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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 Friends and welcome to the show. Today, I am talking about the secret weapon to success that isn’t an offer or a funnel. Now, as a heads up, I’d been promising you an episode where I’d be answering your questions, but the way I record this podcast is done pretty much week to week, potentially sometimes month to month, because the online business space is constantly evolving and shifting, and I want to be able to respond to that. I also quite like treating it almost like a dear diary type episode where I speak to what I see as being super relevant and pertinent at the time. Now, the negative side of approaching recording podcasts like that is if I get poorly, like I have been for the last two weeks, it really throws me off my tracks. So I had the flu two weeks ago, and over the last week, I have had the worst cold known to man. But I don’t know about you, but one of the things I find happens when I’m feeling unwell is that it encourages a bit of introspection, and that that introspection, in and out of itself, can hold its own value. And I started to kind of make observations about those who I succeed see succeeding with more ease, and those who I see succeeding with less ease. And somebody recently reflected to me, Polly, you just make it look easy, and I found that a really interesting thing to say, because it’s not always been easy for me at all. So let me give you some context. My business now is over five years old. For three of those five years, it’s been generating multi six figures every single year. The first two years, I think I was approaching six figures just I was just below enough to need to pay VAT. And the following year was about, I think it was about 180 or something. So it was approaching multi six figures in the second year of business, things happened pretty fast, and that’s one of the reasons why people say, Polly, you made this look really easy. People also generally seem to reflect that I have a very positive mental attitude, which they assume is the result of me being successful and having it easy, and it couldn’t be further away from the truth. So I really wanted to break down well, what’s helped me and what can help you? So we’re going to be talking about the secret weapon that quietly fuels my sales, my momentum and my results in business. And no, it’s not a funnel, it’s not an offer, and it’s not some shiny new piece of software or viral content strategy. And no, it’s not AI. It’s actually a way of thinking and a way of being so a lot of people, for example, who are making AI look amazing right now, they’re asking it the right questions. They’re showing up with the right identity. Those pieces play a huge role as well. Now, I know it might sound vague at first, but stay with me, because I’m going to break it down into specifics. Would you expect any less from me? And it will completely change how you sell, how you show up, and how people respond to you and please. You’re just gonna have to put up with my slightly raspy voice today. But here’s the truth, right? And this is gonna sound pretty profound, coming from a strategist. Strategy is not enough. If it were, we’d all be thriving. Strategy is everywhere. You can reverse engineer someone else’s funnel. You can buy templates. You know how I’ve been wildly transparent about how I make money in my business, and plenty of other successful online business owners are too. But the thing is, you can copy someone else’s strategy and still not see results. Why? Because you’re not them. And the difference isn’t the funnel, it’s who you’re being with that funnel. So let’s get into it. Because I wanted to record this episode, not just for those of you who are growing your online business and are perhaps new to me, but for my clients as well. This is something I cover a lot in the accelerator. It’s something I touch upon as people work through the curriculum. I talk about the feelings that can come up alongside being in the curriculum we’re actually working on creating some new resources to support people with the inevitable wobbles that come alongside both failure and growth. Actually, it’s never just one or the other, but today, I wanted to put a huge emphasis around failure. So let’s. Start with, let’s start with the whole sense of being over strategy. Let’s make sure we’re on the same boat before I go into the other pieces.

