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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 wanted to jump on because I have just finished hosting my first ever workshop for wellness practitioners, and you know what’s really mad This is between you and I, dear listener. And I’m assuming you’ve been listening for a while, but if you haven’t, then let me just share with you I’ve been running my business now for five years. My first ever client was actually a nutritional therapist. She approached me and was like, how are you doing? What you’re doing? Can you show me? And she went on to attract the interest of a billionaire investor who supported her to launch her first CBD supplement company, which ran for about three years until she decided to sell it. So that went very well. She’s also got an amazing corporate deal worth over six figures, so I mean that client to this day. Every time I see her, thanks me for the journey we’ve been on, and since then I work with, I mean, what I consider the all star team and nutritional therapists. Now, why does this matter? And why am I sharing this? I’m sharing this because, you know, like, when there’s like, a tiny little crack on the ceiling and you don’t notice it until it is all you can see, like somebody points it out, and now the only thing you see when you look up at the ceiling is the crack. 

Now that’s not the nicest analogy, because a crack is a floor. Well, this is not a floor, but essentially, recently, and I’ll share more about this mentor when I’ve worked with this mentor for longer. I don’t like to share too much earlier on till we’ve, you know, properly got things moving along. But I will say, so far, so impressed. But the first thing he said to me was like, Why do you not create things specifically for wellbeing practitioners when well over 90% of your clients are wellbeing practitioners? You know, nutritional therapists, psychologists, doctors, who else I mean, doulas, birth workers, people who certify birth workers, and so on so forth, like nearly everyone is in the wellbeing space. And I didn’t know what to say, because the truth is, as well, when I started talking about why I love working with them and why they’re attracted to work with me, I then just recognized I do have this level of depth of knowledge around what it requires to scale as a wellness practitioner that looks very different than it does for the average coach, and actually, I was doing a massive disservice, both to myself and to those practitioners by not sharing it. So I’m not going to waffle much further, because if you’re new to my world and you’re just tuning in, because I put the word wellness practitioner in there, then I want to make sure I’m not holding back from sharing more. But today’s workshop was a revelation. I feel like it really marks a really poignant moment in my career, and that it may affect a lot of the decisions and how I do things moving forward, because everyone was so receptive, and the community was so beautiful. The conversation was so enriching, and it felt really meaningful to be supporting people who do such good in the world, like alongside supporting nutritional therapists, my goodness, have I been supported by nutritional therapists. Myself, I’ve worked with about five different ones, which probably is not the best approach. You should probably choose one, but the problem is, they’re all too darn nice, and they all bring their own specialisms, which have been really valuable to me at different times in my life. But you know, I have shared in the past that I used to have long covid, and it was work with a nutritional therapist that really supported me to feel myself again. It took time, but my goodness, the thing that really changed things for me was the moment I really went all in on supplements in my diet, similarly, when I had hormonal challenges, again, going all in on my diet and supplements has made all the difference. Like, I’m so grateful. 

So anyway, without further, ado, less about me, more about you. So let’s get into why most wellbeing practitioners struggle with making money in a way that’s sustainable. That’s what it boils down to. I opened the workshop talking about the fact that even though this may sound very loosely connected, it’s, I would say, pretty connected. And I’d say, in the time of supporting my one to ones, the fact that I’ve gone through the experience of being somebody who once traded time for money, I very much relate to their frustration and their fears around what it is to move away from being in that situation when you believe. You and your expertise is the thing that people are investing in. It can leave you over delivering, blurring boundaries, people pleasing, under charging, overworking, over delivering, and all the all the yucky stuff we don’t want to be doing. Interestingly, after watching the workshop today, one of the applications I received for a call afterwards, one of the ladies stipulated that she worked out, even when she did the math around what she’d be earning if she were to be fully booked one to one, that she still wouldn’t be breaking even in the way that she’d like to be in terms of being able to hire that VA, so she doesn’t have to do all her admin being able to hire that accountant so she doesn’t have to do all her bookkeeping, and being able to actually take time off for holidays to be with her family, and that’s just not good enough. As far as I’m concerned, I feel like I’m in a very privileged position, because I can see the other side. I can see how different it gets to be, I’m not hypothesizing here. I literally in my day to day work, some of my one to one clients are six figure, plus, sometimes multi six figure wellness practitioners. How do they get to do that? And you don’t, right? Like, why? Like, I love my clients, but they’re not doing anything that a lot of other wellness practitioners aren’t doing, aside from taking a bet on themselves, really. And you could say, and I’m not, that’s not a dig at wellness practitioners. That is just a statement of fact. When it comes to all entrepreneurs, if you are not willing to take a bet on yourself, if you are not willing to kind of look at somebody that you respect in the wellbeing space, talking on stages, appearing on podcasts, writing books, creating movements with their wellbeing protocols, being referenced at conferences and on stages, being Invited as Guest speakers, if you are just wanting to be on the sidelines of all of that, then that is absolutely fine. No shame on you. Like we’re not all designed to be that person. But if you want those things, any of those things, and you’re not taking proactive measures to get there, believe me, all of those people weren’t just studiously studying, you know, being amazing scholars, and, you know, working by the hour, hoping that somebody would discover them one day. That’s not how the internet works. That’s not how life works, and that’s certainly not how business works. Okay, so, what do we do if we’re not going to have some kind of I often make the joke that I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember the lottery advert where the big finger would come out the sky and point at somebody and say it’s you. I mean, that advert obviously had a big impact on me, because I still think of it occasionally and think that finger ain’t coming out the sky telling you it’s you. We have to decide now. Will it be easy? On the other side of deciding No, will you be challenged? On many occasion a yes, believe me,

