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. This is going to be a breakdown of the good, the bad, and the ugly of my mini offers that I have been running since 2021. Don’t worry, there is only 123, of them. Yeah, three. Okay, so it’s going to be a short but spicy one, and yeah, it’s unscripted because I thought I will not tidy up my ideas with Chat GPT, because there’s three offers: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Well, I guess I’m gonna say what worked, what didn’t work, and let’s talk about why before we get into it. Like, why should you care about my many offers? And you know, this is not not a promotion hidden in me doing a breakdown. This is simply knowing that right now, every time I go onto Instagram, I am being bombarded with adverts about how a mini offer is going to be the thing that makes all the difference, and yes, of course, it’s something I talk about in my own marketing too, because it does make a big difference when it’s the right time, and there are also a lot of ways you can go wrong with many offers, and I think one of the things that unnerved me slightly recently is recognizing that because AI now allows you to create a comprehensive looking curriculum, which for somebody who has no knowledge of funnels can look pretty convincing, but you can simply just be regurgitating internet tosh, and the guidelines around, you know, what Chachi BT will tell you will make a good mini offer. Well, I know for a fact it’s often pretty flawed, because I’ve had clients come to me and say, ‘Here’s what I riffed on with Claude or ChatGPT last night. What do you think? And I’ll look at it and be like, ‘Here are all the reasons why strategically this is not going to support you. Okay, so you want to learn from somebody who’s got receipts, okay? And you know, I’m going to give you some of those receipts today for you to learn from me. You know, whether you choose to do anything else, that’s up to you, my friend. But I’m hoping that if right now you’re building a mini offer, or if you’re thinking about creating a mini offer, my experience, like I say, not just the good, but the bad will help you avoid making some of the same mistakes that I have made. 

Okay, so 2021 is where it all began. Settle in, kids, make yourself a cup of hot cocoa, put a blanket over your lap. Auntie Polly’s about to tell you a story. So back in 2021 I launched More Bang Less Buck, what a name can we give it that it’s a solid name, More Bang Less Buck. I mean, in some ways you could say it’s ignoring the advice, which is, you know, does what it says on the tin type name. There was no “does what it says on the tin” it just was “more bang less buck” and I remember at the time, because it was 2021 I promoted it with a reel that was slides made in Canva, because animating in Canva felt very exciting back then, and I had the music Hipula Pina Coladas playing in the background, I mean, I was just messing around, but there was a very strategic reason behind why I created more Bangless Buck, and I will tell you more about what More Bangless Buck is. First, so More Bangless Buck was a course that I initially sold, I think at 97 pounds, and then went up to 197 and it was a mini course on how to run ads at 10 pounds a day to grow your list, still something I stand avidly behind. Bt dubs, you know, like growing your list from as early on as possible, not being reliant on the algorithms friendliness, I think is a very, very powerful thing. And it got brilliant results. So, the first time I launched it, I sold it to my list.

04:21

My list was tiny at the time, but I did make trying to remember how many sales it was, 20 sales, 20 sales just below 100 pounds. So I guess it was about two grand, right? The second time I sold it at double the price, I made 10 sales, and I remember being like, damn, it’s the same money again, but as my then mentor highlighted to me, he’s like, “Yeah, but half the people to deal with, and therefore half the work. So that was true. Anyway, it was called More Bangless Buck, and the premise behind it was, at the time, I was an ads manager. I hadn’t yet moved into having.. well, I think I was gradually moving across to running an ads agency, but I was. In the messy middle, and what had been happening regularly was I was now at the stage where if someone came to me and they definitely would benefit from running ads, but at the same time they were way too early on for it to be something that they should be paying an ads manager to do, because you know their money just wouldn’t go far enough, they’d be like paying me whatever, just over 1000 pounds, whatever I charged back then, I think it was 1.4 I can’t remember what it, anyway, something like that, and then being like, oh, and I have 500 pounds left to spend on ads, I’m like, that is just not a good use of your money, and being the honest person that I am, I would regularly say that to them, but then they had nowhere else to go, I’d be like, yeah, go find somebody on the internet who, and you know, and I knew that if you found somebody on Fiverr, for example, I’d heard a lot of Fiverr horror stories as well, so I wanted to give them an alternative that would put them in the driving seat, save them some money, and give them a skill that would be really valuable. So that’s how More Bang Less Buck was born. Now I said to you, I’ll tell you the good and the bad. 