So you can have two people hand you the exact same business model and tools, and one will take off while the other one flounders. In fact, you could be properly handed an already successful business with leads and sales and a funnel and two different people, one will probably continue to scale it and get it all the way to seven to eight figures. Well, somebody else will potentially sabotage the entire thing until the entire thing collapses. Can you believe that to be true? It’s a bit like putting some fancy car in the hands of two different people. The nervous driver is still going to be a nervous driver, doesn’t matter what car they’re driving, it’s still going to look the same. Okay? So the strategy doesn’t change. The person does. If you’re bringing doubt, desperation or pick me, please energy to your strategy. It’s going to fall flat. If you don’t trust in the strategy, and you constantly look for ways for how it might fail you, then it will probably fail you. If you trust in the ability that being consistent with the strategy you succeed, you will succeed. You know, the gym is a great example of this. If you trust that by next summer, you’ll have abs, and you go in consistently and commit to all the exercises that will get you abs. Chances are by next summer, you’ll have abs. If you decided you needed to have ABS today and you went into the gym, you’d probably be massively disappointed, because we can’t fix and solve those things within one day. And it’s same. It’s the same with online business. If you expect to be a millionaire overnight, then chances are you’re going to be disappointed. But if you take the same, aligned, concerted efforts towards a strategy, trusting that when you keep on showing up and you keep on learning and you keep on doing the same thing, that you will inevitably be successful, then you will be one of those people who’s there. But let me also remind you how many people, admittedly, myself included in this example, who show up to the gym and within a few months give up because it’s too hard, it’s too long, and some days don’t feel great. Business is just the same. But if you’re bringing grounded confidence, calm authority and deep trust, that same exact strategy can blow up in the very best way.

So if you’re obsessing over what to do next, I want you to take a breath, because a real shift happens when you focus on who you’re being while you do it, when you lean in this, into the self trust of thinking, Okay, I’ve got the tools, but which one do I need to be using right now? Which one is going to serve me and my ideal client best? And if you can’t see your blind spots, maybe that’s something you should bring to your coach or mentor and say, I feel like I’m doing X, Y, Z right now. Is there anywhere where you feel I’m not quite showing up the way I think I am? But generally speaking, I find before I’ve even uttered those words to my coach or mentor, the answers already come up for me, wherever I’m feeling the most resistance, wherever I know I’m not showing up 110% that is where I’m sabotaging myself, and that is where there is more opportunity. It’s pretty simple, really. When it comes to online business, you need leads, you need to be nurturing them, and you need to be making sales. And if your business isn’t succeeding, chances are at least one of those areas you are neglecting at least. But that’s how simple it is. So that’s where the answers nearly always lie with you. Because if you take the time to write down, what aligned action are you taking around growing your list, what aligned action are you taking around nurturing that list, and what aligned action are you taking around making sales? Usually the answer is right there in front of us, because what we may perceive to be intentional action may actually translate to, I don’t know, five minutes reaching out to people each week to make sales. And maybe if you change that to half an hour, that could be the difference that you’re seeking. It’s often pretty simple and not complicated, right? The other lens I like encourage people to look at things through is money now and money later. You know, am I focusing on both of those things? Because if I’m only focusing on money now, I’m going to permanently feel like I’m in hustle mode. But if I only focus on the activities to generate money later, like building a funnel, for example. Then equally, I may then start wondering, Why is nobody paying me right now? So you want to be focusing on both. Okay, so that’s about who we are being. Now, I want to talk about your ability to bounce back over perfectionism, and this is something that I’ve really, really had to learn. Okay, so this is probably another core principle that you have heard before, but you may not have truly integrated it yet, and it’s this, your ability to bounce back from failure is your greatest business asset.

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If you’re not where you want to be yet, chances are you haven’t marked. Stood this in the way that you think you have. A mentor once said to me back in 2022 that she was amazed by how fast I could recalibrate. She’d seen me take hits. She’d see me showing up on Voxer and spiraling. She’d see me stalling, and she’d see how fast I would process and adjust, even faster at the time, it felt like a relatively casual comment, but now I see it as one of the most powerful compliments I could have received, because, truthfully, in my first 18 months of business, I made investments that weren’t perfect fits, and I think that’s probably highly relatable to most right, like you know, I massively believe in the value of finding mentors and guides in our journey in online business, because we are walking on new terrains, and if we can be on that terrain with someone who has got more experience, who can highlight the pitfalls that we can avoid and Help us do the things that you know, get into the habits and activities and actions that will get us to where we want to be sooner, then that is only a positive thing, but learning to be discerning very often. We need to experience what we don’t like before we learn what we do like. It’s a bit like the first time you start eating food. You need to try various different flavors before you start to recognize, oh, I’m not that kind of person. I don’t like coffee. I mean, who doesn’t like coffee? But anyway, I don’t like a certain flavor. And so you’ll start to create, you’ll know what your taste buds are, and you will create meals and recipes that match that. And in the online business space, it’s no no different. Quite often we need to be like, Oh, okay, so I really don’t respond well to coaches who do X, but because we’ve never been in that kind of environment before, it’s not unusual that we have to experience what we don’t like before we realize what we do. So some programs I outgrew really quickly. Some weren’t aligned, and yet I was still successful. And people would ask me how, and in many ways, I was succeeding despite the programs I was in, because I was trusting in my own knowing, not just blindly following someone else’s path, but instead looking at what can I learn from this person, even if I don’t agree with X, Y and Z, there was something that drew me to their energy and to the way that they do things.

