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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.

00:37

Hello and welcome back to the show. I am so happy to be recording this. I’ve taken five weeks away from recording any episodes. Not that you would know, because I batched like a bad like a bad bitch back in July. Look at me laughing at my own jokes. My husband’s always teasing me. He’s like, I never known anyone who laughs so much at their own jokes. Well, at least one of us is happy. But anyway, I mean, I’ve titled this podcast about taking August off, and my clients will know I was not as off off in August as I normally am, but I would like you to take a moment to think about, have you built a business that would allow you to take August off? Because while, to some certain intents, I was still working, and I’m going to talk about how in a moment at the same time, there was no massive focus on my there was no direct outreach, there were no sales calls, there were no client calls, no calls whatsoever, no time spent on Zoom. That is a promise I made myself, because last summer, last August, I spent close to four weeks traveling around Sri Lanka with my new husband, again, laughing at the fact that I always feel like such a diva when I talk about first and second husband like never knew I’d be that woman. But here we are. And two years prior to that, in fact, the summer that initiated the no call August was back in 2022 I think it was, or it might be 2021 but I think it was 2022 when I traveled around Crete for three weeks with my then boyfriend, not yet husband, and spent another two weeks in Spain with the kids. And when I booked that trip, I’d really carefully looked at, you know, every everywhere we stayed, I made sure in the description on, you know, booking.com or on Airbnb, we did a bit of both, love, love staying in a, you know, like, not a hotel. 

Basically, that’s, that’s the vibe of me and my husband. We’re not, we’re not in well, I don’t mind a hotel, but most of the time I like to pretend that I am living there, cutting fresh peaches and nectarines in the morning, smattering them on top of some thick yogurt, getting some local honey on top, sitting next to a bougainvillea that I can pretend is my own, like I’m just role playing my like little Mediterranean life. I love it, but everywhere said they had Wi Fi. They told lies. Well, I basically learned there’s like, home Wi Fi, and then there’s holiday Wi Fi. And while I could do things like update my facebook status, I mean, who does that anymore, but I you know, could share a photo of our lovely lunch at some local Taverna, but could I do a zoom call? Could I fuck apologies to my language here. Hope you haven’t got kids in the back. Sorry, sorry. I know one person who does listen with the kids in the back. So apologies, children, aren’t you? Polly’s misbehaving again, but yeah, so yeah, it didn’t work, and it was awful, because it was earlier on in my business. Bearing in mind, I think, I think I feel like it might be in 2021 because I remember having ad client conversations. I remember new people who wanted to work with me getting and it was painful, so painful I’d be like, do you want to jump over to Voxer instead? Messy as hell. I mean, luckily it was only a few weeks, but, I mean, can you imagine? Did I enjoy that holiday, did I hell? Like it was stressful, like I tried to enjoy it, but there was that nagging feeling at the back of my head the whole time, like, am I going to come back in September, not to a whole load of business, but to a bunch of people telling me they don’t want to work with me anymore? I mean, the irony, of course, with that holiday was that because I couldn’t do zoom calls, I then spent more time in my sunbed. On my sunbed, not in it, that’d be weird on my sunbed, creating content, sharing stories, sharing client reflections, sharing testimonials, responding to people wanting to talk to me about working together. And actually, I think that was my first 50k month.

