00:00

Welcome to Make More Money without Selling Your Soul with me Polly Lavarello, evergreen marketing expert. This podcast is for you if you are an online entrepreneur who is looking to simplify their business to scale.  On this podcast you can expect to hear regular talk about wealth, about selling and about wellbeing. Because I believe these three core fundamental things are pivotal to your growth moving forward.

00:44

hello friends and welcome to make more money without selling your soul with myself. Polly Lavarello, Evergreen marketing expert and cushy business pioneer. If you’ve listened to my most recent episodes, the ones which don’t have guests, there was an episode on where I shared my guide the three steps to making everyday sales. But at the end of that episode, I made a promise. I made a promise to go deeper on the themes that I touch on inside of that guide.

So the last solo episode I did was about how to design an offer suite that allows for everyday sales. Because, you know, there are various offers out there that just, quite frankly, aren’t fit for purpose, in terms of scalability, in terms of attracting in more people, and those people still getting an amazing experience, which they totally deserve. So that piece is fundamental, right? Like, I am running a program in January that’s 90 days long, which is all about doubling your leads and doubling your sales, and it’s phase one. Phase one is like, is your office suite fit for purpose? Like, there’s absolutely no point progressing to step two if your office suite isn’t doing what it needs to. And now we have naturally progressed to step number two, which is how to market for everyday sales and the episode that will be coming out after this one, aside from the guest episode that’s coming out next week, will be about selling, how to sell every day, in terms of what actually involves you or a sales team, right? Because marketing is not the same as sales. Marketing does a huge amount of heavy lifting when it comes to well, it does all the heavy lifting when it comes to generating those lovely, warm leads who totally buy into you, your mission, your vision, and, you know, your big promise. But ultimately, if we don’t combine marketing with sales activities, we’re leaving a huge amount of money on the table. So that will have its own episode in a couple of weeks. But this week, my friends, we are talking about the three things you need to know to create marketing that attracts everyday sales. Because let’s talk about why this matters. What I see in the online space, particularly for those who either work one to one or work exclusively with launches is that they’re either doing Minimum Viable just posting in between launches, posting in between, needing another one to one, or like all in and needing to make the sales there and then.

And what that does is it creates a lot of pressure, creates a lot of stress, creates a lot of pushiness, and also just means that you’re kind of relying on everyone in your world, in and as of that moment, being like, Yes, this is something I need to focus on, and that requires you probably having to do a lot of persuading. Well, when you can tweak your marketing to speak to urgency that already exists in your ideal clients, you will attract people who are ready and excited to give you their card details and jump in and work with you tomorrow. That also means you’ll avoid people who resent you a couple of months in, like, oh, I don’t know. I didn’t, I don’t think I even wanted to do this in the first place. It will avoid people who, you know ghost programs, because they realize actually I committed to this when I really didn’t have the time or capacity for this, and it’s just not a priority enough for me. Or worse, people saying I want a refund, like when I see people in those kind of predicaments, they can’t see it because they’re too in it. But I’m totally aware that their business gets to look very different. And it’s not as simple as who they bring into their world or their onboarding process or how they run their programs, but it starts at the very beginning. It starts at how you market and who you speak to. So the really important thing that I want you to understand before we dive into the three things you need to know is that with marketing and everyday sales, no everyday sales does not mean you feel like you’re hustling every day, and it also doesn’t mean that you’re potentially doing what you’re currently doing, which is either being on or being off. Invitations are something that. You should be making in your marketing all the time. You should be making your programs, your, you know, accessible all the time. You shouldn’t be spending half the year acting like an influencer and the other half going come and buy from me that worked in 2022 it doesn’t work anymore. Okay, everyone I know who was thriving off that approach back in 2022 has really struggled this year. I mean, I don’t know. I’m pausing for effect here, but I’m just like take a moment to think about the people you knew who were thriving like that in 2022 it doesn’t work anymore.

