Stuck? 3 Tips to Bust Though and Have a Business Breakthrough

As an entrepreneur, or more specifically, a spiritual entrepreneur or change agent, you may have experienced hitting the dreaded business plateau, (and then wondering what on earth you need to do to have a business breakthrough).

The business plateau occurs when you’re making progress in your business — you’ve achieved some level of success, and you’re focused on continuing your upward momentum.

And then, it hits you.

Or, rather, you hit it: a roadblock … also known as a plateau.

You’ve undoubtedly heard of this before. Plateaus occur in many areas of life: weight loss, exercise (like weight lifting or speed in running, swimming, or biking), or in productivity levels.

So it’s only natural that they occur in business, too.

There’s one thing all plateaus have in common: they’re frustrating!

As you probably realize by now, I’m a big believer in the impact your mindset has on your ability to create results.

So what I’m about to say will come as no surprise: breaking through a business plateau will happen ONLY when your mindset has laid a strong foundation for doing so.

With that being said, here are three tips for making a mindset shift that leads to a business breakthrough:

Tip 1. Determine whether you’re actually ready to experience a business breakthrough … to get off the plateau, and take things to the next level.

If you’ve hit an external roadblock or plateau, for example, you can’t seem to push beyond a certain number of clients or income level, then chances are, you’ve hit an inner block, too.

An inner block is like a psychological wall that stops you from taking the action that will move you past a certain point.

It may be fear-related: fear of success, fear of failure, fear of not having enough, fear of getting out there and being seen, etc. Or it may be a belief or set of beliefs related to your feelings about success: for instance, successful people are jerks, rich people are arrogant.

Even if you’ve been successful up to this point, as you stretch your limits and set new goals for yourself, new blocks will come up.

So how do you know if you’re experiencing a block?

If you haven’t done any self-development work, you probably do have a block or two. We all do—many of us have experiences as children or even young adults that instill these fears or belief systems deep within us.

Here’s a quick and easy exercise for exploring your own plateau-causing fears and belief systems:

Grab a pen and a piece of paper, and draw a line down the middle, forming two columns. In the first column, write down all the reasons you want to break through the plateau. In the second, write down all the reasons you don’t want to break through or all the ways those blocks are serving you. (Yes, some stuff will come to the surface for that second column if you take this exercise seriously!)

The items you write down in the second column will give you an idea as to which fears or belief systems you need to work through to move past this plateau.

Take some time to think about the emotions associated with the items in the second column.

Next, start moving the energy out of these emotions.

I’m going to share one powerful exercise for doing so here, and you can read about several more in my book, Love-Based Money and Mindset: Make the Money You Desire Without Selling Your Soul.

Breathing is one of the most powerful exercises for releasing fear-based emotions. Yes, I used to roll my eyes at the “stop and breathe” advice, but now it’s become my go-to tool for getting past fear in many different situations.

The trick: you must feel your feelings.

When uncomfortable thoughts come up, just stop.

Rather than going with your first reaction and changing the subject, mentally, or calling a friend to talk about these feelings, stop everything.

Close your eyes and breathe into the feelings associated with the thoughts.

Maybe you feel emotions in your gut, like I do. Or maybe you feel them in your chest. Focus on that area and breathe into it. This takes practice! But I promise it will help you move past the blocks that are stopping you from reaching that next level.

Tip 2. Determine what you need to do to grow.

You’ve undoubtedly heard this analogy before, and that’s because it’s a good one. If you were planning to leave your house and drive to another city in another state—somewhere you’d never been—you’d need to get directions, right?

These days, most of us just type our destination’s address into our smartphone and hit “Get Directions.”

Then an app, like Google Maps, for example, gives us turn-by-turn directions.

Now let’s apply this analogy to your business.

If you’ve hit a plateau, then your desired destination if you want to have a business breakthrough is the Next Level, right? Well, do you know what you need to do to get to the Next Level? Which turns you need to make?

In our analogy, the “directions” would be the specific business strategies you’d use. “Turn left” may equate to, “Launch a new product.”

So how does this tie into mindset?

It’s all about preparation and planning. If you are attempting to reach a goal without a plan, then you’re not in the right mental space to get there. It’s like setting out for a destination to which you’ve never been without getting directions first.

Here’s an exercise you can use to figure out what you need to do to have a business breakthrough:

First, determine what the “Next Level” means to you.

Does it mean earning a certain amount of income? Does it mean landing a certain number of clients, or working a certain number of days each week or month?

Once you’re clear on that, consider the strategies that will get you there.

For example, if your goal is to get more clients, you may need a new lead generation system. If your goal is to earn more money and have more free time, creating a home study program may be a good avenue for reaching that goal.

Then, create a written plan with daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly steps for reaching your goal.

Tip 3. Stick with it. Push yourself just a bit further, past that tipping point.

If you feel like you’re on the brink of something big, then you just might be!

You may not be experiencing a mental block … you may be just one final push from having that business breakthrough and reaching the Next Level.

If you know you’re doing what you need to do, and you haven’t yet broken through your plateau, then don’t give up!

This advice may be a bit frustrating, because as a goal-driven entrepreneur, you likely feel like if you could just take action, just push this through, you could get there.

And this is where mindset comes in: when you’re taking all the right actions, and you have all the right pieces in place, then sometimes you just have to open yourself to receive.

So, are you ready to break through a plateau?

Follow the advice above, and you’ll be on the right track.

If this topic resonated with you, you may be interested in my book, Love-Based Money and Mindset: Make the Money You Desire Without Selling Your Soul. It’s available at most online retailers, and you can get your own copy here.