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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. Today, I want to make this episode all about you. Yes, we’re talking about the questions every six to seven figure founder should be asking themselves right now. But whether or not you are already a six figure to seven figure founder doesn’t really matter, because if you aspire to have a business that is earning six figures plus, or even if you’re just on your journey there, these are still questions that are totally relevant to you. I’ve recorded some other episodes coming out this time of year, which are very much about myself and my journey, and the way I think and the things that I’ve been experiencing in my multi six figure business, but I wanted this to be an episode that provides an opportunity for reflection for yourself. It’s that time of year, particularly in the UK, and I know I have international listeners, but if you are in a cold place, in a cold country, I very much recommend wrapping up with a blanket, making yourself a cup of tea, pulling out a journal, the fanciest one you have, and a pen that makes you feel very bougie and take some time to reflect on some of the questions I’m going to be asking you in this episode to really set the tone for a delicious and abundant 2026 So this episode is not about trends or tactics. I’m going to be honest, a lot of good marketing and business principles don’t really change that much, while everyone else tries to tell you that they do. 

It’s about asking the kind of questions that change the trajectory of your business, that make you the cushy CEO gives you the identity to know, the questions to ask, to know what to be focusing on, without outsourcing your power to anyone else. And I’m going to be asking you the questions seasoned founders avoid, but the questions you must ask yourself if you want to be that next, if you want your next level to be inevitable. Okay, so let’s get into it. Where are most founders unknowingly creating a ceiling for their growth? Have you ever been like that? Have you ever been like why? What is it? No matter what I do, I can’t seem to earn past a certain amount. Sometimes we see such a similar amount in our bank account for so long, we start to just believe it isn’t possible, particularly if we feel like our capacity is like up to the rafters, it can be very difficult to feel it can be any different. And quite frankly, that’s where business mentors like myself come in, because often it does require an external perspective, however, where you are not in a position to do that or have no desire to do that right now, let me ask you some questions in this episode to help you. So the first question I want to ask you is, does my current message match the caliber of clients I want to attract next year? Does my current message match the caliber of client I want to attract next year? Yes, I’m repeating myself, because I really, if you’ve got this on double speed, I don’t want you to miss what I’m saying. Here’s the thing, quite often our positioning lags behind our own evolution. You’re growing. Perhaps the clients you’re working with alongside are also evolving and growing, and sometimes we’re so in the delivery of all of that our brand is left behind, but that means we keep on attracting more of the same. We all feel frustrated feeling like some of the amazing clients who are coming in are just pure unicorn. Unicorns can’t seem to speak today, apparently, and the rest is just luck, and it really isn’t but you do need to think about your current message, which let me ask you a couple more questions that will support you to refine that message. 

But firstly, who you’re speaking to really, really does matter the amount of times I’m reviewing my client’s content and I’m like, Who is this written for? And I can see their faces go blank because they’re so in the kind of sharing the features or educating. That they’re not thinking about who they’re writing it for. So one of the things I recommend you do that I did in my own business, the first time I worked with the dreamiest client, who took full autonomy and responsibility, radical responsibility for her results, and implemented with next to no question and just got it done. I then made sure all my content spoke to that kind of business owner, and yes, that means it’s quite repellent to anyone who’s looking for severe hand holding, who doesn’t want to have radical responsibility over their results, but I am perfectly okay with that, because it means the accelerator is full of women who are vibey as hell, considering the investment for the accelerator, the women in there are of such a high caliber, and that is because I talk to women who are of a high caliber in my messaging, and it means the people who come in are phenomenal. So similarly for you, where am I explaining, justifying or educating too much, that is a really good sign of where we are speaking to people before they are ready to work with us, where we are speaking to people who are not at the right stage to invest in working with us. This is where I often talk about empowered pain points. It’s not that we don’t speak to people who, you know, need a problem solving. But what does that problem actually look like? How do we speak to that person who’s given it a darn good go their attention is just going in the wrong direction, rather than the person who’s not even considering trying to fix it in the first place, that person will not be as ready as a person who’s already thrown their hat in the ring, and it’s just been the wrong ring and the wrong hat. Okay? We want you to be illustrating your authority, and that speaks to readiness, not to persuasion. You don’t need to persuade anyone. Third question for you, get your journal out, get your pen ready. Is my marketing saying trust me, or is it making them trust themselves with me? Again? We’re not here to persuade. We’re not here to convince. We already know the amazing work that we do. We don’t need to kind of convince anyone of anything. But what we do want them to feel confident about is we want them to make an empowered decision if they choose to invest in us. We want them to know that ultimately, they’re investing in themselves. 