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I have been there. I have been there, and days like today, when I’m sat in front of, I think was close to 45 at one point, people on a workshop with over 140 signed up to it, with DMS and emails coming in making apologies for why they weren’t attending. And I’m connecting with all these wonderful human beings days like today, I just wish I could bottle them and sell them like nothing comes close. No other job could give me that level of career satisfaction than today did. It was chef’s kiss, right? But there have been the days. There have been the summer holidays I’ve been on where I’ve been looking at my bank account thinking, oh, goodness, can I even pay myself this month? The very same month I’m taking my children away for a special time, and I’m wondering how I’m going to pay myself. I’ve had those challenges along the way. I mean, albeit not for the last two or three years, because things have been ticking over nicely, but those first two to three years, particularly those first two years when I was being topped up by Universal Credit, believe me, I know what it’s like. I know that Courage isn’t not failing. It’s being willing to fail and learn and fail and learn and fail, and the failures never go away. We don’t just suddenly bypass them. We just become more resilient. But anyway, I’ve gone a bit off track. But I guess the main thing to say here is it starts with a decision. 

One of the things I was referring to is one of the reasons why nutritional therapists or psychologists come to me is that they are in the existential cycle of dread, and that cycle looks like, whoa, welcoming a new client. The next part of that cycle is delivering. Look at what you know, delivering your service, looking after that client. And maybe you’ve got several clients in your that delivery period that looking. After clients is really taken up all your time, and the part where it turns into the existential cycle of dread is that period where you’ve been so busy in delivery mode that you have not been marketing, and even if you were marketing, you’re not entirely sure what works, you’re not entirely sure what to say. You’re not entirely sure what offer you should be promoting or how should be going about doing it. So you’ve probably overthought it and then not done it at all and said, I’ll do it tomorrow. Yet now that client has said, Oh, I’m not really renewing now. Thank you so much. I’m off now, and suddenly you’ve got an expansive diary ahead of you, with no clients to fill it, and a panic around how to fill it. And this is where people tend to spiral. This is where people think, Oh, my goodness, is it my niche? Do I need to like hyper niche? Do I need to re niche? Do I need to create, I don’t know, that low ticket offer that somebody’s promoting over there? Do I need to collaborate? Do I need to do a bundle? Do I need to like, what do I need to do to bring people in? Do I need to go on LinkedIn? Suddenly, maybe LinkedIn is the place to be, and, oh my goodness, it just it’s exhausting, isn’t it? The overwhelm is exhausting. And what’s even more challenging is the lack of satisfaction, because there’s that sense of, what am I doing that is working right now. That is the frustration I used to feel now, now that we have a data led business, now that I have years behind me, there isn’t that sense of what am I doing? So I want to reassure you that is not something that has to stay. None of this has to stay. And what I shared in the workshop is that the reason why we can get into these patterns is because you’re building your business on shaky foundations, the three core things that you need to shift to be successful in your business, or the four key things you need to shift, actually, is four of them. It’s really, really simple. When I was thinking about what to talk about my workshop, I was thinking about all this fancy language or unique ways to say things, and I was like, You know what?

