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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. If you are a weekly listener. I teased a guest episode. Unfortunately, that is me being disorganized. That will be next week, but today I am talking about AI meets Evergreen. And to be honest with you, this is a little look behind the scenes as to how we are using AI in our business. What I like about it, what I don’t like about it, and hopefully it will trigger a few thoughts and ideas for how you can either relate to AI or potentially use it in your business. So first and foremost, I’m not going to call myself an AI expert. I don’t necessarily believe AI experts exist, per se, because ultimately, AI is constantly shifting and evolving, and whatever expertise you have is kind of dead and redundant about a month later.

So with that, I’ll also add the caveat to this episode that if you’re listening to this in 2026 hopefully I’ve recorded a newer and fresher one. This is a kind of episode I imagine I’ll be updating every six to 12 months as AI evolves and how we use it as a business evolves. So if you’re listening to this year on it may well be that various elements of this no longer hold true, but hopefully the majority of this will still be helpful to you. So yeah, I’m going to be sharing with you what I don’t like about AI. I’m going to be sharing with you what I do like about AI, and I’m going to be talking about how we use it in my multi six figure business to support our evergreen operations. But yeah, like I said, as a caveat, I don’t really believe in AI expertise. However, I do believe, of course, that there are people out there who have spent a lot longer with AI, who’ve tried and tested more different types of AI, Gizmo softwares, you name it. It’s out there. You know, kind of functionalities from video editing all the way down to podcast production down to content repurposing. There is a huge plethora of different ways and different things that you can do using AI. And of course, I do think it pays to kind of obviously learn from those who have thrown their hat in various AI rings to see how it works for them. And I also think it can be a huge distraction, and we should always, always be careful with that. That’s like when someone says to me, should I move from notion when I’m having a perfectly great time using other bits of software that support me with the same purpose. And I’m like, if you’re using it, it’s just a distraction to move to another thing like, you know, just because other people are using it doesn’t mean that’s the thing that you need to have too you you know, ultimately, all the things we use in our business, the ones we want to keep, are the ones that we’re actually regularly using. If we’re not and it serves an important role.

Then, of course, it’s worth reassessing if that’s because it’s not as user friendly as other things that are available instead. But let’s get into AI. Let’s get into what I see not working or what I haven’t liked about AI before I get into what I do like about AI and how we’re using it. So anyone who’s in my world will know that I have referenced Ryan Levesque, who I saw last year at a summit, who talked about the premise of zigging when other people zag. And one of the things he was referencing with that is AI, and the rise of AI and the fact that now that people can be easily churning out, you know, before, people would say you should post daily, and that was already a stretch for the average online business owner. Now, with AI, we could be posting up to 567, times a day with relative ease. Now, is the quality of that content going to be amazing? No, it’s not. And that’s kind of potentially to a certain extent, what has thrown a lot of the algorithms into a bit of a tailspin, temporarily, as some as suddenly, a lot of online business owners started churning out more content. I’m kind of relieved to say I feel like that’s slowing down now, because I think people started to realize it didn’t make a difference, and if anything, it was actually harming businesses brands, because more isn’t more, and noise is just noise, if it’s not actually helping anything. And even though chatgpt And Claude and those various other kind of, you know, there’s so many of them now, Frank Kerns released one called Oh joy, there are various different bit, you know, different bits of AI that support us to create marketing content and share more prolifically.

So. Uh, but in all of that, it’s lost a lot of its soul and essence. It’s lost a lot of its personality. And I think I guess when the really important point is when I want to talk about where I see AI failing and failing businesses, the important piece that feels the most pertinent and true is that business is really simple, isn’t it? To make sales, we need relationships, and to have enough of those relationships to make consistent sales, we need eyeballs. So eyeballs isn’t the nicest way of putting it, but we need volume. We need lots of people in our world having those conversations with us so that we can make sales, and in terms of how we make our business more efficient, we’ll eventually get to the stage where we need less conversations, because we create online experiences which replace the need for a conversation. And that is essentially the evolution of an online business at its most basic form, we’re making lots of invitations personally at its most sophisticated form, we have found ways to create experiences like webinars and challenges and funnels that enable us to be talking to people at mass, and making invitations at Mass and creating connection at mass that encourages the confidence for somebody To feel ready to jump in and invest in you. Now, where does AI throw a spanner in the works here? Well, when we know that ultimately, it comes down to relationships, what creates connection in those relationships? It’s your values, it’s your quirks, it’s the things that you have in common with one another.

