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Welcome to Make More Money Without Selling Your Soul. The podcast for bold entrepreneurs ready to simplify scale and reclaim their time. I’m Polly Lavarello, Evergreen scaling strategist and cushy business pioneer. Join me and my occasional guests as we explore the themes of wealth, selling and well-being, because building a business that works for you changes everything. Let’s dive in.

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Hello and welcome to the show. Today, I’m talking about the five ways to double your revenue in 2026 and it may sound too good to be true, but believe me, by the time you finish listening to this episode, you are going to feel confident about your ability to increase your profitability, your revenue in your business. I have shared these five profitability levers over the last couple of years, and every single time, I’ve never had anyone who’s gone ahead and implemented on the other side not make more money. So this is, this is a gold nugget of an episode. Make a cup of tea. Get comfortable like tune in. I actually shared these five levers with one of my clients communities last week, and seeing the response to it was just so gorgeous that I thought, right, that’s what my next podcast episode needs to be about. And the reason why I chose to do that workshop in the first place was this is a new community I was coming in front of they’re relatively new to selling in the online space or selling services online. At least some of them were so I was trying to create a workshop on the basis of what will be the most powerful thing to help people understand a the possibility that comes alongside having a successful online business. And B, where to focus once you are aware of that possibility, because I think one of the biggest challenges we have at every stage in business, this doesn’t doesn’t just apply to those in the earlier phases of building a successful online business. This happens at any stage. Our biggest enemy is overwhelm. Because if you listen to my previous episode where I talked about our ability to be with discomfort, one of the things that gets in our way is overthinking, which leads to inaction. We hypothesize our way to success, and your thoughts aren’t going to pay the bills, honey, the conversations you’re having, the relationships you’re building, the actions you’re taking. Because, as I mentioned in the last episode, it’s not that every single action of yours is going to strike gold. You can, you know, like the most frustrating and ironic part of running my business is that sometimes the things that I spend the most time laboring over, that I get the most excited about, just drop like I get them out to the real world, and ain’t nobody picking it up. And it’s so frustrating because I’ve spent hours building that thing up. Then sometimes it’s a moment of inspiration and a Google doc invitation that suddenly sees me having, like, what, like, one of my biggest months in the year, right? So that’s the challenge with business, is that we can think out, you know, we can think if we spend lots of time and hours, you know, bit like, we go into our schoolgirl mode, right? We’re like, oh, well, if I was at school and I said to the teacher, I spent hours doing this, even if it was a bit crap, they’re still going to pat us on the head and say, good job, because they were rewarding us for our hard work. But there’s nobody doing that in the online space. 

Nobody’s saying, well done for working hard. They just want to see the thing that’s going to get them the results. And you know, ultimately, there will be trial and error, there will be many failures, but if we stay in that space of inaction and overwhelm, where we aren’t going to do anything, so how do we get away from that? How do we confidently move forward? Because equally, there’s a very valid and legitimate fear of like, okay, I get it. I shouldn’t be in overwhelm. I shouldn’t be overthinking. But the challenge is, when I sit down at my laptop and think, right do I look at my accounting right now? Does that need tidying up? Do I look at my social media marketing? Should I be spending more time on that? Should I be recording another reel and getting even more visible. Should I be nurturing my mailing list? Is my newsletter strategy, correct? Am I launching this month or is that too soon? Should I be I mean, the questions, right? Like, I’m not going to add any more. I can feel, I can feel the stress building in me just coming up with the examples. Like, it’s exhausting, isn’t it? The option overwhelm, because when we’re. Our own business, we’re spinning loads of different plates, between the accounting, between the marketing, between the client, delivery, the onboarding, the off boarding, the client, new re, engagement, reactivation, systems and strategy. I mean, there’s so many different things that we can be thinking about doing all at once, particularly where we haven’t started outsourcing anything. It’s all very well saying, be consistent. Do the thing, don’t overthink it. But what am I even not overthinking? 

