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.

00:39 

Hello, and welcome to the show. Today we’re talking about the real reason why you don’t have time to create more content, ’cause let’s face it, so many people I speak to will tell me, probably before any other business challenge, that they regret their inability to post more. If you are already posting enough, then amazing.

00:53

Uh, maybe scroll on to the next episode. But similarly, if you are posting enough but you feel like you could be doing more video content, then I would give this episode a listen too, ’cause I’m gonna not just be talking about the mental blocks and the strategic blocks, but also be sharing some practical advice about how I’ve been able to, over the last week, create videos that are going out daily without increasing the hours that I am working. Because the most common question I have coming back from people at the moment is, you know, I’m getting all these DMs saying, “I’m so inspired by what you’re doing.” Some of them have been able to post two videos last week. Some have been able to post three. Some who’ve gotten started have said, “Oh, my biggest challenge so far has been editing.”

01:34

 Others who are like, “I just don’t even know what to say.” But the main bit of feedback I’m getting is, “Oh, I’m really inspired by this. I’m gonna also get round to this when I have time.” Yeah, time. Time, that elusive bugger, right? That thing that we could all do with so much more of. So- I, here’s my first invitation to you. I’ve got about four or five points I wanna make in this episode, and this is the first one, okay? It’s not that you need to find more hours in the majority of cases. And to be honest with you, if you have a business model where you do need to find more hours, then I would highly encourage you to revise your business model per se, in that if it is so delivery heavy that you have next to no time to actually work on the marketing and visibility of your business, if you have next to no time to b- be developing a strong personal brand that’s gonna be attracting publishing deals, invitations to speak on podcasts, on stages, then you are massively slowing down the growth of your business and you are the bottleneck of your business.

02:42

So it’s a really, really important thing to address, and I say it because I know people who for years will complain about this situation, but they will struggle to actually make any change, okay? And I really don’t want you to be one of those people, because I am one of those people that had to at some point make the decision, this may result in a temporary loss of earnings while I make this brave pivot into a different business model that, you know, temporarily may mean I have less coming in. And you know what? Funnily enough, I actually didn’t in the end. Everything was exactly where it needed to be. And, you know, I think a lot of that is just energetically we are so much lighter and productive and focused when we’re actually doing what we love and when we’re not tied to a business model that is killing us, so, so essentially.

03:34 

Anyway, that was … Oh my God, goodness, like not even five minutes in and I’m already going off on a tangent here. What I wanted to talk to you about when it comes to time is that- Adding this daily content made me look at the time I was already spending on my business. Now, this is something I recommend all my clients do, and I never, ever start with a one-to-one where I do not ask them to perform a time audit of their business, which no, does not mean looking at your calendar. It means actually looking at where your hours are going. So that’s what I had to do in my own business. Like, what was I doing that actually didn’t need me to be doing it? Was there anything that could be outsourced? Was there anything that could be simplified? Uh, was there anything that could disappear altogether?

04:14

What am I doing because I’ve always done it rather than because it moves the business forward? Also, really importantly, and I think I talked about this briefly in the last episode, was also reframing what I felt my visibility actually needed of me. Like, did I need to have, like, a blow dry and, you know, a freshly pressed outfit and to be walking out in nature and to have one of the more modern ex- I don’t know, I guess my mic’s actually quite good, but, you know, various things that we can put in the way of actually just getting started. I, I mean, I honestly spent one, one day coming up with ideas for scripts, which I’ve gone on to promptly abandon and entirely ignore. But that was another way I was procrastinating to avoid actually getting started. So there has to, there’s had to be some real, you know, proper honesty. I’ve, of course, used my Cushy COO AI tool, uh, which was really helpful at helping me do that.

05:08 

That’s why I sell it for only 11 quid, because I honestly just wish everybody used this very unsexy but highly effective tool, um, to make their businesses better because, I, I mean, like I say, it, it’s something I use myself. It’s that good. Um, so yeah, number one essentially is, you know, if you don’t have time, do you really? When you change a sentence to, “I am not choosing to prioritize,” how does that then feel? “I’m not choosing to prioritize visibility.” Okay. What are you choosing to prioritize instead? Sometimes it’s justifiable. Sometimes there is genuinely something big, like a book that’s about to come out and all the energy…

05:46

I mean, having said that, if your book was coming out soon, I’d also be prioritizing visibility. But, you know, there are times where th- s- something’s gotta give, but the majority of occasions, visibility should never be the first thing that gives, because there’s no point building or launching something if nobody actually knows about it. You know, visibility is a non-negotiable. Okay. Uh, so the second thing I did, let’s go on to point number two. I made recording boringly easy, okay? So I have two recording locations. One of them is just at my desk right now, where I’m recording this podcast. Super easy. I just spin round. I have my little tripod that is kind of in front of me on the desk, so that I can easily just slot my phone in there.

