Welcome to Less Is the Strategy, the podcast that helps you to simplify in order to scale. My name is Ant Hodges, I'm the author of the book Simplify the Funnel. And my mission is to help entrepreneurs and experts grow businesses online, serving people, having an impact around the world, but to do it in such a way that they keep things simple. Simple scales at the end of the day. I will often say, complexity kills and simplicity scales. That is the truth, that's what I wrote in my book. And if you want a copy of my book, head over to Amazon and search for Simplify the Funnel, or you can get access to it and additional resources over at simplifythefunnel.com.
Now today's episode, today's podcast, is really just an overflow from a conversation that happened inside my Simplify Business community. Those who agree and dovetail and want to simplify, and want to come on this journey with me, can join me inside my Simplify Business community. It's a membership. I'm live every Monday answering questions in that community for them. I provide training and insight. But one of the things that I love is, I love to bring a challenge to people when they pose a question. I won't necessarily answer the question sometimes. And I guess this is what a good coach does. It's something that I know my coach has done to me many times. And in ten years of me being a coach, certified as a master coach this year, it's something that I know I've done many, many times. Because coaches ask great questions. They get you thinking. They don't necessarily give you answers to the questions that you are asking, because that's more consultancy, that's more like the mentoring side of things. A coach is there to ask great questions, to help you realize within yourself, sometimes, that something different needs to happen, something different needs to change.
And one of the community members asked me a question this week. And they were basically talking about how their main core service is selling well in their business. And there was a bit of a complexity monster starting to creep into their thinking. Obviously, I'm all about simplifying. I'm all about making sure that we have what I call the minimum viable funnel setup in our business, where we basically have traffic that gains us an audience. We're putting content out there that's driving traffic to our content, to our website, to our offers. We have no brainer offers, not necessarily just freebies, but we have low priced products that give value and build lists of buyers rather than just freebie hunters. We have human conversion events, and we have a core offer. That's the minimum viable funnel in ten seconds.
But the main crux of this question came from the fact that this person was feeling a little stuck in their business. And they feel like their main core service was selling well and delivering results extremely well, and they felt like they needed to do more in their business. They felt like maybe another revenue stream could be there, or another offer could be there. And the question came, what else could I add to my offering, what else could I add to my business?
And I asked the question, what's prompting you to think this way? And the answer came back, well, that's what everybody says, we need more streams of income to create more revenue in the business. And I said, but who says that? Because if we look today at all of the most successful gurus, entrepreneurs, experts in this kind of knowledge commerce space, they'll have maybe two, three, and at the most probably like four offers. And what they're outwardly marketing is probably only one or two. Because the third and fourth offer typically would be reserved for higher paying clients, or maybe clients who want to graduate to the next level, or even simply by invitation only into things like mastermind programs, or even one to one work with them. The other products and programs that they will have will be self study, self paced, maybe community based products, and maybe even group programs. They won't necessarily be out there all the time marketing all three or four of their offers all the time.
And taking some kind of temperature across the community when this question was answered, I kind of saw that a few other people's light bulbs went on, when I basically said, I just don't feel like you need to add something else. What about just doubling down on what you're doing right now, that is moving the needle for your business? What about taking all of the marketing, all of the funnel kind of work that you're doing, what about taking the conversations that you're having with people to sell your core service right now, and doubling down on making them twice as good, three times as good, five times as good as they are right now? Because if you've got an offer that's proven to sell, there will be a number of factors that is stopping you from maybe hitting some of your revenue goals, that does not include an answer of creating another offer or creating another product.
So let's explore the factors that will impact why you're not generating sales, if you've got maybe one core offer, or a couple of different things that are leading to that core offer, and why it's not generating sales.
The first thing I'd say is that people who make more sales make more offers. It's a phrase that I've used for years, and it's so true. If you make more offers, you will make more sales. It's not a maths game or anything like that. It's just a simple case that if you put more offers out there, and your conversion rate when someone sees an offer doesn't change, then you will actually make more sales. That's the numbers game, and we don't need to overthink anything more than that. If, as an example, right now every week 100 people see your offer and 20 people buy it, if 200 people see your offer or hear your offer, and your conversion rate doesn't change, then you've got 40 people who've become customers. I've not said that you need to tweak everything in your sales funnel to increase that number. I've just said do one thing, make more offers.
So the first thing you need to think about is, how many conversations are you having, how many people are seeing your offers right now? And change the dynamic of your marketing, tweak your availability for calls and increase your availability, and make more offers for people.
There's a consultant that I was working with a few months back, and he was running a monthly live webinar. And that webinar tended to convert fairly well. He was running both paid advertising, plus also invitations through LinkedIn organic messaging, directly to register for this monthly webinar. And every month he would present pretty much the same content and have the same offer, and it was converting well for him. Based on his advertising spend only, he was generating about an 11x return on investment. So for every dollar he put into advertising, he got 11 back in terms of conversion. So he was kind of happy, and things were ticking along, he was earning enough. But the question he said to me was, how do I improve my webinar, how do I get more conversions? And I'm like, I don't feel like you need more conversions. I think you need to make more offers, I think you need to show up more.