Can be the question, right? Okay, and if you’re having that question, you are not alone. I mean, to be honest with you, it’s the main motivation behind why I hire most of my mentors, because I know that it really helps. You know. So the challenge for me, sharing a bit behind the scenes here that I have is I’ve helped various clients get to seven figures and high multi six figures, multi six figures, beyond very often, what I’ve achieved, I’ve never gotten to seven figures myself as a brand, but I’ve helped various businesses get there. And the challenge can be, is that all of them have slightly different approaches. So one thing to know, if you are an established business owner listening to this, is that you know, it’s not the copy paste Polly laverello method. Yes, there are core elements to every business that don’t change, but there are various different ways to get there, and various different businesses have different strengths in their marketing arsenal that we often double down on, and that won’t look the same for absolutely everyone. And so sometimes, for me, the challenge has been getting a bit distracted by all of that, thinking, Oh, but if I layer in a bit of what’s working over here, and so I can, I can, like the rest of us, even though I’m a strategist, even though I know we should listen to the data, it can be easy to kind of envy someone else’s business model and think, but what if I just made that my focus for a year? And the challenge is I wouldn’t make it my focus for a year. I’d be distracted after a month and be thinking about something else. Hello, ADHD, so you know, one of the things I’ve done to improve that is to hire a mentor who can just help me keep on focusing, keep on doing the things that are actually going to get me to where I need to be, to basically quiet down that impulsive ADHD part of my brain and just do the damn thing I had six months last year without a coach. And to be honest with you, I look back on it and I regret it, because I was kind of spinning my wheels and not getting anywhere anytime fast, and that changed the moment I invested so it really, really helps to not be in overwhelm and to focus on things now. You might not be in a position right now to invest, or maybe you’re stuck in an investment that ain’t getting you anywhere fast, but you can’t get get anywhere. Or you might even be thinking about, who should my next investment be, or what should my next investment be? And this episode is going to help you understand the five different things that you can do to double your revenue in 2026 so that you do not get into a place of overwhelm, because based on what I’m about to share with you now, you will feel a lot more confident about what you need to be doubling down on in 2026 to make more sales. So let’s get into it without further ado, let’s dive right in. 

Okay, so one of the really beautiful things about online business, and this is what I really learned through being an ads manager, which I think you know so many people, if they’ve not done that part of business, which, let’s face it, most people haven’t. They don’t understand this, we can start to tell ourselves that a lot of our business success is down to chance. Oh, well, I just happened to be on that stage. I just happened to meet that person. That person just happened to shout me out, when actually, there is a hell of a lot more we can actually control in our business to get forecastable, measurable results. I hope that makes you really happy to hear, and that’s one of the things that’s really worked in my favor since I started running as a personal brand, because I came with that ads background, where I knew that the math always maths. Conversion Rates always stay consistent. They will wobble slightly, but when you get something working, you get to double down on it. Okay, now you might be thinking, how’s this all related? Polly, what I’m trying to say to you here is there are data points in your business, and don’t worry. I’ll explain what and how, where and where you find them and what to do with them. That will help you know what to work on and what to double down on. So they’re five different levers. The first lever to more profitability. If you were to double this, you would double your sales, is if you were to double your leads, double your leads in 2026,

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and you will make double the sales. So let’s say, and when I say leads, a lot, people always say to me, what does a lead mean? Does that mean a follower? Does it mean a conversation? Does it mean a sales call to me, it means a mailing list subscriber. Okay? Because what we know to be true, and this is something you can also look at. You can look at how many people do you have on your mailing list, and out of those on your mailing list, how many of them have purchased from you, and that will give you your average conversion rates. The industry average is one. 3% but I have worked with some people who have anything as high as 10% and I’ve worked with those who are teetering a bit below 1% which indicates there’s work to be done on their positioning and their offer development and all those things. But generally speaking, if our marketing is in order, what we’re doing is consistent, we will have a pretty consistent conversion rate. So what we know to be true is, if you, let’s say, made 30 sales out of 1000 people on your mailing list last year, where you double your leads and bring in 2000 leads, you can double your sales and bring in 60 of them next year. Isn’t that sexy? So simple. Now you might be questioning, well, Polly, what does that look like? How do I double my leads? So let me just throw in a few examples. So I’m not just leaving you with a concept and no nothing to move forward with, because that would be very helpful when I would it. Now, obviously, if I were to fully go into all the lead stuff, we could be here for like, days, and I’m trying to make this episode half an hour long for Your sake more than mine. So let me just give you a few clues. Advertising. Now, how do we get more leads? Is building, borrowing or buying, right? That old, that old thing, build, borrow, buy. Building is social media. Is growing your social media list, that part we have less control over. So would you know for you to be able to confidently say, I’m going to double my leads in 2026 your social media strategy would need to be incredibly robust and incredibly predictable, which, even with some of the best social media managers I know, is very hard. Predictability is less of a thing. You know. You can have a reel that does phenomenally, and yes, your growth will improve, but it’s not necessarily, you know. You can’t promise yourself you’re going to go viral every month. So that’s less measurable or predictable or forecastable borrow that looks like, you know, if you don’t have money right now to spend on ads. 