So if you are one of those people who perhaps was thriving in 2022 maybe 2024 has been quite challenging for you. Listen closely to this podcast episode, because I’m going to be dropping some nuggets that you really need to deeply and intently listen to. And I encourage you. I really encourage you. If I cover something that you’re like, Oh well, I’m already aware of that. I’ve heard that before. I’ve heard somebody else reference that before. I really encourage you to still be with it and listen to it and consider it and review your own business and marketing that way, because very often we’re too close to our own business to see our own business blind spots, and unless you are scaling easily, gracefully, beautifully, making the sales that you desire right now and feeling great, feeling like you’re running that cushy business, then that means you need to listen to everything I’m saying in this episode, even if you think some of these subjects have been touched on before, because what it means is, if you are not seeing the sales you desire, you haven’t fully integrated these learnings and put them into your own business for maximum effect, it indicates there is room for additional depth and growth, right? Okay, so please bear with, bear with. I’ve actually got some notes to make sure I don’t go off on too many ADHD tangents. Okay, so step number one, like, what’s what’s number one before we even really think about your marketing activities, one of the things I think maybe some people may find a little bit frustrating about my mini course, 10 days to sales is actually the first week is almost like a brand deep dive before we even get into the actual selling activities. And that’s because it really matters. So step one is become the Beyonce of your niche own your expertise. Okay, anything else I recommend beyond this step will not have any impact. If you are not aware of who you are being in this space, if you think you can help someone, if you hope you have the right expertise, your ideal client is like a sniffer dog. They are going to sniff the fear on you, which is why I regularly say to my clients, sometimes they’ll say to me, Oh, I’m a sales coach, and I’m not making sales and, you know, I’m feeling really out of integrity, trying to coach people on something that I myself am struggling to do. And I’m like, Well, what if we look at your biggest strength, your strengths, and identify what they are, and we’ll sit down together, and they’re like, Well, I’m really great at communication, I’m really great at pitching to get people on stages. I’m really great at hosting summits. And I’m like, well, here’s an angle that you know, you come back, that you’ve got expertise in and experience in, why are you still pushing the sales thing? If it’s not working, you don’t feel good about it, you don’t feel confident about it, and yet you’re sitting on all this proven expertise, which you know could easily escalate and elevate more into sales later on.

But it gives you something you can really hang your hat on and really speak from a place of true, grounded authority, grounded authority. So, I mean, you may be, you know, listening to this and thinking, no, no, no, I’m good with my expertise. I still encourage you to take a moment to think about this. You know, I think the majority of my listeners probably are very sure of their expertise. You know, most people who listen to this podcast are very established business owners. They’ve got significant experience under their belt. But there is that piece around, you know, specialize and flaunt it like Do not be a generalist. Be really clear about what you’re all about. And if that has needed to pivot or evolve, that’s not a weakness. That is called Business adaptation. It’s very essential in the online business space. You also don’t need to do one of those. Oh my god, there’s a big announcement coming. It’s such a big change. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. With all the love in the world, nobody is bothered at this stage. They’re not bothered until they see you actually sharing stuff that’s really meaningful, and the excitement you have will never be matched by everyone else. Everyone else is like, okay, okay, When’s she actually going to share something and tell us what’s actually going on?

So personally. I’ve ever known who’s pivoted, who’s been like, oh my god, this is huge. I’m like everyone else on the outside could see this already. You just hadn’t claimed it. Now you’re claiming it. So just jump into doing the thing you don’t need to announce price rises. You don’t need to announce your pivot. Just show up and do the damn thing that that speaks so many more volumes and attracts clients way sooner than spending a week sharing a whole load of promo videos with lots of flames around your new name and getting excited like boring people are beyond that. That’s so 2022

10:31

Okay, so when you, like, are owning your expertise, and we’re still on point number one here, okay, and you’re being really, really clear about it, the other thing you need to do is, like, show your freaking receipts, show those case studies, show those testimonials, show evidence of the kind of content you’re creating for your clients. Show them a behind the scenes of what your program actually looks like like. Again, this is about a part of owning it. Having that level of transparency, that level of investment in your clients and your results, makes people feel like, wow, if she’s that excited by her own client’s results, then she’s going to be excited by mine, too. And alongside that, there is literally nothing that does more heavy lifting in terms of turning a lead into a sale than a testimonial or a case study. Like they are the most potent things. So if you’ve been sleeping on sharing evidence of the incredible results you get your clients, then you are missing out on sales 100% okay? The other thing that I hear so often, and this still alludes to being the Beyonce of your niche, is I regularly will get forwarded a real by one of my clients saying, is this true? Where it says, Stop educating, stop giving value, it’s not helping you stand out like an authority.

