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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. I am recording this in the midst of the UK’s first heat wave of the year, I suspect there are more to come, or at least that’s what the news is telling us, but it may mean that I make absolutely no sense today. All I know is that I’m already sweating while recording this, but yeah, the theme of today’s episode is your identity, holding your business hostage. I had a conversation with a one to one the other day, and I just blew my mind. I blew both my mind and her mind, and I’m going to get to it in a moment, but before I get to it, like, no, I’m just going to get into it. Okay, so I talk a lot about strategy on here, I talk a lot about funnels, I talk a lot about cushy business. I talk about positioning and all of those things, and yeah, it’s been a hot moment since I came on and talked more about identity, and you know, I know there’s this whole like, is it mindset, is it strategy, it’s all mindset, it’s all energetics, it’s all strategy, and you know, I will say six years in it is a combination of both friends, you cannot have one without the other, and in fact, actually, this client, you know, I’ve worked with various clients who have been incredibly successful with mindset, with energetics, and they’re selling that, and it’s selling like hotcakes, because they are the embodiment of it. 

They are, you know, they’ve just gone and done the thing, their brilliance, their expertise, their passion, their charisma, their ability to leverage their social media, or, you know, I mean, obviously everyone’s got a slightly different version of it, right? But they have gone on to create a business, which usually, when they come to work with me, because, honestly, I’ve worked with quite a few people like this at this stage, they’re almost embarrassed. They’re like, “Polly, if you can see behind the scenes, it’s really quite messy. I can’t believe I got to hear without, you know, and that’s the thing, right? Like, I genuinely have worked with two very different types of people up until now, and I think I’ve referenced this on the last episode, but I’m gonna say it again, because it’s so true, and I want to say this to normalize it, because I think every client that I’ve worked with has been embarrassed, because they’re not the other type of client, like they’re like, oh God, I’m so, like, you know, wanting tick boxes, I’m wanting everything to be easy, I’m wanting a direct path, you know, I want it to be like studying at university. I want there to be right and wrongs, although actually university, that’s not true either. But you know, I want there to be like I want a formula, and you know, and I want to know that if I can just study hard behind the scenes and do the things that I will be rewarded for my brilliance, because up until now that’s what’s worked for them, right. And then there’s a person who just got excited one day by something, started posting about it online, has built their business up, and has created a community of people who adore them by anything they do, but you know that they’re almost intimidated to work with a mentor because they know that behind the scenes a lot of stuff has been done in a slightly slapdash way, which their clients love, like they love them and they love anything they do, but perhaps the idea of getting started working on it can just feel really, really overwhelming. So, if you fall into either of those camps, I just really want to normalize it and say, like, this is so common, like I could basically almost like posit all my different one to ones into either one camp or the other, and I will say those who are in the second camp very often have an ADHD diagnosis, they’re both at risk of burnout in their own way, which again I touched on in the last episode, so I won’t go too in depth, but you can imagine if you are building something without structure based on passion and energy. If that energy dwindles, if that passion is distracted because you’ve got other stuff going on in your life, your business can feel immensely vulnerable, right? 

But on the other hand, if you’re constantly hoping that behind the scenes, if you’re building brilliant funnels and building gorgeous sales pages, that that’s going to be the thing that’s going to make sales, then you’re really missing a trick. You need a bit of Camp Two’s charisma and visibility and confidence to actually sell the thing, because marketing does not equal sales, right? Okay, so that’s the first piece to say, because I just really want to normalize what I’m talking about here. So I was having a conversation. The conversation that blew both mine and my client’s mind. Let’s get back to that. I was having a conversation with her, because she has come to me. Her brand is so potent, she is so brilliant, she is so impressive as a human being. I bloody adore her, and we have been talking about creating funnels, and there was some resistance on her part, and to be honest with you, what’s been really beautiful about this is I’ve just given her space to explore what that is, you know, I’ve not been here to kind of fix or kind of posit any of my own thoughts or beliefs, but simply I guess, like a coach does, to just question them and allow space for what needs to come up to come up, and what came up for her was a sense that it’s this like thing that you have to do this boring task. I mean, there’s a bit more than that, but I don’t want to go too into detail, because you know it’s my one to one client we’re talking about here, and even though I’m not going to identify her, I know that when I’ve been on the other side and a person’s talked about my business, I’m like, “Hey, how are you talking about me? But the main premise that came up when I shared with her, “You have permission to play, everything started to drop in, and she was able to get started and feel excited, and most importantly, not feel that she needed to do it all herself either. She enrolled support and assistance because she knows she really wants this, and it reminded me of myself and other businesses because I want this, this tiny little kind of quencher of an episode to kind of be like a little coaching moment for you, a little introspective moment for you to look at your own business and look at where you are getting in your own way, because here’s one of the biggest challenges, and why I’m such a huge advocate for having a mentor, or you know, being in a program is because many people say to me, this is brilliant, I’m excited by this, but you know what, I think I’m just going to see how I get along by myself before I invest. Now, obviously, not everyone says this, otherwise I wouldn’t have clients, but I always worry about the ones who say that I never tell them, like I never.. I never, you know, I’m not here to manipulate, I’m not here to decide their timeline, so I let them go, but I worry for them, because I know how humans are, and I know humans at their kind of baseline want to feel safe. We will always come back to what we already know. I’m like, literally sweating. 

