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

Welcome to the show. Today’s episode is part one of a two part conversation with the incredible marketing strategist, Sophia para who’s going to introduce herself shortly. So I’m not going to do that right now, but at the time of recording, she was just 10 days away from her due date. Yet delivering absolute gold. We’re digging into what’s actually working in marketing in 2025 and what used to work but is quietly falling flat. Think the death of just post more, the rise of trust first strategies and how to stay relevant without selling your soul to the algorithm or the AI overlords. We talk about the trust recession, burnout from doing too much for too little, and how to create marketing that connects and converts even as the game keeps changing. If your current strategy feels like it’s stuck in 2022 this episode is your wake up call. Let’s dive in. Welcome to the show, Sophia. I’m really excited before I say proper. Welcome to Sophia. Just going to give my listeners a heads up that this is a new kind of way of recording. We are doing split episodes with my wonderful guest, in fact, you know, I’m going to hand over to you. You can tell them what they can expect from these two episodes. So we are throwing a little bit of a curveball, right? We have decided to kind of do a part one and a part two. So we’re going to kick things off with us, you know, getting into a conversation around what used to work, what no longer works, and just seeing where we go, we already know this is going to be juicy, because we’ve already talked about what we’re going to cover. So like, hang on to your hats, and then when we get to, I don’t know, we’ll figure out, like, the part the point, right? We’re going to move on to the second piece. But we got to be honest, we’ve never done this before. We’re not claiming to be experts at this. We just saw a bunch of other cool people doing it. We’re like, we’re here to do that.

02:22

So there we are. Here we are. Here we are. And for anyone Sophia who has not met you yet, please introduce yourself to the listeners. Well, thank you so much for having me here. I’m so excited to be here. So I’m Sophia. Sophia. Parra, technically, Sophia Rose, but I but most people in the business lands or know me as Sophia. Para, yeah, yeah, I’ve worked in marketing for, I don’t know, like we were just talking about this. I was trying to figure out the exact year that I started. I want to say 2016 but it could have been 2017 I have to check. But before covid, and I know that was something that Polly and I were talking about how covid was such a time for business. And I feel like, given that I started before that, there’s a bit of a perspective shift on how covid actually changed business. So I before the covid era, I’ve been doing this thing, it’s changed a lot. We’re in the middle of another shift, and I think as a result of that, my business has shifted a lot as well. I started out as a social media manager, actually, so my big thing was social media strategy. So I know a lot about social media, but in recent years, I’ve taken a massive pivot, because I have found that while social media is really great for a lot of things, I feel like a lot of people are square pegs trying to fit into round holes on social media. And so I have really made an effort to explore so many different forms of marketing and and make it my mission to help people find the best fit marketing systems for them, so that they’re not getting burnt out, so that their marketing actually fits with their offers. And so they’re building things in in layers, as opposed to trying to do it all at once, which I think is a big thing for people. So So yeah, that’s a little bit about me. About me. I can go in so many different directions, because I think of how many different places I’ve had focus I’ve focused on over the years. Yeah, and one things I love about your messaging is you kind of say, like it’s natural if you’re not a marketing expert, I’m here to be that expert for you, which I think, you know, is such a challenge for coaches and creatives and consultants to you know, they already have so much amazing expertise in their particular area, but it’s a whole new thing being good at marketing. And what is so challenging, I think, for people, particularly if they’ve only been in business for, you know, a few short years, is that, like shifting landscapes, I’m like thinking about a desert where the sands are constantly like flying across. And what was relevant a year ago isn’t necessarily relevant now. There are obviously the timeless elements to running, you know, marketing, but there is so much, particularly in the online space, social media, where it’s changing all the time. And obviously we’re going to go more into that in a moment. But to anyone who is new to me, just gonna say I was like, Don’t forget, you have to say who you are, too.

04:59

Yeah, I’m Polly, Polly Lavarello And I actually launched my business as a personal brand back in 2020, so, yeah, Sophia and I were chatting about the difference, like I literally came in, kind of the gold win, whatever they call it, the Gold Rush period of online business, where everything was crazily easy but nobody knew it. Yeah, everyone was scared that everything was all about to collapse. But actually, we were living our best lives, making our best money with so much ease and so, yeah, so I’ve been running my business since 2020. I actually started as an ads manager. I was helping seven figure, eight figure coaches with multi six figure launches. Supported someone to create an evergreen funnel that was making seven figures within six months of launching, and very quickly started to recognize why some people succeeded and why some people didn’t succeed with Facebook ads, and that I actually had way more fun supporting people with that part, because while I only launched as a personal brand in 2020 I’ve been in the digital marketing and marketing world within an agency format as an employee for years before that. So it was I wasn’t new to marketing, but I was new to doing it in the capacity as a personal brand. So for the last three years, maybe a bit more now, I’ve been supporting people with funnels, systems, Group offers, and essentially scaling from close to six figures and beyond with group programs the Evergreen way, so very passionate about that, not so excited by live launches.

06:32

That’s what you need to know about me. I’m very motivated by what every day looks like, rather than getting exhausted. But yeah, and I love that messaging as well, because I feel, I feel like, especially now with the, you know, we were just talking about how I, I am actually sitting here nine months pregnant, I could go into labor, like on this podcast.