So the good was not gonna lie, I think I launched it about this time of year, actually, so like around May or June, and sales had slowed down a little bit because I was working with really small businesses that often would be like, we’ll run ads again in September when we’re launching, terrible thing to do, by the way, you should run them throughout the summer, and so my sales would often slow down, and so launching that, it was a really valuable little handy two brand to make, and it was really nice. I remember going for a walk, a little ramble in the South Downs, and just seeing little notifications pinging on my phone, and that was a pretty exhilarating feeling. Okay, so that was a good side. The good side was first time ever to be seeing what felt like relatively passive sales, mainly just driven from my mailing list, probably because I called it more Bangladesh, and no one had the energy or patience who was not entirely familiar with me to actually learn what on earth it was I was selling, right? But here’s where it went wrong. So the good thing was I had somewhere to direct people to. It was a nice little easy sum of money. The negative side was the reason why I doubled the price was it ended up being a lot of work, and even at double the price it wasn’t worth it for what ended up being what it ended up being, which was the thing with ads. If you’ve ever dabbled in them or have any awareness of them, is that even basic things like your ads dashboard can have different functions on it to somebody else’s, like if you have an update at a certain time that somebody else doesn’t have. Like the other day, my client was saying to me, “I can’t make the edits you’ve asked for, Polly. I went into her account, I could from my side, but when she screen shared with me, she couldn’t. I mean, stuff like that is happening all the time with Meta, and so, and that’s the other thing, right? They’re like launching new updates every however many weeks, or you know, things are changing all the time.

07:51

So, I quickly learned this could not just be a passive offer I had in the background, because I would need to be regularly going in and updating it to reflect the latest dashboard to reflect the latest updates, and now, obviously, with AI, had it still existed, I’d be going in there all the time to update the way AI is either still helping or hindering ad campaigns, like I still generally, just side note, still be very clear of anything AI related when it comes to ads, still don’t think they work particularly well, but anyway, so it was impractical, because it would need, you know, it’s not evergreen by any means. It would need regular updating. The other thing was being the person that I am. If people were getting stuck, I wasn’t just like, “Oh, you know, just go back into the course, figure it out, because I knew that ads could be overwhelming and stuff. So I’d end up spending my additional time going, “Right, I’m going to run a little clinic, come along if you have any questions, and you know, because it was a relatively small number of people that had signed up in the first place, only about two or three would then come along to the call, and it just very quickly felt like, oh my goodness, I’m charging x per hour for my one to ones, and yet this mini course people are getting way more from me, so it just wasn’t practical, you know, the value of the course would probably have had to have gone up to in the 1000s for it to be worthwhile to have continued running, and also, quite frankly, it’s just not the thing I enjoy talking about the most. Like, I much preferred the fun bit of helping them create the funnel rather than actually run the ads, so that’s why now in the accelerator I have lovely Katie Kalella, who does the ads clinics, because it’s not what I do day in, day out, anymore, and it’s also just never been an area I’ve found immense joy in talking about, and I’ve got people in my world who love ads, like Sleep, Breathe, adore them, but it just, I just knew that the creative side of business is why I got into it in the first place, and so spreadsheets and data and geekery, while I do the amount I need to do, I didn’t want to have to do more than I had to, right? 

So spending time analyzing people’s data just was not up my street, so and I also knew, I guess, at the back of my head that at some point I was going to evolve into a different direction from ads, so that I. Let that go, but that was my first little kind of dalliance. So, here’s what worked. What worked was I once had a mentor who we referred to as the leaky bucket offer, i.e. if someone’s coming to you and you can’t help them, and they can’t, well, you could help them, but they can’t afford your prices, being able to give them something that will help them progress at a fraction of the investment that it would cost to work with you, where they’re still able to access your brilliance. Then, having that kind of offer is, you know, I mean, this is also why, by the way, when it comes to designing a mini offer, I always say lead with your premium offer and reverse engineer back from there, because if you try and start with a mini offering, you think, “Oh, from then onwards I’ll figure out what my next move should be, you’re looking at it upside down. So, what worked was it wasn’t leaky, you know, a bucket offer. I did continue to sell a few of them on, you know, on sales conversations where someone wasn’t a match for my one to one services, but, like I say, the negative was it wasn’t easy to maintain, and I think eventually it would have proven to have also been an offer at that weird in-between price point that is neither like a no-brainer nor is it like something that, yeah, so it just, it was structurally flawed. Then probably, maybe in a year or two later, I think I took some time.