04:43

So while it was painful with existing clients, which, don’t get me wrong, I mean, as you can tell, I led with that, because that was the feature at the front of my head that was paining me. Because, you know what’s like, sales are lovely, but you know, I don’t want to. Upset a whole load of existing clients, you know, in the meantime. But what it proved to me was a, I mean, a lot of people ended up canceling calls to me during August anyway because they were also on holiday. Or if I said, Oh, I’m really sorry, I can’t actually make this meeting because my Wi Fi is patchy as hell, they’d be like, Oh, thank goodness, because I’m also somewhere where it’s patchy too. And so the majority of people were actually, in fact, not majority, everyone was okay, like everyone was happy, because everything was ticking over. It’s August, you know, it was fine. You know, I didn’t lose any clients in the process. What was going on? So a lot of the mind chatter was purely self generated around, what if they’re thinking this, what if the actual reality of it was everyone was fine, but beyond that, because I had less, you know, distractions and I, you know, I’m not good at lying in a sunbed doing nothing. So, you know, I was just sharing the lovely experience we were having, traveling around Crete and making, you know, invitations here and there, and 50k a month. There you go. Now I’m sharing this story, because after that I was like, two lessons, two valuable lessons have been learned here. One, you don’t need to do calls in August. Very little happens in August. August is a lovely preparation month. August is a great time to get you know, if you are in a position like me, where you don’t have, you know, children dominating the show, which I will say, for anyone who is looking after small children during or even larger children during the summer holidays. If you’re caring for anyone, then you know the summer can actually be the worst time to be getting things in order for your business, because you may have very little capacity. But from my particular predicament, where I’m generally child free for the majority of August. 

It’s a great time to get things, get my ducks in a row. I mean, you know, I would say I’ve never seen ducks in a row, but to kind of go into September with my emails already scheduled, my social content already scheduled, my launch plan up until the end of December. And when I say launch, I mean, more like promotion plan, sorted my my funnel, dusted off, like all the pieces, just kind of any systems, bit or any kind of automation that I’ve been ignoring that’s been broken for a while, like that slack notification I meant to get every time a cell comes through that I’ve died about a few months ago and I’ve not done anything to fix it, things like that, you know, just getting on top of it, catching any bad habits, Like, Oh, where have I been, like, losing time? Where have I been putting energy into things that isn’t profitable? So I really like it for that. So basically, I started to recognize August, is this a good time to not force anything, not pretend that it’s not a period where a lot of people are either, you know, either they’re away and slowing down, or they’re dealing with the fact that other people are away and slowing down. And I do know, like, obviously it’s very relative to where you live as well. So this situation is very specific to the UK. I know from my US peers, they don’t necessarily see it hitting as hard, but at the same time, a lot of them have reported to me, like things like their podcast listenership will kind of dip a bit during August. Mine’s actually gone up. But anyway, in fact, they always say, How does yours go up in August? I guess people just like listening to me on the beach. That’s all I can put it down to. So, yeah, the two things I learned is, like, essentially, again, Auntie Polly’s about swear, get your shit in order. Like, it’s a good month for that. Don’t start panicking about sales slowing down, you know, and like, cancel those calls because chances are they’re going to cancel on you regardless. Or be like, Oh, my childcare let me down. Or, Oh, the Wi Fi for my hotel isn’t working. Just, just let it a bit like I do similar in December. I don’t do calls in the last two weeks of December. There’s absolutely no point people so regularly will have something going on, or some networking events, and it just gets messy. Absolutely no point. Just don’t allow it to be a possibility. Just remove it. Okay? And the nice thing is, is, as long as that’s communicated well ahead, like, if I took on a new one to one in July, and I was very clear. I was like, I don’t do calls in August, just so, you know, so it’s anyone who comes in. They’re not like, suddenly blindsided by there are no calls in August. 