And so many people avoid this because they find it really uncomfortable, but it is to get in front of other people’s relevant audiences. So let’s say you are an antenatal you know, you help people after they’ve given birth to babies. That’s not even antenatal is it shows how much I know. But anyway, helping people after they’ve given birth to babies, and you find someone who is a yoga teacher who does the same thing, or a person who does baby massage, and you’re not competing with one another, because the service you offer is different, but you both are marketing to the same audience. You could reach out to them and say, Hey, I’ve got an audience of x and I would really love to promote your work. Would you be happy to look at a kind of exchange where you share my freebie? I share your freebie. Doesn’t need to be more complicated than that. You can simply say, I’ve got this great guide. I would love for it to get in front of more people, even if you could add a PS to one of your newsletters, saying, Hey, I know this person. I think she’s got this great guide. Have a look at the guide first so you feel good about it before you share it. I would love for you to share it with people and make it easy for them do the template email that they can send out so you they don’t have to do the hard work. So that’s the borrow part. And then buying is advertising, which, again, is more feasible for some than others if you do not have the money to invest in advertising right now, I would start with the borrowing part. Because, like, I say, the building bit is the kind of thing that you could come back to me in two months time and say, Oh, I’ve been doing all the right things. I’ve been posting regularly. I’ve been doing this, and it’s still not changing anything, okay, so that we have less control over so move into the borrowing part of that strategy before buying. If you’re not in a position to buy, if you are, you know, starting small and consistent with advertising. I mean, today is the best time to get started with advertising. You’ll never regret advertising. 

Every business that makes sales look easy involves advertising. So, yeah, so doubling your leads will double your sales. Number two, what’s the second thing you can do to double your sales next year? Well, let’s go back to the original analogy, let’s say your mailing list grew by 1000 and of those 1000 you made 30 sales. If we were to go, I mean, that would already be a very good conversion rate. So actually, let’s change that example. Let’s say, out of those 1000 you converted 10, you converted 1% of people on your mailing list, and where we know there’s definitely capacity to improve that conversion rate. What if we got it up to 2% if you were to simply double your conversions, then you would make double the sales now the exciting thing about doubling your conversions is it can look like a variety of things. It can look like updating your sales page to make it more effective. That can look like your messaging, that could look like the user experience that it’s streamlined and professional and not clunky and clear. That could look like hiring a copywriter, or you working on the copy. That could look like having more sales conversations, making a point of like, you know what? I’m not going to hide away from sales calls anymore. I’m going to have double the amount of sales calls, which means I’m going to make double the amount of invitations to people, or I’m really going to up my game with sales conversations and be less blase about them and really learn to get good at them. And I’m going to convert double the amount of sales calls, which, again, I would take into context as to how well they’re already converting. If you already have a very healthy conversion rate, then that might not be the most realistic place to start. I. But you know, if your sales calls, conversion rates like 20% on something that you know could be 40 or 60, then that would be a great place to start. Okay, so number one is doubling your leads. Number two is doubling your conversions. Now, of course, if you did both at once, I mean,

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you’re going to do even better than double, right? You know, if you decided to kind of try both, because you’re not entirely convinced you can double your leads, and you’re not entirely convinced you’re definitely double your conversions. If you do both at the same time, you’re most likely to, you know, like you’re put you’re doubling down on your odds of succeeding here, right the third option. Now this one’s really easy, but sometimes difficult, depending on where you’re at with your pricing, but it is to you know, if you wanted to make double your sales, simplest way, double your prices. Simple right now, for some people, you’ll be listening to this going, oh my goodness, double my prices. No, I’m already at, like, at peak in my industry. I can’t do any more in that case, you know, you can obviously focus on one and two, the leads and the conversions. But what I would say to most people is, if you’ve not increased your prices in the last six months, 12 months max, then you should at least be increasing on the grounds of inflation. You might not be able to double it, but already you’ll increase your sales just from increasing your prices. So do not, you know, sit, sit on those things. I sometimes hear the argument of like, oh, but you know, everything’s become more expensive. So, you know, I don’t want to be another thing that’s more expensive, and that totally dismisses the fact that things have also become more expensive for you. And if you want to be a viable business, then you need to increase your prices. Okay, so that’s number three. Number four, the other thing you can do, and this, again, is one of probably the easier things you can do, is look at your client retention rate and look at your client reactivation rate. What that means, what I mean by client reactivation is, let’s say you have a 90 day program. 

