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 today. I’m doing something I have never done before, and I’m going to take you behind the scenes of a new mini offer launch that was profitable out of the gate, straight out the gate when it launched on the first of June. So I’m recording on the fifth of June, and I’ve got the data from the past five days. Now you might be like, Polly, that’s not very much data, but that’s kind of the point. I’m taking you on the journey with me, because one really important thing, like, before you think, “Oh, I’m going to tune out, I’m not interested in this right now. If you want everyday sales, you need funnels. If you want your funnels to work, you need to run ads to them, like we, or you can spend the rest of your life being the algorithm slave on Instagram, like, if you want to avoid that, then you want to have funnels, you want to have traffic, and while you might not yet be at the stage to be running ads to a mini offer, and you may still be refining your core offer, which I’d always recommend leading with first, this is a stage you’ll get to, and, and really importantly, one of the biggest things that was so enlightening and life-changing in my approach to marketing and business when I studied up in Facebook ads back in 2018 2019 as I attended various digital marketing SEO conferences, all the geeky stuff, one thing became really apparent to me about how experienced marketers operate, about how true successful funnels are built, and I think it’s something that is massively underestimated by nearly every single coach I have ever worked with, unless they have a marketing background, and it isn’t what you do with a funnel, it’s who you be with that funnel. Because the thing that really blew my mind and gave me a big fat permission slip to play was recognizing that actually, yes, through years of doing marketing, do you learn what the better practices are? Do you get better at writing a compelling hook? No. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. However, marketing is also innovation. Marketing is going, you know, zigging when others zag, or zagging when others zig, whatever the phrase is, perimenopausal brain at work here, but you know, yeah, zigging when others zag, because the moment something is really popular and really working is the moment people start to tune out from it, and that’s where we often see cycles in marketing, you know, a few years ago everyone was running carousels because it disrupted the feed, people weren’t used to seeing carousels, and they would stop, and they would scroll through a carousel. Carousels are notoriously difficult to do well, so you know, next thing you know, people were wanting videos. Video ads did well at one point. Longer video ads did well, because people were craving more substance, and you know, as Frank Kern – not a big fan of him, but you know, his phrase, ‘The more you tell, the more you sell. I repeat it all the time, because it is so true, right? But then at some point that was too much for people, and the short.. so I mean, what I’m saying here, without going into enormous detail, is that whatever is working, and you’re like, yes, I’ve nailed it, I’m, you know, like I’m doing yapping videos, and everyone’s watching me, you know? Suddenly, next thing you know, more contemplative introspective carousels will suddenly take off because people don’t want little sound bites of someone running to the gym, they actually want something calming for their nervous system, and they’ll be stopping for the thing that’s not a yapping video, right? Okay, so message received, right? We can never sit on our laurels, we do not find one solution to marketing, and go right, job done. I’m going to go to bed now. Never worry about marketing ever again.

04:25

Marketing is a practice, it is a relationship, it is one you come back to time and time again, and it is one that you refine, and you will find a unique way of doing things. You will have a particular brand with values and ethos, and all those pieces that will influence how you show up to your marketing, like even the way I record this podcast in its very basic kind of primitive fashion, aside from ensuring there’s quality there in the sound and things like that, but you know, I don’t have, like, I don’t know, studio and all that kind of stuff, but in some ways that’s very representative of my brand, I’m talking to women and wanting. Show women that you don’t need to spend hundreds of pounds on a podcast studio, you know what I mean. I guess I’m trying to share here in a slightly tangential, tangential way. I’m wearing a brace, saying that’s really hard. Is that yes, your brand will influence your relationship with marketing, how you show up to it, what you are here for, what you are not here for. You know, if you’re a bro marketer, you’re going to do things a certain way. If you’re anti-bro marketing, you’re going to do things another way, and there will still be nuance to what that looks like as the years go by, particularly when it comes to the algorithm. Like podcasts are pretty stable creatures. I mean, I love that for them, right? You know, maybe the way they’re promoted varies, but the actual substance of what you’re doing doesn’t need to change very much, right, but you know when it comes to Instagram or LinkedIn or any of those things, they are constantly adjusting to human behavior and learning to be increasingly manipulative, and you learning what content it’s preferring is everything, right? Okay, so what I wanted you to understand is that it’s not one and done. It is an experiment. It is being really clear on your values and what you stand for as a brand, and you know, just because something’s working, you might be like, that’s not for me. Like, when everyone was dancing on reels, I was like, I will sit this one out, guys. I think I did one dancing reel just to kind of challenge myself and be like, what’s the big deal here, Polly? And I was still like, no, this is just not me. I refuse to do it. And you know what, I’m still here. I still survived, and I still made money, and I probably inspired other people who similarly didn’t want to have to dance for Instagram. 