It’s the fact that somebody feels like they are truly seeing you, and in seeing you, they’re seeing perhaps a reflection of themselves. You know, maybe you’re mirroring something to them that they would like to claim more of the challenge with AI is it can really dumb down our voice. It can really sterilize our voice, and it can make us sound like absolutely everybody else. And the challenge is, we’re so connected to our own business, we won’t necessarily recognize we’ll see some beautiful, clean marketing copy in its perfect formatting, and think it looks great, but we’re not recognizing that there are lots of other people currently sat at their laptop right now, currently looking at a very similar version of the same copy, equally, thinking it’s looking great, equally, equally hitting send, and that anyone who’s considering working with you or somebody else in your industry is seeing you sounding like you know you’re in the sea of same you’re just sounding like everybody else, and that is not helpful for trust or for making sales. And that’s just words I similarly have an objection to AI photo shoots. I know they’re highly contentious. People who either talk about how they are democratizing the ability for people to have very swishy looking photo shoots, and how it means that those who are less able bodied can have, you know, a shoot without having to leave their home. You know, there’s, there’s various advantages to it, and I do fully appreciate all of those arguments. I’m not here to, you know, crap on any of those. And at the same time, when I see people who are in a position to invest in a photo shoot, are in a position to attend that shoot, and to be honest with you, even if they were simply taking well lit, nicely post photographs on their probably incredibly good camera phone, which the majority of us own.

Now, I believe those would do better than what I mean. I make jokes when I see these images where I’m like, it’s like, Westworld. Yes, they look kind of real, but they’re kind of dead behind the eyes, and it’s kind of creepy. And I always feel bad saying this, because I do know there are people out there, potentially even listening to this show, who may have invested hundreds of pounds in getting a shoot like this done. I will add the fact that, you know, you can have shoots of you stood outside sports cars or pretending to be in a jet, you know, private jet. I find stuff like that even more stomach churning. And again, I appreciate the nuance in the fact that, you know, most people do have photo shoots in places that they don’t necessarily live all the time, or all of that kind of stuff. And you know, that does a similar job. So when it gets to the extreme of pretending to have a life that is very far removed from your own that doesn’t help the reputation that a lot of the coaching industry has already of people being cowboys. So again, when it comes to trust, I’m like, if I can’t see your essence behind your eyes, if I can’t see you. And actually, I like seeing your flaws. I like seeing those your little wrinkles that tell me you’re also approaching 40 or over 40 like myself. I like seeing you know, I like seeing you and your imperfect humanness in a world full of like fillers and filters and everything that we have. Your flaws make you human. That’s my personal belief. I. And your flaws make you approachable, and if you look like some kind of Goddess drop from the airbrushing skies, I’m going to find you unrelatable. Now. That’s you know. You’re listening to a podcast. You’re listening to me. I’ve not used chatgpt to kind of tidy up these thoughts or sanitize them. This is me unfiltered. But I’m sharing this because I know in the same way, when I heard Ryan Levesque say, zig another zag, I was like, oh my goodness, this is like, just drinking a liter of cool, cool lemonade, and just I felt zingy, I felt excited. And I was like, it’s so great to see somebody I admire and respect who’s so established in this industry, sharing something that feels the absolute antithesis of what everyone is selling and marketing right now, and I am so here for it, because, yes, I am zoning out. I am tuning out of the marketing that I used to be very proactively immersed within, because I am missing authenticity in people’s images, in people’s videos, in people’s voices.

So, you know, it’s kind of ironic for somebody who had such a created brand, kind of photo shoot just over a year ago to now be feeling that. But that’s the funniest thing, right? I spent all that money on that shoot, and everyone has said to me ever since, and even before, it like you could do it with AI. And I’m like, That was never the idea. That was never the idea. And I’m actually very happy that it wasn’t done with AI. I do feel it makes a difference. I really do. So that’s what I don’t like about AI. If I’m going to summarize it in one little tidy nugget, is sales are built on relationships, and I believe when someone can’t hear your true word and they can’t see your true face, you know, like we all do our best look. I put on some makeup to record today’s podcast. So not see but you know, we want to see you and we want to hear you. And if the version of you I read in your email sounds entirely opposite to who I hear on a podcast or who I hear on a stage, that’s a huge disconnect. You know, I want to hear your voice. One of the things I’ve always said to my clients who say, Oh, I’m not really a good writer. I don’t know if I can do a good newsletter. I’m always like, just write it like a letter to you know that you’d write to a loved one, like, just, just write that use your voice. People that aren’t looking for perfect grammar, I mean, and obviously we can use, we can use spell check for perfect grammar. But they’re looking to connect to you. They want to know what you think and feel. And again, there may be something in that that makes them feel better connected to you. Maybe you’ll hear something in today’s episode that will make you think, ah, when I’m looking for an online business mentor, Polly, Polly feels like she’s up my street, because I also have heavy levels of skepticism around what I’m seeing around AI right now. You know, let’s not forget that the online business space has always got something that everyone’s getting excited about.