I’m very does, you know, does what it says on the tin? Kind of gal. So let’s be frank here. What do you need to have a successful business? You need time, and more time than you would imagine, because outside of client delivery time, you do need time that you are working on your business, because ain’t nobody else going to do it for you. Okay, not when you’re not earning enough to hire a team or hire a VA, right? And even when you can hire a team, even now as a CEO, I still spend probably about 50 to 60% of my week working on my business, and only 30 to 40% maximum in delivery. Okay, that piece is so important, really important because that is what allows the sustainability of the business. Because no one else is going to capture my ship as well as I’m going to do it. Right? That’s not to say I don’t delegate. That’s not to say I don’t have loads of spacious time to do things around my business. But believe me when I say I know what’s happening in my business, because I need to, okay, that’s just one of the expenses of being a business owner, like nobody ever, ever, unless they’re financially invested in your business, and even then, is going to care as much as you do. Okay? So you need time. You need time, and chances are, if you are in the one to one model, you do not have enough of it, because there is only so high you can raise your rates until it starts to feel ridiculous. The other thing you need is a way to look after your clients that is highly efficient, that is not eating in to that time. You need a quality way to create amazing results for your clients. That is time efficient. Okay? So it’s a time and then the kind of client delivery piece, the clients piece, essentially, the other thing you need locked in is pricing. You need to price in a way that doesn’t force you to, need to have, like, 100 sales in a month when you’ve only got 1000 people following on Instagram, the math doesn’t math, honey. Okay, that just won’t work. You need, you know, if you’re going to sell low, you need volume. And most business owners don’t have volume. 

And most business owners could, yes, follow some kind of Instagram strategy to explode their following. But I will say 90% of people who follow strategies like that, if not 95 do not explode their followings. In fact, it’s probably on the worst strategies you can possibly take. If you have been gifted with volume and people love your content, then that is a very different predicament. That is a scenario where you can consider mid to low ticket offers, but in any other scenario, don’t even touch it, honey. And then the fourth shift, of course, is looking at your actual offer, and your offer should be one signature program inside the workshop. I touched on the fact, and by the way, you can still watch this workshop. I’ll stick it in the show notes so you can go into the workshop and watch the full thing, because it’s so much more fun when you have visuals. But I just wanted to give you a taster of. What I covered, because this conversation is so important. I know way too many nutritional therapists and psychologists and people who’ve got amazing skills to share with the world simply walking away from their practices because it’s not sustainable, and that is such a disservice to you, to your clients, to the world as a whole, and a disservice to humanity and feminism and all the things that matter, because, for fuck sakes, like, how are these people who are just talking about made up stuff, making loads of money, and people with really valuable skills that change people’s lives? Why are they being the martyr to the cause? But anyway, you need a signature offer. That signature offer will elevate your authority, elevate your positioning, elevate your pricing, get you phenomenal case studies that are consistent, which then build up and make people go, how do I jump in? Which is the situation I’m now at with the everyday sales accelerator, because I’ve been teaching clients how to build daily sales systems now for years, and I’ve got incredible case studies to boot. And it is impossible for somebody to look at those case studies and not think that chick probably knows something that would be helpful to me. Okay, all right, so it’s really, really important. Those are the four shifts you need to move away from the mentality of, I don’t have time. And instead think, how do I create a business model that gives me back my time, because it’s not just going to magically appear. 

Similarly, you need to move away from the mindset of group programs dilute quality, and instead look at how group programs can enhance results, because, believe me, again, I’ve got case studies to prove it. Clients can and do that every day. Similarly, you want to move away if you are even stuck with hourly pricing and not really charging in packages, and instead move to transformation pricing, okay? Hourly pricing, just No, just no. I know it’s such an easy thing to dive into if business seems a little slow, but believe me, the hour you spend on building a scalable model will be more worthwhile to your business over the next year than the hour looking after somebody. Because, believe me, you and I know this as well. It is never an hour. There’ll be the email beforehand, there’ll be the follow up communication, there’ll be the oh, just this one thing. It’s never an hour, okay? And then finally, having that one signature program that you can hang your hat on. You know, even if you don’t want to be the next gab or mate, it really matters to have a process that people associate with you. Okay, there’s so many examples of it, people like Dr Terry wells and the wells as it was, was protocol and method, I mean, and Chatterjee in his four pillar plan that Amelia Freer with her, eat, nourish, glow. These are not my clients, by the way. Just be clear, but they understand. They have one, okay? And you should have one too. This is how we get away from the churn. This is how we get away from

