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. Okay, so I want to talk about… you don’t need to do a 5am start. Do this instead. I’m going to be sharing with you in this episode a really valuable tool as to how to better leverage the time you have. So, please do pay attention. And before you think, boring, done this before. If you are not honestly sitting down every single week and taking time to map out how you’re going to use your time super duper intentionally, then you really need to continue playing this episode, because honestly, the most successful profitable businesses are hyper intentional about how they use their time, and know, as I mentioned in the title of this episode, you do not need to get up at 5am you do not need more hours, but you do need to use what you have better. Okay, and one of the reasons why I felt motivated to record this episode is recently I have onboarded a few new one to one clients. I now only have capacity for one more. Would you believe, and one of the first things I do with any of my one to one clients is have a look at how they are using their time, and one of the things that blows every single one of their minds is what they think they’re doing with their time is very rarely what they are actually doing with their time, and the way that they uncover this and give this all the way free. Guys, is a time audit really simple? You can literally pull out a spreadsheet and just map where your hours are going day to day in your business, because, of course, we have, you know, appointments calendarized. You might even be sensible enough to calendarize, you know, all your marketing activities, sales activities, but the truth is, in the same way that when we work in a corporate office, we may go sneak off and spend a lot of time by a water cooler. Similarly, we can find ourselves scrolling on our phones and doing all sorts of things that actually are entirely unproductive. Now, I’m not against being unproductive. 

In fact, I’m all for it. I really believe rest is a strategy, but I still believe it should be intentional, and yes, I’m saying this as someone who is undiagnosed, ADHD, autistic, so don’t get me wrong, I like to have a lot of freedom in how I structure my time, but there is still structure there, because nothing leaves me spiraling faster than not having any structure in how I work, so essentially this episode has come about because as I was doing this for my one to ones, I was like, this needs to be shared with my accelerator clients, because what I know to be true is, you know, we can have the strategy, we can be looking at the week ahead and be about to do the thing, and I’m not, you know, immune to this. We can then be sat there and be thinking, am I focusing on the right things? Are these what people refer to as needle moving activities? If I spend this much time updating my sales page, is it going to be the difference between where I am right now and the sales I want to make this month. Am I putting enough time towards sales activities? What have my sales activities actually work right? Like, we can go in a bit of a spiral, we can look at, you know, perhaps our mentor or our coach and go, yeah, of course, that person only takes half an hour to do a content, but that’s because it’s easy for her, and you know, you know what I mean, like the mindset gremlins go more around your head, and you know what, they’re not entirely wrong. 

Oh, controversial, they’re not entirely wrong in that, yes, you, my darling, have all the answers, or at least a lot of them, and that actually it does really pay to take a moment to reflect. However, if we don’t reflect in a structured way, we can lead, go into a spiral rather than actually taking really useful information into the new week. So, I have created a resource called the Cushy Work Week, so that you don’t spiral on a Monday, so that you can confidently go into the week ahead. And no, this isn’t about learning a new strategy, this is about understanding your own business better. So, I’m about to break it down to you, but I guess I just want to take a brief moment to remind you as to why this stuff matters. One of the things I came to recognize really early on in business is that you can have all the money, but if you don’t have time, you won’t feel. Rich, you can have all the money, but if you’re exhausted, you’re going to spend that whole vacation you’ve been, you know, working so hard for, probably lying in bed feeling sick, or being ill, or being on edge, thinking I should be monitoring my inbox, like it’s just not worth it. So, ultimately, when we’re looking to amass more wealth. What are we doing it for? Well, a lot of people say we’re doing it to have more options, right, but those options are things we use in our spare time, in our free time, and anyone who’s worked for themselves more than five minutes will know that free time can be something that a lot of us scoff at, because a lot of us know if we’re entirely honest, even when we have time out on the beach, sunbathing, or whatever, a lot of us are guilty of spending that time thinking about ways we can make our business even better, even more profitable. Is this a content moment? 

