What It Really Takes to Break $100K, $500K, and $1M in Business Revenue ft. Jessica Marx
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Scaling a business from six figures to seven isn’t about hustling harder, it’s about stepping fully into CEO leadership. To kick off this season, Victoria is sitting down with powerhouse business advisor Jessica Marx, a five-time Forbes Business Council member, top female coach recognized by Yahoo Finance, investor, founder of Tailored Premier, and mom of twins. With nearly 20 years of executive-level sales and leadership experience Jessica knows exactly what it takes to move beyond the $100K mark and confidently scale toward the million-dollar milestone.
Together, Victoria and Jessica unpack the realities of scaling at each stage of business growth ($100K, $500K, and $1M+) and reveal the strategies that help women entrepreneurs shift from overwhelmed operator to visionary CEO. From avoiding common mistakes that stall progress, to building the right support team, to simplifying your offers for long-term growth, this conversation is packed with practical, proven advice.
This episode is designed to help you scale strategically, lead with clarity, and create a business that fuels both revenue and freedom. Whether you’re chasing your first six figures or preparing to cross into seven, you’ll walk away with the tools, mindset shifts, and confidence to build a business designed for sustainable success. Get your notebook and pen ready, grab your coffee, and enjoy this motivating episode with Jessica Marx!
Welcome to Season 10 of The Branding Business School Podcast
After taking the summer off to have a baby and spend the summer with her girls, Victoria is back and ready to have inspiring conversations with you on the podcast! To kick off Season 10, there’s quite literally no one better to join Victoria than Jessica Marx, a powerhouse business advisor and founder of Tailored Premier. It’s often said that what got you to one stage of business won’t get you to the next, and so join Victoria and Jessica as they break down scaling your business to the $100K, $500K, and $1M milestones.
Meet Jessica Marx
Jessica Marx is a seasoned business strategist, former corporate leader, and founder of a multi-six-figure creative agency, Tailored Premiere, all while being a mom to twins. Jessica is known for her insightful coaching with female entrepreneurs and has helped countless business owners clarify their vision and grow with intention.
Tailored Premiere all started when her twins were only six months old because she felt like she was losing her sense of purpose, but with building her own advisory firm Jessica was able to reclaim her purpose and be a present mom to her twins. When you’re in the maternity leave era of your life, it’s exhausting and you feel like everyone else is continuing but you’re stuck in the mundane tasks of changing diapers or washing bottles. So having the creative escape to do something, even if it’s a side hustle, can be really rewarding. Now Jessica works 20-25 hours per week but also never misses a pickup, never misses a drop off, or anything in between.
Glorified Acquisitions
When being a guest on Amy Porterfield’s podcast, Online Marketing Made Easy, Jessica stated that she helps female founders build a business that can sell, so that they don’t have to sell. Instead of having the goal to sell your business, you can build a business intentionally and strategically so that it’s less dependent on the founder and it can then continue to be a vehicle of wealth.
Jessica shares that the acquisition process may be a little bit glorified at the moment because of the major brands going through billion dollar acquisitions, such as Poppi, Spanx, and Rhode. The common thought is that when a business goes through an acquisition, that CEO will never have to work again, and that’s just not true. When acquisitions occur, especially in the female sector, it’s often being sold for debts being bought off or they’re maybe making a few hundred thousand dollars when all is said and done. If you built a business with the format so that you can step back but not sell the company, that business could continue to generate a few hundred thousand dollars of wealth in a single calendar year. So the goal for Jessica with Tailored Premiere is to educate founders what their business is capable of doing as if you were going to take it to market, but then be able to have the founder step back and still keep their company. Many female founders have their hands in everything, they’re reactive, and they haven’t set up their business in a proactive state and so they want to exit just so they can get their life back. However, once they make it to market, they still can’t find a buyer, and so their business ends up dissolving because they’re so burnt out.
The First Stage: $0 to $100K – Understanding Your Customers and Brand Differentiation
This stage from $0 to $100K is often the hardest for a few different reasons. One, it’s brand new so there’s lots of emotions tied to it. Two, there’s a lot of noise in this space. When you’re in your first $100K everyone is giving you advice, and because you’re still just trying to figure it out, you start doing all the things. Since you’re doing all the things, you can’t really identify what’s working really well and so that makes it incredibly difficult. Three, there’s a lot of learning curves. Four, you don’t have a lot of data to go off of. Five, you have to work really really hard. This is the stage that you’re working nights, you’re working when the baby naps, and you’re letting your passion fuel the fire to help you grow. It’s when you step back too soon that you’ll end up dissolving the business.
When it comes to new founders or those wanting to scale to $100K, Jessica has found over and over that these founders have not done anywhere near the amount of research and development that they should be doing for their product or offer suite. She encourages you to find your differentiator and position yourself in a way that you can demand a higher price point or a way that you can systemize and create a process that is lucrative for your company. Then, reach out to your people, your community, those that have purchased from you, or even those that serve similar demographics as you so that you can figure out what is so innovative about what you’re doing or why people are buying from you. If you’re not staying ahead of markets and curves and what’s coming down the pipeline, you’re going to be left in the dust.