So what is it that I am here to learn? What is the return on investment that I am here to make? And I tell you that attitude and energy and approach to all investments I make has made the world a difference, similar to what I shared earlier on, about if you don’t trust the strategy to succeed, it won’t similarly, if you don’t trust that you’re going to get a return on investment in your investments, then you won’t when you look for the return on investment and when you trust that it is coming, it will always be there, even if it is a giant red flag for what to avoid in the future. Believe me, that in and out of itself is valuable in the same way that I did hatha yoga and I enjoyed it, but guess what? It didn’t give me. You know, later on, when I did strength training, I much preferred that as a physical activity that I wanted to do several times a week. Now that doesn’t mean I hate hatha yoga. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it, and actually, it taught me its own valuable things, but it doesn’t mean I still need to be doing it while I do the other thing that I enjoy more, right? So honestly, I think if we can create the analogies that we need to understand our relationship with business, it will take a lot of the emotional intensity that some people can carry around the decisions that they are making in their business. Okay? So in hindsight, the return on investment was always there in the form of connections, clarity and contrast, like that first big program I was ever a part of. The majority of my clients the following year came from that space. I still attract clients from that space, and I still have a really valuable relationship with the mentor from that space, because I also have a huge amount of compassion for people building and creating and being pioneers in the online space that they are not always going to get it right, and chances are, the spaces that woman creates now look very different to what they did then, because of all the things that she learned and actually witnessing her recalibrate and learn and evolve and adjust as she was growing was very, very powerful. And not waiting for things to be perfect, not waiting for conditions to be perfect, was, in and out of itself, an incredibly valuable learning. So, you know, we get to bring a beautiful bias to how we do things that will really help support us get that return on investment.

You know, because we really do need to normalize this when you’re building a business, some of it won’t work. That doesn’t mean you don’t work. It means you’re in the messy middle, and that’s often, actually where the gold is. And there’s a lot to learn from that. The other thing I want you to think about is your capacity overconfidence. So let’s get into the next layer of what it requires when i. Talk about the identity we bring to our business and the success we need to bring to it. Okay? And this is something I really want you to hear. It’s not about confidence, it’s about capacity. So interestingly, a lot of people reflect me when they hear me hosting this podcast, for example, like Polly, you come across really confident. I’m not confident. I’m an extroverted introvert, like when I go to parties, you’ll occasionally find me in a little side room just taking a moment out to myself, or standing out in the garden having a little moment to myself, or hiding in a corner chatting away to the one person who’s probably feeling similar to me. I can be confident in certain environments because, for example, I’ve hosted various mastermind days by now, so I’ve learned to be excited about them and enjoy them. But the first one I ever hosted, I was quivering like a fricking leaf. Okay, so confidence isn’t the thing that we have before we do the thing. Confidence is a byproduct from doing the thing. So up until this day, we’re 2025 June, 2025. I have still not stood on a stage as an online business owner, but I did once in Gibraltar a long time ago, back in 2016 or something. But I’ve not done it in the capacity as the brand Polly Lavarello, and I know that I will not one day be confident enough to stand on a stage. I just know one day I’ll get on that stage and I’ll do it, and I’ll realize, Oh, I’m still alive, and actually people enjoyed what I had to say. And I will start to do it more and more and more okay. You know, we’re not born confident. Nobody is okay. But what we do need is the emotional capacity, the ability to hold the discomfort, the risk, the rejection and the uncertainty without collapsing. So this is why two people can use the same strategy and get totally different outcomes, because one of them has trained their nervous system stay calm and grounded and be in radical personal responsibility when it gets hard.