Should I be screenshotting myself, relaxing on the beach, so everyone knows I’m relaxing on the beach, right. It’s there’s a lot of noise in your mind, and that noise is one of the reasons why a lot of people come to work with me, because they’re like, how do I shut this noise off? I’ve been doing this for years now. This noise is now getting to the stage where I don’t know if I even want to work for myself anymore, right, because there’s two types of business owners. There’s a business owner who is so like following the formula that they almost need permission to play a bit more, and then there’s the business owner who’s been playing their way with their passion, with their expertise, and their experience, but having absolutely zero structure, and both of them are equally at risk of burnout, right? And both are the kind of clients who come to work with me, and the approach is always different, but the one thing they both always have in common is that we do this exercise. And finally, I’m now sharing it with you guys for free, so yes, it will be in the show notes, and yes, I’ve even created an AI upgrade, which you can upgrade to, should you wish to, which will support you to do it in a more passive kind of entertaining immersive way with kind of Polly Lavarello add-ons, if you want to hear my dry British humor in response, a la Claude or Chat GPT. But let’s talk through this process, because we’re already six minutes in, and I want you to know what I am going to be sharing in this guide, now, obviously, I recommend downloading the guide, because I recommend you do the thing, which actually brings me perfectly onto step zero of the Cushy Work Week. Well, step one, depending whichever way you want to look at it, essentially it is the Cushy setup. Now, what I said earlier on in this episode is, if you know you should be using your time well, but you’re not taking the time to prioritize it. You are not alone, friend. Like, how normal is that? 

The amount of people who come to me and say, I know I should be tracking my numbers, I know I should be looking at my data. Oh, Polly, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, look at the data first, and all of that stuff, and yet they are avoiding it. Why? Because it feels like a chore. So, yeah, I guess maybe this is slightly neurodiversity coded, but for me, I know I’m a million times more likely to do the thing if it feels fun. So I actually have something I refer to as my Monday day to date, but you can totally have a day to date at the end of your working week, because my working week finishes on a Thursday and stuff still happens on a Friday when I’m not on necessarily. I prefer to start on a Monday. I also have no calls on a Monday, so to me it’s absolutely perfect to start then. I know some people argue your week has already begun at that point, but I’d, I would argue back that if you did a not good enough job the previous Monday, that shouldn’t matter, because you’ll already have certain structures in place that enable you to take that time out, and for me it feels like a deliciously rebellious way to start the week by starting with my conditioning mobility class, which makes me sound like a granny, but I love it. Go to that, and then I go to a lovely coffee shop, get myself a matcha, and probably a protein shake to reward myself for all my hard work. And then I review my data, so I do it from a lovely setting. I do do it by myself, because if someone else is there, it’s kind of distracting. Sometimes I’ve been known to get a slice of cake. I will, I will bribe myself in whatever means necessary. Sometimes that might mean switching up the cafe I’m going to, sometimes that might mean, you know, doing something enjoyable afterwards. 

But I make myself do it because I know it’s the most valuable half an hour to an hour that I will spend in the week, and I said, half an hour to an hour, because it’s going to look very different for all of you. I have ads running, so that’s a significant additional layer of the day to date. I have funnels running again, another significant layer to the day to date, but where you don’t have ads and funnels, again, sometimes people say to me, I don’t need to do a day to day, I don’t have all the stuff you’re doing, yes. Do as long as you are doing stuff in your business, there is data, and inside the guide you’ll learn more about what that data actually is and what it looks like. But essentially, yes, you do. In fact, I will, I will, I will highlight a bit more as we go through this. So, the first thing is make it unavoidable by making it enjoyable. Don’t make it something you’re dreading, like, oh God, I have to look at spreadsheets, I guess. The other question you might ask me at this stage is, like, where should this data be held? Honestly, in whatever platform is a most affordable to you, and be the one that you’re actually going to use. Again, there are fun things you can do to make it more enjoyable. Use color coding, use emojis, like whatever brings joy, do that. Okay, trust that you can find your own way to do this, like you don’t, you know, there’s no textbook way of doing this. I mean, people will say there is, but there isn’t. Ultimately, the one that you use is the most valuable. Number two, so the next stage of this phase two is the replay. What worked last week, what didn’t, and what you’re taking forward. So, this is what I mean by data. Data isn’t always necessarily numbers, it’s taking a moment to be like, okay, so when I look at my time audit from last week, I actually spent eight hours creating content. That content got me five likes, two comments, zero DMs. 