You know, two years ago, it was like, come and learn how to dance on reels and look how long that lasted. Now, I’m not saying AI is a trend. It is here to stay, and it will continue to evolve. But it’s also not this panacea that a lot of people are marketing it to be, and that is something I find dangerous. So number one, that’s where I see things going wrong. Now I’m getting into the phase two, like how I see it actually helping, and what I’m excited about, because, you know, nothing is ever black and white. And as I mentioned earlier, you know, this is may 2025 my opinions and views may evolve, may vary. I am regularly jumping into and dabbling with AI and improving my knowledge and understanding of AI to ensure that, you know, my clients aren’t left behind in all of this. And as I see things that are working, I share them with my clients, and that is what I’m about to do inside the accelerator, we’re adding in prompts for every single part of the implementation of the program to help people who get black page syndrome or who get overwhelmed by template, to help them jump in with more ease, to make it more interactive, which can really tinkle some people’s dopamine bells. To kind of, rather than fill in a template on a Google doc to be asked questions within chat. GPT can feel more stimulating more kind of keep your focus in the room and to get feedback as you’re filling it in, is obviously something that can’t be done in a template and that we can do with chat GPT.

So I’ve kind of got ahead of myself here slightly, but what I am seeing working with AI, which, as you can probably tell I’m very excited about, is I learned about a month ago how to create a custom GPT, and so I built my own custom GPT for my clients, and I road tested it with five days to speedy sales, where people came in and rather than receiving scripts and templates to fill in, instead they received, well, my custom GPT, which they could use to support them as they worked through the exercises. And they received prompts, which they would be asked questions, which they would answer, and when they when the prompted received enough answers, it would spit out an answer on the other end. I call this the human first approach to AI in that, rather than saying something like, here’s my. Podcast, tidy up the show notes to instead have it ask various questions and beyond that, when they give answers, know what to challenge them on.

So I train this custom GPT to challenge if someone said I help people heal, or I help people feel better, or I empower my clients to claim more rather than where, you know, if they were filling in one of my forms, I couldn’t challenge them on that, and I would have to wait until they’d shared it inside my container for me to say, Hold on a sec. Can you just elaborate a bit more on what you mean by empowerment? They’re no longer having to wait for that feedback, because it’s coming directly to them through my custom GPT, which I have designed to challenge on specific words that I hear my clients say time and time again. And I’ve trained the custom GPT to recognize similar words to those words, so that even if they don’t use those particular words, it will detect where they are using vague language that is not the level of specificity that’s required for easy sales. And what’s really exciting about that for me as somebody who is hosting an ever growing evergreen accelerator and hosting my one to one clients, but this is more relevant to my group program. Well, I say it’s a group program. I prefer the word accelerator, because while there is a process people work through, it’s also highly bespoke and customized to my clients when they come in. But what’s exciting about it is it is definitely cutting down the amount of time that I am needing to give direct feedback to my clients, partly because people are getting responses from Ai that’s enabling them to rather than get stuck on something, to keep on going, and that often leads to them thinking about things more, getting to the stage where the idea is more fully fleshed, which means by the time they come to me with that fully fleshed idea, we’re usually a tiny tweak away from perfection, or a question away from getting it to where it needs to be. And the other reason, of course, is that, you know, aside from the fact that it it keeps them, it keeps on asking the questions that I’d be asking similarly, like I say, by the time they come to me, they’re not miles away from where they need to be there. There are a few tweaks away.