Okay, so it’s understanding that we’re not one and done, and that therefore testing really boring, right? Testing is an essential feature to getting your marketing where it needs to be, and even when you hire the top ads agency, in fact, not even when, if you hire a top ads agency, expect testing to be within their budget, expect them to look at your data, understand what’s worked best in the past, but equally to bring their own experience with similar brands and what’s worked for them, and to be applying that to what you’re doing, and some things will work brilliantly, others won’t. And similarly, when you’re launching a new funnel, it’s very rare, in fact almost impossible, that it will be perfect straight out the gate, so that’s kind of I’m going to share my data with you in just a moment to this new mini offer funnel, but the really core piece I want you to take away from this episode, and yes, I’m saying it straight right right now, I’m not making you wait, is get comfortable with getting things wrong, get comfortable with being curious.

07:41

Get comfortable with looking at boring data to learn from it, because interestingly, one habit I’ve seen time and time again in online business owners is they will say, I launched this thing, nobody wants it, or I did this workshop, nobody like booked a call, so now I’m going to go and do something entirely different, and you may have heard me refer to this before, where I kind of say it’s like, you know, going back to the drawing board, starting all over again, where it is always, always impossible that ever nothing worked in a funnel or in a launch, and understanding the benchmarks that you should be looking for, and understanding where things are going wrong is the difference between you being successful sooner or not. Right? Let me share with you. So, give you some context about this mini offer funnel. I have recently launched a mini offer funnel very closely connected to my core values, in that I believe you should be building a business that loves you back as a perimenopausal neurodivergent mother of two neurodivergent children, with all the things going on with the history of chronic fatigue, which I’m relieved to say at the moment I’m going through a really good patch, but I’m always aware it could come knocking on my shoulder, you know, but with a brilliant brain, like to have all of those things, but also to know I’ve got so much to contribute. I accidentally became an entrepreneur because I struggled to find a business that would love me back, and so I made my own, and that is kind of core essentials as to what a cushy business is. My cushy business will look different to your cushy business. I have some people who want to cushy business because they want to travel the world and they want to have a really lean business model, so that they can be hanging out on beautiful beaches, not constantly checking their emails. I have others who have very practical motivations, like they are a parent carer looking after their parents in their old age. I mean, there are various different motivations for I still want to use my brilliant brain. I still want to have impact on this world, and I refuse to subscribe to the bro-hustling kind of philosophy that we have to be tied to our phones and tied to our businesses all the time, and so that is what I wanted to be right at the very beginning of the funnel that I’m running all the time. I want people to understand. How to build a business that loves them back, and a really simple exercise to run every Monday that will support them to do that, as well as a simple no-brainer upsell for 11 pounds into the AI version of the workbook, so they can go through the workbook by themselves, or they can do the interactive version that I personally find a million times easier to get along with, because it really satisfies my impatient neurodivergent brain, that it simply prompts me to go through all the pieces and helps me analyze what to be doing on the other side, and like I say, at 11 pounds, including VAT, I made it an absolute no-brainer price, so that people will jump in and use it, and then there’s an upsell on that with the full Cushy CEO toolkit, which goes even deeper in terms of support and basically acting like an operations assistant for your business. So that is what I launched recently. 

So, at the very front end, there is a free guide. When you download the free guide, on the thank you page, there’s the invitation to upgrade into my 11 pound offer, and then when you click on the checkout, there’s the option to upgrade again into the offer that is another 27 pounds, which gives you even more, right? That’s the, that’s the crux of it, right? You can go check it out, it’s the links in the show notes, if you want to see what it is I’m talking about, you can go have a little mooch and see what it is I’m sharing, and so here’s the data. Well, firstly, the ads – ads are doing brilliantly. So, let’s start from the very front end.