It’s communicated well ahead, and my accelerator clients are invited to submit any questions and all the way like that, everyone’s given a kind of like, real like runway towards this is happening gang. And what’s really lovely is seeing them take the same permission slip and apply it to their own business too, and to build businesses that aren’t financially impacted by doing that. So yeah, lesson number one was like, it’s, you know, like, how often do we genuinely get a period in our business where we can create some breathing space to focus on the things that we’ll often try and squeeze into the end of the day or kind of do at the beginning of the week that just ends up being so low down our priority list, it just doesn’t end up happening. But it feels really good to finally get it done. And the other piece was, wow, look at what happens when you’re not knee deep in client delivery and therefore able to focus more on sales than. Look at how many sales you make, my goodness, you come out the other side recognizing just how much money you’re leaving on the table during client delivery. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we can eliminate client delivery altogether, but certainly it will motivate you to look at, how can you bring more efficiency to the time that you spend with your clients. So the majority of what happens outside my interactions with my clients is managed by my assistant, Kim. So she does the onboarding, the off boarding, any tech questions, any finance questions, any like anything, even the follow up video, the recording of our call, a kind of breakdown as to what’s been like. Everything is managed by her. And similarly, chasing up to make sure that they filled in their form before we have a call. If they’re doing a one to one call with me, all of those pieces all outside of my brain space, all being managed by her. So the things like that that I probably want to say, probably I almost definitely bought into the mix off the back of recognizing where I’m not selling, my business isn’t making money. I mean, that’s not entirely true as well, because when I say where I’m not selling, I don’t just mean conversations. In fact, I mean conversations less than anything. I mean where I’m not looking at my funnel and going, Ah, that’s interesting. That creative did amazing last week. Let’s test a similar creative like stuff like that. 

Again, can be left bottom of the pile if I’m too involved in and it’s easy, right? Like I love my clients. The one thing people often reflect when they choose to become a client of mine after listening to this podcast is what they say two things. One, is really clear, clear that you care. And two, it’s really clear how invested you are in your clients. And it’s true, it’s true, and it can be to my detriment. And I also say this because I see it in a lot of my clients too. That’s probably one of the values we have in common, right? Like, you know, we’re not just here. There are some business owners out there who just love the thrill of the chase and that moment where they’re like, yes, I’ve got my prey the sale. And you can kind of see that a light switches off behind their eyes once that sale has been made. And, you know, unfortunately, that’s what gives this industry. That’s what gives the online business space a bad name, because there are people who will act like they are so invested and interested into you, in you, up until the point where you start working with them, and then you just become a number to them. You just become yesterday’s news, because they’re already looking at who else they can bring into their world. Oh, it makes it actually makes me feel sick as I’m saying that, because the amount of people who’ve been like ripped off by people and then people like that tend to be incredibly charismatic and put on a really good show on social media, and it can become really hard to know who you can and who you can’t trust anyway. That’s gone off on a bit of a tangent there. But yes, I guess the point I’m trying to make here is, I care about my literally. This morning, to give you an example, I woke up this morning, yesterday, a client in the accelerator had shared a sales page and said, you know, my ads are doing well. I’ve got a really low cost per lead. The inquiries are coming through. 

My accelerator is getting phenomenal results. Yes, she also has an accelerator different kind, different kind. Oh, my God. I’m just obsessed with her. And like all human beings, I responded to her. I shared a question about, you know, asking a question, which I feel will lead to her improving her sales page. But this morning, I woke up and I just was, you know, just, you know, that lovely period, just as you’re waking up and you’re not not entirely awake, but you’re also not fully asleep, and for some reason, she came to mind and, and this is honestly where, like, you know, if I was a hungry like, growmakers, I’d be like, rolling out of bed, lifting my weights, thinking about the gains and thinking about the money coming in. And instead I was thinking about this lovely, dear client of mine. And I was like, Oh, this is what she needs to know. This is what needs to be on the sales page.