How about, for the next four weeks, run it live once a week? And he's like, okay, well, I can't do it this week, next week there's these things on. And he was looking at his calendar, and he was kind of making excuses. He had time in his calendar to move things around a little bit and shift things around, and run five live webinars, Monday to Friday. And it wasn't the following week, it was the week after. The times were tweaked slightly. We set up the registration page so that people could choose which webinar they wanted to attend. It was guaranteed that they were all live, that there would be no replay, so that people actually showed up live. All of those kind of things. And the advertising, because it was already working to drive people to the registration page, and they were getting registrations every time he switched the ads on for two weeks before, we just switched the ads on permanently for the month. That 11x ROAS that he was getting, from advertising spend to sales, went to 26 ROAS. And he onboarded so many more clients, because what he did is he made himself more available, and he made more offers in that month.
The thing about something like a webinar, like this, how do I get my webinar to convert better... sometimes it's simply not about changing the webinar. Simply, this one thing was, become more available, make more offers, run more webinars. And so the first thing, if you're stuck in a revenue trap right now, and you're thinking what else can I add to my business, without adding complexity to your business by adding a new product that you need to release and launch and start to market and educate people about what it is and all of these kind of things, take an offer that's already converting right now and make more offers. Position it more frequently in front of more people. And that's the first thing.
The second thing that I really want you to think about and hunker down on, when thinking about adding something else to your business, is, will it cannibalize anything else in the business? What I mean by this is, if you're thinking, okay well, and let's take AI as an example, because it's a big hot topic right now... I'm gonna create this kind of AI tool and bot that does this part of what I do for people, and instead of me having to do it, or my team having to do it, this AI could do it, and therefore, and this is the thinking, I can charge less for it because we're not doing it, the AI is doing it. I'm talking about maybe like a tool, or a system that helps people to get the result that they would normally get when they work with you directly and your team.
I've seen many, many people, and I've seen service providers doing this. They want to get more clients on board, they want to generate more revenue, so they create this kind of tool, thinking, okay well, people will just be able to interact with it, I'm not selling my time anymore, I'm selling access to this tool. And even, maybe as a freelance web designer as an example, I could create a tool that builds people's websites for them, and they could literally just sign up to the tool, enter a few things, prompts, put some pictures in there, hit a button, and it does it for them. Granted, that is something that you could do if you wanted to switch your model to that. But what building that AI tool does, in my opinion, is it cannibalizes your expertise and the human experience that you can bring to a project that is truly valuable.
The value of a product or service is in the transformation that it brings to people. And my question would be, as an example with this web design example, is having an AI building a web page or a sales page for you going to bring that transformation over and above the human expertise that someone can bring to a project? To ask you the right questions, to really understand the nuance of your offer and your audience, to build on the experience that they've had of maybe selling into that industry before? I don't think so. It's that human experience coupled with the delivery that is gonna make the difference.
And so, when I said don't add something that's kind of cannibalizing your offers, what you effectively are doing is just commoditizing your experience into an AI product, saying, well, AI can do it for me. But this is the fear that many service providers live in right now. They've got this fear of AI, because they fear that AI is taking all their jobs and stuff. And so, to actually think, I need to generate more revenue, well, let's create something that the customers want... the reality is, some surveys and research that are out there right now show that upwards of 60% of consumers, when they see AI created content, switch off from a brand and never switch back on. If your content, and whatever you're creating, is fully created with AI, and there's no human interaction with it, there's no human element in it, then they switch off. So I'm like, let's focus on putting the human in the front end and the AI in the back end.
Now, as a freelancer, if you wanted to develop something that would help you to speed up the process, then think about the processes that don't change, and the processes that could be done after you bring your expertise. So in terms of this web design example, I published a video over on YouTube recently that talked about a way in which I can connect Claude, which is my preferred AI tool of choice, to Kajabi, which is the platform that I build my entire business on. And they're linked together with what's called an MCP. It's basically just like a short little program that helps Claude talk to my Kajabi, and enables Claude to do stuff in my Kajabi.
The example that I ran through on my YouTube video recently was, we wrote out a sales page, we built it in Figma and designed it all in Figma, we exported it as an HTML page, and that's what we sent to the client for preview. Then I took that HTML, which was designed and written by a human, and we plugged it into Claude, and we asked Claude to build that page in Kajabi for us. We specifically asked it to use the building blocks of the Kajabi page builder, so it was natively in there and it was editable afterwards. We asked it not to change any of the content and copy and structure of the page, and we asked it to utilize the images and the branding that we'd used in the design, to match as close as possible. And it pretty much did it. There was a few tweaks on the back end, but what that did is save around four hours of time.
