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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, evergreen marketing expert and cushy business pioneer.

And in this episode, I’m talking about the data you need to be dialing down on to make more sales. And yes, this is a continuation of my walkthrough of the Cushy CEO Roadmap, because this is very much the theme of when we get beyond the cupcake stage, and we’re talking about the cherry on top and sprinkle and scale. When I initially talked about the phase, like cherry on top is essentially when we have a group program, when we’ve delivered it when we’ve got the feedback, when we understand what is and what isn’t working, it gives us the data we need to really recognize. What makes this group program really special? What makes the people I attract really special? What makes this unique in the market? And the better we can communicate that, the better we can dull in our brand authority and really stand out from any one that you may have previously considered as competition. So it’s really, really powerful, but there’s more to it than that. Like when I talk about dialing in, there’s various elements that you can dial in of your business to get you making significantly more scale sales scales. Can tell I’ve got something on my brain anyway. So when you’re clear on your strength, your strengths, and have used them to create your first evergreen group program and have made some sales from it, then it’s time to turn up the dial.

Yeah, I can be way more eloquent when I’m writing. Apparently, the reason why so many entrepreneurs are chasing their own tails is because they love to switch up their scaling recipes, and rather than tweak and refine, they do something entirely new. Are you guilty of that too? I mean, I see it all the time. I’ve already run that program. I don’t know if there’s anyone in my following who’s a good fit for it. Now, I don’t know if I’ve priced everybody out. Listen to one of the previous episodes, three or four back where I talk about the importance of list building to avoid being in that predicament. Okay, because the majority of times you just simply have rinsed your existing following. And I know that’s a really horrible phrase to use, but hey, ho, sometimes I’m pretty direct, and that’s just the truth. Now, ultimately, we’re a business, and we’re here to make sales, and it’s lovely that we create relationships and give value to those who aren’t interested in investing in us. But ultimately, of course, we couldn’t afford to be doing this and giving value the way we do if they weren’t a nice, healthy percentage of people equally going, hmm, that chick knows her shit. I think I’m gonna go work with her anyway. So the challenge at this stage is people often get distracted. They’ll see some other kind of offer by maybe a competitor, or see some ad saying this is the offer you need, and rather than continue focusing on filling their group program. Or maybe they’ve made the mistake of running cohort programs where, you know, there’s you can’t be enrolling all the time. So in the meantime, they’re like, well, let’s, you know, create a low ticket offer so that I can make sales in the interim period. Essentially, it’s almost like your group program is a plate that’s already spinning, and you essentially go, I know I’m gonna do I’m gonna find three more plates to spin at the same time.

It’s gonna be great. It’s not it’s not gonna be great. Can you tell I went to drama school so you can get distracted building new offers. And this is where I see people coming back to me saying things like, oh my god, I created this low-ticket offer, but I think it’s cannibalizing my core offer, because everyone thinks it sounds like it solves the same problem. And now, yes, I’m making £67 sales, but I’m only making five of them, where before I’d be making five, £3000 sales, and everything just doesn’t feel right. That can happen. Sometimes it’s that they’re like mentor hopping or business coach hopping. And of course, that mentor or coach comes along with a shiny new strategy, and rather than allowing the previous strategy that they’ve been working on to embed they start doing something entirely new, or focus on an entirely new area of their business, maybe PR, maybe SEO, maybe Pinterest. And it’s not to say that these things, because all by the way, these things do all play a role, a very important role, in how we generate evergreen sales. However. There is a time and a place, and there is a priority order, and prioritizing the wrong things at the wrong time can slow down your sales, which then suddenly make the investment you’ve made in those things suddenly feel disproportionate to the results you’re getting. It’s just not going to feel great.

