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

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

And today I’m sharing with you the controversial way I have grown my business, the controversial growth hack. It’s not really that sexy actually, it’s it’s really boring. And that’s kind of why I feel it’s controversial because I feel like a lot of the growth strategies that people talk about an online business are really sexy. They involve six figures, multi six figures, seven figures, darling. And this is not that this is about how to actually sustainably run a business and grow business in a way that feels good. Because one of the things I learned really early on in online business is that I could have a 25k months. And if I didn’t really understand where the revenue had come from, or how to replicate it ever happening again, didn’t actually feel that good. Particularly if in my body, I felt tired and exhausted and overwhelmed. Now, to give you some context, in case you’re new to the show, or in case it’s been a while since I shared i in the past have had chronic health issues which to be honest with you I now recognise as an undiagnosed autistic human being that I suspect we’re down to masking. I used to get really bad migraines every so often, particularly after travelling, funnily enough, whenever I’d go on a flight somewhere, I would nearly always have a migraine on the other side, which really frustrated me because I love travelling and I love going to new places. And I’d like Why Why does it always give me a migraine?

And similarly, you know, as I when I was working for myself, I didn’t realise I was approaching burnout. I’m a very hyper focused, motivated human being very energised as you can probably gather from the way I speak. And I’m because I love the work I do. It’s very easy to overdo it. And to be honest with you looking back when I was approaching burnout in 2019 and early 2020, I had two very small children. I’ve just been through a divorce. I’ve been left with basically nothing. And so I was very much in survival mode. I very much associated my productivity with my ability to keep my finances afloat. My ability to give my children what they deserved. I was addled with guilt, for walking away from a secure financial situation with my ex husband and into a life where we were living in a tiny flat on benefits. So I was doing you know, I listen to Bruce Springsteen has a song called working on a dream and I was working on that dream I had very much a romanticised vision as to what it meant to be successful. You know, you we grow up with that whole like American Dream story, right? Like if you work hard enough, and you’re nice enough, and you’re good enough, and you give people all the right stuff, like you will be noticed, and you will do well. And I’ve since learned, that’s all all rubbish. It’s all rubbish. But what that means is, I have to really honour my limits. I really have to work with my capacity. I recently interviewed the incredible Tammy Thomas who speaks so incredibly eloquently on this subject. So if you haven’t listened to that episode, and you’re interested in this as a theme, do go listen to her and then go buy her book because she’s amazing. But you know, looking after myself understanding what the nervous system is, how to keep mine regulated, and how to support myself, mindset wise, subconsciously, all this stuff. There’s been so much work over the last few years helping me manage my stress levels. Now that was quite a lot of context just shared, but I wanted to share that because not everyone’s the same, right? I assume although to be honest with you, I definitely see this in a lot of other business owners, you know that we really, really need to take care of our well being a lot of us have been mis sold, the whole your productivity is equal to your value on this planet, which is just BS. Okay. So with that in mind, well, there’s a few things, the three things you need to know about me is a, I do not cope well with stress. B.

As I just stared, I was on benefits at one stage, and then took my children and myself off benefits and moved us into a house, bought us a cat bought all the furniture and made a promise to myself there and then that I would earn enough money so that we never needed to go back there. For years on, that’s still very much the case. Thank God. So that’s point number two, I am the main earner. So there is no there’s no backup plan. There’s no like partner or you know, situation where I can just find money. If you know, we live in Brighton as well, which is effing expensive. I will say like, it’s London prices and Brighton it’s not, it’s not a cheap place to live. So, you know, our monthly outgoings are not small. And so you know, point number one you should know about me toric terrible stress tolerance to I’m the main earner. And maybe three a useful thing to know, I’m undiagnosed autistic and ADHD and I have two small children who actually not so small now they’re going to be eight and 10, this summer, who also have additional needs. So that takes up a lot of my capacity on the weekends. And obviously, being a good parent to them, is everything, to me, creating a calm environment where I’m regulated, and can support them to feel regulated isn’t just a nice to have, it’s a need to have. And anyone who’s got children on, you know, who have additional needs really probably understand that better than anyone else. Particularly if you’ve got an ADHD little Tigger like my daughter, or a very sensitive autistic son, like my son, it’s, you know, it’s the whole thing, okay.

So, with all those pieces in mind, I needed to grow my business, not the sexy way, I needed to grow it the safe way. Now, I added all that context, because there are some people out there who may be willing to try the sexy way, knowing that, you know, if they have a great month or a great launch a wonderful, that’s an extra holiday paid for. But if they don’t, that’s alright, because hubby can cover the bill, or the wife can cover the bill or whatever it is right. And I’m not trying to say that spitefully and I probably am saying that slightly. Because I don’t have it. But you know, there are some people and all rest of you know, I to be honest with you. I also share this with love, because that was me back in, you know, my online business prior to 2018, which I did have in a different capacity. I didn’t need for it to be profitable, I didn’t need to, I didn’t really fight that hard for the money or care that much about money because really, it was more of a hobby. Okay, now I know the average listener listening to this is not treating their business like a hobby. But anyway. So this means that while I am enormously aware of the power of advertising, the power of funnels, the power of group programs, power of live launches, what I needed. When I grew my business was the bread and butter kg, as I refer to it in the business, the bread and butter kg. And I talk about this a lot with my clients too. Now for full transparency. At the beginning of this year, I shut down my ads agency, I still support I still consult people on advertising. I still do advertising VIP days.