14:02

And that’s how my brain works. I then, like, you know, reached out to her, and I was like, this is the thing I forgot to say about your sales page that I think is going to take it from like, Oh, that’s a nice to have to like, I need this right now. And you know, to be honest with you, it’s that attitude towards my clients, which is why I need to look at the percentage of my retention rate. But it is insane. It is insane like over half my one to ones renewed this year to continue working with me, not necessarily as one to ones, because I’m gradually moving away from that, not entirely, just looking to slim it down. So I’m now working with about a third of the one to ones I used to work with, if something around that three or four. I think I’ve got, at the moment, maybe room for one more, if you if you’re interested, but then I will be, that’s it anyway. So yeah, I’ve really whittled down the one to ones because the group’s doing so well, and because I just want to throw as much energy into the accelerator as possible. So yeah, the learnings were that, you know, I love looking after my clients, and there’s definitely. Definitely space where I can still love on my clients, look after them, and ensure that I’m, you know, prioritizing my funnel and the bits that work. So anyway, that was one reflection. One reflection was, well, that was a reflection from that summer. That was the foundations for why I don’t do calls in August. So if you’re a client or not a client, or thinking about taking August off. The reasons were, people are barely going to attend calls anyway. A lot of people are going to want to move things around. A lot of people are going to cancel. You’ll want to cancel. You’ll have things going on. We all deserve to have a period to pause and reflect, and you know, do what we need to do. And I’m going to share with you several other reflections that dropped in for me. In fact, there are basically two more reflections that dropped in during August that will be influencing how I run my business moving forward. 

So one thing was, I am really good at generally having a very spacious business like you’ve heard me talk about it so many times. Is there like a key tenet to what it is to have a cushy business? So I already don’t work Fridays, Mondays, I don’t have any calls. Last week of every month I have no calls. I do work. That’s when I do my deep focus work. Sometimes I take it off, like in July, it was just a week I took off to spend in Croatia with the kids, so and Christmas again, is a week where I take it off. So there’s at least two months of the year where I take it off, probably Easter as well. But the majority of times I use it for deep focus and batching bigger work, like, I don’t know, newsletters, social media, creating B roll content, all that jazz, because, yeah, because cushy business, it wouldn’t be cushy if I was, like, really shoving so much in there. And I’ve kind of made the mistake I’ve warned clients about, which is, when you have a lot of spaciousness, there can be a little pesky voice in your head that’s like, Fill it. Fill it again, laughing at my own drink or my own voice. But yeah, so essentially, what I did was, I mean, I didn’t even see myself as filling it more like, Oh, here’s a Brucey bonus. I’m making enough money to kind of get and I have enough time to be getting in lots of rooms with a lot of interesting business owners and infiltrating new networks of human beings. And that was really nice to do, but kind of draining, as in, for me, draining because I find being around a lot of noise, a lot of light, I mean, basically neurodivergent in me. Let’s just boil it down to that I’m just I like dimly lit pubs or saunas or smallish spaces where I can have a few quality conversations, and I’d be more than happy if it’s just one, like, I’m not into working rooms. I’m not into like, rushing around and saying hi to everyone. For me, that feels really shallow. I never receive those kind of like interactions from anyone as anything particularly meaningful. I’m not like, Oh, I must work with that person who rushed around said hi and gave me a hug. Like, no, that’s done nothing for our connection. I don’t know it’s fine, but it does eat into a lot of my time, because last year, I think I was essentially trying to attend at least one event per month, which meant I was traveling probably at least two days, maybe spending two days up there as well. 

So essentially eating a week out of every month going to these events. And I don’t want to be disrespectful to these events, but obviously there’s a formula, right? And after a while, you start to know what that formula is. And don’t get me wrong, there was always a gold nugget that would drop in, but my favorite events are the ones that I actually run, which, again, are based on the formula that I like the most, which is having no more than 10 attendees, so that everyone can have a voice at the table, and so that people aren’t just listening to me, they’re listening and learning from one another and creating new connections, new collaborations, and just everyone walking away, always with beautiful, brand new perspectives on their business that they’ve not had before, and often brand new opportunities based on the conversations they had with the people in the room. It’s just amazing. So one of the things I recognized was I was doing a lot of that because there was a little part of me that’s like, let’s get on into more of these rooms, not just to meet more more people, but because I wanted to see talks in preparation for the fact that I knew I’d start pitching to get on stages myself. But then as I was considering that, there was also people saying, well, then you better write a book. How are you going to leverage the talk if you don’t have a book, which, by the way, if you’ve not listened to my episode with Laurie more ofcito on speaking, oh, go listen to it. So full of gold nuggets, right? You do not need a book to get on a stage. But there’s a perfectionist part of my brain that’s like, oh, but you know, you do want to write a book. You are a good writer. People do like listening to what you have to say. So write. Why not go write the ruddy book? So there were a lot of shoulds that were starting to kind of stack up on my shoulders that, to be honest with you, were making it all feel increasingly heavy, and in the meantime, it was distracting me from the thing I. I’m really bloody good at in my business, and that was ads and funnels, like, while I’ve been running off to all these events, you know, I don’t have a tech assistant anymore. 

