00:00

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.

00:37

Hello and welcome to the show. Today, I want to talk to you about the three ways to build a business that loves you back in 2026 this is built upon last week’s episode where I talked about the five ways to increase your profitability and your revenue in 2026 I mean, if you’ve not listened to that episode, please go back and listen to it first, because this is information that I wish every business owner knew. Because what is the one thing that stands most in our way in the morning, when we sit down at our desk and we think about all the things we could be doing with our business overwhelm? Why do we get overwhelmed? You know, if you could tell me hand on heart, you were 100% clear what makes money in your business, you would not feel as overwhelmed. And the reason why you feel overwhelmed is because you don’t know, and the last episode I just recorded tells you exactly what you need to be focusing on, or potentially, you know, it might be one or two things that you need to be focusing on, but you will know what to focus on and, very importantly, what to avoid to increase the profitability of your business. And I really want small business owners making more money, because we do good things when we have more money. 

So this today’s episode. I was like, well, it’s all very well, knowing what five levers to lean into or leverage to increase your revenue and your profitability. But how do we actually plan for that? Right? Like, it’s one thing to know it, but what do we do with that information? I mean, yeah, to be entirely Frank, the day this episode comes out is the Black Friday sale that will be running over the weekend, where I will be running 10 days to speedy sales that actually supports you with those five levers. But I wanted to talk a step beyond which is about planning, which I’m also running a planning session on the 12th of December, which is included as part of that sales sprint. So if you are on my mailing list, or if you are following me on socials, do go check it out. You know, if you feel like you’d like some support and accountability, but I know that not everyone’s in that position, so I wanted to help you as much as I can with this episode, too. Okay? Because, as we know, if you don’t make a plan, you know, not every plan that we ever write creates materializes, right? But it’s 100% not going to materialize if we don’t actually make a plan for what our goals are. Okay? So it’s really, really, really worth having a plan and mapping it out. And actually, that’s all the more reason to maybe be more ambitious with what you desire, because if you think about it, most the time in life, whatever we desire we achieve. Maybe, I don’t know, 60 to 80% of so if you already are aspiring for 120 140% of what you actually desire, then when you land on where you actually get to, you’ll be happy with it. But I wanted to share with you three what I would call maybe unusual cushy CEO planning tips. 

Because, I mean, we’ve all, you know, you’ve read all the books, you’ve listened to all the podcasts by now, I know you’ve heard so many things, so many times, so you know, you’ll have heard me talk about what it is to have a cushy business and be a cushy CEO, and I wanted to talk about what that actually looks like for me and for my clients. So let’s get into it right without further ado, let’s dive in. So number one is, this may seem upside down, but I do want you to start with your life and then build your business around it. It’s funny, actually, because one of the biggest objections people often bring to me when they’re having a conversation with me where they already know that they would like to have a more successful business, achieving more for them, allowing more for them, giving them more opportunities, more money, more flexibility, they’ll often say, but here’s the thing, I can only work five hours a day. I can only work four hours a day. I am a parent carer, or I am caring for my parents, or whatever it is, you know, I am a mid lifer. I support a lot of bed lifers, and a lot of mid lifers are in that sandwich. Between caring for their parents and caring for their children and everything else that comes alongside that. So it’s not unusual. And one of the things I would love for you, dear listener, to know the most is that you do get to work around these things. They don’t have to be the reason why you are not successful. And if anything, you know, I’m not grateful that I had long covid by any means. It was horrible, two of the worst years of my life, having little to no energy, just wanting to be in my bed most of the time. You know, I don’t, wouldn’t want to go back to being a single mum again with two small kids, trying to grow and create a successful business working with limited hours and what felt like endless sickness bugs. There’s so many things I wouldn’t wish to repeat in my life, but if there’s one thing I can say I’m grateful for is the fact that they really sharpened my focus. They really helped me recognize how much I could do with how few hours, and actually is one of the reasons why now, now I run my business the way I do that, I have one integration week at the end of each month, and what I mean by that is I have no calls in the last week of that month. That’s not to say I’m not going to be so ambitious. 

