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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.

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Hello and welcome to the show. If you listened to last week’s episode. I was talking about how the last, I think three years now, I have consistently taken August off, and this year will be no different. And that episode because, you know, like in a day and age of AI and scripts, I tried to keep these episodes as flowy as can be, but it did mean that the majority of the last episode was more about the why and how we get clear on what we want in the first place with our business, but I’m sure it left some gaps for you guys around but what does that actually look like? Like? How? What does it look like as a strategy? What does it look like as an offer ecosystem? Like, how is Polly having profitable Augusts without being on so I wanted to talk more about that today, because, if anything, this time of year, I imagine you’re feeling like more content is not the answer, right? You don’t want to necessarily be out and about, you know, posing in front of the sea, or, I don’t know, trying to get a picture of yourself looking cute, holding a lemonade, telling your family, just one more clip. You know that’s that’s not, I don’t know. Certainly, for me, that’s not, not freedom. Maybe that’s the tomboy in me that kind of gets really impatient with stuff like that. But no, for a lot of us, the last thing we want to do when the sun is shining is trying to find favorable angles of ourselves while we’re sunbathing, and certainly, as I get over the age of 40, those angles are much harder to find, I’ll be honest with you, so I’d rather just not be thinking about that at all. And you might feel the same, and if you are, if you do feel the same, then pay attention. Okay, so here’s the thing, a lot of business owners are probably going into the summer feeling like you have two choices, and that choice is either show up constantly and keep on creating content, maybe create more content, or take time off and watch your business go quiet. And there is actually a third option, and it’s actually one of the most simplest and most underused strategies that I see, and I love that I’m sharing this with you now because we’re still in May, which means you can learn and take action on what I’m sharing with you today so that you are set up for your Summer holidays, set up to make sales. Set up to wake up, stretch, admire a beautiful Italian sunrise, or wherever it is that you’re going, maybe you’re stretching your feet out in the grass, whether you know, while your kids are sleeping in a tent nearby, whatever your summer is looking like, that you can wake up, pick up your favorite book and Bing, look at your phone and see a delicious sales notification and no, you don’t have to be a seven biggest CEO to get results like that. No, you don’t need to be some marketing genius. You just need to understand a few really simple concepts that I’m going to share with you today. Okay, so this is why I recommend you do, because a mini offer isn’t just a way to make a sale today. It’s how we nurture clients. It’s how we get them interested in our core offers without needing to even have a sales conversation. They really are a game changer. And no, you don’t need to spend 1000s of pounds on ads to get traffic to these many offers and to make sales, it gets to be a lot easier than that, okay, because a lot of people have this like, not yet energy around ads, which is really not helpful a lot of the time. You know, people put them off because they think they’re complicated, they think they’re overwhelming, they think they’re technical. But the truth is, if you already have a website, if you already have some kind of some kind of payment processor that you use online, if you’ve managed to wrap your head around posting on Instagram, then you can definitely wrap your head around ads. You know, am I saying that? You know it’s going to be totally easy and comfortable? No, probably not. Because whenever we’re learning something new, and it’s not immediately intuitive, that can be a little frustrating. But I will say, once you get your head around the initial learning curve, or what to set up and where to set it up, and what it all means, it then just becomes as simple as probably, maybe your relationship with social media. Now, I imagine the first time you went on there, you’re like, where do I post a story and where.

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Do I post on the grid, and what’s the caption again, and what do I put there? Like all of that stuff at one point felt overwhelming, and I’d imagine it is less overwhelming for you. Now, ads is very much the same thing, and the difference is, is ads is like the ultimate way to leverage your time, leverage your reach and leverage your impact. And you know, of course, in the early stages of running a business, of course, there’s a lot to gain from kind of testing things organically, building a community, but ads just add gas to the fire. And here is what I want to say to you, because if you’re hearing me say, you could spend as little as 10 pounds a day, and you’re still like, Yeah, but Polly, that’s still like, 300 pound a month.

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Let’s do the math here a second. Okay, let’s do the math. Let’s compare this to something, how many hours you going to spend creating content this summer, filming it, editing it, captioning it, posting it.  If we put a value on your time, even a very conservative one, chances are you’ll spend more than the 300 pounds worth your time creating content. Right? Suddenly, a 10 pound day, 10 pound a day doesn’t feel like a gamble anymore, right? Feels like leverage. Okay, there really is a value to your time. There really is a value to your hours. And the alternative to running ads is being on more platforms. It’s creating more content. It’s getting knee deep in trial reels, and a lot of us just, quite simply, don’t have the capacity for that over the holidays, when we want to be switching off, or when we have childcare responsibilities because kids aren’t at school, or where we want to be traveling, or whatever your reason for doing differently over the summer, you know, particularly, oh my goodness, let’s be honest. Guys, like the amount. I mean, one of the reasons why I also like taking August off is because I generally hear the same thing in August that I often hear in December, which is people are being slower to get back to me, people are being slower to decide which, you know, like, not all industries look like that, but it’s not uncommon, right? December, we’ve got Christmas, we’ve got new year, we’ve got all the other kind of holidays going on. And there’s a lot of religious holidays across the board happening in December.

