00:00

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.

00:36

Hello, and welcome to the show. Today, I want to talk about what it really takes to have a spacious business. So many of us say we want one, but how many of us are actually building in alignment with that desire? Funnily enough, recently I had a new client who had just bought my Kushi COO, my AI tool to help you organize your week, and she managed to break it. I’m not embarrassed to say that. You know, developing AI tools, they are you know they’re prone to that kind of shit, right? They take relentless testing, and occasionally that testing comes in the form of a lovely client. And to apologize, I offered her a free 40-five minute consult as well as fixing the issue. What can I say? I really liked her, anyway, and I still do, by the way. I don’t know why I said that in past tense. Anyway, so one things that she came along with to the call massively inspired me, and I was like, we need to talk more about this because so many of us go through this world saying, I want a spacious business, in the same way that I say I’d like to be a size 10, and then I sit down and I eat loads of cake and ice cream after eating a really perfectly balanced salad. Like the salad, the intention was there. What happened afterwards was not in alignment with that goal. We’re all guilty of habits like that, right? Maybe not quite as bad as me, but at the same time, that habit can also show up in terms of what people say they want in their business, and then what they actually do in their business, and sometimes we can be so blissfully unaware. 

And obviously, it’s one of the reasons why I have a job, right? Because a lot of us are too close to ourselves, our habits, and maybe just you know, like we’re we’re on a new terrain in the digital marketing world. There’s so many things I know and take for granted that many others have not had the chance to consider. So, let’s just pause a moment before we get into that and just talk about what does a spacious business even mean, right? For many, it’s not just having fewer hours; it’s having a business that gives you space to breathe. One of the lovely things this client reflected was that she needs spaciousness for her creativity. If she feels throttled, then you know that creativity isn’t going to come out. And she had the very realistic time constraint of a baby and very possibly another baby on the way. So this wasn’t just a nice to have. This is a need to have, both for her own sanity and for her creativity, which is core to the work she does, and also for the fact that you know she has a family and a family that’s very very young and has you know needs, etc. So you know it’s having a business that gives you space to breathe, but also one that makes money without constantly demanding more from you. Now this can be a totally new arena that people haven’t had to consider before. If you’ve jumped into business and you have been so passionate about what you you know what you’re doing that you haven’t minded hustling, you really love your work, so you don’t mind working on a weekend, you don’t mind working late. You’re working for the dream. I say all of this because I think maybe some will be more embarrassed to miss it than others, but I think a lot of us have been there at some point in our entrepreneurial journey. That stage where we’re like, we don’t care. We’re just looking at all the amazing results that so many people are achieving and being like, I will do this if that’s what’s required because I trust it’s going to get me there. Particularly if you come from the background of like hard work gets you results.

04:00

Like if you went to school and like work harder, get better. People can yeah conflate working long hours with results. If you know me by now, you’ll know that I do not agree with that as a concept. But let’s get into what I really wanted to say today. If you want a spacious business, I’m going to share a few principles that are going to put you in good stead. One of them is build for the clients you actually want. Spacious isn’t just a time thing; it’s a state of mind. And believe me, if you’re working with clients who drain the living life and soul and energy out of you, then you will not enjoy the work that you do. Everything will feel heavy. Everything will feel hard. And if you are somebody who wants to work with premium clients, people who invest premium sums of money in their transformation or the work that they are doing with you. You need to have a business model that is a match for it. So interestingly, this wonderful woman who attended the call today said to me, “So I’m thinking about a membership because then I can like help a lot of people. It’ll be a really easy thing.” To say yes to, but she’d said two sentences prior to that. I want to work with premium clients. So the question I asked her is, do you are you in any memberships? Are they something that you enjoy? Because if you are not, and you would consider yourself your ideal client or similar, or if you can think of your ideal clients and think about would they be in a membership? Then I wouldn’t recommend it. And generally speaking, memberships are not where premium clients go because memberships are big, they’re noisy, and they’re the like you know. Funnily enough, I was sharing with this client. I was like, if you want a spacious business, that’s because you are limited on time, and you know when you focus on the right things, you’re going to get the results. It’s the same for your ideal client. So why would they join a membership? A membership is also a lot of delivery, constant content, constant retention requires a high volume of people. You know, just because it’s cheaper doesn’t mean the higher percentage of people in your world will convert. That’s such a shocking stat for a lot of people. So cheap offers often require more marketing, not less. 