11:18

Well, for a while, I was just focusing solely on my mastermind, I had no other offers. That was like 2022 2023 I think it was in 2023 I started to recognize that, well, that I was losing money, that like it was a mistake to not be capitalizing on all the leads who weren’t ready to invest 10k in being in a mastermind with me. I mean, my goodness, as I say that out loud, how things have changed in the online space. Like, it, I know this may sound wild to you to hear right now, if you’ve only been in the online space in the last two years, but if you’ve been here since 2020 you’ll know how different things have looked over the last few years, right? So, I think it was like 2023 or 2024 that I launched 10 days to speedy sales, and it launched as a 97 pound offer that I would run a promotion on, where people could get it for 27 and I also did a live version where it was still 97 Anyway, to be honest with you, I can’t tell you off the top of my head, I should have been more organized how much money it’s made, but it’s definitely been.. I was thinking for a second.. it’s definitely been my most profitable mini offer. I mean, let’s talk about why it worked and why it didn’t work, so similarly, one of the reasons why I created 10 days to speedy sales was I was reflecting on what is the thing that stands in the way of people joining my 90 day accelerator, which is around 3000 pounds, it’s two, it’s two and a half now, minus VAT, like I’ve been doing all the things to make it as accessible as can be, but anyway, I wanted, and I was thinking, like, what is the thing, the genuine thing that is getting in people’s way, and I was like, well, there’s a few things, there’s the fear of can I genuinely make more money when I come to work with Polly, can it genuinely be simple, can it be fun, and potentially a kind of mis, a lack of understanding around what positioning niche and all of those things, how they play a role in sales. So I created a course with the goal to help people make three to 5k in sales within two weeks, and what’s brilliant is, here’s the one statistic I do remember off the top of my head is when people were just buying it, and I’ll talk to you about bundles in a moment, but when people were buying it, there was a 25% completion rate, and of those 25% like I had a good number of them sharing with me that they had made like three to 5k and a good number of them, then saying I’m going to go and join the accelerator, like they’d got a flavor of being me and their ears for 10 days in a row, me helping them make results, and they felt ready and excited to continue deepening this work and make it part of, like, not just a one-off, but something that gets to be there every month, right? And so it worked brilliantly. Interesting fact, when I was invited to join a bundle at the time, the only mini offer I had, because they were like, “Give one your mini offers, I was like, “I only have one, so I gave them, it was, it was an American bundle, I gave them, you know, they could include in their bundle 10 days to speedy sales, and I think over 300 people signed up, and I was so excited to see Cushy HQ filling with new faces, new names. 

Some people took the time to introduce themselves, which was brilliant. Of course, I mean, as much as I say I don’t like data, I know the importance of it. So I went to have a look to see how many of them had started the course, how many of them had finished the course. Only one out of 300 even though it’s got the most blatant, provocative name. 10 days to speedy sales.

14:49

Who doesn’t want that one person started and finished the course, the other, like however many, like 299 Didn’t even get started now, bearing in mind I was in a bundle of, like, I don’t know, 20 offers and stuff, so I’m not going to be, it might even be more, so, but the point is, I thought this is worth including in the bundle, because people will go through this offer, and even if it’s free, they’ll see the value in it, they’ll make the money, and then they’ll pay attention to other things I have to sell, it really didn’t work that way, so that’s why I’ve pretty much swerved every single bundle opportunity since, because it just didn’t to me. I just feel like I’ve always known the premise of people show up for the things they invest in, and even if it’s a small sum of money, they’re more likely to spend time on it than they are if they’re not, which is why my new mini offer has a paid upgrade to match that thinking, but anyway, so let’s talk about what worked and what didn’t work. So, what worked was it did bring clients into the accelerator, which is brilliant, and not only did it bring them in, but it brought them in with a really good, strong foundation, like some people came in really much clearer on their methodology, so in that way it’s worked brilliantly. The thing that didn’t work about it is I want to be running ads to a mini offer year round, and I just came to recognize recently that the thing the DM I get the most, and the thing that has people coming to me saying that they are excited, well Well, the thing that motivates them to come and work with me is my cushy philosophy. It’s about having a business that loves you back. It’s about having more time for yourself. The thing they’re really craving, because they’re like such hardworking, generous, high integrity human beings, is they just want time back, and actually, the thing that really excites them is like, Polly, how do you take August off? Polly, how do you work a three to four day week? 