06:26

I tend to try and have my mics charging, because I always forget to turn them off, as often as possible, like in the, in the daytime. Once I’m sat down at my desk, I just double-check that my mics are charging so that as and when I need them, they are fully charged. Because my goodness, that is very annoying. I have to say, the amount of times, because I wasn’t in the habit of recording, I would go to get everything set up and at the last moment realize my wireless mics weren’t charged. So yeah, I either record at my office, because it’s here, it’s easy. I, I literally, you know… And, and, and, you know, I’ve always recorded my stories that way too, ’cause I just find it easier.

06:57

 I’m not good at multitasking, so if I’m out doing the shopping or having a nice time with my husband, I’m rarely like, “Oh, let’s capture this for content.” So at the desk is, is best. Again, you know, we could overcomplicate it. We could say, “Oh, but other people do X, Y, Z.” Sod it. Do what works for you. And actually, there’s so many accounts out there absolutely killing it who are not being overly creative with the locations they’re filming from. So don’t put that unnecessary pressure on yourself. So one of them is upstairs. The other one is downstairs in a chair, predominantly because I once did a Reel from that chair, and it was one of my best performing Reels, and because it’s got quite a nice little backdrop. And, you know, is it ideal? Probably not.

07:32

Could I experiment a bit more? Yeah, probably. But I guess one thing I like about both locations is that I’m sat down, and so by being sat down, I’m automatically more relaxed in my delivery, and it feels a much more like pal to pal just having a chat, you know, with a cup- well, not with a cup of tea ’cause that would be t- entirely fake and forced, unless I’m legitimately drinking a cup of tea. So two recording locations. I- it means I also know what the lighting’s like. Like today is a bit overcast, so there’s no way I’m recording downstairs because I’m reliant on natural light down there. Yeah, I also do tend to use natural light as much as is possible. I do have a ring light, but I just, I don’t know.

08:07 

For now, that’s what I’m doing. I- I could maybe play with a ring light, but I think some of the– what I like about my videos at the moment is they just feel very real. I don’t have Botox and stuff like that, so you can see my wrinkly forehead, you can see me in my full middle-aged glory, and I think more women like that should be taking up space online and not having to feel like they need to blur themselves, um, either with filters or anything else. So for me, personally, you know, I totally re- respect and have many friends who have Botox who I adore, so I’m not… Eh, eh, you know what I’m saying. Love yourself. Do whatever makes you happy. But that’s, this is me, and this is how I’m doing things. So yeah. So the second one is make it really easy to record by having chosen locations that are easy for you and have things like a tripod that’s easy to set up so you can just stick it wherever.

08:52

I have a really small, like, Gorilla-type one, and so that makes it really flexible and easy, and I can just pop it on my desk. Um, I tend to just wear whatever I’m wearing that day. I don’t overcomplicate matters. If I am batching, I might have two or three tops, like, just next to me just to throw on, but I tend to keep them really simple T-shirts or spot- sport tops. Again, I mentioned that to a friend, uh, the other day, and she was like, “Oh, I’d find that really boring.” And I was like, “Well, again, that’s okay. That’s okay for you.” For me, it just means I’m not overthinking it. I’m not, like, worrying about does this look okay or not, and, you know, does this shirt need an iron, because a T-shirt’s just a T-shirt.

09:24

So again, it– that just makes it easier for me. You’re just removing anything that becomes friction, right? Like, for me, when I was trying to get back to the gym, I wasn’t like, “Well, what workout am I gonna do and XYZ?” I was just like, “Just get to the gym. Just get there. Do a warm-up for five minutes.” And then once I was there, I would do the thing. And it’s– I’m kind of treating visibility the same way. I’m like, “Just get yourself in front of a tripod with a mic plugged in and hit record.” And, you know, some days I- I’ll just be impulsive and choose something just for fun. Other times, something will feel really fresh front of mind. And other times, I have what I’m about to come to for point three, which is I have my notes Okay, I think all the best ideas come from you.