We will always come back to what we know, and so we will get more of the same. It’s very hard to challenge ourselves to do new and different things where we don’t have somebody else in our corner, bit like going to the gym. I had a PT, I was doing a lot more braver, ambitious things, and progressing faster when I had a PT than when I decided, you know what, I think I’ve learned enough by now, I’m just going to go and do it by myself. I have gone back into the habit of just doing a lot of what I already know rather than doing what I did with her, which is why I’m now thinking about getting a PT again, and it’s exactly the same in business, you know, having someone who encourages you to look at things differently, to be more courageous, to avoid, you know, let’s go back to the PT analogy, avoid injuring yourself as you go about doing that, it’s really, really potent to have somebody in your corner, and I guess a lot of the time people think about me, they think about it through the lens of strategy, but the identity piece comes into it as well. Now, I know not everyone’s in a position to afford a mentor, and whether you have one or not, this is something I would love for you to reflect on for a moment. What is that thing, and we all have that thing that we occasionally early in the morning or late at night, or when we see somebody else doing it, think yeah, if I know if I did that too, that would make a big difference to my business success. For some people that might be finally building the funnel or the low ticket offer or creating a group program for others who already have those foundations under their belt it might be getting on that stage being proactive with their podcast tour it could be looking for collaborations, it could be running ads. 

Finally, I mean, this is one of the really beautiful things about a lot of my private clients this year. One private client this year has been running ads now for over six months. When she first came to me, she was like, “I’m not an ads person, I don’t really trust in ads and funnels. It all feels kind of heavy to me, and now she kind of shares with me it’s like the most freeing part of her business. She bloody loves it, like it’s one of the things that she gets excited to update me on every Monday, and I love that for her, because it’s made such a big difference to her business. I know, and this other client of mine who recognized that there was this sense of, you know, I think it can feel even more vulnerable when you’re really established, when you feel like they’re more eyes watching what you’re doing. I mean, there’s a variety of reasons why we can kind of get in our own way, but when we can see that and do the thing, so yeah, I want you to take a moment, breathe. If you’ve got a journal, get out your journal. If you’ve got your notes on your phone, get out your notes on your phone. And I want you to take a moment to write down what is the one leveraged move you can do in your business this week. I mean, I would love for you to think bigger, maybe for the next year, and then perhaps this week think about what will support that, so for example, if you want to do more public speaking, one leverage move for this week may simply be being either delegating or yourself doing the homework around relevant events that you would like to speak at, and then, and then, perhaps even checking their websites to see how and where they receive applications, and if it’s not obvious, reaching out to the organizer, so that you can get ahead and submit your application in time. Okay, in my case, there’s some events that I missed the deadline, and instead I’m just attending, so I can get a feel for the event, so that when I pitch next year, it gets to land with more gravitas, because I’m aware of what the event is like, and I’m aware how my contribution would fit in with that and complement it. So, yeah, I want you to take a moment to do that, because you know what, this is what I want to say to you: there will never be enough time, there will never be the right time. You will never feel like you know whatever resource you feel you need more of, whether it’s money or time or energy, it’s just not there. You just need to get started, and potentially you need to either lower your expectations, your perfectionistic expectations around yourself, or recognize that progress sometimes looks like a list of events. 

