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Welcome to Make More Money without Selling Your Soul with me Polly Lavarello, evergreen marketing expert. This podcast is for you if you are an online entrepreneur who is looking to simplify their business to scale.  On this podcast you can expect to hear regular talk about wealth, about selling and about wellbeing. Because I believe these three core fundamental things are pivotal to your growth moving forward.

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Welcome to make more money without selling your soul with myself Polly Lavarello, Evergreen marketing expert and cushy business pioneer.

And today I’m talking about the three tools you need to be a CEO. Now, CEO is a bit of a buzzword that you may see thrown around. And when I say a buzzword, it’s not really a buzzword, but it can certainly feel like it’s a buzzword, you know, reach a certain stage in your business. And you’ll suddenly feel like every online business mentor around you is referencing what it is to be a CEO, which is a bit of a funny concept, really, because a lot of us perhaps attach being a CEO with some kind of corporate role. And that’s probably what you were trying to get away from when you were starting your online business. So some people feel really excited around the idea of being a CEO that like yeah, taking myself seriously serious business owner, where other people can feel enormously repelled. But what it really boils down to, is treating your business like you are the owner of your business, rather than just being the doer, you know, being somebody essentially with a glorified job. It’s enabling you to have a business that allows you to be poorly, that allows you to take time off without thinking, Oh, that’s going to incur a pay cut. You know, it’s actually Systemising your business and building this small but mighty team. I mean, in some cases, people go for big teams, but in my case, I’m definitely on the side of small but powerful rather than big, at least that’s where I’m at in my journey right now. And I think it will remain that way. But you never entirely know do you never say never.

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One of the things I like to say, but you know, you do want to you need to be able to do that, in the early stages of starting a business, it’s really true that you know, you’re still figuring out who your ideal client is, you’re probably still refining your offer, you’re probably still getting clear on what you stand for as a brand. I mean, it’s very hard in those early stages of starting a business when someone says what are your values is like, was scuze? Me? You know, I think a lot of the time it’s through the lived experience of running our business where you’re like, Oh, I would never do that. I wouldn’t say that. But you start to recognise Okay, so what do I say? And what do I stand for? And all of these things, you know, lead you to a stage where you’re suddenly start to feel like, oh, okay, I feel like I have a solid brand. I feel like I have an offer that people want. And I’m seeing evidence of that people are buying it, you know, I’m really clear on who it is, I love to help who it is I get the best results for. And that’s all wonderful. But I’d also guess around that stage where you’re confident about all of those things, and you’re starting to trust your ability to make money and that the money is coming in and that you feeling good that you’re also probably feeling pretty tired. Perhaps you’re telling yourself stories like nobody else can do this, the way I do it, I’m not outsourcing because I don’t trust anyone can be as good at writing my social posts, or you know, I don’t know, helping me manage my diary or any of those things. There’s a lot of things at that stage where people will tell themselves, but I can do this. So why wouldn’t I do this? Or I’m great at this. So how can anyone else be better at this, and it can really hold people back. And so that’s why this is such an important conversation. This is why this podcast episode is such a muscle lesson. Because whether you want to call it CEO or business owner, whatever you want to call it, like you know, give it your own term. But ultimately, it is treating your business like you’re working on your business, not just in your business. So that you know, in some cases, you could even end up with a business you could sell at some point. I mean, that’s the ideal scenario. It’d be really nice after all these years that you’re working on something to have something that you could actually you know, sell but but even if you’re not thinking about that right now, and I’ll be honest, where I’m at right now, my business, that’s not my main focus, but as a mom of two small children do I care about having time off and actually being able to be present with my children and not worrying that if I miss something in my inbox that my whole business is gonna go Kaboom 100%

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You know, and as someone who is ADHD, well undiagnosed, ADHD and probably autistic, I, you know, I can really hyper focus I can really get into the weeds with my business, I can become a bit obsessed with my business. And so I