Yes, to seek support, but not to project those feelings of frustration and anger, because that doesn’t actually help anyone, and actually it roots you in the mentality of being the victim to your situation, which is a dangerous place to go. But I’ll go into that more later when we talk about ego. But what we do need to know is that I’m not saying I don’t ever feel frustration. I’m not saying I don’t ever feel hurt particularly. I mean, the last two weeks when I’ve been feeling poorly, my goodness, have I felt things very personally, and I’ve had to remind myself, Polly, it’s because you’re feeling ill. Your Capacity is diminished right now, so your ability to hold discomfort is lower because you’re already at capacity with your own physical discomfort, but that self awareness, in and as of itself, enables me to breathe, supports me to seek positive reframes in negative contexts, and enables me to lean into whatever support is necessary, or In some cases, simply lean back where I recognize that perhaps now isn’t the right time to deal with something that is a little bit contentious. So you know, if you’re constantly abandoning ship every time it feels shaky, that’s not a strategy. That’s self protection, but who you really protecting? The old version of you, the new version of you who’s successful is willing to take the blows and trust in their ability to come out the other side.

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And actually, it feeds really nicely into what I’m about to say to you about ego, but capacity is built in the doing. Okay, you don’t become resilient by reading about resilience or listening to this podcast. I wish you did, but you won’t. You build it by showing up in the moments when your nervous system wants to flee and choosing to stay because success is somewhere you’ve not been before. It’s going to feel scary. Your body’s not going to trust it. Your mind might tell you stories like you’re not a fit for this, like this is something we see all the time in when someone invests in a program, usually you have that temporary high, because you’ve just shown a level of self trust in yourself you’ve just committed to I trust in my ability to be successful, and so I am going to invest in this program to support me on that journey to success, and usually For the first hour or so, we’ll feel amazing. And then comes the crash, where those older parts of ourselves, the little mind Gremlins, creep in and start saying, but will you you didn’t succeed last time? You weren’t there there. And all the stories can start to come up that make us question, did we do the right thing, and our ability to recalibrate and bounce back from that and jump back into that space of possibility is obviously something, as a mentor and a coach, we should support our clients to do like it’s a huge part. You know, I actually take people through that process. When they go through my everyday sales curriculum, I talk about the mindset pieces that come up before we jump into any strategy. To support them recalibrate from that wobble that will inevitably come. But I also am very open with people about that wobble, and even just naming it and creating self awareness around it, in and as of itself, removes the shame, because they recognize that they are not alone in feeling this way, and that they recognize that this feeling is only temporary, but it can become permanent if we allow it to become a part of who we are. Which comes on to my final piece I wanted to share with you, which is detaching ego from results and detaching ego in general, really as much as you can. Now, that may sound really funny when you think about it in the context of, you know, I want you to have strong boundaries. I don’t want you to be a people pleaser. You know, those are all things very much intrinsically linked to a self. But when we’re building a business, we do need to be careful. Let’s talk about ego. Your ability to recalibrate, to adapt, to evolve, is directly tied to how much of your identity is wrapped up in your results. If you see your business’s success as your ability to be successful, then you’re going to be in for quite the ride, my friend. If you see every launch that doesn’t hit, every No, every slow month as a personal failure, you will collapse. You’ll burn out just from the burden of carrying your business. You’ll hesitate, you’ll spin out. Now, I don’t want to, like, gaslight or trigger you here in that you know, have I had those moments? Course, I have. I have. Otherwise, how else would I know to talk about it? Okay, so I don’t want you for a second to hear this and think, oh my goodness, this is who I’ve been. This is who I’m being now. And think, therefore you’re unable to succeed, because it feels really hard to be any different, as is with all things, awareness is the first piece. Okay, I don’t want you to stop listening to yourself, but I do want you to start listening to the data, okay, instead of listening to your ego. And here’s the reframe I want to offer you, are not the failure. You are the scientist, the crazy one at that. You’re in the lab, you’re experimenting, and the test blowing up in your face isn’t a reason to question your worth. It’s just a sign that you are still in the process. Okay, yes, you’ve poured your heart into what you’re building. Of course you care, but if you over identify with your offers, if you let your self worth become defined by how well something sells, you’ll avoid the very feedback that will make it better. And I’m actually going to say that again, because this is so important. If you let your self worth become defined by how well something sells, you’ll avoid the very feedback that can make it better. And that’s when your ego becomes the biggest liability in business. If you’re telling yourself, nothing works for me, I’m bad at sales, I can’t trust myself to make good investments, then you’ve made the results your identity, and so we need to flip that. We want positive affirmations, but we also want positive action. Okay, I’ve been there. I’ve done the whole you are the most successful woman. You are going to have success today. You are a hydrated woman. You are a rich woman. And I’ve almost felt myself chuckling at myself. Now I’m not saying positive affirmations. Don’t have their own place, but for me, the thing that truly rewires my brain is taking the positive actions alongside those affirmations that’s showing up like someone who knows they’re trustworthy.