Polly, how do you take one week per month with no calls? Those are the questions I really want to know, and that’s really the unique thing that I bring that is different to everyone else, that is the unique lens I support everyone through when it comes to growing and building their businesses. It’s all about building a business that loves you back. I could talk about nervous system here as well, but no, let’s, let’s keep it simple. A business that loves you back. And so there was something about 10 days to speedy sales that, while I still love it, and I still sell it, because, man, does it work. In fact, I’m currently going through the process of kind of, well, I basically have been tidying everything up with AI, putting all my IP into AI. It’s now the most potent it’s ever been. And there is a wait list on my Instagram for these new mini offer drops, both for the mini offer system and for the 10 days to speedy sales. So, yeah, so 10 days to speedy sales. What worked is it did bring clients in. What didn’t work was, do I want to be running ads all year round so that people associate me as the speedy sales girl? No, not really, because I’m my whole philosophy is we want to be here for a long time, not just a good time, and so speedy sales is a tool, but it’s not how I want people to identify me as all the time, so the next offer that came along, I just figured, like, by now I’d got some really good results with 10 days of speedy sales, in terms of using it, you know, running ads to it, and it turning it, you know, being its own funnel into my core offer, so I decided to create a mini offer on mini offers, how meta, and here’s what was good and what was bad about that.

18:23

So, the good thing was it attracted in more advanced business owners, those who already had a core offer, who were already making sales, but who knew the next step was to kind of build a funnel that involved a mini offer, and that was brilliant. It meant that I was attracting people who, you know, like one to one clients, not just those who are kind of at the beginning of their journey who are a better match for the accelerator, right. So that was really positive. The negative was is that I also was attracting a lot of people to the mini office system who were looking at it too early on in their journey, who were looking at a mini offer before they’d even really figured out what their niche was, or before they’d even figured out what their core offer would be, and so they were kind of doing things backwards, and so I found myself quite regularly having conversations with people where they’re like, “Is this a good fit for me? because it sounds brilliant, and me being like, “No, not really, it’s not the best fit for you right now. I’d recommend instead 10 days to speedy sales, let’s get those foundations in place, and so I was like, “This, you know, this isn’t scalable if I have to keep on having conversations with people, where if I do see someone ignoring that advice and jumping in and buying it, rather than feeling happy, I’m like, man, that’s not the right direction you should have gone in right now, like it’s not going to hurt you, but it could be it’s one of those things that you’re going to come out the other side rather than thinking that was a really great investment in my time and money, you’re going to come out the other side thinking this is all brilliant, but I don’t actually have an audience to sell it to you right now, because, like, the mini course isn’t about that. The mini course is about the mini offer. It’s not about, you know, having that community, having that niche, having all those other pieces around it. 

That’s what we do in 10 days to speedy sales, or the accelerator. So that’s why what was good and what was bad, like people who built mini courses inside the mini office. System, my goodness, my clients just launched hers, and I’m so excited to see it. So, it is brilliant for the person at the right time, but I wanted to have an evergreen funnel that I can be running year round in my ads that would always be the right match, whether you are advanced or whether you are early on, and one that would really speak to my philosophy as to having a business that loves you back, and that starts with time, and that starts with thinking like a CEO. So, an AI CEO was the obvious next step, and that is what launched a week ago, and it’s already a profitable funnel, which is really exciting to see. Like, we’re not spending a huge spend on it right now. We’re in the testing phase. I’m looking to see what messaging lands. I’m looking to see how my landing page is performing. I’m looking to see how many are then choosing to join my monthly workshop, and so there’s various pieces that I’m still, you know, it’s too early on, like the funnel is still funneling, but so far the data is really, really encouraging, and the type of brilliant people coming onto my list off the back of it are just fabulous. So, what I really like about that at the moment is that to me, if I’m running ads everywhere all the time, I want people to be seeing my personal brand, to be seeing my values, and to understand the kind of account they’ll be following if they then go on to give me a follow.