And there’s a kind of common understanding that a lot of people are taking off at least that last week of December, or not really being around or available. They’re in a bank holiday as well for New Year’s Day. And then in the summer, similarly, in August, you know, if you’re living anywhere in Europe or even in the US, a lot of people are taking time out in August as well. So you know, understandably, even when I worked in corporate, we would know if we sent an email or we’re waiting on a decision, chances are that decision was going to take longer, because it’s August, okay, and we can either fight that truth or we can find a way to leverage it. And one thing that people are doing a lot of in the summer is hanging out on the beach getting bored, scrolling their phones, looking for distractions and boom, oh, an easy offer, 37 quid. It’s going to keep me entertained for a few hours, or help me understand something at a deeper level than I didn’t knew before I’m in I mean, I know myself personally. When I went traveling in Greece, I bought a hunker chunk of mini offers, some of which I don’t think I even ever opened in the end, which is not a good example. But you know, I did that because, you know, what else was I going to do in my time? I still was kind of bored and curious. I just wasn’t necessarily looking to kind of get on a zoom and have a conversation about working with them, but I still wanted to kind of be doing something in August. So there is a, you know, like you’re leveraging your time, you’re leveraging the assets within the business. And look, we can remove the risk. Okay, I’m not asking you to magic 300 pounds out of nowhere. I’m not asking you to eat into your ice cream fund, because, Lord knows, we need ice creams in the summer. I don’t want you depriving yourself of them, okay? But here’s what you can do, okay, to ensure you make that 300 pounds up front. So let’s say your rougher is, like, I don’t know, 37 pounds, all the way through to 97 pounds. If it’s 97 nice and simple, sell three, three of those. You’d be just shy right of the 10 pounds a day if you’re at 37 sell about 10 of them, even less eight or seven, and you will have made the money that you want to be spending on ads. And you can do that. You can make that money by selling to your existing audience. Because when we create something that meets a gap in the market where we have generated a demand, all right, where we’re meeting an existing demand, and unpin that demand up, people will buy it from you, and if you’re not able to sell it to your existing warm audience, and that probably is a telltale sign that you need to work.

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On the positioning of it. You need to work on how you are framing it, so that people understand why they need it before you run ads to it. So again, perfect time of year for you to be hearing this, because you can be doing all of that right now. Get it tested, get it launched, get it sold, so that you can then set up the ads. Get those also work in the way you want them to. So you can genuinely switch off over the summer, just checking in once a week to see if everything’s converting the way you need it to. And in the meantime, just keep a little ear out for the little Bing Bing Bings as the sales come through. Look, I’m not pretending, by the way, with a 10 pound spend a day that you’re going to be seeing like 1010, sales a day of like a 37 pound offer that would be crazy. ROAs, okay, I’m not, you know, like, if it’s that simple, I would be living on a desert island now, swimming with pigs every day, just, you know, hanging out chatting with dolphins and just drinking pina coladas from the moment I wake up to when I fall asleep, and Pedro Pascal and I would be on speed dial like, but no, that’s, that’s not how things work. Okay, so 10 pounds a day, like, what we’re looking for is, even if you made one sale every three days, if your offer is 30 pounds, then you would be offsetting your ad costs. It would be costing you nothing to run ads. And that is when you start going, Oh, this is making money. It’s breaking even. I’m going to start scaling that ad spend. I’m going to start increasing it, because the people who are seeing sales every day are spending a lot more than 10 pound a day. I want to be clear on that. However, if you’re spending 10 pounds a day, and let’s say your offer is 30, and you’re making a sale every three days, you are going to be offsetting that ad cost. You’re going to be getting to the end of the week with three or four people who have bought your offer, who are excited to like why they say three or four. So that’s wrong way around two to three people. Honestly, mental maths is not my strong pursuit here, but people who have bought from you, who can easily follow up in the DM say, Hey, how are your team? Can say, Hey, how are you getting along with it. Has it been helpful? You know, like and you are creating sales opportunities there and then, like you, and you’re making money, and you’re kind of warming up your audience so that when you come back with September, you’re not like, oh, I need to remind everyone I exist again, because they’ve been seeing your ads all summer. Okay, so it’s really, really potent. 10 pounds a day is how my clients start. But I will tell you, because of their success, a lot of them are now spending 30 to 60, sometimes 90 pounds a day, because they’re seeing that ad spend come right back to them through the sales of their mini offers. But I just want you to be clear on the fact that, do you need to dive into spending 90 pounds a day? Of course, you don’t. 10 pounds a day is more than adequate, okay? And that’s what makes it easy for you to get started. That’s where you can make the sales organically, reinvest some of that, or all of that, depending on what you’ve made, into the ads. And what’s really exciting about ads is they meet the person who is ready to make the decision and buy right now. Okay? You get to meet the decision maker. You’re not trying to persuade anyone. Hey, you want to make this decision. 

