What I’ve Learnt About Money in 2024
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In the final podcast episode of 2024, I’m diving into everything this year taught me about money, growth, and building a business that works for you. From streamlining my offers to smashing a 20x return on ad spend (yes, 20x!), this episode is a juicy one.
What I talk about:
How we made 2024 our most profitable year yet
Why you’re the only one holding yourself back from making bold business moves.
The value of a diversified offer suite.
How a small shift in your identity transforms your ability to receive wealth
Why I believe every business owner should explore ads in 2025.
Resources:
Follow me on Instagram @PandoraPaloma_
Join us in London for the Scale in a Day Retreat HERE
Learn more about Consultancy & 1:1 offers HERE
Join Be Reel HERE
Transcript
Hello, hello and welcome to this episode of the podcast.
This is a big deal, guys, because at the time of recording this episode on the 11th of December, my last official working day of 2024 is tomorrow and then I am off for three whole weeks.
It's been a big deal and it has taken me a long time to get to this point in the business where I'm able to do that financially, mentally, logistically.
It has taken me a lot of inner work to get to a point where
I feel really confident in that decision that I have made.
Because it's not just about December, I'm actually taking August and December off from now. I made that decision a couple of months ago. I put it into my client contracts, and you know what, everyone was like,
‘bold move’,
‘bloody love it'.
‘Really inspiring.’
‘Also going to do the same’.
The one thing that I will start this podcast episode with today is
when you know that you want to do business differently, fucking choose it and own it.
Because 9 times out of 10, actually, those who really value the work that you do will be okay with it.
The only person that tends to create the problem is you.
And actually, when you can allow yourself to anchor into ‘this isn't a problem’. ‘This is just the way it is now’. ‘This is my standard’ - people will just acclimatise to that new standard, which feels good.
We have had our best year in business and I thought I would do my final episode of 2024 sharing with you what I have learnt about money this year.
The first thing to share is that,
every year I believe the opportunity to make more money expands.
Now why do I believe that?
First of all, every year for me, I have expanded my knowledge. I have invested a lot in mentors, courses, being in rooms with people in LA, which comes at a cost, to learn and become a master of business.
Which means that every year the opportunity to make more money expands. Because I am learning how to expand that money and getting myself in the room with people who energetically uplift and upgrade me to be a master expander this year.
What I mean by that is in 2025, in the year ahead, if you know what you're doing, if you are mastering business, building knowledge, choosing a new standard, the industry has a lot to offer and I'm really excited about what 2025 gets to look like.
Not just for me (and I will share some of my personal goals), but also for my clients, of course, because what I feel like a big learning for me has been about money this year is that when you choose to do things differently, when you make the decision and you set the goal and you decide your priorities, you set the foundation for a breakthrough year.
Some of the most successful business strategies are the most simple.
And I believe that 2025 will be a breakthrough year for people who are smart with their sales funnels, they are smart with their thought leadership and they are smart with how they are building their brand. That's been a big priority for us in 2024, which is why I believe that we've seen the results that we have.
So, let me give you the context. Our 2024 goals were to have more reoccurring revenue on a monthly basis, to take our ads in house.
And knowing that the average return on ad spend was x4, I was happy with anything between four and six. Our return on ad spend for 2024 was 20x. For every pound that I spent, I made £20 in revenue. Average is four. This is huge.
And then also in 2024, I wanted to streamline my offers. And the reason why I wanted to do that, and this is part of a prediction that I have for next year, is that I am a very, very much a high ticket offer business. And when we introduced Be Reel three months ago, we converted 30 - 35 people into that membership off the bat. So I knew at that point, (it was something I was sensing) is that having a really different price point in the business will be something that will support you.
As we go into 2025, knowing that the economy has changed and may continue to change, it makes sense to have something that is lower cost with a very, very tangible outcome, of which the Be Reel membership is. It is your weekly template for content. It cuts your marketing time in half. It's a no brainer investment, because I also knew that I wanted to invest my time in supporting business owners in a way deeper way.
Intimacy has always been one of my core values.
I decided three months ago that I wanted to move back into 1:1 work. And so, Becoming has become my 1:1 space which looks very similar to what Expand to 7 the Mastermind looked like. in a slightly different way. So what I have created in Becoming is that there's a lower baseline and an additional 10% fee for any additional revenue that is made within the time frame that I work with my client. And that ultimately means that my success is their success, my success is your success.
I am, I believe, the only person in the UK who uses this model.
I've called it the Unity model. It really works for me because I have invested multiple thousands this year.
I invested £30,000 in mentoring and I have seen an incredible result from that investment.
But the result hasn't necessarily been financial.
The result that I've seen has been in the network and the knowledge and the building of knowledge, which has been invaluable.