06:54

I know I’m really, I I was actually, I went, I did. I went to the Ritz the other day for high tea. And I was like, like, I said, nine months pregnant, and I was like, this was a really bad idea. Like, I could be sitting here in this really posh place, like, go into labor right now,but I’m really thinking so much about, like, the lifestyle changes, right and this, and the thinking about what can be evergreen, and I know we’ve talked about this before, and there’s so many things that I didn’t even consider before, because I feel like that’s an area that it’s not that I haven’t considered, or that I don’t have elements in my business that are evergreen. It’s just that I myself have a personality. There’s a little bit of a hustler, a little bit of a like, make it more complicated, and it needs to be that’s like, just like the personality I have. I love your honesty around, yeah, it’s, it’s a it’s the worst, but yeah, that is literally right, what it’s like for me. So I, I love that you this is your focus, because I just feel like that’s such a good perspective for me to hear as well. So listeners, you and I both were in the same shoes right now listening for to for Polly’s genius around the Evergreen capacity. So tell me more about what that’s actually looked like. You know, obviously your business is now, what seven? No, my math is terrible here, 2017, approaching nine years old. I love that you don’t even know when you look I mean that I find hilarious. Like, I will admit I’m on those people that misses my business birthdays. Like, every time I see someone celebrating, I’m like, Oh yeah, no, I’m out by several months. I will remember that next year, and I never do. But the fact that you can’t remember what year, no, I really don’t, you know, I feel like there’s a reason for that, though, like, and this has to do with a lot of the directions I’ve taken in marketing when my business started, like, months later. So when it’s quote, unquote started, because I actually don’t really feel like I officially started at that point because, well, I’ll tell you in a second. But literally, when I decided to launch it, my dad got extremely sick with, well, he had cancer. Oh, I’m sorry. He had stage four cancer, and he had actually a crazy, miraculous recovery that year, which I probably don’t have enough time to get into right now, but we obviously didn’t know that was going to happen. And so he had cancer. He was told he had three months to live. And so my business started, and it was really success, successful right away, which was amazing, because it meant I got to pay for I went from being an out of work actor to a marketer, basically. So it meant that I got to pay for a plane ticket for myself and my sister to go be with our dad in Mexico while he got alternative treatment. Because basically every doctor in the States was like, There’s nothing we can do. You have three months. So we were looking at other places of the world. And long story short, he went to Mexico and found a treatment in Germany that actually miraculously, like, his tumor disappeared. Now I don’t know if it was. We don’t know so many things, right, because he tried so many things at the same time, so we can’t actually tell exactly what it was, but he did all the things, and that put a little bit of a pause on my business in terms of, like.

10:00

Uh, like how all in I was, because obviously I had my I was taking care of my dad and this and that, and then my husband had a stroke, lost his short term memory, and then my dad’s cancer came back, and I moved in with him to take care of him as he died. This was four years later, but so his his cancer did come back, and he did pass. Then my husband took a very long time to recover from his stroke, his search or memory did come back, but he also went through a period of throwing up every single day, like for hours, like it was just so bad, and no one knew what was wrong with him.

10:37

And then we moved to England, and then we went through infertility. So there’s all these things right, that I think made the official start of the business unclear, because I was kind of balancing a lot at the same time, but it really was an eye opener for me, because not that you have to have this crazy shit happen in your life to realize to want to, like, have a more balanced, like, marketing life, right? But for me, it was like, it really made me understand and see what of my coaching was actually sustainable for people, because I think that’s the big thing in this world, right? There’s a lot of marketing advice out there, but most of it is unsustainable. And, yeah, so true, so true. And I also think the word sustainable is so boring. Yeah, and a lot of people don’t realize how necessary it is until I hear a story like yours, and I do occasionally have the odd discovery call with someone where they’re like, Yeah, I’m gonna come work with you when things have settled. When I’m not busy with a house or I’m not busy with an illness, I’m not and I’m like, darling, if you’re somewhere between 30 and 50,

11:41

because I don’t know about you, but ever since, I mean, for you, sounds like a Sadie even sooner, but for me, ever since I had children, really, there has always been something obviously, sometimes more severe, sometimes less. But it it’s relentless. You know, life, life tends to life, right? And so where some people can feel like, oh, sustainable, or six figures overnight? Oh, six figures overnight, please. But they’re not going to maintain that six figures overnight if they even get there in the first place. Yeah, if you haven’t actually looked at like you say, the sustainability of your business, and I think a lot of people don’t necessarily even know what that means. So the question I wanted to ask you is, earlier on, you referenced how actually, everything seemed to happen really quickly in your business, and that it was working. Obviously, you had extenuating circumstances, making things more challenging for you, but I’m like, as you drop that little nugget in there, I was like, Oh, tell me more. Why do you feel you had almost immediate success when you launched your business? Was it timing? Was it something you brought to the table? Was it a particular trend you jumped on? Like, because so many people struggle in those early stages to gain any traction, and you kind of just dropped it there, like, Oh, and this just happened. So, so please share more about that, because I know people want to know, like, what was that? Well, I have to say it’s one of the biggest mistakes I made, actually, and it also happened to be why I was successful. And you’re going to understand the reason. Understand the reason in a second. So the way that I was growing my business was through referrals. That was great at the time, right? So I skipped as a social media marketer. I actually wasn’t trying to get clients off of social media. Even then, I was really leaning into referrals, because I felt like, Okay, I need trust. I need, you know, traction. I need people basically vouching for me. So my strategy is going to really be about who is talking to me in a more intimate way, versus just in a big, broad way on social. The second thing you should know is, at that point, I was working one on one, so I didn’t have a course I was so I, like I said, I was five days old in terms of, like, business, so I didn’t have those things yet, right? I didn’t have an email list. I didn’t have list, I didn’t have anything. So I really did have to start with who knew me, instead of just this course that I built when I don’t even have an email list, I don’t even have proof that it sells like that. Was not the time to go on social media with something like that, right? Even back then. But the third thing that happened, the reason I was so successful is because I was cheap, AF, because I was so not confident. I could not price myself the way I should be priced. And how I came to that conclusion was actually in terms of time, because I wasn’t even saying that I was so valuable, like, I was brand new. The world wasn’t about my services being priceless or my worth being priceless. Like, even though, like, I love that we all, like, I really have a pet peeve of people being like, talking about, like, charge your worth. Charge your worth. Like, like, I get it. And then also, it’s just like, not all things are worth a million fucking dollars. Yeah. So it’s like, so I wasn’t like, sure I needed to charge my worth, but that it I wasn’t even referring to my worth as myself. I was referring to like, the fact that I was I was charging like $400