And what happens in that time is people suddenly abandon their new Pinterest strategy, abandon their new SEO strategy, abandon that investment in ads because they’re not seeing enough sales coming through. And they’re back to the drawing board, and they’re back to creating something entirely new, again, not taking the learnings from what they’ve done previously, but doing something new, because that feels safer than going back to the thing that didn’t work the first time. Can you see why this idea could be flawed? Can you see how if you were talking to your child, if you have a child or a family member, about if they were like, well, I made the brownies, and I think the oven was a bit too high, but they came up burnt. So yeah, next week I’m going to make a lasagna. I mean, I love brownies and I love lasagna, so maybe that’s not such a great example. But can you see that, you know, if they were like, if you’re eating on chewing some, like, uncooked lasagna sheets, and then having that bird brownie afterwards, and then being like, just not getting better, because every time they’re just trying a new recipe, rather than just tweaking and refining the recipe they had in front of them, business strategies genuinely are like recipes. As you can probably tell by now, if you’ve been following any of my marketing, it really, really is. And most people, quite simply, do not have the patience to keep on tweaking and refining, and they are way more turned on by the new thing, okay, like, if you’ve been in a long-term relationship or a marriage, or if you’re still looking after that pet that’s gone all manky, give your business that same love and dedication that you’re giving to other areas of your life. It deserves it, okay? And, yeah, the other thing, which I’ve already referenced, actually, in my guide, I was reading it online distracted by individual tactics, but I’ve already touched on that when I talked about, you know, whether you’re getting distracted by, you know, by the way, like, I say, I’m not criticizing Pinterest strategies or any of those things, because, like, I say, they can actually really elevate your efforts with Evergreen, but where you dedicate your time and energy should be proportionate to the results you get on the other side. And long-term strategies, while they’re a really sensible thing to have, you do want to be balancing that with money now, money later activities, and I think I did a whole podcast episode called money now, money later, if you want to explore that theme more. But as I put in bold in my guide, here’s a reminder, dopamine does not pay the bills, and a lot of what I’ve just been referring to is you seeking dopamine. Because what’s really unhealthy is so many of us are way more excited by doing something new, where there is a promise, a possibility of money and profit on the other side than doing the thing that hasn’t worked the first time. I’ve got some shame around that. I’ve got the why me? Why is it not work for me? Why does it work for other people? That doesn’t make me feel great? I think I’m going to project that onto that coach, or I’m going to project that onto that strategy. I’m going to project that onto the industry, not healthy, not healthy. When you’re focusing on your business growth, leave your ego at the fucking door. And I just swore that’s how much that no but it really is. It really is. I so regularly remind my clients when we are getting in our heads about various things around visibility or making invitations. Stop thinking about you and start thinking about the impact you’re here to make. Start thinking about looking after your business. Start thinking about looking after the people in your world, and you will no longer get so serious and overthinking everything and worrying about things and doing all the things and being busy and being in the do to avoid actually being with the discomfort of, okay, so this time, it didn’t work.

What did I learn? Like that whole really cheesy phrase, I have no idea who coined it the first time, something along the lines of, there’s no such thing as failures. There’s only like learnings at wins and learnings. Or I can’t remember exactly how it goes, but you get the gist. You know it is true, those who succeed the soonest are those who also fail the fastest. If you take one thing from this episode, please take that and download my freebie. Ops anyway, so if you trusted, and this comes back to my masterpiece energy that I talk about a lot, but if you trusted that the offer you had built was industry leading, would you focus your energy on creating different offers or getting more eyeballs on your masterpiece? Piece. So this kind of slowing down to speed up exercise is so important when you’ve got a great offer, because consistency and analyzing the data are all fundamental to being a successful CEO. And if you don’t like spreadsheets, do not worry your fair head.

10:21

You can get a team member to do it, but you do need to know the top line data. You need to be watching, I’m sorry, it’s just the truth, or have a team member who can translate the meaning of it to you. But you do need to know these things. So I’m going to tell you the questions you need to be looking at to be understanding how you can create consistent sales for your business. So one of them is a really important, really basic one, but one that so many people cannot tell me when I ask them, is, how many clients do you need to attract per month to hit your financial goals if you’ve priced your program correctly? Sometimes this number can be as low as like, I don’t know, three to five new clients. When it’s three clients, what one less than one per week, less than one per week, what do we need to do to attract three clients, particularly when we think about that 1% conversion rate and three to 5% in your warm world, where are question number two, where are most of your leads coming from this is really important to know. Why am I saying this, by the way, why does all this matter? Before I get to questions, 345, your data is what you need to understand. You don’t need to be distracted by other tactics, other strategies, other ways of growing if you know, like, if you, for example, were to see, oh my god, that abandoned Pinterest account is resulting in 5000 hits on my website a week. Then yeah, baby, knock yourself out with a Pinterest strategy. Go find out how you can get more of that good stuff. However, if you answer the question that the majority of your leads are coming from your guest podcasts, or they’re coming from your podcast, or they’re coming from your incredibly shit, hot, real strategy, which, let’s face it, some people are born with it, baby. Some people aren’t. I’m joking, but sometimes it can feel like that. But you know, where are they coming from? This is so important to know, and if you haven’t got kind of like, I don’t know, Google Analytics set up in a way that helps you understand that. Please, God, do that. Please, please. It’s so simple to do. Set your Google Analytics up so that you can understand where, in fact, you don’t need to set it up. You can, well, you do need to set it up, but it’s really not complicated. You can literally go into their reports and analytics to see where your leads are coming from. But equally, when people follow on, you know, Instagram and all the rest, reach out to them and say, Hey, welcome to my world. What brought you here? Where did you come from? I love knowing these things. You know, hello, welcome. If you’re on the people I’ve sent that message to, I love to know how people discover me.

