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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.

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Hello and welcome to make more money without selling your soul with myself Polly Lavarello.  This week we are talking about Is it your offer or is it an eyeballs problem?  you may have no clue what I am talking about. But it is really, really significant because it’s where I see so many entrepreneurs unnecessarily redo everything when they really didn’t need to. And because you know me, I love a good analogy. I’ve lined up a Corker of an analogy, if I say so myself, I essentially what I’m saying here before we kind of get into it is if you find yourself in a situation where he you have launched a new offer. And let’s say you feel like a very small number of people have signed up to that offer. And therefore, perhaps your offer isn’t quite right, perhaps you need to redo the entire thing. Maybe you need to check out the offer. Well, I’m here to tell you that more often than not, it’s not your offer, that’s necessarily the problem. Very often it’s enables problem. Now, it’s not always an eyeballs problem. And it’s really important to understand the difference between the two. Because you know, obviously, if it is enough a problem, you want to be getting to work on that immediately. And to not be wasting time just trying to build a bigger following, because it’s not that simple. So let’s get straight to the analogy here, right, because I don’t want any of you jumping off to any assumptions here because there’s three things you need to consider when it comes to understanding how to ensure that one, you’re building a following who are a good match for what it is that you’re about to offer to them. So that there is no question as to whether the people in your following are a good fit for your offer. Similarly, it’s ensuring that you are, you know, priming and warming up that following for that offer when it lands. And then actually just ensuring that you understand the data, you understand whether a good percentage of your following have converted or not. So let’s start. Let’s paint the picture here. Let’s imagine I am hosting an incredible house party. I own a big mansion, like one in the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. It’s enormous. It’s got views of the sea, and everyone’s having to dress up and their finest swag. And I’ve invited you all along. This is not true. By the way. I live in a little house in Brighton. But anyway, let’s say this is true. And you’re coming along to my party, and you arrive and you’re hearing the funkiest, freshest tunes, and you’re like, Oh, my God, I’m in the right place. This is so cool.

And then let’s say you’re just kind of sipping on your first Margarita, and then suddenly,

some opera starts playing you like, Oh, that’s not the vibe I thought I’d arrive to but okay, let’s roll with this. You know, I’m a bit confused. I’m looking around the room wondering what’s going on. But you know, let’s roll with it. Then let’s say, I then put on some funky disco music

from 70s. And everyone’s fill in the dance, we’re having the best time of their lives.

You get what I’m saying here. I’m just changing the tune all the time. People cannot keep up with me. They’re wondering what’s going to be coming next. Nobody is able to kind of feel comfortable and in safe and embrace the journey because they have no clue at this stage, what party they’ve attended, and quite frankly, starting to question the sanity of the host. And this is the kind of social media experience. Sometimes people create around their own online business. They can’t decide what they want to stand for. They can’t decide what problem they want to solve. They can’t decide who it is they want to help. And like those very confused house party guests. They’re kind of leaving going What the hell was that? What was that? Did I drink in the bar dry because they’re just thinking let’s just survive this and let’s face it, there’s a few people jumping in their Bentley’s and leaving early because they’re like, I haven’t got time for this. I’m gonna go to a party where I know what the vibe is gonna be okay. they own your party vibe peeps own your party vibe. What I’m saying here is had I play disco all night. Yeah, it would have alienated a lot of people that didn’t like disco, who were they don’t want to want to know Him. But for those who love disco, they’d be like, Oh my god, that was epic. And if I said, You know what gang, this is going to be a monthly thing is going to be discussed my first Saturday of every month, people would leave and be like, That was epic. That was really epic. I’m going to tell my friends about it. Next time I go, I’m going to definitely bring, like my brother and his girlfriend would love it too. And they would already be thinking of who they’re going to bring along, who they’re going to tell about this exclusive, awesome party. Because it’s really freaking cool.