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I have to be incredibly intentional about putting boundaries in place to ensure that I don’t go that way. Because I know that while it can feel good in the moment, it always inevitably results in burnout in IBS in migraines, in feeling sick and missing important dates, in the moment that I finally switch off getting really poorly because my, my body and brain has just been on hyperdrive. For months, you know, I’m not available for that anymore. That was my old story. So you’re probably wondering, okay, this all sounds really good. But what on earth does it require? What do I need to be to be the business owner, maybe some of you are thinking, I really thought I was being a business owner, am I not? Well, let me share some little handy tips. And what I’m gonna say here, while I refer to the three tools, you need to be a CEO. I’m not talking by the way about Asana, or Trello, or clickup, or any of that stuff, I’m not talking about any of that stuff. I’m not talking about whether you shove Asana or clickup, or Trello. Because none of that stuff really matters, like people will tell you what’s worked best for them. But it’s so dependent as to whether you’re a visual learner, or whether you’re, you know, I mean, like people all, like use different tools differently. And there are different tools which will support you with each of these things. So I will share with you the three fundamentals that you need to be thinking about to be able to be the business owner, the CEO, and not be in the weeds all the time. Because also another side effect aside from burnout is, it’s really hard to scale. If you’re in the weeds all the time. If you are deep in the process, if every time you launch something, you come out the other end exhausted, that is not scalable. You know, like this past month, I’ve spent the month really heavily organically promoting my three month container elevate for evergreen, and it went really, really well. But I’m not going to I will tell you something for nothing, I am tired. But the reason why we did it was we wanted to validate the funnel before we start running ads to it. So I did it knowing this is not forever. And this is something I encourage my clients to do when they’re testing a new funnel, we test it organically first. And yes, there is that push before the curse. But it’s totally worth it. Because you know, it’s setting up something that is scalable on the other side. But you do need to think about what is on the other side. And the problem I see in the online business space is a lot of people don’t think about phase two. And they just stay in phase one burning themselves out, you know, working themselves to the ground, launching, launching, launching exhausting themselves, which you know where we are right now in October 2023. The very end is particularly exhausting. With everything going on in the world right now. Like it’s a lot to be selling right now as a human being selling right now, with all the big things going on in the world, it feels heavy.

Okay, so let’s get to how you can be a business owner, I’m to support you, to support you to support your clients better. So now we’re not just talking about making more money, this will also help you deliver your clients better, more predictable results. Okay, so firstly, the first thing I’d ever say to someone who’s thinking about how do I step into being more of a business owner is about hiring, which you’re probably aware of, maybe you’re listening to this going, Yeah, I’ve got a VA Well, I have ticked that box. Good. I’m very happy if you have because essentially, the most valuable thing you have, when you’re starting out business is time. And the second thing I’m going to refer to which is going to help you with your time, your team will also help you implement which allows you to implement a million times faster, which is systems and processes. So what I’m saying here is if you get the systems and processes before you have a team, what you can find yourself doing is spending more hours on systems and less hours on selling. And that will impact your bottom line. And this is something I see happening so regularly to people plus is a kind of element of having systems and processes is not redundant if you don’t have a team, but it’s kind of makes it less. I mean, it’s it’s not true to say it’s redundant and not redundant at all, because it will help you do things more efficiently. Things like dubsado are an absolute dream. So there are systems you can have in place as you know a company of one if that is your stick. But ultimately, one of the easiest ways to hire without any concern is to be really clear on what the value of your time is. When you know that you can be generating 200 pounds an hour and you’re paying an assistant 20 pounds an hour to help you do some your non 200 pound an hour tasks. It’s a total no brainer. But it’s really hard to feel confident about that. If you aren’t aware as to where your time is going and your day to day business, if you’re not aware of what are the most valuable tasks you’re performing in your business. So these are the kinds of things I support my clients to get clear on so that they don’t have to worry about that anymore. And so that they can be clear on that so that when they do you hire it doesn’t feel like this stomach churning. Oh my gosh, this better workout and instead one where you can feel really confident. I mean, of course there are some things that are slightly unknown. Like you know how efficient your team member will be and how

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Well you will gel together and how experienced they’ll be. But even things like that you can, you kind of have a bit of an insurance policy around by having a really, really clear job description, you know, and for me, in my case, I’ve always hired more experienced assistants, who have got experience in the platforms that I want them to support me with, because I don’t have time to be teaching them things. Because, you know, in those early stages, as a new business owner, my time is so valuable. And if I’m having to spend it teaching new systems and processes, it wouldn’t, it would never work. So it either needs to be someone who’s ready and willing to learn those systems and processes, or somebody who’s already come to me already knowing them. And my first assistant was amazing in that case, because she knew so much already, in fact, probably more than I did, which was amazing. If you can hire someone who knows more than you, all the better. Okay, so that’s step one, make sure you have a team, even if it’s small, even if you’re just starting with a VA. And you know, another thing that I should throw in as a little final tip in terms of how to hire is, you know, don’t just hire somebody because someone else goes, I’ve got a social media manager, Oh, I better get one of those two. No, I actually think where you can keep a handle on your your own social media, generally speaking, the better. I have someone who edits my reels for me, because that’s something I can really can get stuck on. But I do the rest of my on social media, because I’ve had a graphic designer create a bunch of templates for me, which means graphics takes seconds, I also have a whole bunch of professional photos, which means I just chuck a professional photo in one of my professionally created templates. And voila, just add some words, and I have a post.