11:31

So, the ads at the moment are converting at one pound 79 per lead, which, when you’re looking to bring in business leads, is not unusual. Sometimes I’ve got them down as low as one pound 5p but they tend to average anywhere between two, sometimes all the way up to five pounds. So I’m pretty happy with that cost per lead. I also went into lead pages where all my leads are and looked at them, and I can see I can see there’s a lot of quality in those leads. I can see recognizable names, I can see recognizable domains, and these are things you need to be looking for, if you’re running ads like that, you know, because sometimes you can have a low cost per lead, but then when you look at those leads coming in, you’re seeing w y z@yahoo.com or or some kind of fat, anyway, and various things that sometimes can still be the email address of someone who has got a good business, but if there’s a lot of them and very little evidence of definite good businesses, then you’re not in a great place, right? Plus, I like to connect with my new leads, I like to follow them on Instagram, and if that’s not easy to do, then it’s not so worthwhile, right? So, so far, 124 leads at 179 each, which means I’ve spent 221 pounds and 50 4p And currently, if you want some context as to what my campaign looks like. I have one wellness audience that I’ve used repeatedly for all my workshops that always performs well. I share it with my clients, so that they can, if they have the same audience that they’re targeting, because it’s so good. I have all the AI functions switched off, because I find they are not helpful in any context whatsoever. And a client of mine, by the way, recently was running a campaign where Meta had switched on AI elements that she had never agreed to, so please be careful with your ad campaigns, do keep an eye on them, because Meta is doing some crazy shit right now. Okay, so I had four ads that were running for video ads, and this was based on the fact that when I was going to create my ads, I was looking at what was predominantly filling my feed, and it was mainly face-to-camera videos, so I thought I’m not even going to bother testing graphics, particularly also because when it’s a new funnel, I’m not going to spend a lot per day, so I’ve only been spending 43 pounds a day, or similar, I think that’s obviously again with Meta, it will sometimes spend more one day, a bit less, but the budget I gave it was 43 pounds, and what was fun with these videos is I chose four very different angles. One speaks to the fact that if you’re working more than four hours per day, you’re mainly anything outside of that is most likely busy work, and the better you understand what is and isn’t busy work, the more successful you’ll be. Download my guide. 

Another one talks to the fact that ADHD obviously comes with its limitations, however, you know ultimately the fact that my brain can’t handle too many different tasks, and therefore I’ve got gotten to be really good at understanding which tasks to prioritize, has actually been its own superpower, and I’ve actually like solidified all of that brilliance into a playbook, so that you can take the same brilliance, because even my non-ADHD clients really benefit from my approach of not focusing on more than two to three things a day, and getting really good at knowing what those two to three things are. So, as you can tell, I kind of played with, like, what are all the reasons someone should stop and pay attention to this, because it’s more about, you know, it’s more than saving time, it’s more than being really effective and focused, it’s more than you know, being that cushy CEO, which a lot of people don’t necessarily emotionally resonate with yet. Let’s speak to the things that are truly personal to me, that are why I created this, that I feel other people will connect to as well. I can’t remember the themes of the other two, but basically they’re all slightly different, and the one that’s.

14:59

Of really killing it right now is the one with the ADHD focus, it’s performing average, above average, above average in its conversion rates, and it’s where 171 pounds and 60 7p of the budget has gone, so it’s massively prioritized that funnel now, because the messages are all different on the front end, and I’ve had the same opt-in, regardless of the message. I will say that has damaged the conversion rate of my opt-in, because the conversion rate on that hasn’t been brilliant. I think it’s around the 20% mark, while I normally aim for 40% However, fortunately, because Meta is really liking my ads, it’s not really hurt my cost per lead, and that you know my lowest cost per lead is one pound 52 So, obviously, with the learnings from this, seeing that the ADHD angle is really resonating, I now have the opportunity, should I wish to, to go into the opt-in and make it more explicitly for neurodivergent brains. Should I wish to, I’m actually not going to choose to do that, because while it’s an element of who I am and why I do what I do, it’s not the full picture, and I don’t ever want to kind of niche myself too heavily into that space, because there’s much more to it than that, right? And yeah, so just, just the thing, right? But anyway, that, that is something you know, for you, if you’re testing different messages, and you see that there is a drop off in terms of you’re not quite hitting the benchmark or your lowdown on the benchmark of a conversion rate. The first thing you should look for is congruency between the message and the ad at the front that’s doing well, and where somehow there is a disconnect once they land on your opt-in page. And there can be other reasons, like simple ones like formatting. My current opt-in is quite wordy, I could probably benefit from making it shorter, but again, I’m choosing not to, because actually I like that my opt-ins wordy. I like that their first introduction to my world is pretty comprehensive, because it means that the quality of the lead coming through is better, and that’s certainly what I’m seeing in the back end. 