But I don’t run ads anymore for coaches and I say I run ads. I don’t have a team member running ads for coaches anymore. But prior to that, my ad clients were my bread and butter revenue. What did that mean? That means I had a set number in my head of ad clients that I needed to have to ensure that I covered my team costs, my advertising costs, my tech stack costs, my mentor or coach costs and my own salary. So I knew I needed a certain number of ad clients. And that was all covered. Which meant that anything I did as a coach or mentor was just a cherry on top. It was just something that would be like, Oh, yay, you know, like, I’ve covered my team and I’ve got a bonus 20 30k In the back. Amazing. You know, pretty, pretty cool, right? And then at the beginning of the year when I shut down the ads agency, I took a moment to say Do I want to have? Do I want to have all my eggs in one basket? Do I want to have everything? In one program? Do I want to be running lots of programs I really had to take a moment and think, What am I going to do? Do I want to be reliant on my evergreen funnels and live launching alone.

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And what felt really true for me, because I’m in a stage of evolution, if you’ve been following my brand, you’ll know that there has been a huge update to my website, to my office suite to my brand new images. And we’re still, we’re still updating it all. It’s not done yet. There’s still more things to do. And I didn’t want to rush that process. So I had to ask myself the question, okay, so if you don’t have the Add clients anymore, and you know, you don’t want that anymore. And you don’t want to be rushing out launching new offers, until you’ve refined them and done all the pieces, you want to make them truly scalable and evergreen, then what do you want to be focusing on? And the answer to me was one to ones. So I created an irresistible one to unpackage, which at the time, if you’re listening to this, I mean, I had one space, I suspect, by the time you listen to this, it will have sold out, and I enrolled 812, ones for 12 months, which now replaces what used to be my Facebook ad bread and butter money. Now, some of you may be listening to this and thinking, Oh, others of you may be listening to this and going how can the Evergreen Queen be working one to one as well. And I just really wanted to kind of normalise that we get to have different revenue streams. And what’s really important is if there is a safer way, a more predictable way to generate revenue in your business, so that you can approach your business super regulated, in how you approach the less like the less immediate results, you will succeed so much sooner.

One of the things I see that causes so many business owners to stay stuck is they either have one to one packages that take up disproportionate amounts of their time, which leaves them in a predicament where they can’t run group programs or masterminds, or passive offers on the side, because they’re at capacity in terms of their hours, which No, I’ve not done with my one to ones to be very transparent. And secondly, the other reason why so many people get stuck with that is, you know, they haven’t even they’re throwing all their eggs into the sexy basket, the less, you know, the less controversial basket of I’m going to run a group program, I’m going to launch a membership, because I’m going to be able to serve way more people in exactly the same time. But then when that launch doesn’t do well, or when that membership isn’t filling, suddenly, they’re in a predicament where they’re questioning if they can still afford their team, they don’t have that consistency of knowing that team member they have can stay there for months or months, they don’t have the ability to plan ahead, they don’t have the ability to slow down and do things well. Instead, what they tend to do, and you’ll see this so often in the online space, is they will be pulling offers out their bum. I know that’s not very kind to say but I see it all the time, I can tell when someone’s business isn’t going well, because they’re just pulling out offer after offer, after offer. And I often look at that and look at the size of their business. And very often question. If you’re launching new offers so regularly, how can you keep the quality good and consistent. Now I know there will be a number of people out there who can do that. But unfortunately, I find the majority can’t.

And that is where coaches get a bad reputation, because they’re just rushing things out to keep the cash flowing. And so while my strategy may not sound very sexy, what I love is I can deliver an exceptional service at once. Well, at one time it was to my Facebook ad clients. Now to my one to one clients, they’re very lucky because I can only have eight of them. They’re there for a year. And so nobody else now can be a one to one during that period. And you know, I get to really take good care of them. And I get the consistent revenue that enables me to plan ahead, to plan my launches to hold it loosely, to invest time in developing superior products to anything else on the internet. If I may say so myself, because that has become I mean, it’s always been a priority to For me, but more than ever, I have really slowed down to speed up because I know when you create something phenomenal that you really believe in, it will sell. And the reason why some people they make sales with their offers is because they don’t really believe in it. They’re making that offer because they are trying to make ends meet. And that energy just repels. While the energy of I’m good, thanks, everything’s covered. But if this comes in amazing, I mean, what’s beautiful about it is it means that I lead more from a place of I can’t wait to help more people, rather than through the lens of Oh shit, This better work otherwise, I can’t pay myself this month. And that really is everything. And oftentimes people say to me, how is it folly? That you just always seem to have your shit together? Like how are you always so composed? And interest? And the truth is, I’m not always composed. I’m not always interest. I mean, I don’t think any human is. But the truth is, it’s easier for me to recalibrate. It’s easier for me to be confident, because I’ve always ensured I have a bread and butter cog. I would love for you to think about what your bread and butter cook could be too. And if you found today’s episode helpful, do go check out my free resource, the cushy CEO roadmap which will support you to grow from coach to CEO, simply go to my website, pollylavarello.com Or go to my Instagram and DM me the word roadmap and it will go straight to your DMS. So there we have it. Next week. I will be back talking to you about when having a team slows down your growth.