And they’ll be able to communicate it really clearly to others. Because it’s so clean and clear and consistent. They’re like it’s a party you go to or you drink those margaritas and you listen to disco, and dance. And while the party that I had hosted, where there was all the kind of varying music and everything else all confusing, they wouldn’t be able to clearly communicate that they’d be like this weird wild party where there’s lots of various music going and it’s kind of confused, and people would be like, I don’t want to come to that. So clarity of your messaging is so important and understanding what you stand for. What’s the vibe, what what are people coming for? Are they coming for staunch, direct feminism? Are they coming for a barrel of laughs? Are they coming for grounded sensitivity and open mindedness? Spirituality? Well, what is it that they’re coming to you for? And what’s your own flavour of that, by the way, because just to say your spiritual just to say You are funny, just to say you are a feminist is not enough, like people want to know, what’s your own flavour of it? And the better you understand that the better. And most importantly, it’s one thing to be all of those things. But ultimately, it’s also understanding and how is that supporting you to support a particular problem? And how is that really, really ridiculously clear, because the most successful people in the online business space, you don’t just know them perhaps for one particular offer, but you associate them with a particular thing that they support you with. So that regardless as to how they wrap that kind of problem solving up, people still queue up to buy from them because they trust that person is an expert in that space.

Okay. And that’s what gives you the flexibility to create varying offers, which means that no matter what happens in this economic climate, no matter whether suddenly people are only buying low ticket or any buying high ticket, or buying everything in between or any buying online courses are only buying programmes, you are prepared, because people know you are the disco queen that serves the best margaritas. J got me. Okay, so that’s point number one, make sure you own the house party, own your brand, own what you stand for own, who you love to help own the problem that you solve, make sure if someone cannot really easily understand what problem you solve, then you’re going to find it really hard to sell to people. And that can tell you that it’s an offer kind of issue, rather than an eyeballs issue also means that by the way, as people start to bring their best friends along to this disco of yours, that as your following grows, you are growing your following with people who are primed and ready to buy from you because they’re following you for the right reason. And that’s why that clarity piece is so important. So it does help to start off having a clear idea, not necessarily as to what your offer is, but as to who you love to help and what area what space you’re claiming and taking up as to you know, what you stand for? And why people would be following you like what are you helping them with with your free content, and give generously give, give, give, so that people you know, can really get everything they need from you. Point number two, if you want to have that house full each month with new people they need to be hearing about it right?

How are they hearing about it? Are you encouraging the people that came along to that first party to tell all their friends about it? Are you putting up flyers and banners to make sure people are coming to that party, because you know, you can’t just rely on those same people that came to the first party coming along to the next one, they may have other obligations they might have spent, they’re going out money that last month and not have any money to come out the next time, they might not want to wear the same dress twice. There are various reasons as to why someone wouldn’t come to the same party twice, even if they had a great time. And it’s exactly the same with your clients. While there’s going to be a good percentage who will buy from you time and time again, there will also be a large percentage who won’t not necessarily immediately anyway, which means you need to have a constant flow of new people coming into your world. And they don’t necessarily need to be affiliates or affiliated to those people who came to you the first time although those people will be extra warm, because of that kind of trust that rubs off from the people that already like and have bought from you. But it’s more than that it’s having various strategies up your sleeve to ensure that you have a constant flow of new people coming into your world. So I stopped my list building ads in April and May and it’s no coincidence that in April and May I had my slowest Business Month as you know, it’s not true May was good. But April was very, very slow and June there was definitely a knock on effect to the fact that I had two months where I was not list building. And I could see it immediately. I could look at my stats I could look at the data and I could be like I have converted a really healthy percentage of my following right now.

So it’s not surprising right now that my organic efforts aren’t getting me very far. And I want everyone to feel that empowered to be able to see that immediately and understand what lever in their business they need to pull to ensure they’re getting more sales coming in. Because if you are going blue in the face constantly promoting to the very same people time and time again, like I say, they might have lost their disco shoes, they might not want to wear the same sparkles. Again, they might just be needing to take a bit of a break and set it out for the next one. So make sure that you have got other things lined up. So make sure you have got new people coming in to your house party, month after month, so that you never have to worry as to whether you’re going to have a full house or not. Okay, and it’s exactly the same with your business. I don’t know about you, but I certainly find sometimes thinking about real world examples really helps me to recognise Oh, of course, if I were to go down to my local pub, and promote what it is that I do, there wouldn’t be that many relevant people in the room, there probably only be a handful, maybe one or two, he’d be a good fit, and maybe only one who was in the financial circumstances to be ready to actually take action. So if you think about it, that way, it’s not surprising that a good percentage of your followers are will not be in a position to buy from you just yet, even if they’re into what it is that you’re doing. So in that case, you need to ensure that you are constantly growing your following and most importantly, constantly growing your mailing list.

