Episode 1: The Backstory

Hello and welcome to episode one of the You Can podcast. I'm your host Sarah Jolly Jarvis and today I'm going to give you a little bit of background on me and my journey to get me here today.
So first off, why am I telling you this? Why am I sharing this with you? Why do you care? Why does it matter to you? Well, because we all have to start somewhere. And where we come from can tell us an awful lot about the journey that we've gone on, the experiences that we've got.
And that's the thing is, is where we are now, wherever you are in business, it's a collection of all those experiences that have brought you to this moment, all those experiences which have given you different insights, different thought processes on how to go about business and in my case how to advise others to navigate the business world. And like a lot of people or like I advise a lot of people to do, my businesses, they actually started as a side hustle and it had nothing to do with business mentoring and running advertising and all that kind of stuff.
We went traveling just over 12 years ago now. We went traveling 13 years ago.
We went traveling around the world, just the two of us before children. We were, you know, you never felt it at the time, but we were carefree.
And we were like, you know what, this is a really, really good time for us to take a break from our careers and see the world so we set off backpacks you know the whole traditional stuff and we went around India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand we did the the whole backpacking thing and it really gave us a new perspective on the world and the opportunities that are out there and actually how so entrepreneurial some people are because they have to be. And that's the thing is we are, you know, in the UK, we are in a position where we are choosing careers, whereas a lot of people in other areas of the world, it is what they can get with and what they're where they can try and make some money so having spent some time in Australia we saw how popular over there cupcakes and bakery kind of offerings were and so we decided to come back and we saw that as a kind of stock gap as a way to make some money before getting into a bigger project that we had in mind, which was all around the idea of a online, I guess, farmer's market.
And so we set about on the bakery. We then evolved that and looked at doing this offering of an online food festival kind of idea, I suppose it had evolved into into and that's the thing with business guys is that it's always evolving there's always changes happening there's always you thinking up new ideas and responding to what is going on in the market we actually applied for and got through to the last 10 in a metro and cedars competition so it was like a combined competition we featured in the metro and we went to a really nice swanky place in london where we presented to a panel of judges who were looking at different qualities within the businesses etc etc and we became one of the runners up we lost out to a very good shoe company designed for women called Heirs and Graces and I have a pair of those because they were so good anyway so I sort of digress on that one but yeah we were competition runners up during that competition one of the judges called Michael Acton Smith he runs these heads up the car map he said to us you know what why don't you look at using this as a subscription box model and getting people to subscribe on a monthly basis and offer them a range of products for them to try and so we went away with that concept and we built on that concept it was a fantastic idea and so we ended up getting funding for it with a usable website in place, we were able to do the testing and the scaling that we were anticipating in order to make it viable and scalable and what, you know, the business that we wanted it to be.
And we quickly were able to determine that actually this wasn't going to scale the way we wanted it to. The ability to give people choice within within those options which we were so keen on doing and made us really stand out from the competitors meant that we were in a position where this just wasn't feasible the size of the producers that we were using and the margins that we were getting it just wasn't going to be scalable now the feedback from our investors actually was really kind and really quite positive considering the effort the time the money that we'd all put into it uh we were able to test they said that you know you've tested and come to this decision in in within a 12 month period whereas it could have taken people two to three years and they'd have continued sort of banging on and trying to do the same thing so we were pleased that we had come to that we hadn't wasted any more money than we needed to.
But then we're in a position where we're like, okay, well, what do we do now? At that time, my husband had been using Facebook ads within the business. And he was like, you know what, I actually quite enjoy this side of things.
And so he headed off to do the marketing. This had been a side hustle all along.
And so I was in a position where I continued to focus on my my day job which became more demanding as I was a product manager within a pharmaceuticals company so I'd gone from the sales team where I'd been for 10 plus years and and kind of all inhabited that kind of area and when I came back from traveling I went back to my old company for a little bit and then they they had a job opening so I took that and and I did the sales side of things and then this opportunity came up with this other company and so I went into a sales role and then quickly into product management, getting mentored by the CEO in the end. I was in a really, really fortunate position there and I really enjoyed that corporate life.
It obviously gave me an amazing start to my career. But I was really conscious of wanting to start a family with the commute and all the commitments that were involved in doing my product management job well.
And that was the thing for me is, yes, I could have gone back. I could have gone back maybe part time.
I would have been the only person in a company of 400 people who would have gone back part time. But I could have maybe gone back part-time and um they said it was an option and I could have then tried to balance the two the parenting and the work but I knew that if I went back part-time I wouldn't be able to do that role properly I didn't want to go back full-time I didn't want to be away from my daughter and so I made the decision quite quickly uh which you can read in my book which I'll come come on to a minute, that I that wasn't it wasn't for me.
This wasn't going to work. And so I made the decision to step away from that corporate career whilst I was still on maternity leave.
And maternity leave is, you know, it's not for everybody. But maternity leave for me was a great opportunity to think through, OK, where is my skill set at? what can I do? What can I put into a business offering? And now I understand the online world so much more, that probably the decision I made to go down the route of sales training probably wouldn't have been the one that I'd have taken.
I'd have probably actually put myself into more of a VA kind of role to start off with. But actually, I'm really, really pleased that I took that step in and straight away was offering out my skills and my knowledge in that way.
I had identified that and there's a lot of people out there, both online and in person, who are really, really good at what they do. But what they do is not sales and marketing, and particularly not sales and marketing for themselves.
And so they become like a best kept secret. And there is nothing worse in your business than being a best kept secret.
Nobody wants to be that hidden gem. You want to be out there where people are able to find you, understand what you do for them, understand the value that you can bring to them.
And so, you know, you can have those customers queuing at the door. So I came across a lot of people who were really good at what they do but the customers were not by any means queuing at the door they weren't even aware that they existed and so I set about looking at how I could help these individuals because you know it was it was painful to see and it felt like you know what if you could just get yourselves in order if you could just sell to them and convert these people, you could use my skills and you could definitely be having more customers.
It became very, very apparent. I went down the route of getting beta testers.
I had nobody online. I knew nobody.
I'd use my Facebook profile for, well, purely for fun, and to be honest, not very often. I'm not even sure I had an Instagram account when I first set into the online world.
I really wasn't in that space that often on a social basis. It wasn't an area that I gravitated towards.
And so there was a very, very steep learning curve curve I went from a highly regulated industry where you couldn't underline things let or highlight things let alone write stuff to all these weird and wonderful claims that people were making it felt like the wild west and so it was a steep learning curve to get an understanding and also to start to get that foothold into that area how