Are you just letting them kind of go back into the kind of effort and never come back? Or are you creating ways to for them to continue working with you. I guess one of the things I really want to say here is I find it astounding how often people make up stories about why 90 days is enough and people really don’t need any more. And that really isn’t your decision to make. Because I know that I have some clients who I feel like could be done and dusted, who still choose to work me for years and years and years. And my goodness, do they grow like my goodness, the success we’ve created together because of that commitment to our working relationship is quite phenomenal. And equally, I’ve seen people who, you know, who don’t feel done, but stop anyway, and it’s almost like they’ve gone back to the beginning again. So if we’re really doing the best. And of course, of course, before we even get into any of that, just on pure sales psychology, what we know to be true is that, as someone who’s already bought from you once, they’re 80% more likely to buy from you again. So we often get into the habit, as online business owners, of thinking like, how do I make more sales? Oh, I need to get more visible on social media. I need to share more stories. I need to share that post on LinkedIn. And we’re missing what they refer to in the marketing world as the lowest hanging fruit. We’re missing the most obvious opportunity for sales from the people who’ve already purchased from us. Like a really nice example of that is I work with a nutritional therapist who, about every six months, reaches out and says, Hey, how are you doing since we worked together? You know, here is a latest package I have to help you, kind of build upon the work we’ve already done together. And I’ve taken her up like every I don’t know, it’s not every time she emails me, but I do take her up every so often, because, you know, I’ve had a nutritional therapist say to me, oh, but the work we do is so comprehensive. Once it’s done, it’s done, it’s done, it’s like, Well, I’m a mum and I am changing. My hormones are changing. I’m going to turn 40 next year. My stress levels are always changing, and I have chronic health conditions which evolve and have changed and have improved. But my goodness, like, I feel like I’m a different like, every time this woman re engages with me, this nutritional therapist. She’s not reaching out to the same person anymore. And also, I’m just a simple human being who requires accountability sometimes, who requires that push to remind myself stock up on those supplements, get back into that healthy habit of having that particular kind of meal every day, and it just helps me get back into a groove. You know, I think sometimes we over complicate stuff in our heads. We’re like, they need all this knowledge. Like, no, actually, a lot of the time they just want a human on their side, someone to support them in what they’re doing. A bit of accountability, a bit of focus, and for them to be choosing to prioritize themselves. Like, honestly, again, we can be so busy with our stories. Stories very often are not helpful when it comes to sales, and you know, taking bold action. Okay, so number one was doubling your leads. Number two is increasing or doubling your conversions. Number three is doubling your prices. Number four is doubling your client retention rate. Like, how can you engage people to continue working with you? And keep it simple? So like in my Excel. Accelerator, for example, it’s 12 months long, and my one to one packages look like three, no, yeah, three, six or 12 months. But every one to one gets the opportunity to extend. 

And like I say, I’ve got one, one to one client who’s now in her fourth year working with me, and I’ve got accelerator clients who have, I mean, again, like three or four years in, still I’m gonna accelerator isn’t in four years old yet. Next year will be four years old, but they will be four years old, but they will be at four years by the time they finished, because they’ve just renewed. And it’s really simple. I don’t have loads of offers. It’s just that, if you’re in the accelerator, if you’re enjoying the monthly challenges I run, if you’re enjoying following the curriculum, if you’re enjoying the three calls we do a month, as well as the resident experts, if that is helping you grow, why would you walk away? Why would you not stay? Why would you go to another mentor who’s going to have a different approach, a different focus, if the approach and focus that we have inside the accelerator is working for you, and why would I put them into a membership with a few people, when they can be in that same space and profit from it? So you know, it doesn’t have to look complicated. It’s figuring out what works for you and what works for them, but it makes a huge difference to your business’s profitability. I would say probably 70% of my revenue comes from repeat clients or retain or clients who’ve chosen to renew and renew and renew. So it makes you know, if you look at most multi six figure businesses, 70% of that revenue often looks like repeat or retained clients. Okay, so it really, really matters. And finally, the fifth lever to doubling your profitability in 2026 is doubling your efficiency. So that looks like your systems and how you execute the tasks in your business. 