10:06

Not I think, I know all the best ideas come from you. So one of the best ways to not sound like AI slop is to legitimately bring your perspectives, your thoughts, your ideas, and those often hit me on a walk or when I’m at the gym or fresh out the shower or in the shower. Um, so I tend to just pop them into my notes app, just really simple so that I have the premise and I know I can come back to that premise if I wanna talk about it later. And once I’ve used it, I make sure I go and delete it, which sounds obvious, but as an ADHDer, oh my goodness, I’ve not in the past, and that just became a real mess. So here, so that bit, you know, you might be like, “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. That’s obvious.” The next bit I think is really good. It’s so simple, and it’s really gonna help you with not just taking an idea and turning it into a video, but turning that video into something that people actually stop for, pay attention to, and then do the thing that you want them to do, whether that’s sign up for your training or give you a follow.

10:59

I think it’s important to say I look at my videos predominantly as a way to kind of either nurture people in my world who are already there or to attract brand-new people to it, but I’m not doing any kind of heavy sales stuff in my videos. It’s a way of just building the relationships with people who are discovering me. So this is the premise. So if I have an idea, let’s say I wanna talk about what I’m talking about now on the podcast. I’m like, “I wanna talk about the easy ways I have made it possible to get visible on a daily basis, even if it feels impossible for you right now.” And I’d just do a little kind of five-minute blurb into ChatGPT, three to five minute, maybe even one minute, whatever, whatever’s coming.

11:39

And then say, “Please give me five strong hooks. I wanna turn this into a reel.” It will give me five strong hooks. If I don’t like them, I’ll keep going until I have the hook that I’m happy with. The other thing I ask… Actually, sorry, I realize I’ve got this the wrong way around, and that that hook, the other thing I do to make this hook stronger is I say, “I want a strong curiosity gap in the hook.” So it’ll be something like, “This is what I didn’t know about filming daily.” I mean, that’s a bit naff, right? But I’m just making that up at the top of my head. This is why I use kind of ChatGPT or Claude to come up with the, uh, curiosity gap. But something that makes people go, “Oh, w- well, what, what happened?

12:15

What went wrong?” Like, “What, what was the thing she didn’t know?” Um, also makes it more your own if you’re speaking from experience, right? So curiosity gap is the thing that has people lingering. Like, if you’re like, “Five ways to get visible,” people are like, “I know how to get visible. I don’t need five ways.” If you say, “The one thing I didn’t realize was getting in the way of me being visible,” people will be like, “Oh, okay, what is that one thing? ‘Cause maybe it’s getting in the way of visibility for me, too.” Okay? We are, we are natural problem solvers. We wanna know. If you, you dangle like, “You don’t know this,” we wanna listen.

12:42

And there are different ways of expressing that without saying the phrase directly, “You don’t know this.” So hooks with curiosity gaps, followed by authority. So essentially- Let me give you the, the recipe. I went into Claude. I said, “I’m going to blether my idea for the next five minutes. From that idea, I want you to give me five to 10 hooks using a curiosity gap. Following on from that, I want you to give me, put in an author- authority statement for myself.” Now, the authority statement you might wanna work on separately. You might want to give Claude or ChatGPT your entire bio, all your accolades, all the things you’ve ever done, how many clients you’ve ever worked with, how much money you’ve made from certain group programs, how much money you’ve made, or how many years you’ve spent, spent studying.

13:27 

Like, literally give it all the success metrics you’ve ever had in your life. And if you’re not sure what they are, ask Claude or ChatGPT to ask you an- the questions that you need to answer to get to the stage where it can give you a good authority statement, okay? And we want this as authority statement to be a one-liner. So to give you context, mine is, “I’m the strategist behind some of your favorite seven-figure personal brands in the wellness space.” Now admittedly, ChatGPT or Claude didn’t make this up for me. I just decided to go with that one. It just felt catchy and short and easy. But as I say out loud, it’s a bit of a mouthful.