11:42

Yes it does. Yes it does. Giving evidence of your expertise, solving micro problems for your ideal clients, sharing blogs, sharing kind of a depth and breadth of content that they don’t see elsewhere, means more in 2024 than it ever has in any other year, because AI is allowing people to churn out little kind of snacks, Social Snacks, that just tastes good for a moment and then you’ve forgotten them already, right? Like being able to record a podcast like this, where you’re really helping somebody improve their Well, in my case, business, but you know, really help them on a specific problem is really, really potent. Like, I totally believe you could literally listen to all these episodes back to back and achieve so much by yourself, like you really could. I, I hold so little back with these episodes. The only thing I’m holding back is your specific business blind spots, because I’ve not looked at your business. I’m talking general here because I want this to help everyone, but I literally help as much as I freaking can, and it’s never stood in the way of me attracting more clients. It means that when that person’s thinking it’s time to invest, I’m front of mind. Okay, so do not hold back like people aren’t impressed by your bag or your dog, or the lovely woods at the back of your house. They’re more interested in themselves. Like, yes, they’ll engage with that. And they’ll go, oh, wow, she likes the woods like I do.

But the thing that will help them invest in you isn’t the lovely woods at the back of your house. Okay? So please, please, please, do educate like a boss. So the things you need to know about becoming the Beyonce of your niche is one, specialize and flaunt it. Two, show the freaking receipts. Make sure everyone knows that you’re doing it, you’re walking in it, you’re being it, you’re showing it, you’re doing it. And then finally, do not be afraid to educate like a boss. Okay, people are looking for the best solution to their problems, and you’ll make it easy for them to trust you when you show off what you can do. As the wonderful Colette Macbeth has referred to in the past, who is the wonderful messaging expert inside my business incubator, she used the delicious word, which was conviction. Show conviction around your messaging, your promise, which also comes, you know, when we’re talking about, I know I talked about this in the office. We the Office Suite one, but you know, being able to create measurable promises makes you see sell, helps you not, makes you whatever, see sales a million times faster. Okay, so that was point number one. I feel like this episode could get pretty lengthy, but let’s see. Let’s see how we go. I feel like, I mean, I mean, anything around brand gets me super duper excited.

Point two, can be, can be more snackable. Okay, so the other thing that’s going to help you attract everyday sales, another fundamental, again, before we get down to the rinse and repeat activities that you need to be doing to see more sales, is to be, really, how’s about to use the word mindful? I’m like, who uses the word mindful anymore, which comes what’s the word connects beautifully to what I’m about to share, which is, speak their language, not yours. This also applies to the transformation. So many people are like, Oh my God. But of course, people would love a subconscious transformation. I’m like, no, they don’t. They want to heal. Actually, I was about to say they want to heal their relationship with their husband. No, they. Don’t even want to heal their relationship with the husband. They want to be excited by the sight of their husband’s face on the pillow next to them the next morning. Or they want, you know, a partner that picks up an equal load of the childcare, so that they don’t feel like they become the family slave, like that’s the language they’re using. They’re going to the pub going, oh my god, I become the family slave. I promised I would never be that I was such a feminist at university.

Now, look at me, when you use that language, they’re going to be like, Oh my god, were you listening to me in the pub last night? Okay, God, I miss going to pubs, having two small children on a Friday night. Now, it’s all about watching Disney on a Friday night. But anyway, let’s this. This episode is not about me, right? So speak their language, not yours. Marketing isn’t about you. It’s about them. Okay? Talk about pain points and outcomes. Ditch the industry jargon and focus on what keeps your ideal client up at night and how you’ll make their life easier. I want you to mirror their language. Pay attention to how your audience describes their problems, their dreams, their frustrations, and also bear in mind when you’re thinking about this ideal client, don’t speak to someone who’s deeply in the bog of victimhood, who’s massively identified with this place in their life, because they will be not in a position where they’re like, ready to make a change, like if you’re wanting To help people. I keep on using relationship coaches as examples, and I don’t know why, because I’m not even working with a relationship coach right now, but let’s say you wanted to help people avoid divorce, but you were speaking to people who were already considering it. Maybe it’s just suggestion. You might be meeting people who are too far and too deep into it to be ready to do the work in the way that you like to do the work with them. And maybe instead, you could speak to people who are impacted by, I don’t know, renovating a house, or a new child coming into the mix, or, you know, maybe I don’t know, there are different ways you can meet someone when they’re at a stage where they still feel empowered and excited to work on it, and it will bring a very different energy, particularly if you’re working in groups.