let’s say for like four blog posts. Do you know what I mean and like, but I was doing research. I was doing a lot of, like, time intensive things, and I think so there’s two lessons that I learned here, right? Like, one that’s going to burn you out. So the even though, yes, I did actually make 10k my very first month in business, right? A lot of it was because I was so cheap, and people were like, oh my god, I gotta hop on this deal immediately. It wasn’t because it was like some crazy strategy, right? But the thing that kept it going, because I did ultimately scale, you know, much higher months, right? And maybe not necessarily by the second month, but, like, within the first year, I scaled much higher months. I was a six figure business, like, right away. And I think what really like helped with that in the beginning, right, when you’re, especially if you’re just getting started, right? Is the referral piece, is the relationship piece, and that is actually something that has stuck with me to this day. I obviously think about relationships at scale. Now I’m not necessarily thinking about the one to one relationship. Well, I do think about the one to one relationship, but I think about it in a very different way, because I have been establishing those for many, many years, right? But the relationship piece has never not been important, right? Like in the beginning on day one of your business, that might look like referrals, and then on your whatever, right? That’s going to look like your network, that’s going to look like your affiliates, that’s going to look like, how, like, how, what systems you have in place to build your relationships with your lists like, that’s going to look like a lot of different things and a lot of different strategies, right? But it never stops being important. And I think that’s something that I’m seeing a lot right now, where in 2025 we’re talking about this trust recession that we’re all in, and again and again and again, I’m hearing people be like, like, we need to come back to relationships. Truthfully, the biggest thing mistake people made was that they left it, you know? I mean, yeah, like, I’ve never left it, and I I’m not really, like, sure I feel the changes that a trust recession is bringing on, but not because I’m not doing relationship work, because I’m doing because there’s other AI and things like that, or where the changes are happening. For me, the relationship stuff is intact. It’s working. It’s always worked, and it’s one of the reasons why I don’t think I’m necessarily feeling this trust recession in the way a lot of other people are, yeah, no, I hear Yeah. So trust recession. Trust recession is, I mean, trust recession is the main thing we’re hearing people talking about at the moment, aren’t they, in terms of what is changing. 

17:24

And actually, before we dive into kind of specifics,you mentioned that earlier on in business, you were working more one to one, and now you think about relationships at scale. Can you, just for anyone who kind of wants to kind of zoomed out version of your business, like, what’s the core problem you solve? How are you solving it? What does that look like in your day to day? And then we can, like, dive more into like. I really want to get back to trust recession, but I want to make sure that everyone kind of has an understanding of that piece, so that we can contextualize everything we share afterwards. Yes, absolutely. So, I mean, so I am essentially helping. I focus a lot on coaches. I not to say that people who are not coaches, I can’t serve. They they appear and they join my memberships and things like that, but my messaging is very towards coaches, consultants, educators, and my big goal is really helping them create marketing systems that actually work for them and for their business. What I’m seeing again and again and again as people design systems that are driving them towards burnout aren’t actually effective, and are really focused on what’s trending instead of actually what they’re what is needed by their business. You know what I mean? They don’t really know how to bring those, all those things together. So I have a program called Pocket CMO, which is, is not even it sounds like it’s a membership. It kind of, I guess, format wise, should be like, in terms of like you come in, you pay monthly like, it kind of sounds like it should be, but the type of support we give in there is more mentorship specific. And it’s very much about like, building that revenue roadmap, understanding what goes into a revenue roadmap, and having the tools to fulfill the revenue roadmap. And so we’re helping them build, like, skills that they’re going to have for the rest of the life of their business. Because when I am seeing again and again, is people don’t know how to do that right? What they’re doing is they’re just seeing what’s popular online, and they’re just doing that thing, right? Yeah, no, no, it’s so true. And it’s one of those things that occasionally people say to me, it’s fine, I’ll just make enough money, then I’ll outsource it. I’m like, if you’re a personal brand, you are always the face of your business, like, whether you’re having a conversation with someone, whether you are guesting on somebody’s podcast, whether eventually you stand on a stage. Like, these are skills that you do not want to be bypassing, because A, it’s going to make it so much harder for you to get anywhere. Yes, but B, like, that next level of growth when you start to scale, when people start inviting you, like, I say, onto podcasts or on stages or to do any of those things. You know when we know, ultimately, what we know with marketing is like, as you mentioned earlier, relationships are the thing that create the sale. But how do we get those relationships in the first place? Aside from referrals, which I think is such a juicy thing to go into as well, but it’s, it’s visibility. Visibility is how people discover you in the first place.