So it might be that there is a part of your business that if it were automated, you would work half the hours, which then frees up your ability to actually focus on those sales or marketing activities that you’ve been putting off. That may look like hiring a team member that enables you to have more capacity for the things that generates more sales. Like one of the biggest blockers we have to sales is getting so busy in client delivery, so busy in the do and being the business that we don’t get to work on the business. And that leaves us in that awful predicament of, you know, looking at our really happy clients, looking at how we’re changing their lives. But when that client drops off suddenly, being in a position of like, Oh God, I now have to start the whole process of bringing somebody in and because we know most buying cycles can last, last anywhere between 90 days to six months, that can leave you with a huge expanse of time where you’re questioning if your business is working or not. And of course, the more irons we have in the fire. As a phrase I was trying to remember the last podcast, I think it was, the more ions we have in the fire, the more conversations we’re having, the more relationships we’re nurturing. The more marketing we’re doing while we are still delivering means we do not have that existential spiral that can happen in between clients because we already have a waitlist. We already have clients lined up. That part is done. Another nice thing, of course, when it comes to doubling your efficiency, isn’t just about systems and, you know, team members, it can also look like your business model. So obviously, you probably know by now, one of the things that I’m massively passionate about is, you know, one to one has a limit. It has a cap. And one of the depressing things about one to one work is that when you reach your like max potential, and you are booked out, which, of course, in the early stages, when we start out, that’s all we want to be able to say, I’m fully booked. It feels really great, right until you look at your calendar and you’re like,

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I now have to show up for all of these calls. And on top of that, I now also need to find the time to market to ensure that I remain fully booked. And it can feel it can feel exhausting, and it certainly doesn’t feel like freedom. And the holidays roll around, when you get sick and you’re suddenly wondering how to, you know, actually fit all those one to one calls in the following week, because you can’t do them in one week. I mean, there’s so many ways that it can truly suffocate you. And I say that from my own lived experience, because I had a year where I focused on one to one, where I kind of, I don’t know, had a bit of a come down from the sudden growth that my business had early on. And I do remember, like pretty much probably this time last year, I got the flu, and I was ill for a week, and it just turning my stomach, looking at my calendar as it filled up with all the calls I was having to cancel and they were rolling into the following week, and I was like, Great, I’m going to come back, probably a bit shaky and a bit of a shell of a human being, and I’m going to have the most packed diary. And I just remember just going to bed at eight o’clock every night after those calls, because I was so so tired, and that was probably around them on the moment. 

So I was really motivated to go all in on really making my accelerator be my focus for my business, because it doesn’t require that kind of level of commitment and exhaustion that comes alongside. So yeah, one of the ways you can improve your efficiency is like, how can you help more clients in less time with a group program? So yeah, if you’ve not explored that, I have various free resources. I also have a fabulous Guide. Called the profitable practitioners guide, where I break down the things you want to be considering if you want to increase your profitability. So if you found this episode helpful, but you want to explore it even more and look at the mindset Gremlins that can get in the way. Because I can guarantee you, as you were listening to this episode, I bet there were some stories like, I can’t double my prices. Oh, hire a team member. No, no, I’m really far away from that. Oh, you know, double my leads. Oh, crapper visibility. I bet there were stories, and I hope, by the way, there weren’t all of those, but those are examples of what I’ve heard people say to me when they hear those things. They’re like, Oh, you know, we can start making excuses as to why it’s not possible for us to do any of those things. But you know, if you’re choosing what to focus on, if you’re like, I’m going to write a book. Does writing a book improve any of those things? It’s probably going to minimize your efficiency. It’s not going to double your leads, it’s not going to double your conversions. So chances are right now, your book, if your sales aren’t where they need to be, should be on the back burner. Your Podcast should be on the back burner, where you’re not making sales. Those five levers are the only things you should be focusing on. You know, where you’re not making the sales you desire. I should say, I’m not saying, where you’re not making sales, where you’re not making the sales you desire. Focus on those things before you focus on anything else, and then come and thank me at the end of 2026 when you’ve doubled your revenue. Because it really does get to be that simple, but the mindset, grammars can get in the way. And I discuss what those can look like and how to get past them inside the profitable practitioners Guide, which is entirely free and is linked in the show notes, so do go check it out. And that’s it for me. I’ll be in your ears next week talking about how to plan for your most profitable 2026 so I’ll be talking more about what’s required to have the kind of focus you need to go into 2026, to actually take what I’ve just shared with you, theoretically today, and actually make it happen. Okay, I’ll be in your ears. Then. I’m looking forward to it as always. Any questions, jump into my DMs. If you enjoyed this episode, please do like, please do share, please do review. It really helps my podcast reach as many years as possible, and that makes me so, so happy, right? See you soon.