And finally, be human. People buy from people, drop the corporate. Speak and show some personality, a little humor or vulnerability goes a long way in building trust. Fun fact, adverts that are funny perform better. Okay, but the really important thing to understand is that when your audience feel seen and understood. They’re already halfway to pulling out their wallets. So as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I may be touching on things we’re like, I know this. Speak their language, have a niche blah, blah, blah, but honestly, a lot of people who come to me who say, Oh, I’m still not quite seeing the sales that I want. So often I look at their marketing activities and I’m like, they’ve got a good website. They’ve got a pinned how to work with me. Post. They’re regularly doing stories. They’re consistently posting. They’re on one more than one channel. Some of them are even running ads. Why are they not making sales? Or why are they not making the summer money they’d like to be making? Why are their sales calls so challenging? It’s one and two. I’m going to come to three, which is the most attractive thing I’m going to drop on this episode, because it’s the marketing activities. This is a bit that people love to jump into, because it makes them feel like they’re doing something of value. It makes them feel like they’re spending their time in their business well, because they’re being proactive, because they’re being productive, because hashtag imperfect action. But the challenge with this is, you know, to avoid the discomfort of like, oh, I don’t know what their language is, or I feel like I’ve already niched. Is this not already specific enough? A lot a lot of the time, these marketing activities just don’t move the needle.

They don’t do very much. So I really, really encourage you to just take a little moment to journal on. You know, who do I love to work with? Whose problems Am I solving? All the good stuff, but just spend a bit of time just thinking, Am I being specific? Does this really stand out? Is it immediately clear how I’m different from my competition, and am I using this is the most important 1am. I using the words my ideal client uses around the problem so like I say things like, heal your relationship, have a better life, work, balance, feel more freedom. Anytime I see any person write those words down, I always ask them, What does freedom mean to your ideal client, what does the perfect work life balance actually look like for them, particularly if you’re running a group? Because work life balance for let’s say, I don’t know, a man in a corporate bank is going to look very different. For a mother who’s got a side hustle on Etsy with three children under the age of five, like it’s just gonna look totally different. And when you can, you know, and if you’re like, Well, I work with women, that bit should be obvious. It’s not. If someone has to think about it and use any brain kind of cells to figure out what you’re saying, you’ve lost them already.

Okay, so specifics wins the day, and genuinely, when you create messaging that. Really speaks to that specific person. Before you even tell people how to work with you, before you even make an invitation, people will already be DMing you, saying, Oh my God, you’re on my vision board. I can’t I am desperate to work with you. I’m always saying that happens to me. But yes, it does. Okay, so number three is a really important one, and it’s make invitations daily, any kind of invitation, whether it’s to your list, whether it’s to your offer suite. There’s a few things I want to say. Look at me sighing it myself, because I was about to kind of share some very generic advice. And actually, I want to make this I want to ramp up the specificity with what I’m sharing with you here. Okay, because everyone knows, if you want to make more sales, make more invitations. It doesn’t require more offers. It requires more invitations. In fact, I would say having one different offer that you promote per month and making lots of invitations to that will a, improve your efficiency. B, create more sales and C, allow you a beautiful bank of content, easy to repurpose in three or four months time when you go through the cycle of promoting that same offer again.

So one to tip number one, when it comes to making invitations and selling have one focus per month. When I see people dipping and diving between various offers all the time, it just devalues the invitation they’re making to their core offer. And I always start with my most profitable offer, because I know I can always go down from there, but it’s very hard to go up from there. So I tend to lead with my group programs, my one to ones, my mastermind days, things like that. Okay, so we want to be making invitations, and we want to keep things really simple by having one core sales focus per month as a small business as a service based business. This makes the most sense for you. Now. This is where I’m going to get a bit more specific. One of the things some my clients ask me when they’re contemplating my 90 day accelerator to double your leads and double your sales is what does it actually look like in terms of my marketing strategy, and I am not able to be uber Duba specific and go, Ah, it’s as simple as 123.

22:09

and the reason for that, to a certain extent, because there is a bit of laziness my part in terms of, I probably could articulate this a bit better, but the main reason for that is, when I work with my clients. We look at you specifically. No business owner is entirely the same. There are some people who like myself, I’ve always enjoyed creating my podcast. People really enjoy my podcast. It attracts really beautifully aligned clients to me all the time, like I love it, and it’s not a stress for me, and it flows pretty naturally. Put me on a stage, and I would probably poo my pants. This is something I’m planning on working on over the next year, but for now, put me on a stage and I will probably cack myself like I just hate that idea. But there are other clients I work with who could literally get on a stage and delivering an impactful keynote speech, they could do it in their sleep. Okay, that’s a huge opportunity for them, a huge opportunity. There are other clients I work with who are eloquent wordsmiths who can write phenomenal blogs and kind of essays, pretty much just in their sleep, they can knock it out in five minutes.