do you stand out when there's so many crazy claims going on how do you stay authentic and true to yourself and that has been something that you know has been a constant thing um to look at and address in um in your marketing online and and something that my clients are regularly getting my help to navigate. Anyway, I don't, again, I digress.
So I set up a business where I was helping people, specifically women, who were in a position where they were not able to sell as much as they wanted online. I managed to get some beta testers by using contacts that I'd made, really, friends of friends, and I secured five beta testers by using contacts that I'd made really friends of friends and I secured five beta testers to test out my sales support program and it became very apparent very quickly that this whole course that I'd created thankfully not in any too much detail but the outline was there the steps that I wanted to take them through were there I hadn't thankfully produced any slides or anything like that because I was doing it on a one-on-one basis and it became apparent very very quickly that they were not where I was expecting them to be at I thought that they would have leads coming in and they were just not able to convert them on a call because they weren't positioned themselves properly well now I now I can, I can, you know, safely say that these people were, they were not in a position where they had leads, their marketing was not helping them.
And so they come into me saying, you know what, yeah, I've definitely got a sales problem. And in reality, they weren't getting enough leads through and they're putting so much pressure on themselves when they did have a sales call, because not every sales call is going to convert.
Like, you know, for me now, if you're looking at, you know, my best conversion is 81%. That was with a lot of pre-selling, a lot of support on the marketing front, a good structured email automation going on.
And, you know, and them knowing the price and the commitment and everything else up front before booking a call so you're not going to get that 100% conversion that they needed to get because they had so few leads so we took a few steps back really in the process and we looked at okay well how are you how are you turning up and at this time that wasn't my area of expertise whatsoever but that was the area they needed help with so what we looked to do actually was we combined the work that my husband was doing with the lead generation side of stuff because he knew those bits with the knowledge that I had for the sales and for a time we worked it together as one business the challenge was was that he was his heart was in the ads and for me where my client base was really at and the people that

I could really help with the sales were the people who they were not at a place where they

were running at and so after probably 18 months two years of working under the same banner and

we actually split the businesses back out again and that is basically when to start off with it

was Sarah Jolly Jarvis selling without Without Sleaze. And then it became Selling Without Sleaze.
And from there, my book was born. So I have an international bestseller.
It got 11 number ones and nine top tens over four countries. It did very, very well.
It is a a really good book it gives you some really great tools and outlooks on how to do sales and how to change not just change your mindset towards sales but understand what sales is truly about and how you can really get it working for you so um selling without sleeves is the name of the book i highly recommend that you look it up. There's been well over 3,000 copies sold now and it is available on Amazon for you to get your hands on.
It's also available direct from me and a link to that, a bit way to order it, will be in the show notes. So from there, Sending Without Sleaze, we ended up doing a doing a well sort of actually stepping back a little bit the the birth of selling without sleeves came about with a challenge that actually did really really well during lockdown so I was pregnant by then with my third child we went into lockdown there's a lot of uncertainty over what to sell how to sell how to do it and so we put on a challenge called Selling Through the Storm, it got 1800 sign-ups to that challenge and we sold on the back end an academy course which was eight weeks long, there was also a 12-week long version and basically that took me up to maternity leave so that was the only intake of people that I had once those stops were gone they were gone and you know there was a very clear end date in mind because I wanted to go off on maternity leave before my obviously before my third child was born so I was then in a position where I was creating the book at the same time as doing the academy and supporting those clients we've got some amazing results with those I finished the book literally the morning that I was supposed to go off on maternity leave in the afternoon and off I went on maternity leave my book went off to the editors and then that is how that all went about um I will at some point share more detail and get somebody on who can talk you through the publishing of a book and how to publish a book.
But more on that later. So, you know, it was really my business has really for the last seven years since my daughter.
So I was on maternity leave with my daughter. So the last seven years has really fitted around.
It's had lots and lots of fits and starts as it's

