Speaker:making more strategic calls.
Speaker:And of course the next step is you want support, but you just don't know.
Speaker:What kind of support you really need, or if you even need support.
Speaker:So that's what we call the success hangover effect.
Speaker:So after a major revenue milestone, like six figures or something like
Speaker:that, you start to feel maybe unworthy because you're like, I don't know,
Speaker:half this stuff that I can do now.
Speaker:Like, I'm cash poor, I can't afford do, can I even afford to hire help?
Speaker:Do I need to raise my prices?
Speaker:You feel unsteady because you're like, okay, I'm making money, but like.
Speaker:Am I making money?
Speaker:You know what I mean?
Speaker:You're making money, but are you really making money?
Speaker:And of course that's where you get to that point where you're
Speaker:unsure what to prioritize.
Speaker:So it's like building that two story house on the foundation of a tent.
Speaker:It's going to collapse.
Speaker:So of course it, it happens though.
Speaker:Your brain can't focus because you don't just need better productivity.
Speaker:You just need a better financial compass and a better understanding because six
Speaker:figures is a lot more money than five figures, or four figures or three figures.
Speaker:It's a completely different game plan.
Speaker:Obviously your season and the season that you're in is
Speaker:gonna determine your strategy.
Speaker:But I have four places that we wanna focus on.
Speaker:And this is going to be like where we lead off of and where you think about.
Speaker:So the first one is you wanna stabilize.
Speaker:So if you've gotten to six figures and you've never touched your books or you've
Speaker:never done bookkeeping, the first thing you're gonna wanna do is clean them up.
Speaker:Get accurate reports.
Speaker:Know your burn rate.
Speaker:Understand if you are actually making money, or if you are
Speaker:not actually making money.
Speaker:That's what the first step is called stabilizing.
Speaker:So stabilize your business.
Speaker:Once you get to that six figure point, the second step is where we wanna sustain.
Speaker:So we want to build systems that reduce manual labor and
Speaker:make your income predictable.
Speaker:So monthly recurring revenue, hiring out contractors if you can.
Speaker:And then of course beginning forecasting because now you're at six figures.
Speaker:You want to understand your business and you want to be able to forecast.
Speaker:And a lot of times, when you're a really successful growing business, what we'll do
Speaker:is we'll look and say, okay, historically, you've grown 10% month over month.
Speaker:We're gonna forecast that.
Speaker:That's go trend is going to continue.
Speaker:How is that going to continue to impact your bottom line as we continue to grow?
Speaker:And that's where you look at that forecasting.
Speaker:Again, that's very CFO level mindset, so sorry if that's right over your head.
Speaker:But of course, again, that's where we're talking about sustaining the third step.
Speaker:Or a season is scaling.
Speaker:So getting strategic with your hiring.
Speaker:Maybe you've only hired contractors, maybe you need to hire employees now.
Speaker:Pricing decisions backed by margin data.
Speaker:So you've really analyzed your margin and you understand that your pricing
Speaker:needs to go up X amount because.
Speaker:In order to protect your margin, your pricing needs to be here.
Speaker:And then of course, cashflow planning is gonna become a non-negotiable
Speaker:in this season, especially if you already have bookkeeping.
Speaker:You've already done everything, you're just ready to scale, so you
Speaker:really need to focus on that cashflow.
Speaker:Planning.
Speaker:The fourth season is strategizing.
Speaker:So now is the time when your past six figures where A CFO is really helpful
Speaker:because not only are they going to help you track KPIs, they're gonna help you
Speaker:analyze profitability, plan your growth.
Speaker:And I wanna just take a moment to describe what A CFO really is.
Speaker:A CFO is very similar in essence, to a coach, but we do it backed
Speaker:by a lot of financial data.
Speaker:We're not just looking at , how can we grow your business with
Speaker:social media, things like that.
Speaker:We're really looking at your finances and analyzing.
Speaker:Okay, so for example, let's say that you have an item and you're
Speaker:like, okay, Samantha, like, how do I make this more profitable?
Speaker:We're looking at that and we're analyzing it, and we're saying,
Speaker:okay, what is your margin on it?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Is there a way we can make the margin tighter if there's not a
Speaker:way we can make the margin tighter?