To say I always take it off. That wouldn’t be true. Sometimes I do in the summer, I take it off. In the Easter I take it off. At Christmas, I take it off, but the rest of the year, it’s simply a week that allows for deep focus work. And yes, you know, this week, I’m going up to London on Thursday for a fun mastermind day. And you know, oftentimes there’s a bit of travel and some frolics involved, but I have one week every month where there are no calls, which, for my neurodivergent brain, allows it to breathe. And I also have Fridays with no calls, again to allow for flexibility. So if I want to go for a massage, if I want to go for a nail appointment, if I want to go to the sauna, if I want to go have lunch with my friends, whatever I want to do that, I have the flexibility to do to do so similarly, Mondays, I have no calls. That is a day where I do work. Today is a Monday when I’m recording this. So I use things like Mondays for deeper focus tasks, as well as checking in with my one to one clients, ensuring that they are set up for the week, and again, check in with my team to ensure they have everything that they need from me before I get deep into calls on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. So this is a rather rambly way of saying, you know, I have very much designed my business around my capacity, my energy, my joy and the support that I wish to receive. It’s recognizing that no one was ever going to turn around and say, hey Polly, now you’re making this much money. You do know you can go and do this. Hey, Polly, where am I going with this? So Ain’t nobody coming down to say, here’s your permission slip. You’ve got to allow it for yourself. So here’s what that looks like, you know, in a tangible way and in a way that you can measure. Now, for me, it looks like I have my monthly massage scheduled in my monthly money pedi scheduled in my gym sessions, which happen several times a week, or they should do scheduled in, okay, okay, I’m being honest. I don’t always go to those gym sessions. All right, leave me alone. But soreness, I always make time for them and rest watching a bit of Real Housewives. Let’s be honest. And you know what, right at the very beginning of my business journey, could I have afforded a monthly massage and mani pedi and all that? I know I was a single mom on benefits, so you know, I’m not saying that relaxation and you time is going to look the same for everyone, but it is understanding what that looks like for you. 

Whether that’s a lunchtime walk around the park that’s entirely free and, oh my goodness, does it feel good, whether that’s a post school drop off, going around with a podcast, listening to something you enjoy for a while before you do something, whether that’s making time for couch to 5k and getting out for a run, whether that’s a post and whatever. I’m not you know you babe, I’m not gonna like make it up. But what I am saying is, before I had money, I still found ways to do small things for myself, whatever that happened to look like, sometimes that was even things like, I don’t know, a kombucha subscription arriving and me having a little ritual that once the children had dinner, I would open a can, pour it over a Bougie ice cube in a delicious, beautiful crystal glass, because that always made me feel special, and that would be my signal to myself and my brain and my children that I am truly off for the day and that my time and energy and attention was now towards them. And you know, even tiny little rituals like that can just really change the game. You know, if you work from home, and boundaries can easily be blurred creating rituals as to a certain drink, a certain glass, lighting a candle, whatever it is that makes you kind of signal to yourself and your mind and your body. It’s the end of the day like that really, really helps. So, you know, protecting your brain with no call Mondays, integration weeks, Fridays for you and school holiday boundaries, you know, think ahead and. My goodness, and Matt, people are like, Oh my God, it’s half term. I didn’t think about this big. I’m like, choking on my own, like, enthusiasm here. Think about it now, please, for the love of God, like, you know, don’t, don’t have everything all lined up for a big launch in half term. We can then be like, Oh God, my children are off. I mean, this should be obvious, but you know it’s not. I’ve seen it enough times to know it’s not so please. You know, do you know like and, and, and I want to say this. Sometimes people hear this stuff and go, oh yeah, successful people say that. But you know, I can’t get to that stage without this is just not true.

10:36

I was so close to burning out really early on in my career, and the first coach I ever hired was a burnout coach, and I had all those fears and all those doubts and like the Oh, but I need to be successful first, and when I washed my hands of those silly stories and allowed myself bit by bit, okay, first it was Fridays. Then it was well, let’s see what happens when I don’t allow people to book a call on Monday or the last week of the month. Let’s at one point we were trying to be ambitious and not have people book calls two weeks of the month. That was too ambitious. Then my other two weeks got so busy and full on that I was exhausted, and I was like, no, okay, let’s go back to three weeks and one week off, because that just isn’t working at this current phase of where I’m at, you know, I would have to revise my business model and my offer suite to enable that to be something that feels good, and maybe that will happen. But for now, things feel pretty good. So I guess what I’m saying is, if you are hearing what I’m saying and thinking like, oh my goodness, but I don’t you know, like that is a huge identity switch to be the woman who claims all those things for herself in a month, in a week, in a day, that’s a lot. Just start with one. Just start with one. And when you see that nothing awful happens, that you’re still earning the same money, but you feel more refreshed and you feel better, you will start stacking those delicious little habits, until eventually you look at your business, and that’s when it will genuinely start to feel like you are a cushy CEO, because it feels too good to be true. People are like, what is that week? Again, we have no yeah, okay, where are you? Oh, you’re going down to the beach this morning. All right, all right. And, yeah, okay, and you’ve got a job, right? Yeah, yes, yes, I do, and it feels great. Okay, yes, you get to have that business. And actually, what I would argue is, you know, like the money is something that doesn’t always come straight away, certainly not in the capacity that some of us desire it, right? Like online business, like any business, is not an overnight, whoa, I’m Rich for most people, but one of the things that will enable you to feel rich before you’ve even seen a pound or $1 hit the bank is your ability to be in control of your own time, nurturing your own energy, your well being, Your happiness, understanding that when you take care of you and support your nervous system, you will have the capacity to hold more the value that you convey in a podcast will reach so much more depth than you would have done previously. I know I have no excuse, and you know that just everything you do will just have a more delicious flavor to it, and you will then have the resiliency to take the inevitable knocks and blows that come with running your own business, because I’m not going to pretend they don’t exist or they ever go away. They just come in different shapes and forms, right? 