So I prefer to manage my own social content, because ultimately, people are connecting to me, not somebody else. But in other cases where I work with clients who are perhaps dyslexic or not very good with, you know, they find it hard to communicate with words in a way that feels effective, then hiring a social media manager is wonderful. So again, you know, when you’re looking at your business, look at your business, look at your business needs, they will not be the same as everyone else in your mastermind or in your group container or your friend down the road, they will be unique to you. And you will also know which parts of your business are resulting in the most sales and which to double down on. So if you know if you’re not able to look after a certain part of your business, which is serving you well. But business has got too busy to take care of it, hire someone who will help you do it. And it might not always be in the obvious ways. You know, in the case of social media, it might be that you hire someone to do your admin, and various other tasks which don’t require your own creative flair, so that you do have capacity to do social media. So it might be the task you think you need to delegate is actually the one that you need to keep and it’s finding another one in the business, that 100% can be done by somebody else. Okay, so those are the things to consider when hiring.

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Number two is systems and processes. And like I said, I’m not going to get too into this because ultimately, it boils down to a very simple principle, which is, you know, I noticed this a lot with some my one to one. So I work with who are at that stage of kind of, you know, they’ve, they’re hitting the 10k months, they’re attracting clients, and they’re saying to me, right, I’m creating another bespoke package. And I’m Mike Noonan, in in in an interview, like this is the value of having an office suite. You don’t want to be recreating things all the time. Because every time you recreate something, you make it unscalable, you make it really hard to have a process behind it, you make it really hard as a deliverable. So you know, getting clear on your office suite, so that you can have clear systems and processes, clear onboarding processes clear, you know, payment processes clear? Absolutely. I mean, everything like you want everything to be so easy. And this is where having a team member before you think about systems and processes is ideal. Because what I did with my team is I’d say Right, okay, you’re responsible for my calendar, can you look at the most efficient way to manage it so that you know, when I have a client who’s looking to book a call with me, but you know, you’ve sorted out that part of me and I like great done. And another one I’m like, right, you’re responsible for funnels and ads, like, here’s what I want to be looking at. And I do get involved to a certain extent, because obviously funnels and ads are very much my my shebang.

But I also really encourage that autonomy on her part, you know, I’m not going to be there thinking for her. Because otherwise, why would I hire her? You know, like, if I was just spoon feeding somebody, there’d be no point in having a team member. So I’m very much for encouraging the autonomy of my team, I’m very clear on their responsibilities. And when it comes to systems and processes, I’m not spending hours designing what they are, I’m being clear on what my client my team’s responsibilities are, so that they can support me to build out those systems and processes so that I don’t necessarily have to play a huge role in that. I can disrupt a team meeting, they can say, hey, we’re thinking about moving over to let’s say, a sauna rather than whatever we’re using before. And about Yeah, sure. Okay, let’s do that. So, you know, don’t obsess about these things. But you know, because obviously, the systems and processes I use are enormously robust because I’m scaling an evergreen group programme and inviting people into it month to month. And so there’s a lot to track in terms of everyone who’s in there when they’ve started when they finished when their birthdays are what

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What they’ve submitted, where they’re where they’re at in the programme, there’s a lot of data that we’re tracking all the time, alongside all my leads on my discovery calls. And, you know, that means I use air table because it does all those things, mainly automated. And so it’s massively efficient. And so that’s what we use in my business. But earlier on, I use things like Trello, because there just wasn’t enough data swirling around for something like Trello, to not be efficient enough. So you know, don’t get carried away by what you see the big boys using, use what’s relevant to where you’re at in your business, you know, similarly, if you go into something like this has got way more features than we actually need, then you’re probably right now either look at those features, see if they’re helpful or not, and if not, bring it back. But yeah, allow those systems and processes to be there. And importantly, look at them, if at any point, you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, if things are dropping through the cracks, that is an invitation to reassess your systems and systems and processes. Like every conversation I ever have, with my team, wherever something has, like not gone the way I wanted it to. The question always is, okay, right, what’s going on in our systems and processes that’s allowed this to happen? And that’s the conversation.