So what I mean by this is one of the biggest things for 2024 is like deep content, content where people can really connect with you, and understanding what that looks like for you is going to be different from everyone else. And it’s understanding where you flow where the immediate opportunity is, and what I know to be true on the things I encourage people to do in my mini course, 10 days to speedy sales, is to do an exercise where they recognize what 20% of their marketing is creating 80% of their revenue, because it’s down to pritas law, which you can look into separately. I’m not going to go into that. That could be a whole podcast episode. Could be a whole podcast episode of its own. But the truth is, I’ve never worked with a client who hasn’t done this exercise and hasn’t immediately recognized, oh my God, when I’m a podcast guest, I always enroll three or four clients off the back of that podcast, and I’m like, Well, what are you going to be doing more of next year? More podcasts. So I mean, obviously there’s only so much depth I can bring to this tip, because, quite frankly, there’s a variety of ways. There’s a rinse and repeat marketing strategies where you know when people say to me, my book isn’t selling, I’m like, Well, how often do you mention it? Okay, well, how about sticking it in the signature of your email? And how about creating a graphic on Canva, maybe 345, of them, and simply just dropping one in your stories once every week, like that, in and as of itself, already will create more book sales.

There’s obviously more complex things we can do, but I really love the simple, delicious rinse and repeat activities we can add to your processes that simply will be. A bit by the end of the year that will automatically result in more sales. You know, there’s a rinse and repeat stuff, there’s the automated stuff, there’s the funnels. But one really simple thing, when I think about, what thing can I share with you today that will help you see more sales in 2025 without kind of getting overwhelmed thinking about the rinse and repeat stuff and the processes and the funnels and all the other stuff that we can all the fun stuff we can do together, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. But when I think about what’s the one thing that you my friends can listen to today, grab a journal, go sit in a nice coffee shop, or maybe get your laptop out, because this is going to require some data. You know, looking at your data, which, if you’re not collecting it, you should look at it and see where are most your sales coming from with your marketing? Is it a particular platform? Is it a particular activity? Is it affiliate marketing? Is it guest podcasting? Is it your podcast? Is it advertising? Where are you seeing the best ROI? And here’s one delightful little hack, my friend, simply double down on that 20% and you will already make more sales next year. It’s as simple as that, and most the time it’s the thing we enjoy the most, the thing that comes the most easy. So we actually kind of go, oh yeah, when I do spend 15 minutes a morning kind of engaging with other, you know, accounts and, you know, collaborating with them and getting on their podcast, like, Oh, that’s so easy and fun. That’s, that’s the thing I do to break up my week and make it interesting.

Well, my friend, if it’s driving sales, do more of it. So, yes, take a moment to audit. Like, literally write down all your marketing activities. Write down all your sales from this year, if you can, if you can’t write them down, use something like air table. Air table is amazing. You can set up kind of amazing tables and automations, which essentially do the math for you, so that you can see in a pie chart what is creating the most sales for you. But look at it, and when you know, you can then do more of that thing, and you will automatically make more sales. So there we go, my friends, to summarize, to make everyday sales with your marketing one, you want to be the Beyonce of the business world, or Beyonce of your niche, maybe not business world, because who knows what niche you’re in. Secondly, you want to be speaking their language, not yours, and ensuring that you’re communicating the transformation through their priority. So often I’m saying to my clients, you are attached to the vehicle. You’re selling them the vehicle. They don’t want the vehicle. They want the destination. They don’t want the subconscious transformation. They don’t want the coaching. They don’t like they’re not paying for that.

They’re paying for who they’ll be on the other side. So do never forget, never forget that. And then finally, you know, it’s about looking at your marketing strategy and understanding what 20% of your marketing activities is creating 80% of your revenue, and then doubling down on that. Beyond that, there are other things we can be doing. In fact, as I say this out loud, I’m like, this totally deserves its own podcast episode. If you agree, DM me and say yes, please to more about the marketing activities that will see me make double the sales in 2025 because as I say this out loud, I know I want to dive into it, but this is a record long solo episode. I think, I don’t think I’ve very often gotten this close to 30 minutes, so I’m going to wrap it up now. But thank you so much for listening today’s episode. If you found it helpful, please, please do share. Please review. I love to see my podcast listenership going up. I love to see another review ping through. It’s literally one of the happiest things that happens to me, for me and my business. And if you found it helpful, you know, let’s make sure we’re sharing the love and helping other people succeed with this information too. And as always, you know, if you have any feedback, any suggestions, anything you’d love for me to dive deeper into. Simply DM me on Instagram. I love to hear from you at Poly Lavarello, or connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m starting to do more over there too, and that is it for now. Next week, I will have a guest on the show. We will be talking about visibility and how to turn that into sales. Oh my gosh, all the good stuff coming your way. I’ll be near ears next week.