So I’m not saying that AI solves absolutely everything. I mean, my business would be in trouble if it was, and I certainly recognize through having people go through five days to speedy sales, where some people came in with something that was like pretty much fully baked and ready to go, the majority came back, definitely in need of a few tweaks and refinements, but still a million miles ahead of what I’ve seen clients coming up with previously. And most importantly, it really delighted me and excited me to see that they were learning from experiencing the questions in chat GPT, how to start looking at their business ideas through that same lens and knowing that they could confidently pursue ideas without needing to check in with me first. I mean, they should be doing that anyway, but it’s really lovely that they know that they’ve got a kind of mini me in their pocket that they can be accessing. And that’s obviously how I’ve designed it to work. And that’s, you know, a work in progress. That’s something I’m going to be continuing to kind of feed it more information to make it better and better and better. But I’m really, really excited by that. So in terms of, you know, when we’re hosting an ever Scaling group program, one of the things that eats into the majority of our time is client feedback, because that’s the one thing that we don’t have as much control over, as to how much, how many questions will be asked, right?

We do have control in the fact that, you know, we can make sure our curriculum answers a lot of questions. We can make sure there’s clear guidance as to, you know, check that there’s an answer in the curriculum before you come in here and ask. There’s various little smaller things we can do to avoid answering repetitive questions. But ultimately, there are certain processes we’ll be supporting our clients through, and one of those in my business is messaging, and messaging is an art form which, you know, doesn’t drop in with ease and can require various reiterations until we land on that sweet spot. And the fact that they now have a custom GPT designed to think like me, means they can do so much of that work autonomously, without waiting on my feedback inside the container, which is really potent. So this won’t be relevant to everyone who’s listening, but I would certainly be looking at AI to look at how it can enhance group program experiences. Another thing we use it for a lot in our business, outside of running the program, is, as you can imagine, by now, I’ve recorded well over 100 episodes of this podcast. And you know, I’ve recorded hours and hours and hours of supporting my clients on calls, so we are doing a lot with transcripts to come up with content for newsletters, which is exciting because, because it’s my spoken word. But it does sound like me, and because they’re my opinions, it is something I would share. So where it used to take me two three days to write all the emails for a month, it now takes me like one afternoon, I will say it’s something that I’m sitting with, because I’m still a little concerned that it’s slightly overly sanitized, and one of the things I’m deliberating doing alongside this podcast is creating a sub stack where I share my truly unfiltered thoughts every week or every month to kind of really see what difference it makes to have that kind of connection piece there. But yeah, we should see. We should see where that goes. So I would say approach with caution, but at the same time, certainly if you have blank page syndrome, certainly if you’re thinking about what are the most relevant pieces I can share.

AI is amazing for that. I think my watch out here is that it won’t necessarily feed you the content strategy that supports that. So it may repurpose your content, but if your content is not kind of hinged on a very strong content strategy in the first place, then it might not necessarily all add up together the way you need it to, but there are so many pieces you know that you can do with AI that will support you with that. So yeah, essentially, content repurposing and optimizing the efficiency as to how my clients are supported inside my group program are probably two of the most pertinent ways that I use AI. The other thing I love to do with it is to record voice notes, because I am better at thinking with my words, as you can probably imagine listening to this podcast. So I even if I’m leaving a note for my VA, I will record that into my chat GBT, because I know if I send her a rambly message, that is not fair on her. So I’ll simply say, can you tidy these thoughts for a handover at the end of the week for my VA and that’s gorgeous. It means she just gets the top level information she needs, and not the random tangents that my AuDHD brain likes to go on. So she gets what she actually needs at the end of the week. And similarly, when we check in at the beginning of the week, it also, similarly, you know, if I’m looking to delicately word a response to a client, I will always put it through the chat GPT filter. And as Iman shared on a previous podcast episode, which was fabulous, by the way, on email marketing, she shared how she uses her chat GPT almost like an assistant to kind of run ideas by and kind of get some feedback. And I do use chat GPT in a similar way, if I’m over overwhelmed with how I’m using my day, for example, or how I’m managing a project, it’s amazing what it can do for you. I think the really important piece kind of like anything we do in business, whether you hire a mentor, whether you’re using a new, savvy bit of software, whether you are working with AI never.