20:00

Yeah, and obviously me being a big funnel geek, very into the visibility piece. Because as far as I’m concerned, as soon as you’ve got the foundations that nurture people to have that relationship with you, have that trust and want to buy from you, the only other thing you need to work on, on the other side is having more people discover you and like you, and ideally, you want to make that as easy for them as possible, you know, so that they’re not like, Who is this chick and what does she do, and all that kind of stuff, you want to have marketing which people can very quickly ascertain like this person is for me or they are not, and the Betty and like you say, in this world where so many people are worrying about people being slower to buy, slower to trust, nailing these elements is so essential. So I think sometimes people think about marketing and they think about social media, or they think about funnels, but it’s so much. It’s that positioning piece that comes before anything. And actually, when we talk about what’s timeless and what isn’t the positioning piece, to a certain extent, is timeless, like, I know your business has evolved, Sophia, and I’m really curious to know more about that, because about that, because for me, mine has evolved in that, you know, I sometimes think, Oh, I’ve changed so much. I used to help people with ads, and then it was about, oh no, funnels. And then it was funnels and offers. And then I think about the kind of promise as to, like, what people are getting when they come to work with me. And then I was like, listening back to old podcasts. And I’m like, actually, that theme of building a business that you actually love for a life that feels great has been an underlying theme throughout the entire journey. Like that has never deviated. Yeah, how we go about achieving that has but then that’s also honest, because sometimes I feel like there are marketers out there flogging a dead horse because they’ve spent so long building a course on, let’s say, Facebook groups. They’re terrified to leave it rather than admit that they’re just not doing the same work that they used to. Yes, 100 I actually wanted to ask you that, because this is, I have to say, like it took me a really long time to believe that we could build a business like that doesn’t take away from our life, that it’s like, it like, gives us a life that we love, like, it took me a really long time to believe that was possible. I don’t know if it’s because I’m American, if I’m being honest, because Americans are just, like, work horses, you know, we just, like, don’t stop and like, yeah, maybe there’s some cultural thing in there for me. But I’m curious for for you as well. Like, what like, did you just always know your business was going to support this life that you love? Or did you have to learn something the hard way? Or, like, how did you get to that commitment? Because I feel like you have really committed to it, whereas I waver, like, I’ll be like, Oh, it’s a hard moment. I’ll just like, hustle my ass off for three years and then figure, you know what I mean, it’s like, I waver, but you’re like, committed to it. So I’m just curious, from your perspective, I love that question, yeah, because you’re right, it is a non negotiable, and it’s not always easy that it’s a non negotiable by any means. But for me, when I launched as a personal brand in 2020 I had spent two years being propped up by benefits, living in a tiny flat with my one year old and three year old. I mean, by then they were two years plus that, but they were one in three when I left my husband, and so they were, yeah, five and three by the time I launched as a personal brand, and I’d spent two years and talk about where referrals can go wrong, I was that cheap Facebook ads girl. They were like, you gotta hire her. She’s, she’s cheap as chips, yes. And at the time, I hadn’t chosen a particular type of client, so I was doing e commerce. I was, you know, I was trying everything out. And towards the end of 2019 like, I was putting my children to bed, I was then getting back up. I was working till really late. And I have to admit, I did have this, like, American Dream thing at the back of my head, too. I remember listening to Bruce Springsteen, like, working on I was,

23:44

like, romanticizing me working really hard, being like, Look at me go because I’d taken my children away from, you know, real financial security with their their dad, and so I didn’t want to be the one that let them down. And and I think you’re going to get this even more when your baby comes along. I mean, you’re probably feeling it already, because I think the moment you are growing the baby, there’s that connection already, but there was, like, this ferocious like, I will not, I will not lose time with my children to make this work. Like, I will pick them up from school. I will not, you know, take them away to another country, which is where I’m from, but I’m not going to be raising them in a country where they don’t see me all day, particularly as a single parent, I just, I really couldn’t do that. So that was, like a not like they talk about like, non negotiable kind of energy. Like, that was a non negotiable. I was like, I will find a way to make enough money in the hours I have available. That’s it there. And for a while, you know, I had to kind of suck up the fact that that required me getting some benefits. But again, I was like, This is not who I am forever. This is going to change. And basically, early 2020