The next week it might look like you reviewing your media kit and seeing if it’s up to date and updating it the following week. It may be a gradual, unsexy, slow process, not one where you can say, at the end of the week, “Oh, I’ve applied to 10, which, you know, by the way, if you want to do that, I’m not saying don’t go do that, but I am saying that sometimes if we can’t get to the shiny thing immediately, we just don’t want to get started at all, and actually those smaller leveraged moves that stack up week on week is the thing that when you look back on your business in a year’s time, you’re like, my goodness, that one talk that I secured within six months of getting started and deciding that that was my leverage move has now resulted in x number of inquiries, x number of sales, and now I’m going to get to talk on three times as many stages next year, leveraging the fact that I’ve been a speaker at this event already. Like, I think that’s one of the biggest dangers of, like, our identities and ourselves, you know, weight loss, PTS, everyone markets towards there, like, here’s how you get the thing tomorrow, here’s how you get the thing in six weeks, but a lot of the stuff that really moves the needle in our business, a lot of the stuff that really makes a difference isn’t what we do today for tomorrow, it’s what we do today for the year ahead, for the bigger picture, for where we want to be, for who we want to be. If you want to be the speaker, you’ve got a pitch to get on stages. 

If you want to be a key person of influence, as Daniel Priestley talks about, then you need to take the aligned action of a key person of influence. If you want to be making sales in your sleep, you need to be taking the aligned action of somebody who has funnels that enables that to be a thing. Okay, and the other thing to say is, like, and permission to be messy, permission to be imperfect, permission to receive rejections along the way. You know, am I brilliant at funnels? Yeah, I’ve got really good, but do you know how I’ve got really good? I’ve got really good, because a lot of them haven’t worked. I mean, particularly at the beginning of my journey, they haven’t worked perfectly straight away, but the difference is, is I was committed to understanding how and where they weren’t working straight away, so that I could now launch a funnel and feel very, you know, throw. A big ad spend at it, because I’m already very confident that it’s going to do its thing. I know the formula at this stage, but I didn’t know it at the beginning. So, yeah, this is my reminder to you to A, get your head out the day to day, think bigger, B, don’t just think bigger, take the aligned action that supports thinking bigger, and don’t dismiss it if it’s only one tiny small step. A lot of us women juggling so many different things, one small step is all we are capable of in that particular week, in that particular moment, and that is still better than nothing. Don’t be like the dieter who’s like, I will start eating well next week, I will start going to the gym once I’ve lost a few kilos, and I feel people who make excuses like that to themselves, and yes, I’m doing a whole, like, crossing, you know, from business to weight loss to food, because it’s all connected, that same mentality of I will start when is the reason why you’re not seeing the success you desire, you just need to get started now, and not just get started now with, oh, well, I posted something on Instagram. I did more of the same. You need to start looking at where you want to be the person who achieves the things that you want to achieve, and start taking one small action at a time from that space. If you want to be the woman who speaks on stages, then you also need to be the woman who prioritizes it in her business. If you’re the woman who wants to be making sales with ease, then you need to be the woman who prioritizes building the funnels that enables that to happen, because I can tell you from the people I’ve worked with who have made sales with ease without funnels, they’re also equally panicked as to, like, I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know if it can happen again. I don’t know if I can go viral again and make the same thing happen again. 

There isn’t that grounded assuredness that we get from having a funnel, and we get from having consistent data and understanding what does and doesn’t work. Anyway, if you found this episode really helpful, I have created the Cushy Work Week playbook, which is all about supporting you, to you know, think well, not even think like a CEO. I mean, it’s basically there’s an AI co-o for 11 pounds, which I’m going to be transparent with you, which is on the other side of the playbook, which, you know, if you’re the kind of person who’s like, I’m not going to sit down with a PDF on a Monday, well, I’ve created the AI equivalent for a silly summer money, only 11 pounds, so that you can look at your week ahead and plot it out, so that you can have the business that you desire, and that you do not fall victim to going back into the same habits and patterns of your week, because that is the thing that’s going to keep you exactly where you are now, again in six months time, or at least not much further along. Okay, so DM me the word playbook, that will get it sent to you, or click the link in the show notes, that will also get you signed up. I’m really excited to hear what you think about it. I think it’s the best resource I’ve created yet. It’s really comprehensive, it’s really extensive, and it will be a game changer for you. 

However, if you look at the guide and it already feels heavy and a lot, just go download the AII, AI, the COO AI tool, the Cushy C is right, the Cushy Coo AI tool, that’s really hard to say, I did not think about that when I designed it, there you go, see Imperfect Action, but download that and that will make it so easy for you. I cannot wait to hear how you get along with this. I think on Monday I’m going to share on my stories how I use it, so you can get an insight as to what that looks like too. All right, this was meant to be a smaller bite-sized episode, so I’ll wrap it up here. I’ll be in your ears next week, hopefully not sweating my non-bollocks off in my office, all right. Big love to you.