Please, outsource your power to AI where it is making the decisions for you. It is, you know, ultimately, recycling bits of information it finds on the internet. It is not some superior being that understands more, and it definitely doesn’t understand your ideal client better than you understand them. And in a world of AI and its increased usage, it’ll be those subtleties in the nuance. You know that it does. It can’t do storytelling. It doesn’t know what their favorite snack is. It doesn’t understand their unhealthy habit with Love is blind, you know, it doesn’t know all of those pieces. So the more you can dive into the detail and the specificity that goes a level beyond AI, the better your business will do. And so that’s why, when I talk about AI, I talk about my human first approach to AI, because it’s leading with my skills, my knowledge, my words and asking it to take my neuro diverse kind of way of approaching things, and tidy those things up so that they are easy to consume or easy to easy to do. So yeah, to summarize the things I don’t like the way it can remove the human from your business, in your messaging, in your images and in your relationships, because ultimately, that’s what all of those things are designed to do.

They’re designed to support your client, to feel a strong connection to you, and images where you’re dead behind the eyes, words where they are lacking feelings or storytelling or nuance will eventually just mean people tune out to your messaging. Where I see it working really amazingly, is that there is a huge opportunity with custom GPT and training AI to think like you, so that you can support your clients more effectively, whether you’re doing that in a group experience, or whether you’re using it to help like I say, draft sensitive emails to sensitive situations where you want to make sure you’re being careful. And you know, finally, I guess the main thing to say in terms of wrapping this up, in terms of, well, what does this mean moving forward, I believe, with everything in the digital marketing space, one of the biggest mistakes we can make is assuming, ah, I’ve got this dialed in. I know exactly what I’m doing for the rest of my life now, because that’s not how digital marketing works.

The way Instagram works as a platform has evolved massively over the past few years, as has Facebook. As has Tiktok, as do all of them, right? LinkedIn is the only one. I’m like, oh, it’s kind of being quasi steady. But no even that is evolving and changing, particularly as more people, for example, move over to LinkedIn, it’s changing the kind of conversations I’m seeing happening over there. So there’s no such thing as stable landscape in digital marketing, which means that it pays to give some time every single week to kind of keeping in the loop with the changes and the evolutions that are happening. You can either do that by joining an accelerator like mine, where I’m doing that work for you, and sharing those updates with you, or you can simply do that by I know there may be a podcast out there that’s sharing things, but like any area of our life and business where we’re constantly looking to grow and evolve, it pays to kind of have some time on our own kind of development around awareness as to what’s happening in the digital marketing world, while not allowing it to be an enormous distraction, or allowing our brains to perceive it as some panacea to all pain we’ve previously felt in our business. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. So yeah, have fun experiment. See how it helps you. And yeah, if you have any questions, as I always say, reach out to me on Instagram. I’d be more than happy to dive into the subject even more deeply, as I’ve shared with my clients inside the accelerator, they’re going to be getting a behind the scenes as we utilize AI increasingly. And you know what works for us, what doesn’t work for us, what we’re keeping, what we’re ditching, so that they can learn what works for them too. Because ultimately, what I don’t want for any of you is to have a crazy high tech stack full of AI tools, of which only 5% you’re actually using and 1% are actually helpful.

So I’ll be sharing more inside make more money without selling your soul, as it’s a hyper pertinent subject. But please, please, if there’s one thing you take away from this human first, when it comes to AI, be human first in all your choices and all your decisions and how you show up, and look at how much faster the sales flow in. For you, it’s no coincidence right now that my business is having one of its best months yet, and June looks to be another Corker. And I believe a lot of that comes down to how human I’ve been in my business, where everyone else has been increasingly churning out content using AI and churning out AI images and videos, people are seeing the real me still, and that is definitely making huge difference to the levels of trust they’re feeling and how soon they’re feeling confident to jumping in to working with me. So there we have it. I will be in your ears next week with my guest, Lisa Robertson, talking about Dex. I’m so excited to share that with you, and the following week, I will be having a very special episode on summer, proofing your business, answering your questions, where you will be able to submit your own questions. So if you are following me on social media or my newsletter, if you’re not already, do jump in. There’s a link below in the show notes where you can join my mailing list. By being on my mailing list, you will get an invitation to appear asking a question on my show, where you can reference your business at the same time. So it’s a great way to get exposure, get in front of my listeners, and a great way to connect with me, and a great way for me to know that you’re listening to the show and have something you want to share. So yeah, basically any questions you have about summer proof in your business, join my newsletter. You will be invited to ask your question, and you could be listening to yourself in a couple of weeks on my podcast. So really, really excited for that episode, and also excited for leases. As always, if you found this episode helpful, please do subscribe. Please do share it with anyone you think would find it helpful, and I’ll be in your ears next week.