Because when someone comes to an investment, knowing that ultimately the investment is within themselves, the energy exchange and the radical responsibility they bring to that transformation is on a different level, where someone invests and thinks, please solve all my problems. Please do all the thinking for me. You’ll be drained immediately. There needs to be a meeting of energies, right? So those are the first three questions. Now I want to get into offers and delivery, because this is where most businesses leak profit and energy. Okay? So this is question number four. I hope you’re keeping up. Which offers genuinely deserve to come with me into the next year, and which ones are there just because my old self thought I should have them. Maybe there’s a mini offer gathering dust. Maybe there’s a tier that is barely filling, or a membership that has five members, where you’re making very little money, and it’s taking a lot of energy and time take a moment to think about your offer. Suite, what deserves to come with you into 2026 what forms part of a wonderful client journey, and what do you need to leave behind? Question five, if I delivered one offer for the next 12 months, which would move the needle most for me and my clients. Okay, so when you think about if you were just to have one offer and no other other offer that allows you to have the spaciousness that you desire, the impact that you desire, and the number of clients that you desire, to hit the financial goals that you desire, what does that look like for you when we’re thinking about premium, not clutter? What does that look like for you? So that is question number five. I’ll say it one more time. If I delivered only one offer for the next 12 months, which would move the needle the most for me and for my clients.

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Sorry, that question is worded very poorly, but essentially, if you only had one offer, and you had to be delivering it for 12 months, what would it be? I’m not saying, by the way, that you all need to go off and make a 12 month long offer, but I just want you to challenge yourself to think about what that can look like, because it is amazing the mind weevils that can tell us that what we’re doing only works a certain way, and it’s very powerful to just look at it from a different angle and see what is there possibly available for us that we’ve been discounting up until now? Question number six. What in my delivery drains my brilliance and what consistently amplifies it? Okay, I want you to think about areas in your business where you feel drained, particularly in your client delivery, and where it feels amplified. I’ll give you one little example I have found really, powerful. Because, you know, business strategy for people, as I mentioned in my previous episode, although I think it might be the one coming out next. You know, with business strategy, there are so many different things I can help my clients with holistically, you know, from their marketing to their website to their messaging to their office suite. And so when I first start working with a client and I do an audit of all of these things, it can feel quite overwhelming. And even as we go through the process of a call week to week, while we focus in on one area and look at everything in the form of projects, so that we work through things one bit at a time, at the same time, even just, you know, once you’ve finished a call, because we’ve been chatting, in some cases, from, I don’t know, 45 minutes, all the way to 90 minutes, dependent on the package a client has with me. If we have a 90 minute call, we’re going to cover a lot of things. By the time you finish the 90 minute call, you’ll probably remember the freshest thing, which is the most recent thing we discussed. And while I always will summarize a call and say, These are the things we covered, these are the actions I have found simply just using a certain piece of AI software to summarize my calls and giving them clear actions that we need to do by the next call, rather than just leaving it for them to decide or figure things out. Just doing some of that with AI, obviously, with me reviewing it and checking it’s where it needs to be and tidying it up so that it is 100% accurate, and what it needs to be has really elevated the way I work my one to ones they always share with me immense gratitude when I share these summaries with them, which before I’d simply give them a call transcript and a recording. And let’s face it, people don’t watch call recordings, and they rarely reference a transcript unless they’re looking for a particular thing that’s been said. 

So these AI summaries are really good at removing the overwhelm, bringing back the clarity. And not just meaning that they’ve got valuable reflections for my call, but they actually have a clear implementation strategy on the other side of our conversation together, such a simple thing to do, but that’s why I feel like my brilliance is amplified, because not only are we discussing brilliant things, but they have a very clear pathway to use on the other side. But in terms of draining my brilliance, it was actually spending the time developing those AI also had summaries, and so it was passing that over to a VA so that it’s not me needing to do that and I’m simply just reviewing it before it goes out. So there are ways that you can both be draining your brilliance and amplifying it in small things and in big things. You know, one of the most simple exercises you can do in business is simply have two lines in your journal. If you’ve got your journal in front of you right now, just do a line down the middle and put feels heavy, feels light on either side, in each column, and just a list all the things that feel heavy and list all the things that feel light. Once you’ve done that, you can take a moment to think about what you about what you want to delegate, what you want to ditch, and what you want to automate. So that’s a that’s a little bonus I threw in there that I wasn’t planning on throwing in there, but it seemed relevant to what we’re talking about. Okay, so now I’m getting in some capacity and leadership questions. This is where identity meets operation. Question number seven is, where am I still being the operator when I need to be the founder? So funnily enough, that AI example I just gave you is a very good example of that. 