Did that go very well for me? That was a lot of time for something that didn’t yield very much. Is there a more efficient way to create my content moving forward, so it is less time heavy? And is there a way to, you know, like, let’s look at what I was posting that didn’t perform very well. Let’s compare that to content that did do well, and let’s see what the difference was. So, you know what worked last week, what didn’t work, so obviously again, you know what worked last week. Oh, I GMed three previous clients I used to work with, letting them know that there is a new way to work with me, and one of them booked a call and is talking to me this week, so that worked well. Let’s see if I can find three other previous clients I can reach out to and make the same invitation, because one out of three ain’t bad, and what you’re taking forward, so taking forward, I’m going to find I’m going to batch my content once a month, rather than doing eight hours in a week. Let’s do a whole month in eight hours, and I’m going to, by the way, I’m making this stuff up, I’m doing this on the basis that if you don’t have very much going on, like these are the simple things you can be looking at, and I’m going to write a list of six people to reach out to to see if I can get two calls booked in and get, you know, two one to two clients by the end of this week. So you’ve set yourself a nice doable sales goal. So that’s what we’re doing in step two, is what I refer to as the replay, replaying the week. Then we want to look at leverage, the one thing this week that’s going to make future weeks easier. 

So, if you’ve listened to this podcast for a while, you’ll know I talk about money now, money later activities. So, actually, just what I refer to then about in the replay about reaching out to previous clients and making an invitation, that’s a money now exercise, that’s what I refer to as like a rinse and repeatable sales activity, something you could literally calendarize, like every two months or every month. I’m going to look at, you know, if there are any clients I’ve not, previous clients I’ve not reached out to in a while, and I’m going to make a specific invitation to them, whether it’s to in-person day, or whether it’s to a VIP day, or whether it’s to a discounted, you know, come back and work with me for x amount of time, like, you know, anyway, that’s a money now activity. A money later activity would look like things like I am going to do a list of all the biggest, most scariest, like would they even say yes, would they even acknowledge my invitation guests for my podcast, and I’m going to reach out to them all this week, and you know, with a goal to get, I don’t know, if I reach out to 10, no, let’s do more than 10. If I’m going to reach out to 50, the hope is to get at least five of them saying yes, and all my podcasts in the next few months, because I know that when I have them on my show, that that will add authority, clout, kudos, reach, and who knows what other opportunities, because I’m also going to leverage that relationship to see where there may be opportunities for collaborations, or you know, any other thing you know, or potential clients. So, that would be like a highly leveraged activity. One thing that you’re focusing on. So, notice, by the way, how I also broke that down into phases. Like, I’m going to write a list this week. Next week, I’m actually going to reach out to them. 

The following week, I’m going to follow up with them, so just because I’m saying leverage doesn’t mean it has to be big or huge or take over your entire week. You can break it down into phases, but make sure that you’re always doing something that’s leveraged, so you’re not just falling down into rinse and repeat activities that will keep you at the same level. So that was phase three. The leverage, by the way, I want you to choose one thing, no more than one. If you do more than one, you ain’t going to do it. Okay, it’ll be too much, and you’ll go, ‘I’ll come back to this next week. This only works when you can do it this week, which we’ll get to in a moment, because the next part is the calendar read. Where is your time leaking? What do you need to protect? So, obviously, with. Is a leverage move we’re going to get it in the calendar nice and straight away, so that it is happening. It is a non-negotiable. It’s as non-negotiable as you showing up for your client meetings. It is going to happen alongside all your rinse and repeat activities, but again, reviewing those rinse and repeat activities and seeing, you know, are you doing them as effectively as you can be, which actually again leads on to phase five, the edit. What can you stop, automate, hand off, or push? 