Speaker:Can we raise the price?
Speaker:If we can't raise the price?
Speaker:Do we need the product?
Speaker:Is it profitable?
Speaker:Really looking and asking all those questions, because that's how you
Speaker:really think about and plan your growth and strategize is when
Speaker:you have someone on your team who thinks with that financial mindset.
Speaker:Of course, strategizing again, is just optimizing, not just surviving.
Speaker:So now we're optimizing our business to really get to the point.
Speaker:So those are the four seasons that happen after you reach your post six
Speaker:figure growth, you are stabilizing, you are sustaining, you're scaling,
Speaker:and then you're strategizing.
Speaker:So again, just to do a quick little recap, stabilizing by getting your
Speaker:books in order, getting your reports, knowing what your business is doing,
Speaker:sustaining by starting to build systems.
Speaker:Making income predictable, forecasting, scaling by hiring, raising your
Speaker:prices, starting to cashflow plan 'cause it's a non-negotiable.
Speaker:And then strategizing by starting to analyze everything and really grow
Speaker:your business with profitability and KPIs and optimizing.
Speaker:So again, it's not about doing more in your business, it's just about.
Speaker:Seeing things on a clear level.
Speaker:So there's new skills that come with, of course, having post six figures.
Speaker:After you get to six figures.
Speaker:It's making decisions with your numbers, not just because you
Speaker:want to make those decisions.
Speaker:Because once you have a team to pay, once you have people, that are
Speaker:backing you up, once you have things that are going on, now you need to
Speaker:make decisions based off of cash in your bank account, not just based
Speaker:off of what you think you can afford.
Speaker:Trusting team support, trusting your team and giving them the tools to
Speaker:success without worrying about it.
Speaker:And then knowing your offers are profitable before a launch.
Speaker:So making sure that your margins are there and being like, yep, I've
Speaker:got my margin already in there.
Speaker:We're good to go.
Speaker:Let's launch this offer.
Speaker:Let's launch this product, whatever it is, and knowing that you're profitable.
Speaker:And then shifting from urgency.
Speaker:So running your business out of urgency to running with intentionality because.
Speaker:Once you've gotten to six figures, usually you're making enough money that
Speaker:you're able to support your family.
Speaker:But now it's like, how do I grow my business without stressing myself out?
Speaker:So that's something that we really wanna focus on.
Speaker:I know I've talked a lot about what happens when you hit six
Speaker:figures, but it's so important.
Speaker:The milestone isn't the summit.
Speaker:So hitting six figures is not the summit of the mountain.
Speaker:It's really just the base.
Speaker:It's a new base.
Speaker:You didn't do anything wrong to get here.
Speaker:You, in fact, you were amazing.
Speaker:You hit six figures.
Speaker:You've just , graduated from making money into managing it, and that's
Speaker:a skill you were never taught.
Speaker:If you're ever like Samantha, I'm at that point where I'm past six figures.
Speaker:I just need help.
Speaker:Please reach out.
Speaker:I'm here to help you.
Speaker:You can book a strategy call.
Speaker:We have a free discovery call.
Speaker:We can talk about things and really just get into it.
Speaker:Or I can even talk with you and point you into one of the four
Speaker:stages that you might be in.
Speaker:Especially if you're over six figures and you're not sure where you're at.
Speaker:You're like, I don't know if I can hire whatever it is.
Speaker:I can help you figure out what season you're in.
Speaker:That way you can start to focus on what you need to.
Speaker:Again, that's always free.
Speaker:Feel free to message me.
Speaker:I'm here to help you out.
Speaker:As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend.
Speaker:Leave her of you comment.
Speaker:And let me know what you wanna see more of using the form
Speaker:in the description box below.
Speaker:Of course, don't forget to share and leave a review.
Speaker:It helps other people to find the podcast and learn more and grow more.
Speaker:. And as always, I hope you learned something today and that you feel
Speaker:really good about your business because what you're doing is amazing
Speaker:and you deserve to feel good about it.
Speaker:We're just here to make sure that you get the strategy and the confidence you
Speaker:need to grow your business intentionally.
Speaker:As always, I wish you the most amazing week, and we'll see you next week.
Speaker:Farewell fellow travelers.