But you will have the capacity to hold it all because you’ve designed a business and a life that allows for it. Okay? So you know, accepting that hustle is a habit, and if you don’t build business into your calendar up front, you will not magically add it in later. Is the thing I want you to know. Your business grows at the pace your nervous system feels safe. This is the opposite of hustle culture and the foundation of sustainable expansion. I’ve been running my business for approaching six years now. Can you believe it, guys, can you believe it if you’ve been listening to podcasts for a while, you know I’ve been saying for the last year, five years. Five years now, as we approach December and my business started in February, we are much closer to the six year mark. I would not still be here, and I would not still be this joyous. I wouldn’t still be recording this podcast three years on, if it weren’t for the fact that I enjoy the work I do, and I enjoy it enough to take the knocks and the blows and one of the reasons why I feel a lot of joy is because I’m not forcing myself into constraints that were never made for me in the first place. They’re just silly conditioning that we take from being in the corporate workspace that tells us we should be at a desk nine till five, that tells us don’t spend too much time at the Watercool. Wheeler like, fuck that shit. You’re your own boss. Be the best boss you ever had. So that’s number one in terms of planning. Plan first for the good shit. Come back to the other stuff later, but start with that, because, believe me, the stuff I’m about to share with you now will make your head spin a bit when you start thinking of all the different plates you need to spin. As a business owner, there is a lot to consider. I’m not pretending there isn’t there is a lot to consider. So if you’re coming from a place of hustle, rush, depletion, you will be overwhelmed. You will probably overwork. You will make poor decisions, and everything will feel really heavy. So reward yourself before you’ve even before you even deserve it, because you deserve to be rewarded just for existing, my darling. So that’s point number one, but point number two, this is where we get to the actual like, come on, Polly, I get that bit. Got to have fun. But what do I actually plan? Okay, so this is the other biggest mistake people can make in business. And as I say this, if you are a longtime listener, there may be a slight groan, because I refer to this a lot, but it is honestly the main area where I see people making life and business unnecessarily hard for themselves, and it is a slight gross oversimplification, because, as I mentioned, running a business means keeping on top of our bookkeeping, keeping on top of our marketing, keeping on top of client delivery, keeping on top of, you know, brand and websites and photography. I mean all the things right. But before we even think about the smaller features of running a business. I want you to think about it this way. I want you to plan with money now and money later, thinking and whenever I mention this at mastermind day, the amount of like I hear around the room at such a simple phrase that really helps reshape your relationship with your business. Because most people, if they’re being really honest, are only planning for one or have a bigger comfort zone in one of those areas or the other. 

And so even if you’ve heard me share this before, and I never share it exactly the same way, please stay in the room with this. Because what I would love, if you are hearing me talk about this again, is just to take a moment and think about which camp Do you fall into, and where can you be stopping habits that are not helping you, and where can you be reintroducing new ones that will support you to have a better balance. So most people plan their year ahead based on long term ideas, the new funnel, the rebrand, the Evergreen machine, the huge launch or or they stay stuck in doing money now activities they can’t think beyond this week. They’re just like, how many conversations do I need to be having? How many sales can I be making? And they’re not thinking about the bigger infrastructure of their business. They’re just thinking about, how do they make ends meet? This week, the idea of their business still existing in a quarter may feel laughable, because everything just feels heavy and unsustainable right now and busy they can barely come up for air. Okay? A CEO holds both money now and money later tasks with equal respect. Here’s the unusual twist. When planning 2026 don’t ask, what are all the things I could do. I want you to ask what belongs in each category. So money now, category can look like simple workshops, low lift, visibility pushes, direct invitations, nurture to offer content. 