So once we know where your leads are coming from, that’s great. But let’s say you got, I don’t know, 100 new leads from some random collaboration, but you didn’t get one sale. I don’t think we necessarily need to focus on going back to that collaboration to get more leads, if they’re not necessarily a good fit. Okay, so we also want to know question number three, where are most your sales coming from? By the way, if you’re liking these exercises, I have this fantastic mini course called cushy cash flow. It’s actually half price in August. If you try and think how you can find it, if you basically Well, once you’re on my list, you will then actually get a discount, a 50% discount off what is already a very cheap offer, and it literally supports you with how to make more money without needing to do without, like, encouraging you to do some brand new crazy thing. It’s all about elevating what you have already to make more money. I know that doesn’t sound very sexy, but it’s fast. It’s a two-week sales sprint. And people have had like, multi six No, not sorry, multi five figure. Multi six figure would be a stretch. But you know, over that, I think least Lisa made 1006 $600 from a £47 investment. I mean, that’s not bad going right in the space of two weeks. Come on now. So if you’re liking these questions, and would like to kind of know even more how to leverage where your revenue is coming from, and how to get more of it. This is a random pitch. Random pitch. I didn’t I’ll be doing, but, yeah, go check it out.

But anyway, question number three, where your sales coming from? Because if you know where they’re coming from, you can attract more. Sometimes people have turned around to me and said, Oh, right now, it’s referrals. I know it’s not ideal. I know want it to be from funnels. I’m like, That’s okay, though. Like, if you need more sales right now, let’s not worry about the long-term goal to build out your funnels. If you know a lot of time, like, you know what? There’s actually one person who’s, like, consistently referred, I don’t know one person a month to me, why do you reach out to that one person again and say, Thank you so much. Is there? You know, like, send them a hamper. Say thank you. Take them out for dinner, whatever, and make it really, really cool. There that you welcome those you know do something to sweeten that relationship and express your gratitude and make it really, really clear that the invitation is there for you know, as many, whatever it is, but you know, think on your feet. Think on your feet. My friend, don’t get distracted by some Facebook ad strategy that could take months to like optimize. Think with what you have already. So that was question number three, where are most yourselves coming from? Now let’s get to question number four, hot, relevant collaborations exist within your network to help you get in front of more dream fit clients. I mean, it’s impossible if you’d have a following and a mailing list already and not already have some relevant people in your network, and if you don’t, please this is my invitation to you to start networking and focusing on your peer-to-peer relationships, because they are potent.

My friends, they are really potent. I mean, to be honest with you, I’m a bit simple, and I just like them. For the company, I love to be on a boat with other people who get what it’s like to be on that boat. And I’m not going to lie, it’s also resulted in some fabulous opportunities to be on some great podcasts and to I mean, all the opportunities are endless. Okay, you just never know where that connection, that relationship, could take you, even if it’s as simple as just getting them on an Instagram Live and getting in front of their following and them getting in front of you, how much money do you need to generate organically to comfortably invest a small budget in growing your audience month on month? This is such a simple concept, and one I see people overlooking all the time. Oftentimes people associate advertising with it needing to be really stretchy, really uncomfortable, really risky, and actually where we just understand there is a certain budget that’s going aside for growing your following with paid ads, it’s just going to make your life so much easier. I don’t know anyone who’s moved to ads and been using them long term and not turn around and said, Oh my god, it’s so nice to have a holiday to have money coming in, to have surprise payments while I’m sat on my sunbed, but you also don’t want to be on that sunbed thinking, Is my holiday budget about to be blown on ads? Right? There is the flip side to that as well, but the truth is, there’s only so much that organic growth can do for you. And one great stat I saw, trying to remember who it’s from, can’t remember who it’s from. But anyway, they were saying when you hit 100k in revenue, you should be spending more of your time on paid ads and less of it on your organic strategy. And that is so entirely true, and that is where I see so many people getting stuck. Anyway, we have come to a nice, little tidy end, and I’ve still managed to run really, really far. So the next episode is going to be about what to do when you have got to six figures, or maybe multi six figures, and you’re still feeling miles away from seven and not knowing what you need to do to get there next. And I’ll be using this Cushy CEO Roadmap to inspire that conversation. Again, if you are feeling impatient to know what is coming next, all you need to do is go to the link in show notes and download this delicious Guide, which I’ve thrown so much heart into, as I hope you can hear from listening to this episode, and yeah, if you liked this episode, if you found it helpful, please give it a review, give it a share. Give me a tag. I always, always, always, love to hear from you. And as always, I’m so, so grateful for your support. See you next week.