It’s that simple. It’s never about finger pointing. It’s never about blaming, it’s always about okay, what can we do better as a business? What can I do better as a CEO, to ensure you guys are supported with the systems and processes to enable us to not fall through the cracks again, and it creates a really healthy, happy, you know, self reliance, you know, I love it. I love the kind of culture that I have in my small but mighty business, we may be a small team, but we are respectful, we are kind, we pick up the pieces for each other, we support each other. And it’s because we can have clean businesslike conversations around systems and processes when something isn’t working accurately. And you know, questions like how can I support you better to ensure that this process is followed? So there we have it, number two, systems or processes. And three, finally, the final piece when it comes to being a business owner, is recognising that yeah, having a team and having, you know, processes and all these systems and processes and having software and all the stuff? Yeah, it’s an extra outgoing. So what do you need to do, if you’re doing that you are going to need scale.

Like there’s no kind of going backwards, you’re either growing or you’re shrinking. So I do encourage you to like look bigger, think bigger, you know, it’s not intimidating to invest in systems and software, it’s not intimidating to invest in a team, when you feel confident that you can also scale your revenue. And obviously, that’s why I come in with the majority of my offers, which are around how to how to create a really high impact high ticket group programme that enables you to confidently forecast, sizeable months, which enable you to feel confident about investing and everything else. And you know, the final piece that’s really going to support you to ensure that that is a consistent is advertising. And I really want to speak to this very, very briefly, because I’m conscious, we’re approaching the kind of Mac’s mark around how long I’d like to make these episodes. But I think, you know, I’m really seeing at the moment that organic marketing is not doing the heavy lifting it used to, and advertising really is as efficient if not more efficient than it used to be. And as long as you’ve got an office suite, that enables you to confidently sell on sales calls, there is no reason not to be running ads. So I highly recommend if you are not already running ads to be considering it, I do actually have an offer ripple to rise accelerator, which is all about running your first load of ads,

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with a budget of any 10 pounds a day. But list building and growing your list all the time is you will always have people to sell to. So I’m saying this in the context of there is absolutely no point, investing in systems and software, investing in a team, if you’re not also investing in your growth, because those things alone systems will not help you grow. They’ll help you be more efficient when people come in. And yeah, they’ll give you some time back. They’ll give you the foundations to grow from but they will not in and of themselves allow you to grow. People won’t go out, we’ve got to go work with that person over there, they’ve got great systems doesn’t work like that, as I’m sure you can imagine. Similarly, they don’t care if you’ve got a VA or a team, it will make their experience better means they’re more likely to recommend you to their friends, and you know, you’re more likely to get more clients. So it does help to a certain extent. But it’s only ever going to do so much like both of those things will help to a certain extent. They’ll both help you get you know, a few more inquiries, clients having a better experience, more predictable kind of outcomes for your clients, which again, you know, all that stuff is really good. But your growth will massively stagger. If you rely on those things alone. You 100% want to be advertising as well. So there we have it. I think I’m going to do a separate episode. In fact, here we have it. I am going to do a separate episode on advertising because I’ve been having a lot of questions recently about should they should people be starting funnels around

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running ads to low ticket offers to offset their list building costs. And I’ve got some bad news for you. It’s not quite as simple as that. So I’m going to break that all down in next week’s episode, cannot wait to share it. If you didn’t know this about me, I do have a micro ads agency we spend we’ve Well, we’ve helped clients to generate millions of pounds at this stage over the last three years and spend multi six figures in ad spend, probably yearly annually, I’d say I needed to get the numbers. Now we’re in October. But essentially, I know what I’m talking about when it comes to advertising. If you are not aware of the side of me, because I know up until now you’ve probably been thinking but she she’s the Evergreen mighty. So yeah. Next week, we’ll all be about that. Look forward to sharing it with you then if you enjoy today’s episode, please help me get this in the ears as as many business owners as possible. I really, really love hearing back from people sharing that these episodes have really helped them move the needle in their business. And I would love that to be the case on business owners. So if you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, please do share it feel free to tag me I will then reshare your share and to share that love back. But that would be that would mean so much to me. So if you could do a little gesture of sharing this episode, I would be so happy and if it’s not this episode, please feel free to share your favourite episode. I’d be really curious to know which one it is. And that’s it. I’ll be in your house next week. See you then.