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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.

Today I’m talking about the self development tools that supported me to go from being a single mom on benefits to a multi six figure CEO. Yeah, even now, when I say those words out loud, it almost feels like a slightly out of body experience, it feels weird to acknowledge that my reality in 2020 was that of a single parent on benefits. And that now I’m recording this from a comfortable home, and just how much changed and actually how fast the majority of change like the majority of those huge changes my first 10k month, the move into this house, all happened by the July of 2020, after I made that the decision in February 2020, to launch as a personal brand. And I was gonna say it’s been quite the whirlwind.

Actually, it’s felt very gentle over the last year or so. But certainly, the very first year, it all felt like a real whirlwind. And I can definitely say who I am now is very different to who I was in 2020. It has been such a growth journey, going through all of this. And so I wanted to share these these kinds of insights and tips and reflections. I’ve got a list of about I think 10 of them. So I’ll be showing those 10 Today, don’t worry, I won’t be going too in depth on any of them. As always, I’m going to keep these this episode short and sweet. But it felt like a really relevant conversation to have. And it’s one of those things that I wanted to speak to one to kind of get a sense for the appetite for these kinds of conversations. Partly because when I became a single parent, when I became a single mom, I feel I should say, I remember actually googling in 2018 when when it all kind of was happening. I remember Googling, you know, looking for examples of successful single mothers because me my whole world was crumbling around me.

You know, I was moving away from where I live for eight years and moving not just to a new city, but to a new country. And nothing, nothing looks. I mean, I just I couldn’t even I remember people kind of saying, What are you doing in six months time? What are you doing any year and just thinking I can barely look to the next day, I can barely look to the next week, you know, I and I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to ground myself in the present because the present was too chaotic and precarious and uncomfortable. I remember buying a piece of art. In 2018, when I moved into my flat, I was trying to find something, you know, to kind of spend some money on that would bring me some joy. And I look at it, I look at it today. And it reminds me of how far I came because I at the time thought it was funny. But this piece of art is a painting of the sea with a hand poking up from the sea holding a placard saying I’m okay. And I look back at it. And actually, I guess it does remind me of how far I’ve come because that’s that was really my reality. I remember kind of trying to present a strong, composed front, mainly for my children, but also to everyone else. Because I knew my parents were worried about me. I knew that people around me kind of they looked at me like, like I was a widow, which I guess in many ways I was it was its own kind of grief, you know, walking away from a life of what I thought my life would be to this new reality. That was, like I said, something I wanted to stick around and for very long. And like I say I was looking for evidence of other single moms who’d been in the same situation as me and still been successful. Anyone who’s had small children can understand, when you have you know, at the time I had a four and a two year old, or I think at the time was three and a half and one and a half year old.

When you have children that age, it’s hard to imagine what the you’ll ever sleep well, again, it’s hard to imagine you’ll ever not be carrying things around like a kind of mule, loaded up with various items and wet wipes and buggies and scooters. And it’s hard to imagine your existence ever looking any different. And it’s hard enough when you have a partner and you’re going through that. But to be going through that experience alone. While also recognising that you need to provide financial security for those children and their holidays, you still want to be able to take them on and the life you want to give them and the birthdays you want to kind of celebrate with them and recognising that’s predominantly on you. Because ultimately, you know when you separate from your husband, you separate from a significant chunk of that financial security that you previously had. And particularly as the person who initiated the divorce and the separation. There was a heavy onus on me to make this work to make it that it was the right decision. So it was hard and as you can probably hear My voice I’m being very real here, because it was a hard time. And like I say, I was looking for evidence of women who had been through it and come out the other side. And there have been suggestions in the past that I share this story with tabloids. And I, I don’t, I don’t want it to be a clickbait thing. And I don’t want it to be every overly simplified, I don’t want it to be without without know lacking the nuance as to kind of how things came about. And I obviously can only go so far in depth. With what I’m going to share today, I’m not going to go into the practical ins and outs of it all. Because ultimately, actually, what I’m about to share with you in terms of the self development kind of things that I did during that time to get to where I am now, honestly, they probably account for a lot more of my success in any strategy I followed.