 21:17

I don’t want them to be associating me with fast wins, I want them to be associating me with that CEO level identity, a cushy CEO, no less, and to be associating my business with building that infrastructure that allows you everyday sales, and to understand these mini offers I have are mini puzzle pieces that ultimately all hold together more strongly when you come into the accelerator and work with me there, or if you’re more advanced than that, and you already have a lot of the working pieces, but you just can’t see the blind spots right now to come and work with me one to one. So, yeah, that’s where we’re at right now. And you know what’s really funny, I was reflecting on it as I was thinking about what I wanted to say on this episode, and I was like, what I really like now about my existing offer suite is that there are clear mini journeys that match different types of people at different times, like 10 days to speedy sales is a match for someone, regardless as to where they’re at. If cash flow is low, this course is going to seal that, like seal that gap. Is that, does that make sense? Fill that hole, that doesn’t sound very nice either. I can’t find it at work, but you know what I mean. And then the cushy CEO again, whether you are really early on in business, as long as you are busy and you’ve got things going on, then it’s really, really worth having the cushy CEO or the free playbook that you can have if you don’t want to invest 11 pounds in having the AI version, which, of course, I think the I version is superior, hence why I created it, and then, of course, you know, the mini office system, you know, I love, you know, once we’ve upgraded all the AI pieces. I’m really excited for the difference it’s going to make to the business owners who have it, and the conversations that could follow that in regards to how they get to continue to build upon that and excel with that with my support inside the accelerator, because there are two different pathways inside the accelerator. There is the pathway, which is launching your first group program, and then there’s a pathway beyond that pathway, which is once you’ve launched that group program, having the mini offer ladder, having your ads running, and to be using your time like a CEO, delegating, ditching, automating all of those good pieces, but essentially locking in a rhythm for your business, where you can truly sit back, knowing that you have an everyday sales system, and that you get to wake up like I did this morning, to three sales in your sleep. It’s a very nice feeling, I’ll tell you that. And nor does that, of course, I mean, three sales is lovely, but it’s recognizing they’re three people that chose to invest in better proximity to you and the work you do, and trusting in the solution that you’re going to provide for them, and that is just beautiful, cool. Well, that was longer than I expected, but I hope that’s given you a little insight into mini offers. So, I guess the one thing I just want to kind of finally caveat with this, in case it’s not been clear already, is please don’t lead with a mini offer if you don’t already have a core offer. Yes, your core offer could just be one to one for now, but ultimately, what you really want is a scalable group program, because many offers support volume. There’s no point having volume if your core offer doesn’t support volume too. So, I’m a big fan of reverse engineering, because you only need a few sales of your core offer to make a really healthy monthly revenue, and when you get your core offer right, you’ll make enough sales from your existing audience. If your existing audience don’t want it, then your core offer ain’t doing what it needs to be doing yet. Your positioning is off, you are not meeting a demand, so you always want to start there, because that is like this is literally no point doing anything else until that piece is nailed. It can feel boring, it can feel tedious, it can feel long and heavy, but it needs to be done.

24:44

Then the mini offer system is the next step, because what do you want on the other side of a scalable offer? You need volume, you need a volume of clients to then fill that set offer, and you don’t want to be paying for each lead, you want to offset that by having a mini offer, so in the. Not only are you not paying for your ads, but you’re also warming people up, because we all know the statistic that it, that is, if someone buys from you once, they’re like, was it 80% more likely to buy from you again? I’m really glad you can’t see my video right now, because I just got Invisalign, and I can see that my gums are bleeding onto one of my teeth, that’s just lovely. Anyway, that is all I have to say now, and I’m really sorry for that extra detail that you really didn’t need to know, but it’s kind of like looking at Frankenstein in my reflection right now. Anyway, biggest love to you all. I’ll be in your ears next week. Final actual request before we really like shut down this episode, which is I am launching a mini series. We’re approaching 200 episodes of Make More Money Without Selling Your Soul, and I want to bring on the How Did She Do That wellness founders were who you are looking at and thinking, how did she do that? I’ve been told my interviewing skills are pretty exceptional. I don’t know if I agree with that, but I do know they are good. And so I would love to get, you know, we’ve had any redoubts on, we’ve had Tammy Thomas, we’ve had, I mean, I had a list of people to share, and I’ve already forgotten half their names, Kirsty, Raynor. We had so many brilliant guests on this show, and I want to bring on even more. Okay, so shoot me a DM with names of people you like to see on there. I’m probably going to send out an email and send out a social post soon, asking for you guys to tag accounts that you would like me to interview. So, please be part of this. I’m really excited to do it. It’s going to be a really beautiful way of celebrating reaching 200 episodes, and hopefully allow you some amazing insights into those businesses, where you thought, How does she do that? How does she have so many followers? How does she have such an amazing community? How does she sell out with so much ease? I will be asking those questions and getting honest answers from some brilliant, brilliant wellness founders. So, yeah, reach out to me with suggestions, because I will be reaching out to them in the next two weeks or so, so I’d absolutely love your participation. Biggest love to you, and I’ll be in your ears next week.