So it’s not a business model that is in alignment with desiring a spacious business. Do not recommend. Okay. So the second principle I want you to know is that for a spacious business to exist, you want to keep your offer suite incredibly simple. Every new offer creates more marketing, more messaging, more admin, more decision fatigue for your ideal client, and more customer confusion as to like, am I in the right offer? Should I be here? Should I be there? What I want you to ask instead is, how do I make my existing offers work harder, less complexity, more depth? Okay, so that kind of comes nicely onto principle number three, which is create one obvious invitation. If you are the person that solves a particular problem, how are you doing that, and what is the invitation? So, for example, I shared that inside my accelerator. It used to be 12 months; it went down to three because there is an obvious yes in the three months. People can come in and within a short time frame they can get clarity over what their offer is, confidence around their positioning, create an offer that they can validate and launch within three months, make sales, and have strong foundations to scale from. Simple promise, easy decision. Okay, but then we get to principle number four, which is give somewhere people somewhere to grow. The first offer isn’t the whole journey. After the foundations, then you know over the next six months. For you know, for example, say someone’s joined me for three months. I’d be like, look, stay for another three months, and we can get your ads up and running. Then you’ve got more visibility, and you’ve got more sales. Then within nine months, we could be looking at let’s add a mini offer to what you’re doing, so we can offset some of your ad costs. Again, that’ll be another funnel to develop, another offer.

07:45

So yeah, it will take time, but then within nine months, you are then able to offset some of your ad costs and make sales with even more ease. Following on from that, I might be like, stay on for another three months, and beyond that, we can then look at scaling your ads and improving your conversion, so we can get your funnel fully optimized. That goes from someone joining me for three months to 12, all the way through to 18 months. The average client that comes inside the accelerator stays with me for 12 to 18 months. There are people who’ve even been in there approaching three years because their business continues to grow and they continue being able to benefit from the expertise and experience I bring and the brilliant community of other established business owners. It’s just brilliant, okay. But can you see how much easier is? I’m only making one invitation. The other invitations happen the happen on the other side of once someone’s come into my world, and you can totally apply that to all industries, all invitations, all group programs. So in the same way, most businesses aren’t transformed in 90 days. Most health issues, there’s always another level of depth or another level of support that’s required on the other side for consistency, for you know optimization and everything that you might desire. Okay, so people stay because there’s always another milestone to reach. So when I was talking to this client, I was talking to her about what milestones can you be adding so you’re not fearing whether people will stay or not because they have an obvious incentive to stay. There is an obvious roadmap to follow. Okay, my other you know principle, spacious business principle, is to optimize before you expand. So that was the advice I gave because one thing that was happening with this wonderful woman I was talking to, who’s such a brilliant. I’m also sharing all this, by the way, because she is established. She is brilliant. She’s already killing it with her sales. And my reflection was, if these are things that you know, accidental paths that she could have gone down instead of the one I recommended, then this is something I need to talk about because it’s it’s obviously not something that everyone knows. Which obviously, again, is you know, again, we’re all too close to what we do, right? We all underestimate our knowledge, and that knowledge can be so valuable when heard by the right person at the right time. Okay, so interestingly, when I was talking to this wonderful woman, she was talking about: should I add more offers? Should I add more to my existing offer to make it more desirable? And I was like, that is a great channel for your creativity, but it’s just going to add overwhelm to your existing client. Like, channel your creativity instead into visibility, so more people are coming into your simple, streamlined kind of client journey, rather than overcomplicating things. Ask yourself, how do you make what you already have perform better rather than what should I create next? So my invitation to those of you who are seeking dopamine, who are seeking novelty, who are seeking creativity, it’s not to undermine any of those things. So many of us would not be able to still be here running our businesses the way we do if you didn’t have that within how you do your business. But just channel it in a different direction. Channel it in the visibility direction, so people are discovering you and buying from you. And in the meantime, do the boring stuff like improving conversions, improving client retention, improving pricing, improving your messaging, and improving your lifetime value. Expansion isn’t always the answer; it’s going deeper, which I go into a bit later. But let’s get to principle number six: keep your marketing simple. Don’t try to master everything. One clear offer, one clear message, one reliable sales system. As soon as your business is profitable enough, start investing in ads because ads buy your time back. Okay. Sorry, there’s like 10 principles. So this is why I’m whizzing through this because I want this to be so snackable that everyone takes the time to listen to this because this is an episode everyone needs to listen to and take motherfricking notes.