So let’s dive into them, shall we? Do you want to hear them? I’m excited to share. And you know what, if you’re not a single mom, this will still be relevant to you. So do please still listen in to this because these are what I will say are the kind of main things that supported me over the last three years in entrepreneurial business to go from being somebody who was on benefits exhausted working all the hours undercharging, looking after two small kids. being fiercely independent. I was you know, had a guy I was dating around the time that I launched my business. But I was very much feeling in a kind of space of I needed my business to be successful because I wanted to feel safe in my own dependents, my own financial security never needing to rely on anyone again. And anyone who knows my situation now will know how much I’ve softened and leaned into trust and how much things have changed. But how did I get there? So firstly, actually, it leads perfectly into the first note I made, which is don’t be afraid to ask for help. I think I was so keen to be that warrior woman. I think I was so keen to prove that I wasn’t making a crazy decision that I wasn’t very good at asking for help. And actually learning to ask for help took so many different guises like between the Friday night where I admitted I don’t like to cook.

So I’d order a takeaway and like it would be the cheapest takeaway of like chicken and chips. But I would do something so that I didn’t have to cook a meal on a Friday because it gave me a very much needed break with two very small kids and me basically working, whether it was looking after the children or whether it was actually actually contract work. And later on self employed work. I was you know, working from pretty much the moment I woke up to pretty much the moment I went to sleep actually there were very few breaks. So learning to carve in ways to get help. And then later on when I was going out my boyfriend, we very early on had the conversation where I was honest with him and said, I really see myself being successful in business. And I really want to do that. And I’m really excited about the online business space. I really enjoy kind of journalistic type work I’ve done in the past, I don’t entirely know where things are going. But I know that it’s a space I want to jump back into when I have the chance.

And he was very supportive. And we discussed the fact that it may end up looking like me being the main earner and him supporting with a lot of the childcare because I said to him, it’s really important to me with to two children undiagnosed, then on the spectrum, that there was somebody who was consistent there for for them. And he was on the same page. But I wouldn’t have known that had I never had the nerve to ask him. And I have to admit, prior to becoming self employed, I don’t think I was very good at doing that. And yeah, learning to ask for help made a huge difference. The second piece that has really helped me and really accelerated my growth, has been thinking like a CEO. What do I mean by that? I mean that one of the first conversations I ever had, when I became self employed with my uncle, he was very proud that I was doing all of this. And at the same time, he he’s always been, he always was.

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He always was very practical. And he highlighted to me that with two children who are dependent on me, being self employed, and doing the kind of work that was reliant on me, meant that if anything should ever happen to me, we wouldn’t have that stability. So from the very getgo I recognise that I needed to create digital products, digital offers a team and things that didn’t just solely rely on my shoulders and me showing up. Otherwise, my business was not going to be robust. And this is the beauty of being a single parent because to be honest with you, if I had a partner who also brought in a consistent enough income that covered most things, I probably wouldn’t have been so assertive about the moment I saw any money coming in hiring that first VA creating systems creating processes, really looking at things through a kind of be laser sharp focus, because I knew that what I was building was much bigger than me. And going in with that mindset from the outset has helped me get to where I want it to be so much faster. The third thing that’s really, really helped me, which again, has been very much a side effect of being a single parent. In fact, I almost feel I should have named this episode.

The reasons why being a single mum has actually immensely helped me grow my own business, is that failure was never an option. Because it wasn’t like to this day, I’m pretty sure if I were to find a marketing job, it wouldn’t pay me as well as the work I do now for sure. It would probably involve way more hours, way more pressure, way more expectations to travel around and do things that I don’t necessarily want to do. And so, as soon as I committed, as soon as I got started on this path, there was nothing that was going to throw me off it. What does that mean? That means what every time I’ve had a client say no. prospective clients say no to working with me. I’ve already been focused on the next Yes, that is potentially going to come in, I’d been like, Okay, I’ve been I’ve been able to be philosophical about it, you know, I’ve not, you know, I don’t let I don’t dwell on these things.

Similarly, if I have a month, that is quieter than the next month, again, I don’t let it kind of rock the boat too much. I look at what I can learn from it, and I move forward. And that can sound almost borderline robotic. It’s not it’s actually really human. But what I will say is I actually had another client reflect something similar to me recently, and that she’s qualified in one very particular area. And she has a certain methodology that she loves to use with her clients. And she recently shared with me after coming outside the other side of scale with the power one that she you know, six months after finishing the container with me, she’d had like one of the best financial months ever, that she felt like she had finally kind of really refined to really refined her evergreen offer and evergreen funnel, to the extent that she felt really confident that these kind of results were going to be her normal now. And of course, after celebrating her, I kind of said to her, Well, you know, I’m just so happy for you, I’m so happy that you persevered. I’m happy that when you had the months, and you didn’t see the results immediately that you kept on tracking and that you kept on testing and refining.