That’s me very much an operator, energy going above and beyond and creating these summaries where actually I quickly recognized my VA can do that. And you know, where I’m being the founder is, where I’m actually spending my hours of my time with those clients, ensuring that they are being supported, while also then having the capacity on the other side to look at the bigger picture tasks that need to be done working on my business. Question number eight, what am I postponing hiring, delegating, simplifying, that’s already costing me growth. Okay, so what am I postponing hiring, delegating or simplifying that’s already costing me growth. So one of my one to ones recently invested in dubsado, after me repeatedly saying you are doing the same process again and again and again. And hiring a VA to do it, you’re going to save so much money having it automated via dubsado. Yes, as an upfront investment getting it all set up, but once it’s done, you’re going to save hours on your VA, which means your VA can then support you with amplifying your marketing tasks. Such a simple switch took a bit of bravery on her part, because she needed to trust that when she invested in Dubsado and the kind of setup that it would pay dividends. But I mean, I’m using Dubsado years on from a time that I took a similar leap of faith and oh my goodness, am I grateful for it? 

Question Nine, if nothing changed in my business for six months, what problem would finally force me to act? This reveals neglected bottlenecks instantly do. Okay, take a moment to think about it. Where are there energy leaks and how you are operating? If nothing changed in your business for six months, what problem would finally force you to act similarly? I like to ask the question, if there is one thing that you often think, Oh, I know if I got more visible, I know if I recorded more videos. I know if I posted more personal posts alongside my more strategic ones. I know if I was more consistent with my visibility on stories. I know if I reached out to that amazing person I could collaborate with. There could be some opportunities. There any of these stories you’re telling yourself, or you’re like, I know if, but you’re not doing it. And if that, I know has been dragged out for the entire of 2025, and you’ve still not acted upon it. Now I’ve just referenced quite a few. I’m not saying do any of them, or do all of them, or any of that at all, but do you think about where you’re telling yourself that story, like one of the I know if was for me, I can’t remember it was the beginning of this year or the end of last year, where I sat with my lovely friend Sarah, Sarah Dalrymple, and I was like, I know if my brain wasn’t so preoccupied by with social media posts, I would have more capacity for sales and sales conversations. And you know the other things I need to be focusing on. And I knew the moment it came out my mouth. I just needed. I needed to do it. I needed to hire Bella before I even felt ready to have another team member and make another investment. I trusted where and again, I knew if someone could be managing that part of my business for me, I would have more capacity to make more sales. And I knew if it didn’t work out, it’s not like I can’t change my mind further down the line, the contract wasn’t forever, it was for 90 days, and here we are, I’d say probably around a year on, still working together, so that I know if paid off, right? But I think sometimes we can also see our decisions as finite, and very often they’re not. So there’s an element as well of you know, really reminding ourselves of that when we make a decision. Okay, let’s get into the final No, yes. Six questions. 

Okay, so question number 10, and this is about marketing and visibility. We’re moving beyond tactics into resonance and thought leadership. This is such a good one. Question number 10, does my content reflect my thinking or my insecurity. Oh, my goodness. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this where a client may say to me, Oh, I’m so frustrated with x, and then next thing I know, I see their Instagram and they’re having a rant about this thing. And I’m like, that rant may felt very cathartic to get off your chest, and other people in your industry, or other people who relate to you will probably, you know, respond and be supportive, but that ideal client you’re looking to attract, is it actually speaking to them? Is it going to have resonance with them? Is it further supporting your positioning? Now I’m not saying we can’t be an authority and have a rant. We can 100% be an authority and have a rant. In fact, some of the biggest authorities I know, biggest authorities I know, rant regularly, but what flavor of rant are we sharing? Just think about it for a moment. Question number 11, what am I saying because it’s true, and what am I saying because it’s trending? Okay, we don’t want to be part of the noise. I The one thing I love about me being autistic, undiagnosed, I must always add, is that I just don’t care about the noise, probably to my detriment, because I’ve never, ever gone viral, but I just don’t care, and it means I attract people who, fortunately, I think, are in a very, very similar lane of Yeah, I just want to be true to myself and know that that attracts my ideal clients. Just speak to my ideal clients like none of the bullshittery that happens in the online space. And that is very refreshing people like that again, when we remember we’re building a body of work. We don’t need to trend, we don’t need to go viral. And in fact, we could be repelling maybe one of our most ideal clients if we were to be doing those kind of things. Question number 12, where am I muting myself to seem palatable to people who will never buy from me. Where am I muting myself to seem palatable to people who will never buy from me?