Okay, that’s gonna be a whole subject for another podcast, because people quite often focus way more on their following than they do on their mailing list. And the mailing list is where the magic happens. That’s where the magic happens. So point number two. One is about owning the disco two, it’s about ensuring that you are constantly getting this offer in front of new eyes. Otherwise, you will not have a full house at your disco. Point number three, if let’s say you were kind of making a pretty regular recurring revenue from the 100 people that showed up to your house party, every single month, and you’re like, I’m kind of breaking even here, most people aren’t paying me a huge sum of money. And so while I’ve got 100 people in here, they’re all paying like 27 entry fee, how do I actually ensure that I’m no longer breaking even, and I’m actually making a good sum of money, let’s introduce a high ticket offer, let’s have a VIP booth. Now I know about my 100 People that are attending, probably only two to 3% can afford that high ticket upgrade. So that’s going to leave me with maybe, if it’s 1000 pounds per person, that’s going to be two to 3000 pounds, I’m going to make out of the 100 attendees that come. Now, this is what happens to so many people in the online business space, like oh, I’ve only managed to sell to two to three people or five to six people or I wanted to have 40 people sign up for my live launch.

Why have any 40 out of like 4000 followers signed up. And so often I’m having to help them do the maths and help them understand that actually, the number of people that have signed up out there list is really like not just normal, good. Most people’s lists aren’t big enough to have the size of conversions that they are looking for, particularly in the earliest stages, online businesses isn’t so pertinent, as people are an online business for longer, I think they start to understand the numbers better and start to understand it’s not unusual not to have 40 to 50 people converting when you’ve only got a list of like, I don’t know, let’s say for a live launch, you know you do you need to continuously be growing your list. And this is also why I don’t like list building in the context of live launching, because that’s under the assumption that someone can discover you and decide to give you a high ticket investment within like a week or two of discovering you and that a really healthy percentage of people are ready to do that. In my experience, such as so rarely is the case that so many occasions had support live launches.

And people would say to me, ah, so the advertising worked in that the cost per lead was good. I had a whole new bunch of people on my list. But to be honest with you, the majority of people that signed up were people who are already in my world. And the question I’d say to them was, yeah, but how long have they been in your world? How did they come into your world now be like, Oh, wait, actually, yeah, when I look at it, they did come through Facebook ads, but it was a launch or two ago. So really, it wasn’t really the answer. It was me I was the one warming them up. And I’m like, that’s not really how it works. Ultimately, if they discovered you via an ad, then the attribution is towards an ad, they may not have discovered you otherwise. And the truth is, there’s a healthy percentage of people that do need to be in your world before they decide to convert. And that’s why selling evergreen and allowing people to sign up whenever they desire to is so much healthier, because you’re not waiting on one week kind of time bracket every few months, and hoping a good percentage of people want to jump in. And instead of allowing people to take that empowered decision making upon themselves and approach you when the time is ready, which funnily enough, a good percentage do month upon month, which enables you to have that consistent recurring revenue, rather than feeling like you need to force people into making a decision. They’re not ready to make yet which is essentially what live launching often looks like if you’re in the early stages of building your online business, and you’ve only got a handful of people who’ve bought your high ticket offer.

To me, that’s an invitation to explore. Okay, so what happens when I grow my following, and that offer gets in front of more people, if that percentage remains the same. So if we take the analogy of the party I was sharing, if I need to three people say I made two to three grand out of 100 people that attended my party, no, maybe even one to be honest with you in this context wouldn’t be bad, you know, 1% would not be bad at all. You’d be like, Oh, sending me 1000 pounds, I don’t think it’s any point having a VIP base. However, if someone were to say, look, mate, come use my venue, because you’re getting loads of people in so I think we get 1000 people at this party, and that sell the same VIP booth offer. And if the same percentage convert, suddenly that two to three, looks like 20 to 30 out of 1000. And that’s suddenly 20 to 30,000 pounds you’re making on an events. Now, obviously, this is a slightly tenuous example, please don’t get too, too intimate with it. Because I’m sure there are some flaws, some holes in the analogy I’m making here. But when you imagine a room full of people, when you think about your subscriber list, and you imagine the very same number of people attending a party being in a room, even the number of people viewing your stories each day, even if you feel like that’s on the lower side, if you were to imagine speaking to that number of people day to day face to face. What would that mean for your business? I mean, it is what’s happening. But so many people underestimate it. I’ve had people say, Oh, I only have about 100 people viewing my stories each day, I’m like, that’s 100 people seeing your content every day. That’s not bad. Tell me any other contexts where you can do that just walking down the street or walking into tell me where you can find a curated following of people who are interested in the problem that you’re solving. So firstly, it’s about taking up space and knowing what it is you’re inviting people to. So that as you grow your following, you’re growing the correct kind of following. I know this should make sense.