11:27

Okay, principle number seven for for a spacious business is design around your capacity. Okay, so I kind of touched on this earlier. Please don’t build a business with a version of you who has endless energy, endless childcare, endless motivation. That is not real. Again, why I created my cushy CEO that helps hold you to account in what you’re doing. Please build around your real life. Again, you know, if you’re regularly scheduling and stuff that you’re not doing, look at why you’re not doing it. Do you need to be doing it? Should you be slightly? Should you be ditching it? Should you be automating it? Should you be finding a different way of doing it so it actually happens, but I also want you to ask: How much do I actually want to work? What does my ideal week look like? How many clients can I genuinely serve brilliantly? Then build the revenue around that. Okay, so everyone’s version of spacious is going to look different. For me, I don’t like to do more than two to three tasks in a day. Otherwise, I quickly and easily feel overwhelmed. I like to batch certain things into same days, so I have days purely for content creation. I have days purely for serving my clients and doing one day just for my group call, and no other kind of client calls that day because I know that it takes a lot from me looking after a lot of people all at the same time. I mean, not so much these days, but it certainly used to feel like that at the beginning. You know, again, if you flex the muscle enough, it doesn’t always do that. And again, I guess would be a good representation of what I’m sharing here, which is you know to always be re-evaluating these things and seeing what still is true and what’s evolved and what what needs to change. Principle number eight: You remembering these guys? Prioritize profit over turnover. Revenue doesn’t equal freedom. A 250k business can feel exhausting. I was sharing with this client. She was like, “I want a membership model. I was like, “Okay, if you want a membership model and you’ve got everything going on your personal life, realistically, you’re probably going to need to hire a team of like at least two to three people to keep everything ticking over because the amount of content that you’ll need to have going out, the amount of guest experts you’ll probably want in your membership, the advertising that you’ll need running, all of these pieces, I was like, that is a complicated business model. At the same time, you could have 180k business with strong margins, evergreen sales, simple delivery, loyal clients, people who come and people who stay. You know, you could literally have the same number of clients and triple your revenue just based on creating those milestones and creating depth, creating a next step for those who already love buying from you. Okay, not saying either is right or wrong, but if you want a spacious business, yeah, actually no, there is a right and a wrong. So yeah, that will feel infinitely more spacious. The goal isn’t bigger. The goal is better. Okay, so the other thing I want you to be doing for your spacious business is please, for the love of God, and repeat yourself. Spacious businesses don’t constantly reinvent themselves. They repeat the same offer, the same framework, the same stories, the same messaging, the same systems. Repetition creates mastery. Mastery creates ease. Okay, and I really don’t want you to hear this and go, “Oh, that’s going to kill my creativity, because it’s not. Your creativity is in how you repeat the same offer, how you repeat the same framework, how you repeat the same stories. There is plenty of space in all of this, in your messaging, in your systems, for you to be creative and still not make your life overcomplicated. Creativity is not like the antithesis of this. It actually gets to be a strong part of it. I’m always saying simplicity creates spaciousness, which allows spaciousness for joy. Okay, like joy gets to be a firm companion on this journey when you have the spaciousness there, right? Because actually, it comes really perfectly to what I want to say here, which is what’s the biggest threat to spaciousness outside of everything I’ve just.