So, you know, in stories, we’re like, here’s the thing, do you want this thing? I’m doing this thing. Here’s the invitation to the thing. Small promos. And this keeps cash flowing right while your attention is on the bigger builds. That’s what I want you to be doing. You’re not abandoning invitations and low hanging fruit and all the opportunities that are more readily available to you. Else you’re leaving so much money on the table. And this is the kind of work we do inside 10 days to speedy sales. I support my clients with but money later tasks, and this is the stuff I do with my clients inside the accelerator. If you want to know the difference that’s building funnels, that’s improving your positioning, that’s potentially brand photography. That’s not something you do inside the accelerator, but it’s something we can talk about tech upgrades or new offer development. These take time, they require traffic, and they must not impact or interrupt your ability to earn today. When you listen to these things, where do you feel expansion and where do you feel contraction? When you map out your year in this way, thinking about money now and money later, tasks, burnout disappears, panic disappears, overwhelm disappears. You stop trying to build a cathedral overnight. You start building a very profitable business home, brick by brick.

20:21

Okay, so just take a moment, and this is, by the way, part of 10 days to speedy sales that I’m running in the first two weeks of December. When we do our plan for 2026 we will be looking at the larger marketing pushes. We’ll be looking at the infrastructure that will support your expansion and growth in 2026 as well as the money now activity, so that you have a balance of the two, so you’re not pinning everything on a particular launch to know that you’ll make money that quarter or that month or that week. Okay, you don’t need to live like that. And genuinely, that is the biggest danger for you. A lot of my clients who are still working one to one, or the people who I want to help move away from being stuck in the one to one trap. The reason why they’re in the one to one trap is because they are very much in the money now camp, and they barely have the capacity to create the money later, infrastructure that enables them to gradually move away from being victim to their calendar, and instead feeling in charge of their business like a CEO, it can almost feel impossible to imagine what that’s like, and that is why, you know, when I work with my clients, I’m very aware of this balance, and very aware about the things, the smaller things, with the biggest leverage that they can be focusing on to gradually remove themselves from being their own businesses bitch to being that cushy CEO. Okay, that’s why I bang on about being a cushy CEO. 

Because, like I say, Why would you be your own boss? If you’re going to be the worst boss you ever had? And I’ve seen that time and time again, people being their own worst boss, you deserve better. So finally, that was point number two. Money Now, money later. Point number one was, build your business around the balance you desire. Map in, schedule, in put them in the calendar. Not just a when I do this, I’m going to award myself with no, it’s already in the calendar. 18th of December, 3pm massage with Haley. It’s happening. Sorry, Haley, if you’re listening. I don’t think it was on the 18th. I’m just giving that as an example. But yes, Haley is my missus, and I adore her, right? Okay, so number three of what I’m hoping are some less usual takes on how to plan for a successful year in business, because we’ve already read them and seen them and snoring, snoring and choking at once. I’m just, I’m just a multitasker over here. Okay, so number three, treat your marketing like a body of work, not a one of campaign. This is essential, essential for 2026 it was essential for 2025 but some people have been a bit slower at understanding this, and I recognize through conversations with new clients and people in my world that this still hasn’t fully landed. For a lot of people, they’re still hoping they’ll go viral with one post or one particular Webinar will change to the trajectory of their business. But the truth is, you know, if we go back to that Google study that talks about seven hours of contact with your brand before somebody feels empowered to buy from you. That is like the number you should have in your head when you’re looking at the trust ecosystem you are building in your business. So this is the most CEO level tip, and the one that people are not talking about enough in 2026 trust is the currency. And like I say, I’d argue that was the same in 2025 but it is even more the case. The online space is saturated. People have been burned by poor investments. People are increasingly aware that the online space is a wild wild west, and that’s why things like this podcast, for example, is one of the number one drivers of my painful one to one clients, because they will go and listen to this podcast and they will hear this chick knows what she’s talking about. This chick you know, is doing the work, and I can trust that when I come and work with her, she’s invested in me and will support me, and I can get phenomenal results like her other clients, right? And that she’s truthful and will not will tell me where to get off or what to get started with if I’m not in a position to succeed with her, at least. That’s what I hope you’re getting from this. 