The Middle Stage: Scaling from $100K to $500K
Once the first six-figure milestone is reached, there’s a new milestone to work towards, scaling a business to $500K. Jessica explains that many founders struggle at this stage because they hesitate to reinvest in their business. The hustle and grind will keep happening, but it’s not getting them to $200K, $300K, and they wonder what they’re doing wrong. What really needs to happen is some strategic delegation and thoughtful investment.
Hiring support in this stage can unlock new growth opportunities. Reflect on your week and assess how many of your tasks are actually generating revenue. How many of your tasks are correlated to being a CEO? What of your tasks can you outsource or delegate? Then you look at what you can afford and how many hours it can take off your plate to potentially bring on additional business. Once that initial hire is made, you’re going to want to reinvest the next level of funds into an actual doer for your company. This mindset shift is crucial for founders aiming to scale without burning out.
Strategic Hiring and Team Development
When you reach the point of hiring a “doer” for your company, you are going to want to go about this strategically. You’re looking for team members who can think critically, take initiative, and contribute strategically. Jessica shares that even at the $3M to $5M level, she often sees founders who are the only strategic thinkers in the business. Without a capable team to share the load, a company’s growth stagnates and the founder remains tethered to daily operations.
Creating a structured hiring process is key. Jessica talks about how you can place intentional “landmines” to test your hires to see if they’re innovative, problem solvers, and able to come up with a solution on their own. From there, compensation plans can be aligned with business growth which provides incentive structures to help ensure that employees’ success directly contributes to company revenue.
If you’ve hired while in the $100K to $300K stage and it didn’t go so well, there could be a chance that it wasn’t them… it was you. At that stage you probably never hired someone before, you have zero onboarding process, you weren’t clear on the deliverables, and the person didn’t know what to do. When you hire, you need to be very clear going into it and provide clear KPIs, clear deliverables, and set very clear expectations.
Building a Business That Runs Without You
One of the biggest mindset shifts for entrepreneurs is learning to let go of control. Jessica advises to ask yourself if control is more important than experiencing the life you absolutely deserve. One of the best investments that entrepreneurs can make on their way to a million is in your mindset. You have to be able to break your patterns or they will follow you for the rest of your entrepreneurial journey. Working with a mindset coach can be so valuable to help understand why it is that you’re so obsessed with control and what you need to do in order to release it. Building systems, processes, and a team capable of independent execution allows founders to step back and focus on strategic growth.
You can only grip the sand so tight. If you find that you are very focused on controlling the narrative and you don’t trust the people you’ve hired, it’s probably an issue you need to unravel. Building trust, combined with a documented brand strategy and repeatable systems, makes letting go much easier.
From $500K to $1M: Simplifying and Scaling
Transitioning from half a million to a million-dollar business involves focusing, streamlining, and sometimes trimming excess. Jessica observes that many service-based businesses get lost between $500K and $1M because they have too many offers, they’re unclear, they don’t have a solidified target demographic, and/or their referral system isn’t optimized.
Instead of chasing shiny new opportunities, she advocates for customer ascension strategies which include deepening relationships with existing clients and expanding the value of current offerings. Jessica shares that acquiring a new customer is expensive but your lifetime value from an existing client can be maximized by additional services, upgrades, or refresh campaigns.
The principle here is simple, by leveraging client relationships, defining clear offers, and focusing on profitability, founders can achieve sustainable growth without overextending their resources.
Business Audits: The Key to Unlocking Growth
Jessica emphasizes that no strategy is complete without a thorough business audit. It’s something that they focus on in their audit process with Tailored Premiere before any strategy is even written or mentioned. Nobody should be giving you business advice that doesn’t have full access to the picture.
Common Pitfalls at Each Stage
At every stage of growth, Jessica warns against common traps. For $100K businesses, founders often over-focus on the hustle and comparison. Between $500K and $1M, they spread themselves too thin, chasing too many offers without clarity. Beyond $1M, the challenge becomes maintaining strategic focus and letting go of control. Jessica sums it up by telling us to stop focusing on what everyone else is doing or what social media is saying. Focus on your business, your growth, and your personal vision.
Actionable Insights for Female Entrepreneurs
Jessica Marx’s insights provide a roadmap for female entrepreneurs navigating the challenging transition from solopreneur to CEO. Listening to your customers reveals the differentiators that truly make your brand stand out. Strategic delegation and early investment in hires free up time for growth while building a team of capable “doers” ensures that your business can scale. Implementing systems and processes that allow your business to operate independently is key to long-term success. Simplifying offerings, focusing on customer ascension, and conducting comprehensive business audits can uncover opportunities for growth while maintaining clarity and direction. Finally, centering your decisions on your vision rather than comparing yourself to others helps maintain focus, purpose, and sustainable progress.
In this episode, Jessica shows that scaling a business is as much about mindset and strategic thinking as it is about revenue numbers. From breaking the $100K plateau to growing toward a million-dollar enterprise, she emphasizes the importance of listening to clients, building a team you trust, and creating systems that allow you to step back without sacrificing growth. Her experience offers a real, human perspective for women entrepreneurs seeking to grow with intention. By focusing on what truly matters, female founders can build businesses that are not only profitable but sustainable, freeing, and aligned with the life they want to live.
Key Quotes
“Be aware of your competitive landscape, but really focus in on that research and development, your own business, your own personal growth and what you want to do differently within your market.”
Jessica Marx
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