Because look at where you’re at, look at where you are now this is amazing. And she kind of said to me, well, Polly, I mean, what else was I going to do? This is what I do. This is how I help people. I was always gonna find a way. And I was like, yes, yes, I wish, I wish more entrepreneurs thought this way. Rather than thinking, Oh, this isn’t working as soon as I want it to, what else can I be doing? What else can I do? Like, you know, what else? What other offer can I be creating? Or who else can I work with? Or what mentor do I need to hire next, like if they could actually learn to trust in themselves a bit more, and really commit to a strategy that feels good for them, then then it will come in the end if you’re consistent, but most people aren’t consistent. I’ll tell you that for nothing. Most people are not as consistent as they could be. And they are probably like literally, it’s like that kind of illustration that some people show occasionally of people kind of like chipping away at a goldmine. And they’re like inches away from getting to the gold before they throw down their tools and say it’s just not working. And that is so often the case with entrepreneurs in the entrepreneurial space. We’re like, oh, it’s because no one wants high ticket offers, I’m not going to go create a low ticket offer. And it’s like, no, no, all you needed to do was refine your messaging around that around that one offer.

And chances are you would be fully booked by next month, but they’ve just walked away. And then now wasting another one or two months developing something which they’re probably going to also give up in three months time and move on to the next thing. But it’s the most frustrating thing to observe in the entrepreneurial space, particularly in the coaching space. So please do not be one of those people when you recognise that failure is not an option. How do you behave? Or let’s put it the opposite way, where success is inevitable? How do you behave. And again, to be honest with you, it’s also about the work of finding an offer that you are so committed to that you are willing to be consistent that you are willing to learn and refine because you know what you’ve created is worth it. And you know, when people no take on this offer, and experience it that they will be grateful that they did so a lot of people haven’t taken the time to create something that they feel that that confident about. And alongside this whole failure isn’t an option. It’s recognising that learnings are baked into success. And when I say learnings, that’s my way of kind of saying mistakes are baked in success, ie, you’re gonna get a lot of things wrong, you’re gonna do a lot of stupid things, you’re gonna make a lot of bad decisions, you’re probably going to hire the wrong person at some point, you’re probably going to invest in things that aren’t going to give you the right results. But again, this is something we can stew on or this is something that we can sit with and observe in a compassionate way. And be curious and see what the learnings are.

Take those learnings, learnings almost kind of put them on like a suit of armour and move forward from that, you know, when you can be with those learnings you’re, you’re so much closer to the breakthrough you’re looking for. But if you try to ignore them If you tried to pretend they didn’t happen, or if you do the opposite, if you lament on them or get frustrated by them for too long, none of those things are serving you. Okay? Another really important piece is who you surround yourself is pivotal to your success. Okay, and I say this because at one point in my single mum life, I was surrounded by contractors who were under charging, predominately because majority of those contractors had their partner as the main source of income in their household. So they didn’t need to be charging very much. And I remember having conversations with them, I always felt greedy for charging what I was charging, because it was so so different to what they were doing. But when I then started surrounding myself with other people on a similar path, I think I then came to recognise that what I was doing was not unusual. But it would have felt unusual had I not surrounded myself with other people who had the same kind of growth mindset. So do go out your way to put yourself it doesn’t necessarily need to be a mastermind, it could be a community, whatever shape it takes, if you can’t afford to invest, find the free groups with people who are like minded, if you can afford to invest, I will say that, particularly in the early stages of building an online business, it was really powerful to see other people just like me, just as human as me just as flawed as me, absolutely killing it and making really vast sums of money, and really proving to me what is possible. And also proving to me that there is success in the mess, because none of them will have their stuff together. And yet still, still, they would be successful. So it was I mean, it was really Yeah, and it really normalised all the things I desired. Because like I say, in my day to day, real life, I wasn’t surrounded by anything like that. And the next thing I want to say actually related to people around you is don’t be afraid to mute or block anyone on social media, or pick and choose who you share your journey with.