I am deeply grounded and rooted in the success I create for my clients. My sales calls convert so well these days, and it’s not really. I’m still a bit clunky when it comes to sales calls. I don’t use exactly the same template each time. I have a very basic formula of understanding, where are you stuck, where do you want to be, what support you need to get there? And aside from that, I very much lean into the energy of who is there and what it is that they’re seeking on that call. One of the reasons why I believe my sales calls convert so well these days is because I have been supporting people with Evergreen funnels for years now, getting seven figure, multi, six figure, six figure, and in some cases, first five figure results for clients. I’ve helped people across the board, and I can really quickly identify what is and isn’t working for a client, and that grounded trust I have in myself is palpable to the person who gets on a call with me. It is impossible for them to leave and not believe that I know what I’m talking about and that I am invested and interested in what they’re doing, and that I care, but most importantly, that I’ve built. Is a phenomenal space that can support them with their growth. You can’t make Well, I see you can’t make this stuff up. You can, to a certain extent, in that what you can do as a valuable exercise is take a moment to look at all your achievements. That’s why, inside 10 days to speedy sales, I have an exercise where I ask people to write down 10 of the most impressive things they’ve done in their lives. And it always blows me away, because on day one, they’ll share their intention. They’ll be like, Oh, I’d love to make someone someone will say something, I’d love to make three grand this month. And then when they’re writing the 10 best things about themselves, they’ll be like, Oh, I helped somebody get investment from a billionaire. I stood on a stage. I don’t know. I gave birth to triplets, unmedicated, like so many impressive things, I’m like, why wouldn’t you trust in your ability to make even 10,000 pounds this month? So leaning back into the badass that we are, and if that requires taking five to 10 minutes to remind yourself of that before you jump on a call, that is five to 10 minutes. Well, spent my friend combined with looking into who they are. I mean, actually looking into who you are is probably more valuable. Sell like somebody who believes in their value and experiment, like someone who’s unattached to perfection and obsessed with learning. My obsession is with bringing the very best experience to you. I don’t aim for perfection, because Perfection doesn’t exist, but I do strive to be the best, and that’s what’s so important. And I am very unattached. My ego is very unattached from from my results, because I just know that the world is evolving. People’s demands are changing. What people are seeking is evolving, and my main goal, my main aim, is to be keeping my ear to the ground so that I can evolve with that. You know, that’s why I moved from having just a mastermind as my one offer to creating a more accessible accelerator, and even changing it from an incubator to an accelerator, when I recognized that people wanted 90 day trajectories to be working through, rather than coming to work with me for a year. So that shift and evolved over time, and that took patience, and that took months with less sales, but nobody sees that bit or pays attention to that bit, because there’s enough other success going on in my business that nobody was really paying attention or noticing they were noticing that I was fully booked with one to ones and still running my multi six figure business. You know, being in a phase of, you know, improvement and growing your business is so normal and overnight results is so unusual.