Now, as a website designer or a sales page builder, for instance, if you can save four hours but you still charge the same amount, because you're charging based on the result you're giving your client rather than on the number of hours that you're billing, that will help you to grow your business. It's not about creating something that's gonna cannibalize the offer that you do. It's about thinking, I need to keep human in the front office, I need to put AI in the back office. What are the tasks as part of this process that I could bring AI into that will help me speed up the delivery, without cannibalizing pricing or anything like that? And that's just one example of, you know, utilizing web design for like sales page building, that could help you to deliver an amazing service for your clients.
The third thing that I want you to think about, when you're thinking what else can I add to my business to generate more revenue, but to actually take complexity out and keep things simple, is to actually ask yourself, how much human interaction am I having with my audience? Human interaction has proven, even in this age of AI, to convert into sales much better, much easier. You're actually having conversations with people, you're actually showing up as the real you. You haven't cloned yourself and created AI avatars and then scripted things and then asked it to start posting everywhere. Because literally, you're not gonna be able to be everywhere all the time, so people are gonna see that it's AI content.
There's gonna be things... I saw an AI avatar recently of someone, and he was sat there at his desk, and he had his hands in front of him, and literally his hands looked really odd. And I couldn't work out what it was. And basically, the way that his hands were, he had two thumbs on one of his hands that were just poking up. And I was just like, this is what I'm talking about. The integrity of showing up as you is massively important in your marketing, and in your communication, and the way you interact with your audience, with your community, and with your people.
And I want you to just audit your business. I want you to look at the touch points with your brand for your audience, and I want you to ask, am I showing up as humanly as I can in that moment? I'm not talking about having to have a physical conversation with every single person. There are ways in which you can show up in a human way that bypasses an AI bot or an avatar doing the job for you, which means that you'll make a stronger connection with your audience.
For instance, on my own website, I had a button which was like a chatbot, so for inquiries. I changed that, I now have a WhatsApp button. If people click that, then they get one automated response that I manage through ManyChat, and that basically asks them how can I help, gives them some options. When that then comes through, it's triggered on my phone, so that I can literally see the message and respond humanly. And nine times out of 10, because it's on my phone, I actually respond by doing a selfie style video straight to them. And that selfie style video is literally just me recording a message back to them, calling them out by name, talking about what they wanted, and starting the conversation. I then may continue the conversation in text format, but it's not an AI avatar that's replying back to them. It is me. It will be wherever I am. So if I'm in the studio, or if I'm maybe in the car, I've just parked up, I might just do a selfie while I'm in the car. I might be walking around. And that brings that human connection.
The second thing is, have your sales pages got videos on them? Do you create enough video? Because when you're going over to YouTube, when you are engaging with video, and you see the whites of someone's eyes and you connect with them, there's something magical that happens. There is a human connection that is made through video. And consistently showing up and making that human connection is important. So do it from a genuine, authentic perspective.
I've seen many AI avatars who will literally be sat there looking at the camera, and they'll be talking, and they never move eye contact away from the lens. If you've ever been in a conversation, you know that people will look from side to side, and they'll think, they'll be distracted by things. I even like... there's one guy that I love, I love his content, I love his work, he's a guy called Taki Moore. Whenever you watch a video of him, he's just like all over the place, he's looking all over. There's no way an AI avatar could copy what he does, because it's just not authentic. And literally, I implore you to stop using AI avatars in your videos. If you're using them, just pay the Zoom tax, as some people call it. You know, getting ready for the video, just make sure you're in an environment that you can record something, that you can put your phone on a little tripod and you can record stuff, that you can just be yourself and talk and connect.
Those three things are the three things that I would really want you to knuckle down and focus on if you need to generate more revenue in your business, and if you're sat there thinking, what else can I add to my business? Simplicity scales and complexity fails. You know, I think all too often we are ingrained with a lot of messages from business people over the years, and even like corporate people. If you're in a corporate business thinking about adding another revenue stream to that business, maybe creating another product means 12, 24, even 36 months of development work to get it right, to launch something proper. They don't just think on a Friday, oh, I need to launch something, spend the weekend creating something, and launch it on a Monday. They do the work properly. But it takes time to get something right like that.
And actually, if you've got offers that are working in your business right now, doubling down on making more offers, doubling down on making the human connection, doubling down on being and running a simpler, leaner business, is how you're gonna be able to scale.
If you agree with me, if you don't agree with me, I'd love to know your thoughts. If you're watching this video on YouTube, then drop your comments and let me know your thoughts. My name is Ant Hodges, this is Less Is the Strategy, the podcast that will help you to simplify and scale your business. Please, if this message has resonated with you today, and you think other people will appreciate this, please do share this episode with others. If you're in a community and somebody's been asking these questions that specifically talk about this, I want you to share it, so that they avoid falling into that hustle and complexity trap that has been preached that we need to do. Simplicity is the way forward. Let's simplify and scale our businesses. I've been Ant Hodges, I look forward to speaking with you on the next episode of Less Is the Strategy.