I don’t have someone running my funnels for me. Like, I teach people about funnels, so therefore I like to be knee deep in my own but in the meantime, things would happen, like my app, my cost per lead would start to go up, and I’d be like, Oh, I don’t have capacity to look at that this week. I’m just going to switch the ads off and come back to it, and then I wouldn’t come back to it. And then I’d have a week with a VIP day and a mastermind day. I’m like, oh, no, I haven’t got the capacity for it. And I’d keep on putting it off. I don’t even know why. I think for me again, probably because I was big, building it up to be like, this big thing, like, oh, then I’m gonna have to review the funnel, then I might have to change the lead magnet and all these things. Because there was, there was this inner stirring, this inner knowing that, like, my funnel needs to, like, be more specific. It needs to solve a more specific problem, to convert at the rate I want it to kind of an element of, like, I’m not walking my own talk with my own funnel, because it’s not doing what I would recommend to my clients that it should be doing, like it was converting fine, and it was bringing in clients, and that was the other ridiculous thing. In hindsight, I look back at this funnel, I’m like, it was still doing what it needed to do. Yes, it could have been doing it better. But again, the perfectionist in me was coming in going, No, until this is absolutely perfect. I don’t want it running at all. Now. I’m happy to report that the reason why I wasn’t fully off, off in August was because I launched a brand new freebie on the three mistakes you’re making with your mini offer, which is phenomenal, BT, Dubs, and adhering to what I believe is essential to being a high converting freebie. So if you want to know what that looks like, the link’s in the bio. Secondly, I wanted to create a mini offer so people could get a kind of taster of what it looks like to work with me before committing to something like the accelerator. Also solving what I believe to be is a really like big problem in the online space. Because for about a year now, people have banged on about the importance of having a low ticket offer. And the truth is, like, close to 90% don’t actually convert or do anything. And certainly that’s what I was hearing from people in the space. They’re like, Oh my goodness. Like, I can sell my core offer, but my mini offer that’s meant to be a funnel ain’t funneling. So I created the solution to that in a mini offer, which is like 97 pounds. It’s worth so much more than that, my goodness. So I created this new funnel. It went live like a couple of days ago. Cost per lead is, I don’t know, under two pound 50 at the moment, but I mean, I’ve spent a tiny amount, tiny already made three sales of my mini offer system. So it’s doing what it needs to be doing. Now I’m sharing this not to brag about my funnel, because it’s very, very early days, still more to come, but I’m feeling very optimistic and I’m feeling very committed, because the offer my goodness is so good, and it really showcases how I support my clients as a strategist, and it really showcases how simple it gets to be, and it really showcases what it looks like to scale your business with system, strategy and structure. I don’t know why that feels great, you know, like so that you genuinely can make sales in your sleep. That’s what I want for everyone. There’s honestly, it doesn’t honestly. I was on the way to the coffee shop earlier, and I looked because I was about to share how many mini sales I’d made, and I thought I’d made two with 60 pound ad spend. And I was like, oh, that’s still, like, 160 pounds.