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You know, what I really dislike about the online business space is that, in the same way in the dieting space, people like to sell speed and certainty, where, if that were true, there wouldn’t be so many serial dieters. It’s exactly the same with online business. If anyone’s telling you you can, like, have everything you desire in 30 days, they are, quite frankly, lying to you. And the important piece is to find somebody you can trust, and to find a business model that does feel good for you, that is a good match for you. You know, if you’ve got 100 followers and you want to have 1000 people in a membership, sorry, honey, that ain’t happening anytime soon. So understanding the best business model for you and who gets the best out of you is one of the best places you can be. So to wrap this up, what actually moves the needle in your business. It’s not the perfect strategy as much as I love my evergreen funnel, and yes, it plays a really important role. Because for me, part of being a regulated, grounded business owner is the fact that I have a regulated and grounded business model, which you know, live launching, for example, is the antithesis of but even that can be something that when you grow the capacity you can hold that too. But it’s not the prettiest funnel, and it’s not confidence. It’s this. The key to success is who you are when you show up, how fast you can bounce back, how much emotional capacity you can build to hold uncertainty, to hold failure, to hold doubt, and how little ego controls the meaning you make from failure. This is the deeper work, and it’s not overnight, and it will become embedded through how you choose to behave in your day to day, in the habits, routines and rituals that you create for yourself. You know, one question you can ask yourself if you’re listening to this in the morning or if you’re reflecting at the end of the day, is, are all the things I chose to do today in alignment with my goals? Or, you know, if you’re setting yourself up for the day, have I set myself up today for success and a lot, and when you think about success, be clear about what that success is, because the majority of times, people look really closely at their routines, habits and rituals, there’s usually something missing. And like I say, I am not perfect in this. I should definitely be heading to the gym a bit more, because the gym, for example, is something I perceive to be an integral piece of being successful. And again, a. Other way to avoid my personality and my results being one in the same, because my success doesn’t just look like money in the bank. It looks like my commitment to my health and well being. It looks like the time I spend with my family. That’s success to me. That’s cushy business. Okay, so if this has hit home for you, let it land. Let it integrate, and know you’re not behind. You’re just learning. You’re still in the lab, and that’s exactly where you’re meant to be. I’ve got more coming on how to grow a business that’s rooted in depth, clarity and embodied leadership, not hacks and hypes.

So stay with me. We’re just getting started. My goal is to share a lot more with you about what cushy business actually means to me, and I’ll be sharing that alongside what I share about everyday sales, because the two are inextricably linked. And I know the very intro of this podcast, I talk about mindset as well as well being and strategy. But there’s been a lot more about strategy than anything else recently, and this piece is so important because it’s almost embarrassing to admit, but I can tell you, when I have a conversation with someone, or if someone’s been in my accelerator for a month, I can already tell what the results are going to look like, purely based on the questions they ask and how they show up to the space, and Actually, yeah, the questions they ask. So be mindful when you ask questions. Think about is this coming from victim? Is this coming from personal responsibility? Is this coming from perfectionism? Take a moment before you ask any question in any space where you’re seeking support, and think about the energy that you are bringing to that question. So there, there we have it. I hope you found this episode helpful. As you can tell, I am a self development psychology, like, I don’t want to say buff, but like, I’m obsessed. I’m obsessed with all things. I have people in my space who are a million times more awesome at this. In fact, one of my wonderful clients, Leanne Sia, is having a workshop on Big Deal identity next week, on the 12th of June. If you listen to this on the fifth I will stick the link to her free training where she’s going to go into this and a whole, whole new level of depth, because this is her area, especially her speciality. So I will drop that below so you can check out her master class. It’s going to be amazing. She’s amazing. And, my goodness, when we talk about identity, she is next level. Anyway, I will be in your ears next week, hopefully, well actually, next week, we’ll be with a guest, and the following week I should be back with the episode where I’m answering your questions. Finally, as always, if you found this episode helpful, please do subscribe. Please do rate it. Please do share it with your business friends. I’ll be in your ears next week.