14:59

Outlined, it’s not actually your strategy. It’s anxiety. It’s you. When we are uncomfortable, we add more offers, more launches, more content, more ideas, more complexity. If this isn’t working, I need to add on another thing. I need to go on another platform. I need to hire another mentor. And actually, all we’re doing is slowing ourselves down. Sometimes complexity is just anxiety wearing a productivity costume. I know I’ve said this before, but I will say it till the cows come home. You know, you really we we can be our own worst enemy if we’re not careful with how we approach these things. Okay, so understand if you are getting in that headspace, take a moment to recognize: Do I really need this, or is this a distraction? Okay, get on your rebounder, go for a walk, play some music, get to the gym. Don’t do all of these things, but choose one of them, whatever it is, or just talk to that friend that doesn’t bullshit you, and just say, “Am I am I getting in my own way? And they will say, “Yes, yes, you are. You’re already doing brilliantly. I guess my question to you is: If I’m being that friend for you right now, I would be inviting you to say, “What can I refine in terms of what I’m doing already? When I look at the data, what is already working in my business? What is the opportunity that I’ve been avoiding? What is the low lift thing I could do today? Like, for example, following up with old discovery call leads that would result more sales rather than me overcomplicating things and adding I don’t know 10 trial reels to my schedule for the day like it’s so rarely that so a spacious business isn’t built by adding more it isn’t built by you know like doing more okay it’s by deciding what is enough. What’s the truest of your offers? 

Like, what what’s the best offer that you really really love? What can be your core offer, your signature offer, the thing that people attach and associate to you? Okay, how can you make sure that you’re marketing your clients, your working week, your revenue goals are all as simple and spacious as possible. Because ultimately, you’re not just building a business; you are building a life. And hopefully, if you’ve been listening to me enough, a cushy one at that. Okay, so yeah, if you want a spacious business, it’s time to be radically honest with yourself. Look at those 10 principles. Listen to this episode back if you need to. Are you adhering to them through the lens of your marketing, your offers, your hire, the way your week work looks? I want you to be looking at all of those things and recognizing: Am I sabotaging the spacious business that I desire because your spacious business isn’t something you earn; it’s something that you design, and it’s something that you can have from today. Believe me, as someone who, and I’ll share more on this at some point, but as someone who literally was on benefits, single mother raising two children under the age of, well, yeah, I’m guessing. Yeah, they were both. One was at preschool, and one was at school. Like, but just I learnt that you can build a business in three to four hours a day, and I, within two to three years, got to a multi six figure business, working less than school hours with many days when my kids were off school. So I know I’m not just saying this because I put a bunch of notes into ChatGPT and wanted to share them with you. I’m saying this because this is my lived experience, and it gets to be yours as well. Okay, I didn’t just get this once things got easy. I’m not like woohoo! I can now choose to work a few hours. It’s like no, this is my lived reality. I have children, and I was not going to let that be the one thing that stood in my way of making money. You know, not only do I have children, I have children with additional needs. Not only do I have that, I have the whole thing of that their dad lives in a different country. I have all of these obstacles, and I never let them get in my way.

18:54

Instead, I allowed them to drive me to be more intentional, drive me to be the person who’s so passionate about cushy, spacious businesses, and drive me to share this message with you today that you don’t have to wait, you don’t have to burn out to get to this stage. You get to have it now. Okay, so I hope this all pep talk has landed. I hope you are taking a moment to look at your calendar next week and look at where you get to make it more simple. And of course, if you want help with that, there is a free playbook that you can use that will support you to design your Cushy working week. And if you want it made super easy, I’ve been getting brilliant feedback about how phenomenal my Cushi AI COO tool is supporting you at designing your week. You literally just put it into your AI prompt, whether you’re on Claude or ChatGPT, and run through it every single Monday, and it will make sure that you’re focusing on the needle movers in your business each week, eliminating anything that doesn’t need to be there, and supporting you in designing backer shoe business. So yeah, this wasn’t meant to turn into a little sales spiel, but here we are. Have a brilliant week, and I’ll be in your ears next week.