23:32

And then I double checked. I was like, oh, no, 240 pounds with, I think it was 59 or 56 ad spend. Like, Oh, nice. And that was just on the way for a coffee. I was like, Who’s, who’s this person? I don’t even recognize the name. Such a nice feeling. Two people have reached out to ask me questions, another person just and another person’s asking about it, saying that they’re about to come in too. So it’s a great feeling. But I’m sharing this because I suspect, and this is a really great time to take a moment to reflect on this that we can often, even with the best intention, get distracted by all the noise and maybe the ego’s playing a role here too, because I’m not going to lie, there was a part me going, will people actually notice me and take me seriously? You know, I’ve created great results for clients like multi six figure launches. I’ve supported seven figure, Evergreen funnels. Every day, my accelerator clients are just growing and thriving and celebrating the support they feel inside the accelerator. So there’s so much working in the business right now, but there was such a big part of me that’s like, oh, but you know, you need. You need for people to know you. You need for people to see you. You need to network, you need to connect. You need to get on stages. You need to write the book. And to be honest with you, the mental burden of that was really weighing me down, and to be honest with you, is that’s not very cushy, and so I kind of got in this little fight. With myself for a while where I was, like, almost feeling guilty, because every time I ever talk about talking, people are like, so why aren’t you pitching to get on a stage and like, a little, kind of grumpy teenager, I wanted to be like because I don’t want to. I don’t want to right now. And it took a quieter August. It took, you know, having no calls and having time to review my calendar, audit how I use my time, review what’s working, what isn’t working, to take a moment and recognize my goodness. If I actually just plowed more energy and time into running ads to the funnel, ensuring that new people are discovering it. 

Every day, my business gets to double, triple, quadruple, an income by Christmas, I feel really confident about that, and then questioning, why did I allow the other things to get in the way, like, What was I expecting to happen? It’s just like with all the clients I’ve supported who don’t have books, who don’t talk on stages, or if they have spoken on a stage, it’s had a negligible impact beyond a little bit of additional authority, but the main way they’re making money, funnels. Funnels, well designed, offers, ads. And that’s where I excel. Why on earth did I take my foot off the gas? So there we have it. Even strategists can get distracted. Even strategists cannot have their ego calling the shots. Be like, well, you mustn’t be the only person who’s a multi six figure business owner who hasn’t yet written a book and being kind to myself, because cushy is kind. So, yeah, so you’re going to be seeing a lot more of me in your feed as this ad adventure becomes bigger, I am going to take you on the ride, because I know that advertising funnels and offers, while a lot of people want them, they’re often really overwhelmed by them and really intimidated by them, and often don’t know where to start. And I think what’s exciting is I’m starting with a really small ad spend, like I’m starting with just spending about 3035, pound a day, five pound for traffic ads, and 30 for funnel ads and scaling from there. So you’ll get to learn through, well, through all the optimizations I make, I was about to say, through the things that go wrong and the things that go right, but my mindset doesn’t work like that. When it comes to ads, there’s just learnings and optimizations. That’s all there are. So I’ll take you on that journey, because I would love for you to not be overwhelmed, because passive sales and funnels only work when they’re getting new, fresh eyeballs on them every day. And the most measurable way to do that, and the most kind of manageable way to do that, is through advertising. It’s as simple as that, but the challenge as a business owner, is that if you go straight to advertising and your funnel isn’t funneling and your offer isn’t converting, then ads are going to do nothing for you if you go and work just on your funnel and your offers rubbish. So it’s one of those things you need, all three pieces all speaking to each other. And actually, that’s really what I cover inside the mini office system really freaking effectively. So if you were, if you’ve been thinking about, how do I make all of these pieces talk to each other? That’s what I do inside the mini office system. You learn how to ensure that every single piece of the journey is working perfectly, so that you can have a profitable way to bring new people into your business every day and make sales in your sleep. So that sounds appealing to you. Go check out the link in my show notes, and that’s it. This is like one of the longest solo episodes ever. Can you tell I’m really happy to be here again. I’ll be in your ears next week talking about, I think I want to talk about the things I’ve learned about podcasting now that I’ve recorded over 150 episodes. So that’s what we’re gonna do. I’ll be in your is then in the meantime, keep it cushy, and if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please do subscribe. Share all the good stuff you know the drill by now.