Okay, this podcast has played a huge role in my trust ecosystem, and I’m sure it will carry on to do so moving forward. And that’s why it’s the only marketing thing I’ve been doing for approaching three years consistently, because because it works, and because I don’t have to think about it very much, I just show up and it still seems to work. So, you know, people need about seven hours of meaningful engagement before they will buy from you. How are you building that? I’m not saying podcast, you know, is the only way to do it. I have clients using YouTube. I’ve. Clients using private podcasts. I have clients using a free guide that then goes to a webinar, that then goes to, you know, emails and check drop in sessions and all sorts of invitations. But it’s recognizing that it’s rarely one invitation alone that will create a client or a sale. It’s usually a journey that they have been on with you. It can also look like a mini offer. That’s why I have my mini offer system that I promote and have a mini course on because that, in and as of itself, also builds those seven hours with huge efficiency, or at least a good number of them, right? So, you know, it’s understanding that you’re not relying on one webinar to rule them all. 

Now, are there people out there who have won webinars that create sales for them all the time? Yes, there are. So I’m not saying they don’t exist, but I am saying that, you know where we want an insurance policy, where we want to feel really regulated in our business and not hinging everything on one aspect of our business. We want to look at our entire marketing ecosystem as a trust ecosystem, a warm, cohesive experience where your audience feels safely led, not rushed and not manipulated. I worked with a coach recently where her next invitation to me was so manipulative I didn’t even leave her testimony, her testimonial afterwards, because it just just didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right at all. So it’s so important that people feel they can trust you. So every touch point, a podcast, written content, small workshops, challenges, emails, is part of a long term relationship, not a transaction. I say to my clients time and time again, nobody ever likes to feel like they’re being sold at but it also means, in terms of your content, we haven’t got space for wishy washy. We haven’t got space for like, Oh, here’s a picture of my cat all the time. I mean, I love Monty. If you follow me, you’ll know he shows up in some way content, but I mainly lead with my ideal clients, what they need to know how I can help them. It’s all about them, while also sharing a little bit about me, because obviously they need to know the person that they’re trusting. But just understand that, you know, we need to own our zone of genius, own the impact that we make for our clients, own the celebrations that come alongside the clients that we’re working with, and not be hiding them or being lazy with sharing them, because they really make a difference to how people get an insight into what it actually looks like to work with you. 

So when you plan your year like a body of work, you naturally start spacing out your big visibility, pushes your smaller, low lift, marketing moments, your sales weeks, your downtime, your creative seasons, your delivery seasons, and this is how you grow revenue and keep your humanity intact. So yeah, those are the three things I want you to know. I want you to know that we’re not aiming for overnight kind of crazy sales going even when people come back to me after a webinar and they’re like, Oh, I’ve only had three sales calls. I’m like, that is not game over. Like, you know, sometimes people come back without a sales call and yet they will still sell the number of places they wanted by the end of the webinar, people just don’t respond to marketing the way they used to. That doesn’t mean they’re not buying. It just means their relationship is with it is different. It means that following up and having conversations and learning more about them and making direct, clear invitations is the thing that gets them to the stage where they choose to work with you. So yeah, understanding that, once you understand it’s building valuable relationships, building trust in your content alongside in terms of your marketing activities, having money now and money later, invitations in mind and plans in mind. And, of course, leading with let’s do this in a spacious, sustainable way, because we all know what it’s like to be an online business owner. We all know there’s never a moment where you get into bed and go job done, really happy. Don’t have to think about it anymore. There’s always more to think about. There’s always more to do. And that’s where finding a way to create start points and endpoints, clear boundaries, clear spaciousness in your brain to feel like you have completed what you need to complete. And that means we need to be able to zoom out, to recognize the larger things we’re doing, to be able to zoom in and look at those in smaller projects, so that we can complete the day knowing that, yes, we’ve done those three tasks we wanted to do today that all form part of a larger whole as to what the larger project is that’s getting us closer to more sales. If we’re constantly looking at our business through the lens of the 99 different tasks we need to be doing, you will burn out. You will feel resentful, you’ll feel exhausted, and you will fall into the trap of, why is everything not happening for. Me overnight,

30:02

because it feels like I’m carrying enough that it should do okay. So business gets to feel great. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, there is an invitation to 10 days to speedy sales. That is 10 days of 10 minute little nuggets that will help you make December one of your best sales months this year, and set you up for the best 2026 ever, all wrapped up with a delicious planning session. That’s going to be fun. There’s going to be Christmas music. There’s going to be an opportunity for you to reflect on your year as well as strategize for the best year ahead. And pick my brain while you’re at it, so that you have got a really clear plan for the year ahead, so that I can then also put my feet up the rest of December and chill out in preparation for a big 2026 myself. So I hope you found this episode helpful. If you’d like more like this, or have any questions, just DM me on Instagram. I always, always love hearing from you. And if you found this episode helpful, please do rate it. Please do share it. And in the meantime, I will be in your ears next week with another show on making more money without selling your soul.