24:49

I did the kind of stupid, slash courageous thing of spending the last of my savings on a business coach who essentially reached out to me and said, How’s it going? All these referral type things. Polly.  Absolutely and I was so close to burnout, I thought, if I don’t change something now, then I’m going to get really ill, which I did. Covid came in 2020 I was bed bound for about three months. I ended up being hospitalized. I ended up having long covid For 18 months where I could only watch my children play. I couldn’t play with them. I just was I literally had a few hours a day I could work in and, you know, that’s when what was interesting is, it forced me to charge more because I was like, I only have so many hours available. So I could only work with so many clients, and those few clients, you know, I, what I did in 2020, after launching as a personal brand, is I moved us into a house, I took us off benefits, like you. My first month was like a 10k month. I was like, Whoa, this is happening, right? We get and obviously, with covid, we were, you know, stuck inside. And I was like, We need a garden, so I moved us into our house. Oh, my God, this is quite the story. But don’t worry, it’s coming close. Yeah, but yeah, moved us, yeah. Moved us into a house. And, you know, then there was a pressure like, this has to work my my then boyfriend, who’s since become my husband, agreed to work less because he was full time at that point, but he agreed to go down to less than part time hours. I think at one point he was only doing one day a week so he could support me with my children, who have since been diagnosed with autism and ADHD, so they need quite a lot of support outside of school. And yeah. So anyway, basically, I was so real I was so real I only had a few hours available, so I had to charge more. And what was interesting was seeing people would pay more, yeah, like this was always there. It was always available. And even more interestingly, those people who paid me more respected my time, more respected my expertise, more trusted me more and really saw me as a valued member of their team, rather than some of the people I’d been working with previously, who kind of, you know, one copywriter, when she was doing like, looking at my testimonials for my website she was working on, said, Polly, you sound like a therapist, not a Facebook Ads Manager. I’m not even putting that testimonial on there. You don’t want to attract more people who think, you know, they can treat you like that. I didn’t even see that at the time. I just, you know, was trying to help. So, yeah, so that was the beginning, and I think, honestly, that’s been the foundations for everything I’ve ever done since, you know, I tried live launching. And while I’ve recovered from long covid, it’s not difficult for something to happen that pushes me over the edge and for me to feel like I need to spend a couple of days in bed again, and that’s what launching did to me. I just I launched, and then I was exhausted. I was like, how am I going to find the energy to actually deliver upon what people needed? Yeah. So I was like, you know, I think ultimately, and I’ve seen this with all the coaches I’ve supported, if they’re like, I don’t like a rule book, I’m going to do master classes. Why ad lib? They make it work. Do it enough times. They make it work. Other people go, Oh, I hate, you know, like one to one, I’m just going to do memberships. I think ultimately, what I witnessed in so many peers and in clients is, as long as you decide and stick to whatever it is you want and make it all your decisions in alignment with that goal, the highest likelihood is you will get there. The difficulty is, is that most people aren’t willing to be patient for that time frame that’s required to get there, and that’s why I was so curious about you. And you were like, oh, and it worked straight away. But I hear you, and I love your honesty, because I feel like that was the same for me. I was definitely under charging and overworking in those early stages, and it caught up with me really fast. What about you? Have you ever had any kind of burnout, oh, my god, so much burnout. Like, like, this is an issue for me, right? But so much of what you were saying about like, it just resonated so much with me. Obviously, the charging less that 100% I can relate to that Sure, not charging enough, right? But, but yes, I have had tremendous burnout before, and I’ve had to learn this lesson myself.

28:47

The boundaries and the respect piece, though, was the big surprise for me, because I actually weirdly thought, like, one of the reasons it’s almost like, like, I was like, acting like a child who was trying to make friends. I was like, if I give everyone what they want, they’re just gonna, like, love me, and that’s so important, and I’m like, love doesn’t pay the bills.

29:07

No, no. And it’s amazing how that kind of, honestly found, in my experience over the last five years, the people I’ve gone above and beyond for are always the ones who also ultimately end up complaining, or you know, or the relationship turns sour, yeah? Because there comes a point where you start to kind of feel resentful, and they pick up on that energy, and then they for and it just all, it just never ends well, yeah, fortunately, in the last year or so, I’ve been really good, but I literally went with a coach for a year, probably just to learn that skill alone, because she had such rock solid boundaries. And I was like, I just need to be in proximity with you for a year. And I would come to her and say, this has happened. I want to, you know, respond this way. This is what I would normally do, yeah. And she’d be like, No, Polly, don’t reply for another three days. And when you do, I want you to say this and and it was scary, and it was paid.

30:00

Beautiful, and it was unnerving. I’d even say to if I get a message late on a Friday, I want to respond. Then I don’t want to wait till Monday. I my whole brain overthinks. She was like, can you be with that discomfort Polly for a weekend? And I was like, I don’t know, but I’ll try, because otherwise, why am I working? And I did it, and now it’s my norm. I don’t even think about it. I’m like, if you’ve messaged me late on a Friday, of course, you’re gonna wait till Monday. Like, why did I ever worry that that was, you know what? I mean, like, it’s crazy the stories we tell ourselves. Yeah, no, it really, really is. And I like, what? Because I ended up, like, I told you before, I think I said I was charging $400

30:35

for, like, four blog posts, or something insane. That price went. PS, it wasn’t just blog posts. I also did, like, supportive social media posts. Like, it wasn’t like, oh my goodness, it was just too It was insane, right? But to me, at the time, I was an actor living in New York City, very used to being out of work. That was a lot of money for me. So I, like, didn’t actually, it didn’t actually register, right? That it wasn’t actually a lot of money, especially for people that were charging what they were charging. Because I should have added, the coaches I worked with were six, seven and eight figure coaches as well. And for me, I had no perspective of what that even meant, because I was just broke all the time. So for me, that didn’t even I didn’t even understand money in that way, like it’s really interesting when I look back on it. Long story short, like the first time I raised my rates, I went from something like $400 to $2,500 right? And the first time I raised my rates, no one left. And I was expecting everyone to leave. I was expecting I was already submitting my application at Starbucks, and no one left, yeah, and they like because of my transparency, they stayed. I’m really I have relationships with all of them today. You know what I mean? I don’t do that. I had more of an agency model before. I don’t do that anymore. So we’re not working together, but they still every year, I have one. She’s a massive coach, and I probably can’t say her name, because she is very well known, but let’s just put it this way. If I did, people would know her, you know? Yeah, and she emails me every single year, and it’s, I’m sure it’s a little bit of a joke now, but every year, she’s like, just my annual email letting you know how much I love you, how much your content meant such a big difference in my life. And I want to keep working with you. And so if you’ve changed your mind and you’re working with people again the way that you were before, I want to hire you like so just like, my annual email letting you know, right? And it’s like, it’s so sweet that. But that’s the kind of relationships we ended up having, even though the rate that I ended up charging her went, went from one thing to like, 20x you know, yeah, 30x and she’s still doing that. So it’s, I think it’s just a reminder that most people aren’t charging enough, yeah, and I love this whole boundary piece, right? Because, back to our conversation about trust recession, right? I think the danger here is people are like, Well, if there’s a trust recession, maybe my boundaries are too tight, or maybe I need to, like, you know, mix things up a little bit and lower my prices. 