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the hamster wheel of one to one, which is exhausting. Okay, I want you to get away from it. So I’m trying to think, if there’s anything else I want to share with you about all of this which is hyper, super duper relevant. I feel like those were the main things I wanted to say. I’m just going to compose myself for a moment to kind of because I feel like I flew through that a lot faster than I was planning on it. So let’s talk about the concerns that people have when I talk about doing things with a group. Well, firstly, I want to say people often assume group coaching needs to have enormous launches with like 30 or 40 people enrolling at a time for it to be successful. My approach is very minimum viable. You know where you can be charging, let’s say, 2000 pounds for a 90 day protocol. Sell 50 of those across a year. That’s like four to five a month. That’s 100k year. That’d be pretty cool, right? And when you understand what it is that your skills are actually opening up and allowing and transforming for your clients, it all gets to be possible. So actually, you know what? I’m not going to say anymore, because I feel like I’ve kind of teased why this stuff matters. I feel like I’ve illustrated why when you’re building a business on one to one foundations, yes, yes, we all need to start there. I’m not denying it. I’m not poo pooing it. We learn really valuable expertise working with clients one to one. And there’s a lot of power in one to one work, which is why I have never abandoned it myself. I still have one to one clients. However, I am fully aware that the scalable, most profitable part of my business is my group program. And, you know, I wouldn’t have been able to have created a unique, powerful, unique way of working. I’ve said unique twice, but bear with I’m tired of just run a workshop. I wouldn’t have been able to do that. Had I not done the one to one work, had I not developed resources from them? Had I not heard their inner kind of worries, their inner desires, things that kept them stuck, the things that moved them? Forward, all of those things contributed to the efficacy and power and strength of what I was able to then put into a group program, which is also why, when I talk about who’s the person who’s in the best position to create a group program, it is somebody who is already working one to one, you 100% need to go through that process first, and you probably need to move away from it sooner than you think you are ready, sooner than you think, Oh, this is a safe bet, because the longer you keep yourself in that position. So I was working one to one for probably less than a year before I moved into group. And it was slow and it was gradual and it was transitional. But you know, this whole dream of like overnight success in the online business space. It doesn’t exist the future you want. You need to start working on it yesterday. If you want it anytime soon, you need to start now. It is amazing how close we can be to profoundly different results when we change gears when we look at our business from a different perspective. And of course, that is the power of joining a place like the everyday sales accelerator. I had one client come in who had an amazing mailing list. Now what’s hilarious is because she’s a sole trader and never worked with a business mentor before, she was unaware that her mailing list was enormous in comparison to the average sole trader, and so therefore was a massive untapped opportunity. 

When I helped her understand how to craft the perfect email to pitch her list, she had 60 expressions of interest that turned into 50 sales of a passive offer that resulted in her first ever 8k month, where the month prior she’d only had a 2k month, one email, an extra 6k in revenue generated on a passive offer. I mean, now that’s the scenario of someone who had a really big mailing list. Now, not everyone has that. Another client came to me, and this is a really good example, because it’s the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of this client had what you’d think on the surface should mean she should have a successful funnel. She had an offer that was validated. Lots of people have been through this offer. She had a webinar, a sales page, a va, all the things to kind of help things be successful, even a social media manager, yet things have been slowing down for the past six months, and as we can tend to do as humans, she started to worry and think, Is this just not working anymore? You know, is there not a demand? Are people just not willing to pay this anymore? Have I rinsed now? Have I got all of that kind of market through what I was able to identify when she shared her data with me was that there was one marketing activity that she was doing in particular that was almost consistently resulting in sales, yet she had it really low down on her list because it was something she really didn’t enjoy doing. She didn’t enjoy doing it because of the way she was delivering it, I suggested to her that we change the way she delivers it so she did enjoy it. She was well up for that, and then increased the frequency of it. She did that and managed to fill all 12 spots in her facilitators program within the space of a month. What was amazing about this client was, when she first started doing it, there were just two sales that came in, nothing like revolutionary but through being consistent and being persistent, she got 12 sales in which ended up being 24k in sales, I think maybe even slightly more, in just one month. No launch involved. All daily sales system, no nothing else required so we can be so close to profoundly different results, but we can be so close that we cannot see the thing we need to do to achieve it, and that’s what makes a place like the everyday sales accelerator so special. 

And I’m very excited that this particular month of October, I’m enrolling a wellbeing practitioners cohort into the space, and have created some phenomenal resources for those wellbeing practitioners. It’s going to be amazing like I say, the writing’s been on the wall for a long time. I’ve been supporting clients like that for a long time, yet I’d never really named it, and I’m very excited to be naming it now, if you want to catch the replay. You can still catch the replay if you do watch it over. The weekends, doors are actually closing to the accelerator on September the 30th, so if you want to fly and have a conversation, jump in and do it soon. It’s going to be very special. Jump in, enjoy the energy, and I’ll be in your ears next week if you enjoyed this episode. If you’ve got any well being practitioner friends, do share this with them, and, you know, share the love like and review. I’m always so happy to see those five star reviews below, so don’t turn on a four star one. I’d be gutted. Anyway, I’ll be in your ears next week.