You’re meeting the person who’s already made the decision that they are looking for, the transformation that you facilitate, and you’re making your option, the obvious, easy, enticing one to jump into. Okay, that’s also what people like my clients who started doing this, their brains have literally been blown by the fact that people are coming in going, oh my god, this is exactly what I need. This is brilliant. I’m in and they’re like, Oh my God, why did my existing warm audience? Why are they taking longer than people with ads I’m like, because it’s all about your positioning. It’s all about your messaging. It’s all about designing your offer ecosystem in a way that makes it a really clear, obvious pathway, so that not only are they buying your mini offer, within a week, you’re getting a DM going, oh my god, you blow my brain. That mini offer like that is so clear, so obvious. What’s the next step? How can I continue to work with you? Okay, that’s the magic we get to create. Okay, so, yeah, I mean, I guess that’s the other point I wanted to make here is please, you know, like I unless you are a bakery, a bakery school teaching people how to make bread, please do not do a mini offer on how to make a sourdough starter that you know. Just because you have the knowledge and just because people are seeking it doesn’t mean you should be selling it. Okay, for one AI has all the sourdough starter information you could ever need. There’s endless YouTube videos explaining how to do this too. And unless you are some special pastry chef that people want to learn your unique approach to a sodo starter, please do not do that. Now, I know for many of you, you may listen and go, that’s really freaking obvious, Polly, but believe me, the amount of people when I go to look at their lead magnets or their mini offers, the variety of things that they cover that are so far removed from the core transformation that they facilitate literally blows my mind on the daily so for those of you who found that obvious, I do apologize for those of you who don’t, I’m so glad I just said that to you right now, because you need to know this, because it’s the kind of thing that when you get that bit wrong, you’ll be like me.

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The offers don’t work, yes, because you’ve approached them all wrong. Okay? So they need to be the gateway into your high ticket offer. They need to solve a clear problem while equally identifying the gap between that problem you’ve just solved and the bigger problem your your high ticket offer solves. Okay, that’s how we create a mini Offer Funnel, you know, one that actually leads people to your core offer. So yes, you’ve got your free lead magnet and free resources, but you also have this, which we know through sales psychology, when someone’s already invested in you once, there’s something like 60% likely to buy from you again. So we’re really doing ourselves a lot of favors when we have a mini offer. Okay, so that was one of the biggest mistakes to avoid. Is the sourdough piece. Please just don’t do that. I’m trying to think of. And the other mistake, like I say, is, you know, here’s another mistake. Another mistake is putting too much information in there, being like, Oh, I’ve got so much knowledge. I’m going to put loads of knowledge into this mini offer so that people you know, really see how committed I am to giving them as much as possible, so that they can, yeah, see how much I care, essentially, and again, if someone has too much information, and because it’s entirely passive, they’re not necessarily going to take their time to work through all of it. So I’m always like, you know, make it something that, ideally, they can work through a process of five days. Really, really simple, really, really digestible, gets them there. Like, don’t try and give them the mountain. Just give them. Just give them the trainers, the right trainers to walk up the mountain. Okay, please, please.

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So yeah, I mean, ultimately, the thing that’s going to make your mini offer sing is where the positioning piece comes in, right? Because if you don’t know what makes your work unique, if you don’t know why people follow you, and if you don’t know what gap you fill in the market, it becomes very easy to create the wrong mini offer. But when those pieces are clear, creating the right mini offer becomes incredibly simple. So if you’d like my help with this, I’ve actually created a very simple guide on how to set up yourself for a spacious summer, well beyond spacious summer, how to have a spacious business. It is in the show notes. It is brand new. I’m always looking for feedback, so do hit me up in the DMS on Instagram at Polly laverello And tell me what you got from it. I’m going to be throwing in a little juicy AI prompt in there as well to make it so easy for you to make the most of it. Oh, please, please, if you listen to this podcast, if you’ve been in my world a while, please just listen to what I’m advising you. It’s literally the thing that allows you to almost feel like you can print money in your business. It’s really going to help you not feel like you’re constantly waiting for the right person to find you, because you’re getting in front of ideal clients every single day. It really is the biggest game changer. Like, does it work in and as of itself, without anything else around it? No. Like, I say, you need the positioning, you need the obvious next step in terms of your next offer, like in and out of itself. Will it cure all your problems? No. However, you want to be saying sing sales over some if you want to be warming up your audience, if you want to be able to take time off knowing that your business is still present and relevant in people’s brains, and that you’re attracting new clients all the time without needing to be thinking about what piece of content you should be creating next and where you truly understand the value of your time and recognize that spending 10 pounds a day without sacrificing your ice cream daily budget is viable. Then crack on, guys. Just do it and you’ll thank me later. All right, I hope you found this helpful. I’ll be in your ears next week with a guest episode.