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Did I ever tell you about that time I muted my mum on Instagram or the ex boyfriends or ex husband’s family that I blocked on social media, all of those things I did because there was a quiet internal noise thinking, are they judging me? What are they thinking about what I’ve shared just here now? They might, you know, credit to all of them. They’re all good human beings. They probably weren’t paying any attention to what I was doing, but the fact it was even playing in my mind, and I have shared in the past, I do have a very busy mind. I’m not pretending this is a healthy thought, but I’m sharing it because I know I’m not alone with this. I know my clients express this all the time, and so I like sharing this example because it is vulnerable, being this honest, but it also reminds you. That you know it is normal, whether it’s peers, whether it’s family, whether it’s ex husbands, all of these things can limit our confidence with getting visible and being really truthful and really owning our authority and bringing people in and thank goodness there are solutions like muting people that they don’t even know. They’ve been muted. They don’t even know. They’re not seeing your stories. I mean, if they’re listening to podcasts right now, sorry, guys, you now know, but you know, it doesn’t matter. I also thought if one day it comes out and my mum finds out, I’d just be honest with her. In fact, I probably have told her, since I can’t even remember. Most important thing is it doesn’t matter, but be aware of where there are real Gremlins in your head, where you’re worrying about how people might judge you and recognize you. You can actually do something about that, that on a practical level, obviously on a mindset level, in the ideal world, we’d just stop caring, but where we’re not at that stage yet, then simple things like muting or blocking is a great, great boundary to set in between, because, quite frankly, they’re not the people who are going to not the people who are going to buy from you anyway. So why should they be there? Okay, we are now into Phase six, the final three questions, and this is about self and identity. Okay. 

Question 13, am I building from my next level identity, or from the version of me who started this business? Yes, I went there. I’m going to repeat it, because it’s a big one, and it actually ties everything we’ve just talked about together. Am I building from my next level identity, or from the version of me who started this business? In fact, I could add to this and say, am I building from my next level identity, speaking to my next level identity client, or from the version of me who started this business honestly, when we don’t infantilize or patronize or persuade people with our content and instead, help them recognize from all those other silly choices you’ve been making that haven’t been getting you anywhere fast. I am the choice. Let me show you all the reasons why, and let me make sure you know that you’re a good fit. Because here are the people I don’t like to work with, and here’s who I do. It all comes together so much more easily. And I hope from listening to this episode so far, you’re recognizing that, yes, strategy comes into it, but who you are being the identity piece. My lovely client, Leanne Cyr, is so so about this. She talks about the 8020 you know, 80% is mindset. 20% is strategy. And this is this episode really highlights this, right? Like, yes, you’re going to be building and designing and implementing a strategy. But if you’re coming to it from a mindset where you don’t entirely trust in yourself or where you’re going, people pick up on that energy. Okay, you need to be doing it like, from your feet through your body up, not from your head down, okay, from the ground up. Question number 14, what would become effortless if I simply allowed myself to be excellent? You are excellent. Why are you hiding it? Why aren’t you making it easy for people to find that excellence. How are you making it hard for them to find that right now? And how do you make it easier? Where do you get to enjoy your business every day? I’m going to repeat the question because I added on a few things there question 14, what would become effortless if I simply allowed myself to be excellent, excellent at podcasting, excellent on camera, excellent at client delivery, excellent at developing your offer. Suite. What choices does that person make? The one who trusts in their excellence, that person would definitely be diving head over heels straight into the accelerator starting in January, because they would trust that they are building something that will be industry leading. Because that’s the kind of things my clients do when they work with me. Question 15, what future Am I actively choosing with the decisions I’m making today? Ooh, that’s a big one. I’m going to say it one more time, what future Am I actively choosing with the decisions I’m making today? I want to remind you, the sales you’re making today or not making today, are usually a response to what you were doing three to six months ago, and what you choose today is setting the foundations for the results that you will achieve in three to six months. Now that’s not to say you won’t make any sales today. You can 100% do that as well, but it is understanding the compound effect of what we’re doing in business all the time and where we’re making those decisions from, really. Really, really matters. You are so much more in control of the ship than you’re giving yourself credit for. Trust in your excellence, trust in your navigation system, and trust in your desire to have somebody to support you with that navigation because it is heavy to carry alone, even if it’s just simply tuning into this podcast. But you know, if you want more, in January, there will be a masterclass on how to scale from one to one. There’ll be so much more good stuff where that came from. And of course, I have got my profitable Practitioner’s Guide, which is entirely free, which you can download in the notes below. I really enjoyed this episode. I hope you enjoyed it too. Strategy is so potent, but the underlying identity really is everything. I recommend you look at these journal questions and prompts. I recommend you spend time with it, and I recommend that last question that I asked you that you come back to it on the daily what future Am I actively choosing with the decisions I’m making today? And look at how fast things change for you and how fast things elevate. If this landed, if you found it helpful, if you think it could be helpful to any other business owners you know, please do rate it, review it, share it, and I will be in your ears next week.