13:59

So maybe I’ll be reviewing that one. But anyway, choose that and then repeat that one ad nauseam, okay? You just wanna hear it time and time again. So the good news is, once you know what your authority statement is, you can just stick with it. There’s a real power to sticking with it because e- eventually people will start seeing your name and almost be hearing your authority hook in the context of seeing or hearing your name. And then we follow up with the idea, so we’re expanding on the idea that they’ve obviously come to listen to this reel for, and then we give them a CTA, a clear next step. So in some cases, I’ll say things like, “And if this has been really useful to you, follow my account because my next reel, I’m gonna be talking about X,” or, you know, “I’m gonna…

14:38

This series, I’m gonna be talking about Y.” And that gives them a reason to follow along, and it means you know you’re developing a following of people who are there because they’re interested in the subject and the transformation that you facilitate. Really simple, so easy. I’ve not created a prompt for this. If you really want me to create that prompt, DM me and say, “Polly, please give us a prompt you use for this,” ’cause I will say it’s amazing. The moment I started dropping my ideas into this particular framework using Claude, my mind was blown. I was like, “Oh my God, I’m interested in me.” Uh, so it’s really, really effective, really, really simple.

15:13

So the formula is hook plus authority statement plus idea plus next step. That simple. And the nice thing about that is that it’s not too difficult to remember. ‘Cause the other thing that’s come up for me while I’ve been recording is that I, you know, I can … I, I’m finding the videos where I sound most relaxed and most like me are the most effective. And unfortunately, those are the ones where I tend to just be riffing. And when I riff, yes, I sound more natural, but equally, I’m not doing all the clever psychological bits like, you know, asserting who I am or why they should be listening to me, asserting who they are and why they should be following me, asserting what this account is about and what they could be doing with it.

15:57

So I’m now trying to find more of a middle ground in that way, and I think one of the ways that supports that is being like, well, if all I need to remember is a hook My authority statement, which I’m repeating ad nauseam, so that’s gonna be hard to forget. The idea which I’ve already riffed into ChatGPT or Claude, so that should be easy enough to remember the most important points I want to make. And the CTA. Like, those things could easily be little Post-it notes stuck up on the wall or written down in a notebook, and you then just get to be as natural as you can be. Because, yeah, other ways of doing it, like teleprompters and things like that, I personally don’t think are a good idea. I think everyone can tell.

16:33 

I don’t think it’s very natural. I don’t think you come across naturally like a pal, and that’s what we want from videos. So yeah. So my point number three is have a place to store your notes, and then have a really clear, simple little process that you can use, because even the repetition as to how you share information also becomes reassuringly comforting for people after a while. They’re like, “I’m gonna come back to this account because I know that this account consistently does X,” okay? Um, and again, the more we do these kind of things, the more natural it become. Like, for me right now, it doesn’t feel natural remembering all those things, and so I don’t think I’m as natural. But I also know that it takes…

17:11 

Like, it’s a bit like sales calls. I don’t feel like I follow a sales script anymore, but I also know that do I touch on all the points a sales script does? Yes, I do, just in a far more natural, organic way, because I’ve done it enough times now that I don’t need to be looking at a script. I’m just curious about the person, I’m curious about their business, I’m curious about where they’re stuck, I’m curious about where they need help. And so of course I cover all the grounds that a classic sales script would, but in a way that it doesn’t feel like that. And I, I guess I’m looking for the same feel when it comes to my content, which again, you can only really just do through doing it. And I don’t think even just recording it and not posting it is good enough.

17:48

Like, you, you need to also press, press publish. So the fourth one is to create a repeatable recording ritual, so choosing a time that really works for you. It might be really early in the day. I’ve already betrayed my ritual because I go for a morning walk, and the goal was to record immediately after said morning walk, but it was raining and really humid, so I ended up getting soaked through. I don’t think I wanna have that kind of account. So I did not record, and instead had sat down to record this podcast. Um, but instead I will record in the window that I was gonna record my podcast in. So I guess the important piece here is at least put it in your calendar, right? I was able to swap two things around.

18:30

But ideally, moving forward, I will try to keep most of my rec- recording when I’m feeling freshest, straight out of a walk, and probably the most energized, focused, and all the good things that we wanna be when we’re recording a video And, uh, you know, number five is just don’t overcomplicate it. You know, you don’t need to become a influencer or a content creator. You don’t need to worry too much about lighting, editing, or, you know, feeling like, “Oh, I’m not gonna do this. Instead, I’m gonna post five trial reels a day.” Feeling the pressure of being amazing at talking to camera straight away, or understanding every feature of CapCut, or needing to spend an hour every day creating content.