33:02

Oh my God, you’re so right. So I feel like this is actually a really good segue into, like, if there’s anything specific you are doing right now with the trust recession that we’re experiencing, like, how are you building trust with people? How? How is that something that you’re taking off the box is like, okay, great. I’m paying attention to this during this, this weird time period inside of business and the world, yeah. Oh, I love this question. So juicy. I think what’s interesting here, like, in terms of the trust recession, and, you know, earlier on, when I said, you know, flogging your dead horse, one of the challenging things that I’ve seen for a lot of evergreen marketers over the last year or two is that the way evergreen Works has changed as well, in that the rules of engagement have changed, and there was an element of kind of a messy middle as we caught up with what that change is. Now it’s really, really clear, and that is that I mean, and I know a lot of people are talking about this, and there’s a truth to it, which is low ticket offers. Now make a much better funnel into your offer than, let’s say, a webinar. I mean, webinars still do really well, don’t get me wrong, but it’s more about having an offer suite that is a client, that matches a client journey. That’s what I’ve seen, and that’s what I’ve done as a business myself in that I used to back in 2021 2022 only have a mastermind that was 10k for the year. And I had enough people coming in that I had like 30 people in there at a time. So I had 30k months from 30 gorgeous, established business owners who were looking to scale from probably, usually they were making around 70k to 100k and looking to scale beyond that. And so they were like tightening up their curriculum, tightening up their group experience, and creating a webinar funnel that would bring people in. And it got to be that simple. And I will say I’ve got clients who it’s continued to be that simple, so that, you know, it hasn’t disappeared as a strategy. It hasn’t disappeared as a funnel that can still work. 

35:00

However, I think if you’re earlier on in business, if you’re not one of those brands that people immediately recognize and trust, like at this stage in my business, I’ve got so many testimonials, I will say that really, really helps me, you know, so many case studies that I can roll out and all that kind of stuff. And I’ve just been at this for a long time. People know that this is what I do, but when I’m supporting people who are earlier on in that journey. It’s not necessarily that simple. And what I used to talk about, even back in the day, when I was running ads to my mastermind, was have a feed a program. Such a horrible phrase I was thinking like human centipede or catfish. I don’t even know. I haven’t seen the film. You probably can tell by me going, was it centipede catapult? Whatever it is anyway, a feeder program. Now I’ve like, given that horrible association to everyone else who thinks about it that way, but the idea of a feeder program is that you have, like, a six to 12 week offer that people can come in they experience like one simple transformation, which is part of a much larger transformation, and it works beautifully. I mean, as I said, you can tell I don’t have to sell this one here. It so makes sense that if you discover someone and you’re like, Oh, I feel like I need a lot of what this person’s talking about, if they’re like, Well, here’s the most valuable thing you need right now, and we’re going to fix it in the next six to 12 weeks. Come in here, if that’s evergreen, all the better, because they come in, they get the transformation. You say, great, we’ve got you to here. But actually, where I want to get you to is over here. And if, from the very beginning of the journey. You’ve always made it clear that this bit gets you to here, but the full transformation is over here. It’s very easy for that person to then say, right now, I’m joining your like, year long or nine month long or six month long container. And then if before that, because before it was just like, send them to the feeder program. In some cases it works to have a low ticket offer before that so that they get an even smaller transformation. Yeah, and the most important piece about all of this, which I suspect you’ll agree with, is like, just solving a very clear problem with these offers, like, where I see people making mistakes, and I think this is a really important thing to talk about with low ticket offers is being too vague or broad with a promise, because people are like, do I need this? Do I trust this? Is it really going to achieve this also being too content, content heavy, when they go into the low ticket offer? Yeah, a lot of people think I’m giving loads of value, and it’s like, no, you’re not. You’re overwhelming them. You’re giving them an excuse to be like, Oh, come back to this later. So it’s kind of Yeah, so And so basically, you’re just giving them a clear journey that they can jump in with ease, where it’s not a huge financial commitment for them to get a feel for your brand. Because, you know, when we talk about trust recession, let’s be honest about one of the reasons why that trust recession is here. It’s people have bought offers that were all

37:32

all talk, no walk, and so people, quite rightly, are a bit like, Well, how do I know? So this is why, when you design all your offers, no, you don’t need to go in really heavy with what you’re in fact, actually that shows a lack of understanding as to what is good teaching, what is a good curriculum, when you can show to them that you create content that genuinely moves the needle for them, that is easy to consume, easy to action, easy to troubleshoot, create community that they can also be part of as Well. Alongside that, then you’re onto a winning formula. I mean, what do you think? What are you seeing? Yeah, I mean, a lot of the same things. And I actually would love to ask you, for you if what, like, if you had any specific example? I mean, I’ll answer your question first, but like, one thing I want to get to is specific examples on that, like quote, unquote feeder program. And I’ll talk about mine first, because I feel like we have, we have the same perspective. And then there’s a couple extra things that I’m also making shifts around, so we can both answer that question. So okay, I’m seeing everything the same,

38:36

like and I love that you pointed out. Let’s be real here. The reason that this is happening, right? Like people have bought crap and now they don’t trust you. You know what I mean? Like, this is that’s where it’s happening, right? I also think something else that has made created this trust recession. And I want to be clear, I am not against AI, freaking love AI, but I think AI is part of why there’s a trust recession as well, because people feel like they have all the answers already. So there’s that the, you know, there’s almost like our coaching and our knowledge has almost been devalued because they feel like they can get it on chat. GBT, well, also, everyone can market now as well. Like, you know, you have to be pretty

39:20

like, like AI. It’s not perfect, by any means, and I do believe it’s a reflection of the person who’s using it to a certain extent, in terms of how much you can get out of it. But at the same time, same time, I’ve seen the evolution. I’ve seen people’s marketing, where before it was very scatty and untidy and not very clear. And you know, with the right AI agent or tool, they’re now actually producing something that someone would see and go, This looks professional, this looks trustworthy. It’s clear what problem it solves. I’m in, yeah. But does AI tidy up everything on the other side? No. So it’s, you know, in some ways, it’s going to perpetuate that challenge, yeah, percent. But what I also think is not.