So as much as I love my dad, and my dad is one of my biggest cheerleaders in so many senses, and he’s honestly one of my best friends. At the same time. He, he said some pretty insensitive things about my choice of work. He actually since then has been in the last year or so has been immensely encouraging. But there was a time right in the very early stages where he really didn’t understand what I was doing. And he was quite dismissive. And when I was celebrating my first success with a group programme launch, he said, he made a comment that made me feel really rubbish for a while and really question if I was good enough to be doing what I was doing. And that really was unhelpful. So moving forward, I decided not to share any conversations with him remotely route routed around work, because I just didn’t want to allow space for anyone to be questioning myself at a time where I was so fragile. In that sense, I can certainly say I’m less fragile about those things now. But it really helped me in the early stages. Similarly, if there’s anyone on social media who triggers you, or a nosy relative who leaves you feeling like you’re embarrassed to be showing up in stories and selling, simply mute them, you don’t have to block them or anything. But if it’s gonna help you get out your shell and just show up and do what you need to do, then do it. Okay, because visibility is enormous when it comes to making your business successful. And one of the things I did on steroids in the first year of launching, my business was being immensely visible, entirely imperfectly, very casually. But I still was immensely visible. And it really, really helped. The other thing to share, and we’re getting towards the end, do not worry, but I’ve got four more tips to go. One of them is prioritise your well being as much as your strategy I’ve always invested in both equally as heavily, okay, and what I mean is I’ve supported in subconscious, subconscious transformation work. I’ve invested in somatic work, I’ve invested in nervous system regulation work, I’ve invested in trauma informed work, I’ve invested in so many things, to support myself, emotionally, energetically somatically. I’ve also read all the books.

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And it really has really, it’s really, really helped. So obviously, I’m talking about the self development stuff that’s helped me here. But, you know, these, these revelations, these, this, this level of self awareness and ability to support myself has only come about because I’ve proactively gone about learning to and learning to understand myself on a deeper and deeper level. And that work, it feels like it has only just begun. And it’s helped me really keep a genuine level head, and a healthy degree of separation from the work that I do, and really instilled a deep sense of self belief and self trust, which has helped me become the self led leader that I am today. The other thing to say about all of this is that the energetic leap into business is essential. Now that leap of faith that we take at some point, I do believe is essential. I think at some point, you’re going to take a leap and it’s going to feel scary and you don’t really know what the other side is going to look like. But you know what, that’s that’s the truth. When you’re moving away from reality, you know, one that you don’t really like, you won’t entirely know what the other side look looks like. And at some point, you do need to surrender and you do need to take the leap. However, what I will also say is that leaping is exhausting. If, and if you find yourself getting energetically drained by it, because I mean, that’s not unusual, it is recognising that this is a marathon, not a sprint, you know, when you’re looking to build a sustainable business that’s going to support you for years, you need to find a way that you can do it sustainably. So once you’ve done that initial thing of getting out your comfort zone getting visible, perhaps live launching, perhaps you know, pitch or whatever it is, you’re doing. Those first few times, they’re going to feel stretchy as hell. But once you’ve got past that, is then learning about Okay, but how do I do this sustainably, otherwise you will burn yourself out. And that’s why obviously, I’ve created my particular programs, to support entrepreneurs.

Because I recognised myself, the way I’d started, business was not away, I could continue doing it. And obviously, that leads beautifully into my second to last point, which is consistency is key. And again, this is where sustainable practices come in. Because it’s very hard to be consistent. If you’re doing things that energetically drain you, okay? So learning to find a way to be visible, that feels good to you, is really, really important. And my final point is when you love your clients and love what you do selling comes 1000 times more easily. So it really, really pays like part of this work around really understanding yourself and looking after yourself alongside doing your work. Focusing on your strategy. The reason why these parts are important is because you know, it’s not enough just to show up and do who you are in the equation is actually more important. And it’s much easier to understand and really create from a place of love, when we love ourselves first. So you know, taking the time to do the things to love on yourself, helps you be in that state of overflow, where that love can spill over for your clients that love can spill over for the offers that you create that love can spill over in the way that you sell. And ultimately, that then creates the most genuine connections, genuine client chat transformations, genuine marketing communication, and you bring the human to your business, which everyone will find immensely attractive. And then later on, if your business becomes even bigger than you, it’s still rooted in something that’s very real. Okay. So that is pretty much it. If you have any questions, I’m curious to hear them. If you’re a single mom yourself, and you’re starting out in business, I want to hear from you.

So thank you so much for being in my ears today if you found this useful, I would love for this to reach as many single moms as possible. So if you are on yourself, and you know someone this could help, please do get it in their ears because I want you to know what’s possible because I know that no one is ever at their final destination, right? Everyone’s always on a journey. But I will say I’m in a much better predicament than I was two or three years ago. And I know the version of myself two or three years ago would have been elated to have heard this podcast and to know that I was the one that recorded it or the motion came in there. So So yeah, so please do share and next week I’m going to be talking about why not niching is slowing down your business growth.