19:07

You know, it’s so easy to overcomplicate all of this. And actually, there’s so many businesses I’ve worked with who haven’t needed to change anything about what they’re doing. The carousels were already killing it. Their stories were already great. What they were doing was more than good enough. The challenge is actually that they didn’t know what to do beyond the content, okay? And some people genuinely were also in business models that weren’t yet at a stage where they could prioritize visibility and prioritize the changes that they wanted to see in their business. This is why I’ve created my upcoming training to help you make more money with what you’re doing with your content already.

19:47

Because yes, this is fun. Will I continue to do a daily post beyond September? I have already decided no, and I’ve decided that on the basis that To me, for me to actually be able to learn what is and isn’t working and work with that, actually having some space outside, you know, of my recording schedule gives me more capacity to do that. But also I guess it’s because I don’t need to do that because I have all of these other pieces in place. To me, it made sense in September at a time where a lot of people are considering who to work with. It felt like if ever there was a good time for a push, it was now. And on top of that, I also knew that every time I recorded a face-to-camera video, it was– it just didn’t feel comfortable.

20:37

I’d never felt like they were received very well. And actually funny enough, it was the ones where I was being more impulsive and just being silly that seemed to do best. So this whole experience of me recording daily for a month, similar to the gym where I set expectations of like, I just wanna be someone who goes to the gym three times a week and lifts weights. Like, I can start tracking the weights, like the, the, the, the he- the he- weight of each kind of weight, that’s hard to say, uh, in the future to, to kind of really get– have clear goals about, you know, what I’m actually doing in there. But for now, the biggest goal is be somebody who goes to the gym three times a week.

21:14

Be someone who’s feeling better for going to the gym three times a week. That gets to evolve. And I think similarly when it comes to recording content, I’m like, just be somebody who is becoming less afraid, less procrastinaty, that’s not a word, but we’re going with it, around creating content, and just be somebody who’s getting more comfortable with being in front of the camera, sharing slightly more raw, kind of candid elements of myself and my thoughts, um, get more comfortable with people not necessarily agreeing with you, and all the stuff that comes with it.

21:49

And then later on, if I wanna refine it, if I’m really getting joy out of it, if I see that there’s a good impact from it, then I can take time to actually refine the process. But for now, my biggest goal is getting out of my own way, I think is what that boils down to. So very aligned with the gym and the content creation. We’re, we’re in the same part, getting out of my own way, and I think that’s a really important lesson in and as of itself, that in life and in business, we can so often decide we want the final destination and then get angry at ourselves at being so far away from it and feeling like we’re failing because we’re so far away from it, when actually everything gets to us so much faster when actually we, we just slightly lower our expectations about what that first step is, and just trust that once we’re in the habit of doing it and we’re enjoying doing it, and we’re seeing the benefit of doing it, that of course there will be more motivation to refine all of those elements.

22:43

And that if we overthought various elements of any of it, we just wouldn’t get started in the first place. So I guess indirectly, this episode has been for fellow overthinkers who get in their own way. So yeah, carry on the journey with me, please. I am over at Instagram, polylavarello. Give me a follow, ’cause I’d love you to see what this daily visibility experiment is turning into. I’ve got some more videos to record today. We’ll see how those go down. Like I say, I’m actually really enjoying it, and the time I spend doing it all is actually really enjoyable. And I think actually in some ways it’s really improving my self-confidence in this area in a weird way. As much as some videos are a bit shit, I’m a bit like, “You know what?

23:24

Instagram needs some of that.” Instagram needs some less shine and less polish and just a bit more realness, so we’re here for it all. Cool. Amazing. I will be in your ears next week. If you haven’t already signed up to the training, the link is in the show notes. I really, really encourage you to come. If you are struggling to do everything you need in the existing time that you have, if you know you have it in you to be a bigger personal brand, making more money, making more impact, helping more people, but where you’re at right now seems to have you on a bit of a hamster wheel, then you need to attend this training.

24:02

I’m so excited to be delivering it. There’s already over 100 of you signed up, and I know there’ll be a lot more coming. So yeah, please come. I suspect by the time it’s happening, there’ll be like 300 to 500 of you signed up. That’s the kind of numbers we had last September, and I suspect we’ll hit it again. So come. It’s gonna be vibey. It’s gonna be full of wellness practitioners. It’s gonna be full of women and men, I suspect there might be some men as well, who are here to make a difference in this world, who are not here to play small, who are here to actually, yeah, not just look at others taking up space in podcasts, on stages, with books, and impact and clients, and recognize that you get to be doing it too when you focus on the right things, and you’ll learn what those things are at the training.  All right, I’ll be in your ears next week.