40:00

Everyone can benefit from Ai because they don’t actually have the experience in marketing and what works and what it actually, actually is effective. So I see this a lot, where people are more blown away that AI created something for them that they feel like, wow, that sounds good. I sound professional. This is great. Blah, blah, blah. But I, myself, as a marketer, can look at it and be like, This is not good. Like, yes, the grammar is great. The language is great, but this is like, strategically, like, does absolutely nothing for you, because AI is not necessarily, well, you have to know how to talk to AI to get those kinds of results, which means you actually have to learn what the heck you’re doing before you even get there, right? So yeah, technically speaking, everything that we’ve always done is just as valuable as it always has been. But our audience isn’t necessarily picking up on that anymore, because I think a lot of people aren’t addressing AI clearly enough in their messaging. And I feel a lot of people are saying things like, you know, you know, we’re creating these like aI brand books and stuff like that. But again, if you don’t know how to use it, it’s not actually going to do the thing. You know what I mean? Like, you have to understand your business, your revenue, like marketing in general, so that you can actually coach AI to do the thing you want and recognize when it’s not doing it well. Yeah. And I feel it’s pretty temperamental, isn’t it? You know, it’s not consistent at all. I mean, one of the things that bugs me about AI is all these AI photo shoots. I just look at them. And I think, you know, people are like, looking like they’re a stone slimmer, with their hair absolutely perfect, and their makeup on point, yeah? And I’m just like, when you meet these people in real life, like, I just don’t get it. I think it would give me a complex if people, I mean, I don’t get me wrong, when I do a photo shoot, I’m still looking at my best, but not AI best, yeah.

41:39

And when I can’t see people’s eyes, you know, when we came earlier on, you referenced the importance of relationships. And one of the things I think about when I see like aI photo shoots, is that there is nothing behind the eyes. And actually, it made me realize how much eyes do communicate to us in a photo, and by not seeing that, we’re missing that connection piece. And so I think there’s so many things that are going to play out over time. I think all this noise right now around AI and it being like this panacea to your marketing, it’s gonna like, I don’t know. I just, I hope it starts to fizzle out, because I just don’t believe it. I really don’t, and I think it’s just making a lot of messaging sound very generic and boring. If I see the phrase no fluff one more time, I will actually strangle my cat.

42:22

And, like, you know, these perfect photo shoots and these, I’m just like, it’s so bland and so boring. And I’m, I want the social back in social media. I want to see humans. I want to hear humans. I want to see that kind of slightly chaotic grammar I’m tired of. Like, I love a typo. I don’t give emojis. Yeah.

42:40

Why is this so true? That is such a go to for Chad, rocket emojis. Rocket emojis, no fluff. But you know what kind of images, I swear AI, that makes me so mad about AI, because I actually used to, before AI even existed. I used to say no fluff all the time, and now I can’t say no fluff. And I’m like, this is, like, AI has taken so much for me. No, just kidding.

43:04

I actually, like, I really do, like, there’s great things about AI, too. And when we get when we start talking about, like, you know, my maternity leave and things like that, like, you’ll notice AI is part of that in a big way, you know what I mean. So it’s like, I can really appreciate AI, but i The people that really benefit from AI are the people that have years and years and years of experience in marketing, because they know what is good and what is not good. They know how to coach it in something better. And a lot of the people buying from us who are looking for those kinds of solutions think they’ve got it with AI, but they actually don’t. So I think a big mistake that we are making as marketers is we’re not, like, addressing the AI problem in our messaging, like, heads on right and like, and actually explaining it’s not just about speed, because that’s the other thing. People like, they look for marketing solutions that are quick, easy, fast. And I don’t know if you disagree with this, but like, I’m yet to find something that feels quick and easy, fast, and 100% of the time effective, like it just, that’s just not how it works. You know what I mean? Like, we’re always testing. We’re talking about markets shifting right now, because market is the markets are always shifting right like we’re, you know, you were talking about covid. Covid was a completely different time two years after that was a completely different time when the AI, when AI came on the scene, another a new time shifted when AI got updated, everything shifted again. Like, things shift constantly. And you also, like, you cannot rely on a robot to be able to help you through all of that. It just doesn’t happen all that. To say, like, how do we address that? I mean, how I like, there are elements like, I’m obviously incorporating AI into my offers so that people don’t feel like, I’m just, like, unaware of AI, because I feel like even, even the fact that I use it now, people are like, okay, she knows it’s, like, the same thing. I was like, Oh, I better bring this in because demonstrate it. Yeah, it’s part of testing, right? It’s all part of, like, you know.

45:00

Don’t ignore the stuff that obviously isn’t going anywhere. And it does help various things. Yeah, but like you say, I think the really important piece that you’re talking about here is coming alongside with the caveats. Is like, yes, it will help you do this, but watch out for x, y, z, which I don’t think enough people are doing. I think people are quickly jumping on the bandwagon of, like, I’m gonna sell my chat agent, and it’s gonna, you know, like, solve all your problems, write all your sales pages and stuff. And it’s yeah, that I find really problematic, yeah, but, but, you know, the when you talked about low ticket offers being like, a feeder, yeah, I call those trust offers, actually, so I kind of love that. But, like, I like, also the feeder, because it’s like, very like, literal. It’s like, oh, that actually, like, I can now see, like, on a conveyor belt. It’s very literal. Trust offers so much nicer, far more feminine approach. I’m just like, feeder.