So, whenever we’re reviewing a funnel, we’re looking at it through the lens of, like, well, we’re looking at all the pieces, right? Like, quality leads and sales are ultimately the core goal of what we’re looking to achieve here. So, that is what I’m leading with over everything else. So, the opt-in isn’t converting as well as I’d like it to. However, the cost per lead is looking really good, and the quality of lead is good. So, I’m not actually going to touch my opt-in. The next part of the funnel is when they land on the thank you page, and what we’re seeing is out of those 124 leads, 24 of them have clicked on my checkout, which I’m actually really happy with. That means when they’ve got to the thank you page, like a fifth of them have chosen to learn more about the mini offer, which, considering the ad funnel is not a purchase funnel, and it is a, you know, opt-in funnel. I’m not disappointed by that at all. The challenge is, is when it gets to the conversion rate. Currently, 17.4% are converting, and that is at the, I mean, it’s below benchmark. The benchmark should be 20 to 40% So, I’ve actually made 81 pounds and 60 8p prior to VAT, since launching this funnel, and that has looked like four sales. Yes, so that I think there’s one that did one or two have done the upgrade. Anyway, I can’t, I can’t remember doing all the maths, but there’s definitely been some upgrades and some that haven’t, and yeah, so we want to get that up to 40% So, one of the slightly lazy things I did when I created my checkout is I didn’t include a testimonial on there, and I didn’t have a reminder of my commitment to the satisfaction guaranteed 14 day refund policy. Adding both of those to a checkout make a big difference.

18:36

So, having your refund policy on your checkout page and having a testimonial reminding people why what you’re doing and what you’re selling is brilliant, both help conversion rates, so that is something I will be looking at to get that converting better, but I will say to have spent was it 220 quid, let me see, 220 pounds at this stage, and to have made 80 back 8168 I’m actually pretty happy with that as a beginner result, and this is one of the things I wanted to speak to briefly, because quite often we can just be really hard on ourselves, so like I want this to be a self-funding funnel, and it’s not immediately self-funding for me, a brand new unvalidated funnel that I hadn’t even really shared, but not even I hadn’t shared it with organically with my audience to kind of see if there was appetite before I ran ads to it. I just simply thought, sod it, let’s run some ads to it, let’s learn quickly, and actually, yeah, and I knew there was an appetite in that every time I ever talk about my cushy working week, and every time I promote my playbook, I get a lot of response, a lot of engagement and a lot of saves, so I know it’s something that’s at the front of a lot of people’s minds. So I trusted that this approach would do well, and the reason why I started out spending 46 pounds a day was I wanted to get the learnings in as soon as possible. I’m now actually going to lower the budget to 20 pounds a day. Now what’s probably going. To happen is that my cost per lead is going to go up a little bit, because that’s what tends to happen. It shouldn’t go up enormously, but if it were to go up by 5% to 10% I wouldn’t find that unusual. And for the sake of spending 20 pounds a day instead of 46 that is preferential to me. And one of the reasons for that is because there is a five day email sequence that goes alongside this funnel, I want to be looking at that. I want to be looking at the open benchmarks, I want to be looking at the CTR links, I want to be looking at whether anyone buys the offer deeper into the funnel, because there are further invitations to buy the upgrade, like the upgrade isn’t 11 pounds and then it’s gone, it’s there, it’s always there, 11 pounds, so I’m interested to see whether people, once they’ve finished the welcome sequence, feel more inclined or excited or motivated to buy the offer later into the funnel. Equally, there’s an invitation to join my workshop that’s happening at the end of June around how to build your own cushy business model, and I’m interested to see how well that’s converting, because otherwise I will most likely run ads to both the workshop and the guide, so that I hitch hit the numbers I like to bring into a workshop as well. So that’s kind of how I’m playing it. I’m playing it slow right now. What I know to be true is if I were to spend 46 pounds a day, the likelihood is I would remain in a position where I am making one sale a day, which is beautiful, right? Because the goal is always everyday sales, but this is kind of also why I wanted to speak to this, that you know, I’m not letting ego dictate things, like, do I want to show you a screenshot of daily sales? Of course, I do. So, would that motivate me to then increase my spend, yes. However, what is the main goal here? The main goal isn’t everyday sales from my mini offer, it’s how well it performs as a funnel into the accelerator, and that’s where I really measure its success. And as it’s a brand new funnel, all of that is yet to be seen.