fitted around various children various commitments and various weird and wonderful times like lockdown so you know it's been for a lot there's been a journey and throughout that journey I have been consistent I've had to balance and refocus myself on a regular basis on what is truly important here. I started my business because I wanted a work-life balance.
I wanted to be good at what I did, but not at the expense of being there for my children. And that has continued to be at the core of everything that I do.
I'm recording this podcast on the evening that during the day I took from one o'clock onwards off from work because my children had their sports day. I went to the sports day then there was a like a little carnival thing going on afterwards so we did that and then we came home, chilled out with the kids and then had a special meal to celebrate all their efforts and for me that is the key with all this I was working with a mentor recently and it was a guy and you know he was used to working with people who were very very financially driven and he was like so how much money do you want to be making in your business and I said you know what I want to be making as much as I can working four days a week and you know that is a very clear boundary that Fridays I have off and I spend them with my youngest because I want to be there and I want to enjoy those times could I put him into child care on a Friday and and work more and get more money yes I absolutely could but is that my priority right now the money that I will be getting that future gain that I'll be getting in finances will not get me back that time that I have with my son and that for me is what's really really important we've also got neurodiversity in the family and so that comes with its own challenges so needing to be there for the family and being flexible so that I can support people as and when they need it is really really important to me but I wanted to to have that personal growth and to feel like I that I would could continue to to add value to to the world around me that I could use my skills that I've spent so much money obtaining not just in mentors in the online world but my degree was in business and public policy and all that time that I'd spent in the corporate world collecting all this understanding and these skills and these resources it just seemed crazy to just walk away from that and do something purely to fit around the flexibility when I could I believed I could do it do both and that is the fundamentals of you can and that is why I'm going to have one of my clients on in the near future talking to you around your values and what is important to you.
Because for me, it's really key that you bear that in mind, and it does fit around, actually, the core values of what's important to you. When you're out of alignment, that's when you tend to get overwhelmed and stressed because you're not doing the things that actually you feel you were born to do and for me I feel like I was born to support people with their businesses I would do this even if I won the lottery tomorrow and for me that's always a measurement with clients it's like you know what would you be doing if you lottery? If it's not this, then how can we get you to the thing that that is, that does really light your fire up.
And so it was important to me to have that personal growth, understanding, gosh, the journey that I have been on, even within the corporate world, I think it's very, very easy to not fully understand the impact that you has on your performance. And, you might realize yeah on an off day this is happening but you are not under that microscope in the same way as you are when you're wearing 101 hats in your business and when that business needs you to perform in a particular way and and you understand you know it's there as as light as day the impact that your mindset has on you and the more that I work with people the better my understanding of people need to be in the right place to work with me and for me to get the very very best from for them from them and and that is you know for their heads to be in that place of you know I can do this and their heads are not blocking them if their heads are blocking them then it's you know a case of me pointing them in the right direction of support and then getting that support on that so that I can continue to work with them and help them achieve that success so you know the impact of mindset is huge my understanding of that has just grown uh you know exponentially since I started working for myself and understanding the impact that that that your mindset has and also that value of support and network getting that work securing that network getting that position that little foothold in your market is so so key and those are things those are the sorts of things

that we're going to be discussing on this podcast I am really really keen to help to inspire women in business to feature women who are inspiring in business to help us understand ourselves better to work to our strengths to understand our motivations to stay true and aligned to ourselves and to see what is possible i remember watching a documentary about helen glover the british rower and it was like the mother of all comebacks and if if you haven't watched it watch it in that her coach robbins williams he talked around if someone can show you the path at the mountain it's easy for the next person to follow and I think that is so true in bringing stories to the fore on women in business and their successes and you know the whole ethos around the you can is that um that the kind of bigger that the longer statement around you can is you know you can have it all and there is that argument that you can right you can have all that is important to you but it's understanding what is important and it's understanding that they might not come all on the same timelines it's about working out your priorities okay but it doesn't have to be that that never-ending sacrifice you can fit things in you can balance stuff can make your life work for you. You can have the kids and be successful or impactful, but that success and that impact may look different.
The need and the support that you will need around that, having the family and everything else, will look different. And that's understanding, okay, where are my priorities? And it's a constant reassessment and readjustment.
Is it easy? No. Is it worth it? Absolutely, yes.
And I'm not talking about running yourself into the ground here, working all the hours or anything else. It's about finding a way that works for you, where you get fulfillment and you get energy from your job and you have that time with your family where you can also get that fulfillment and that enjoyment from them.
So really, guys, you know, that's it for me for episode one. I just wanted to share with you my sort of take on things where I am, the journey that I've been on so far.
I would love to hear about you guys and your journey. I'm going to pop one of those questions against my podcast.
If you're looking at it on Spotify, you should be able to have a bit of an interaction on that and I look forward to seeing you again

next week bye for now