45:55

I probably saw that in some like, males kind of, yeah, no, yeah. I’m gonna move to trust. It does sound a little bro marketing, actually, as we’re talking about it. Does see it sound like, I can see that on like a bro webinar, yeah, people take offensive, like referring to human beings as leads. They’re definitely gonna be offended by the feeder, funnel, feeder offer.

46:17

I started something called Marketing lab. Every person I spoke to about this offer was like, do not do this offer. This is going to shoot you in the foot. And I would, I still think this is an experimental phase, right? But I did start something because I have a strategy. It’s called my Q and A Day party and and I could totally break that down. That’s like, one of the things I started doing a few years ago, and I consistently have 100% conversion rate on it for, like, higher ticket offers and low ticket offers. But again, the low ticket offers feed into the high ticket offer, so it kind of all works out, right. So it’s a very effective strategy, but I Well, let me give a little bit of context around what it is, and then I’ll share a Milo ticket offer is, but I’d be curious what yours is, too. So my Q and A Day, essentially, I open it up on my inbox, and I’m literally like, hello, welcome. We have a Q and A party right starting now. And you can get ask whatever question you got, just hit reply, and I will spend from 9am to 3pm answering as many questions as I can. And there’s no guarantee I’m gonna get to everyone’s question. Like, there’s no nothing like that. I have an end point. It’s just that between calls, I’ll check in and I’ll send I’ll shoot people bomb bombs and voice memos all day long, and basically be connecting with my audience. And then it ends at 3pm right? So I always pick it on a day where it’s like a light Day, and I can do as many as I can. And I’ve been doing this like pretty much every quarter, and what I have seen is that people talk to me, get excited about me and feel like they actually know me. So when it does come time to promoting something, not only do I have a list of people who have taken part in a Q and A day that I can personally invite them to like into whatever thing the thing is, like the webinar, whatever it might be, but they typically are already signed up because they’re like, Oh, I had this one experience with her, and she was like, great. And she knows my business, and they, they just feel there’s like a deeper level there, right? So then I was like, Okay, this works really well. Again, I started doing this in 2022 No, 2023 and see, I know that day, but I don’t know the day I started my business, but I had 100% conversion rate in 2023 I had a 93% conversion rate in 2024 and what that looks like is every single person that took part in a Q and A day within one year invested in me, right? So, like I said, most of them were high ticket investments, but some people did do the low ticket thing, but what I find is, even if it takes them longer than a year, they eventually get into the high ticket. Do you know what I mean? Like, it’s just, it’s just been effective, right? Yeah. So then I was like, Okay, this has really worked for me in terms of a long term relationship strategy, but in a scalable way, because instead of just, like, getting on a bunch of coffee chats or something like that, or discovery calls even. It’s like, really quick for me, high value for them. And so I was like, what would happen if I actually created a low ticket offer where this was possible, like, whenever they wanted, almost like a paid nurturing event, instead of like, something I just do for free on my list. And so for Black Friday, I sold into something called Marketing lab, and how I positioned it was like, ask me as many questions as you want, whenever you want. And I think it’s like, $45 a month or something like that. And everyone was like, Oh my God, you’re crazy. You are gonna get so many questions. You’re gonna die at the computer. Like, not gonna work. And it’s interesting. What ended up happening is people had questions for sure, right? But it’s like people were expecting, I think, like my colleagues were expecting me to get like seven, like 75 million questions a day. But actually people tend to, like, want to submit, like, one question a month, sometimes even less than that, right? Because it’s not.

50:00

Want, like, people feel like they have so many questions, but sometimes they ask the one question, and you can provide the information that actually, like, Aha, gives them this, like, eye opening thing, gives them something to focus on, and then they’re off doing that thing. Do you know what I mean? And it hasn’t actually played out where I’m, like, stuck at the computer answering questions. So that low ticket offer had turned into what and has now feeds into, like, my pocket cmo program, and most of the people that that take part in that offer go there, but now I’m almost getting paid for my Q and A days. So that’s kind of like, what I want to do, something that is more scale. Like, not I’m not at the computer. Like, yeah, care of it, like that’s that’s where I want to go. But I was just kind of curious about this offer, and I tested it, and it’s worked really well for me. But again, it feels more like I’m right now. The reason I did that was because I was responding to the AI of it all people feel like, oh, all I have to do is like, go to AI and have a chat. And I was like, what would happen if they had a chat with a real coach, like, what kind of difference would they recognize, right? And so that was actually why I started it, not really thinking I was going to do it forever. And I feel like that goal has been accomplished. Yeah, again, I am thinking about what’s next, because I’m always testing, you know, me, so I’m curious for you, like, what what have been low ticket or feeder offers that have worked really well for you. I’m thinking this could be a good moment to move across to the other pod, leaving them on that cliffhanger.

51:30

I love that. I love that. Yeah, I love that. All right, that was part one of our two part conversation, and you’re going to want to keep this going for part two. Simply head straight down to the show notes and find the link to Sophie’s podcast marketing unfiltered, and it will take you to the specific episode where we continue the conversation, where we’ll be flipping the mic and diving into the specifics what makes a truly effective trust offer, how to build real connections at scale, and the exact shifts we’re Both making in response to the ever changing marketing landscape, trust me, it’s the kind of episode you’ll want to take notes on. See you over there.