However, it did get me thinking about how I would want to receive £30,000. And really what came through was I would love to receive £30,000 from a client, but I would only love to receive that knowing that they have made a substantial amount more.
And that's really where that came from.
If I can support you to increase your revenue by £300,000 (which I know I can do, I've done it before), you pay me £30,000 of that.
That's my reward for supporting you to make £300,000.
And that feels really delicious.
Now, knowing that I wanted to open up my 1:1 services, it meant that my Expansion Accelerator Mastermind, which has been my signature offer for the last four years, had to be reworked.
And what became clear is that I really want to train people with the knowledge that I have.
I've been working in marketing for 20+ years now. I started working in marketing when I was 18 and I'm now 39 years old. And I haven't just learned the absolute foundations of marketing and PR and communications, but I obviously now have been running my own business for the last eight years, five of which as an online service provider.
And what I realised is that I have the skills and the knowledge, and a big part of what I want to do in 2025 is share that knowledge with you.
That's where the 6 Figure Sales Strategy has come in. There is coaching, of course, and I am going to hold your being in that, but not at the level that I was in my mastermind, just simply because of the way that it's run and the features of the training.
It really is like learning this step by step so that you can ultimately know what I know that has helped me build the business that I've built.
And so that is now my office suite.
We have the Be Reel membership, we have the 6 Figure Sales Strategy, which is a training. And then I have my Becoming 1:1
So that is how we have streamlined my offer. And it means that I'm able to continue servicing more and more women every year.
We have a big goal to have 500 women in Be Reel and 150 through the doors of the 6 Figure Sales Strategy. With Becoming, I can work with five women at a time due to the level of intimacy that is required in that space. And I'm able to be able to do that because of the way in which we have tweaked that product offer.
So that's that piece and it feels super exciting and we've really achieved that.
We have had our best year in business. I really don't think I could have done it without, first of all, putting the repeatable sales systems in place.
As you may know, if you've listened to me for a long time, I work with a fusion of live launching and then automated sales funnels. And by weaving those two together, you create a really beautiful foundation and a really smart harmony in the business.
Knowing that you can lean into Facebook ads and automations if you want to, but you're also nurturing and growing a warm audience. So your existing audience and you could go either way, you could choose one. I personally feel that having the skill set of both means that if you don't want to be using your profit on Facebook ads, you're still able to scale your business because you've nurtured (or are nurturing) a very warm audience.
So the way that I teach the method that I teach means that we've seen incredible results.
There's a couple of other things that I would say have had a big impact on the results that we've seen this year.
One has been really prioritising nurturing my warm audience and community building, and of course being super consistent.
I talk about consistency a lot, but there's never a week that I don't post.
There's never a week that we don't have either a newsletter or a podcast coming out, and we do aim to do that on a weekly basis.
I'm very consistent.
So the goals for 2025 to streamline my time.
Coaching versus training, as I've mentioned in the 6 Figure Sales Strategy, 100 women in Be Reel by the end of the year. 150 coming through the 6 Figure Sales Strategy, and then working with five women within the 1:1 space.
We have some other goals.
I would like to get to
100,000 downloads on the podcast,
10,000 subscribers on the email list
and 30,000 on Instagram.
We have some marketing goals specifically.
But a big thing for me next year is now that I have streamlined my offer to actually just really focus on building those two core offers.
I won't be having to build sales funnels for Becoming because people find me, and they tend to be previous clients that I've worked with in either TEA or the 6 Figure Sales Strategy.
So that's the learnings.
What have I learned about money in 2024?
The first thing is that building a repeatable sales funnel is key.
We all want to be working smarter and not harder. The term freedom based business has been having its moment, and of course, because we all want more freedom.
We all want to have more time to live the life that we want to live.
More time with our children, more time with our families, less time on Zoom.
I believe 2025 will be the year that no one is going to want an extra Zoom call. We want people to help fix our problem, and how we do that, we get to choose.
But I don't think it's the year of extra calls and extra Zooms.
I think actually people just want way more of a Done For You service.
I do believe that 1:1 will become increasingly popular.
That's a whole other trends podcast that perhaps I will do for the new year. But we are working and wanting to work smarter, not harder. We are wanting more freedom. So building those repeatable sales funnels is so, so, so key.
You want to have your automations on Manychat set up.
You want your sales system working for you so that ultimately you're creating a whole bunch of freedom for you to live the life that you want to live.
Now another learning for me in 2024 has been,
actually having a tier of those price points will benefit the bottom line of your business.
To date, we have been very much a high ticket offer and we've seen a really good success in Q4 of 2024 with introducing a lower price point offer.
What we have also done is started to introduce lower cost product offers.