21:57

So, for now, I’m spending a modest amount on that funnel, because it’s brand new, and my workshops, which consistently convert brilliantly, is where my ads budget will be focused for now, because I, you know, with anything in business, I always recommend my clients do this, like if you have something that works, just dial it up 10 to 20% you know, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel so often. If sales are slow, or for not seeing what we desire immediately, we’ll be tempted to be doing something brand new altogether. And again, as I mentioned earlier in this episode alone, that takes you back to the drawing board. So, for me, because workshops work brilliantly, I’m going to be running the masterclass I ran last January and last September, but people always give the most brilliant feedback to, as to really understanding how to design your own cushy business, and how to avoid the common mistakes people make in their journey to creating funnels that allow them to make sales in their sleep. So, I’ll be sharing that. I think it’s on the 24th of June. I’ll share more about that. In fact, I’ll make sure that’s in the show notes, too, there’ll be a link to that below as well. And what I tend to do with my low ticket funnel is I have it either running alongside my workshop ads or I temporarily switch it off to prioritize my workshop ads during that period, and then as soon as the workshop ads are off, I switch my low ticket funnel back on again, so that I have everyday sales systems working all the time. I’m either getting people into a workshop that’s coming up or I’m inviting them into my world through a funnel, and of course, when people discover me by my workshop, it’s not unusual for them to go to my Instagram, have a look at my content, see invitations into my playbook, see invitations into my funnel, and dive into those pieces as well, so they all support one another in their own way. Anyway, I hope you found that really helpful. 

Like I say, it’s really early days, but it’s also partly why I thought this is the best time to do it, because oftentimes we talk about something from the other side of, like, let me tell you about my funnel that generated six figures last year, or you know, multi six figures, or whatever, and we often forget those tiny pieces that influenced our decision making earlier on, and we often don’t speak to the bits where, well, this bit isn’t quite working, so I’m going to do that. So this is my invitation to you to tinker in your business, to get close to your data, to not let ego call all the shots in your decision making, not leading with what you want in a year’s time, and deciding from that place, but instead leading with when I trust what I design a year’s year’s time is inevitable. What is the most valuable step I take today? Okay, and that’s not necessarily trying to hop, skip, and a jump to where you want to be in years time, but doing the thing that is required of you today, because, like I say, marketing is innovation, innovation is science, science is experimentation. So be willing to play in your business, and your business will reward you back. Brilliant. If you found this episode helpful, please do DM me. Please let me know if there’s any other things behind the scenes of my business that you would like a closer look at. And in the meantime, I am looking for my well-founded. Series guests to come on my show. I’m looking for people who have got brilliant businesses with brilliant followings and brilliant sales that everyone else is looking at, all their peers are admiring and wondering how does she do that. So, if you think you are a good fit for one of my guests in my well-founded series, there will only be 10 of you, and I’m choosing that 10 really carefully, because it will be in the lead up to my 200th episode, and the series, like I said, is called Well Founded, and I’m so excited to be running it. It’s going to be absolutely brilliant.

25:30

So, if you yourself would be an amazing guest, or if you’d like to nominate someone who is, again, please just either email me, hello at Polly laverello.com or DM me at Polly Laverello on Instagram, because yeah, it’s all happening this week. The invitations are written, and I’m going to be starting to send them out over the next week, so don’t don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you can either think of someone you’d love on the show, or if you yourself think you’d be a brilliant guest. All right, I’ll be in your ears next week.