Okay, so I know some of these elements will not be new to you at all, but how often do you sit down and do any of this? Okay, a lot of us don’t do it often enough, and it’s costing your business dearly. And look, how brilliant all these doing all of this is, can you see how this is the kind of thing you’d often pay a business mentor to support you to have clarity around, and you can bring that own clarity yourself. Like, I’m not saying that makes someone like myself redundant, because ultimately you still want the overarching strategy to follow, and to understand what goes where, and to see your own blind spots, but this will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, and particularly if you’re in a situation where you can’t afford a business mentor right now, this is going to do so much more than winging it and reacting, which is what so many business owners do, winging it, reacting, or simply just doing more of the same and wondering why they’re getting more of the same results. So, finally, number six, and this is a bit that makes it very much my own process, which is the cushy calendar, putting in your life first and then your work around it. Okay, so you know you’re going to look at your leverage move, you’re going to look at the rinse and repeat stuff. What I don’t want you then doing is being like, great, my calendar’s jam packed. That is not sustainable. Okay, that will not feel like success. And where we use our time well, there should 100% be leftovers, 100% that shouldn’t be taking you more than three to four hours of your working day. It isn’t. How do I know that’s possible? Because that’s basically how I have built my business, I mean, I have to do school drop off, school pickups, everything else in between, and I am able to do all of that because I am able to run my business within a few hours per day, allowing enough time for me to sit down and watch Love is Blind or Below Deck, or whatever Bravo wants to throw at me, because yes, yes, yes. Apologetically, I did subscribe to Hey, you, and my husband found out the other day, and yes, I downplayed the subscription fee because I was too embarrassed to admit that Mama needs this. God, I’m starting unhinged. Anyway, so, but yes, fit it around your life. 

So, an example of what that looks like, for me, is like I say, I’ve got my exercise class on Monday morning, I’ve got my Pilates Friday morning, I go to the gym Wednesday afternoon, because it’s nice and quiet, because nobody goes there around school pickup, top top hint, and I usually have, well, I always have got my monthly massage, that I mean, so it’s not a weekly thing, right, but it happens once a month, things like manicures, float spas, I mean, I make sure it’s all in there first, also allowing for a healthy amount of time for hanging out with other biz besties and other fun things that make me feel like, is this even my job? And, like, I say, enough space for a bit of slothing, because you know what I find, and I imagine you might the same, I sometimes find calls pretty intense, you know, I’m helping people make, in some cases like multi six figure decisions, so unsurprisingly, sometimes I need a little lie down afterwards to then get back in gear for an entirely different business that I’m speaking to half an hour later, so I make sure that there are nice pauses and breaks for a bit of food, a bit of movement, a bit of playing a song and dancing around, or a little bit of like catching up on, I don’t know, whatever silly TV shows on, like, I don’t know, and I really wanted to speak to this, because I think a lot of people do often say to me, oh, Polly, you know, you’re so with it, with your spreadsheets and your data, and you’re on it, and you know, no, I am neurodiverse, and if sometimes, if you, if you were to take, if you were to be a fly on the wall, and see me occasionally catching up on little bit of admin at night with Bravo playing in the background, like you would not think, wow, she’s a high flying CEO, but you know what, it works for me, and it works, and I’m still able to run a successful business because I’m not always doing admin in front of Bravo TV, but having the freedom and flexibility to be able to make decisions like that is how I’m able to do all the stuff that might feel a bit harder, where there might be a bit more natural resistance around. 

So, yeah, I’m really, really, really excited to share this resource with you, because ultimately these are the foundations of cushy business. I feel like in the past I’ve jumped several steps ahead into what a cushy business model looks like, and I can’t believe I missed these foundations out, and I’m so excited to be sharing them with you now. So, do jump into the show notes, do jump into the guide – it’s a brand new funnel, guys, so you know if you’re downloading this end of May, so if there are. Be issues with it, please. Just DM me, because we’re using a new platform. We’ve used AI to create the funnels and all sorts, so all sorts. Who knows what the robots might be doing? So do reach out to me if, for any reason, anything isn’t working quite the way you want it to. Otherwise, I’m excited for you to get your teeth into this. Let me know how you get along with it. And yeah, I’ll be in your ears next week with a new episode again, DM me to tell me what you’d like it to be about. Go ahead with the app. Alright, big love to you.