But the amount of times people kind of say to me, I’m just going to grow my list while I figure out what I’m doing. And I’m like that list is going to be a convoluted diluted massive a list if you’re not really sure what it is that you’re helping people with. So it definitely helps understand the destination you’re inviting people to. Secondly, it’s understanding if you want a full house, ie a busy business, constant inquiries and consistent sales, then you need to ensure that you have a full house each week, which means ensuring that you’ve got new eyes coming into your business all the time that can look like going viral with reels and tick tock, I’ve supported clients who have an incredible organic invite. And that serves them really well. And paid advertising just helps that go further. Similarly, I’ve supported clients who do very little with their organic and rely solely on paid traffic and do amazingly with it. Visibility can take so many different guises. It can work in so many different ways.

The main question I always ask my clients when it comes to what their visibility strategy should be is what you have more of right now, time or money. If it’s time, then organic strategies are the way to go. And it’s employing the best of the best and really owning and understanding at least one platform. And if you have more money, then it’s ensuring that yeah, you’re putting some of it towards a paid advertising strategy, which means that for me, for example, I was away in Wales for a week last week. And they invited in 150, new leads just from running ads, which is beautiful. So it really does get to be that simple. And I didn’t spend a huge amount of money to make that happen either. And it was a very easy, easy investment to make, which enabled me to feel like my business was still working for me while I was taking time off, which is a lovely feeling. Thirdly, if Well, when you introduce your high ticket offer, do not be surprised if only a very small percentage of your following purchase it. In fact, even when you create a low ticket offer, do not be surprised if only a small percentage of your following buy it. As I’ve shared in the past, I do not see a huge difference between high ticket and low ticket offers in terms of their conversion rate, they tend to look very similar. So do not be surprised if it’s a smaller amount.

And instead, look at the data if a good percentage of people and when I say a good percentage, a good percentage can be as low as 1%. And as high as like three to 5%. If that percentage are already converting from your list to your offers, then you need to be growing your list. It is as simple as that. And I really hope this has saved you time because ultimately when we understand what is the issue at stake here, you know, you’ve got a million people on your Instagram, and 50,000 people on your mailing list and say you’ve introduced an offer and naught point naught naught 3% have bought it, then it’s 100% An offer thing, it’s the offer, or it’s a messaging around the offer. If however, it’s the opposite scenario, and you’ve got a smaller following, and you’ve only had a tiny handful of people who’ve bought your offer, that to me says you’ve got very strong foundations to start scaling from by scaling. It’s not really about that. But it’s about growing from some really strong foundations to grow from, which will enable you to be scaling your following scaling your mailing list so that you can make more of those sales. So do not be disheartened. If you are not seeing the number of sales that your competitors are having because chances are their numbers behind the scenes look very different to yours. You know it could be that someone has a very similar social media following to you.

But if their mailing list is two to three times the size, don’t be surprised if their launches look a lot bigger than yours. Or don’t be surprised if their evergreen sales look a lot better than yours. It’s because they have been working on their mailing list for longer than you are more assertively than you. And that is why they’re generating more sales. So like I say, sometimes it’s an offer issue. Other times it’s an eyeballs issue, make sure you understand which it is. So you can focus your attention and energy in the right space, either on refining and improving that offer, or on growing your following. And if you need help with either of those things, there are offerings within my office suite that support with both one with Facebook ads, and another one, which is up with my business mentorship. So just thought I’d drop that in there. All right, then. So I really really enjoyed sharing this with you. I hope you found it helpful. If you did, please do share it with your fellow business entrepreneur, friends, I would love for this to reach even more is next week, I’m going to be talking about high ticket buying trends. What do I mean by this? What I mean is that the way people buy and invest has changed over the last few months to a year.

And I have seen certain patterns and trends that will be relevant to you. If you’re wondering, why am I not converting as easily these days? Why are the kinds of conversations I’m having changing to the kind of conversations I used to have? And how do I continue to create consistent revenue and attract consistent high ticket clients in this current economic environment? Because what I will tell you is that there are a good number of people who is still converting day in day out really, really successfully. So it’s not to say that people aren’t buying but what I will say is the way they are buying has changed it has evolved and I will be speaking directly to that next week. So I hope you’ll be back to tune in for that episode. And in the meantime, I hope you’re having a great summer