There was a moment for about 18 months where those low ticket $97 products just didn't really sell.
People were opting in for higher ticket.
But what we're seeing now as the economy has changed, is that actually those lower ticket offers that do solve a problem (they have to really solve a tangible problem or be a tangible solution to a problem) will have started to work again. And we're seeing great success with that.
So having a tier of price will work in 2025. And that's been a big learning for us that we'll obviously take into next year.
And then another big thing that I have learned about money this year is that
mindset is not just about mindset.
Mindset is part of the bigger piece. A bigger piece when it comes to building the capacity to receive more money.
And it's your identity.
You have to completely shift your identity.
And this is something I have personally experienced this year in holding more money. There has been way more responsibility. And every year that we build our revenue, there is a requirement for me to mature and a requirement for me to be more responsible. And it also means requiring me to have bigger, more difficult, conversations.
And that is just part of what is required of us to shift our identity in order to hold more.
Money can often come with power, and power is a really big thing to hold.
It can feel really clunky having more money, because it often feels like you have more power. And as we know, because of the many people who are in power that we see today, we haven't been shown what divine power really looks like.
Money can do a lot of weird things to people. You can do weird things to humans.
And so for me, a big part of how I have personally shifted my identity is really anchoring into the identity that I am able to be wildly successful and wildly wealthy and remain humble, because I want to be humble and I want to be a different kind of leader.
I want to be a new earth leader that is showing a very new version of what leadership gets to be. So that's that piece.
Now the next piece is something very practical.
What I have learned about money in 2024 is investing in Facebook ads.
And taking them in-house has been the biggest game changer.
When I had my (prior to this year) most successful year to date, we made around £250,000. And there was very, very, very little profit.
In fact, pretty much nothing at the end of that year.
We invested £30,000 in ads that year and we saw a very different return on ad spend that year.
Now actually, it wasn't so bad. It was an ad spend return of 8.
But what we found that year was where the business grew, let's say more rapidly. We were having to outsource so much, so paying for people to support the growth. We also had a very different way of working then. There was a lot more support within the Mastermind. So a lot of the time I was paying my co-coaches way more than I was paying myself.
Just overall, it was a really unprofitable year.
And what we also found that year was where we were investing in ads. When we saw the return on investment, let's say we had 10 people sign up to that £6,000 program, it was obviously profitable, but we had a couple of flopped launches that year. But obviously the outgoings for that particular container were the same.
So then I ended up in a cycle where I had to continue to repeat launch in order to make the revenue that I needed to cover the running costs of the business.
We also were paying £1,500 a month for the ads manager every single month.
So whereas, on the months that we were in launch we would have a return on ad spend there, we would make money on that. There were many months throughout that year where we weren't actually using ads at all, but yet still paying for that service.
So there were so many learnings within that year.
But in relating it back to my ‘what I've learned about money in 2024’ is that actually investing in ads has been a huge game changer in our business and enabled us to grow our audience very significantly.
This year we've had about 35000 new people onto our mailing list, and obviously then we've been able to nurture them through the marketing process and converted many new faces into my world.
And in taking it in-house, we've obviously cut across an ads manager and learnt a skill that again is a return on investment again and again and again.
So we've just been way smarter with how we have invested in Facebook ads this year.
We've also introduced a couple of lower tier ticket offers. We optimised our thank you pages in all of our funnels this year, which means that we offset our ad costs.
So the whole ecosystem of how we've used ads and the revenue that we have seen from that has been completely different.
And if there's one thing I would invite you to think about in 2025, if your audience isn't growing, definitely start to think about how you might want to include meta ads into your marketing and sales strategy.
So a bit of a recap what I have learned about money in 2024.
The first thing is that every year the opportunity to make more revenue, expand, build your knowledge, get support.
The industry in 2025 has so much to offer and I really do believe that it will be a breakthrough year for people who are smart with their sales funnels. From that top end attraction phase to the tail end of the funnel in terms of the sales that you're making.
Building a repeatable sales system is key.
Having a tier of price points will work in 2025.
Really understanding how your identity is going to shift your reality.
Another huge thing then - the investment of Facebook ads. As I just shared.
I am wishing you all a very beautiful end to 2024. This will be the last in the podcast until 2025 and I will be back with a bang.
Very well rested I'm sure from two weeks in India.
I just want to say a really big thank you for my regular listeners, people who tune in every week.
I really appreciate you.
Let me know who you are.
Come and find me @PandoraPaloma_ on Instagram. I'd so love to know that you dial into the podcast every week.
And as always, if you enjoy this podcast and you haven't already rated and reviewed on Apple Podcasts, please do that, because it does support us in being able to get the podcast into the ears of more humans.
Big Love.
Sending so much love and magnetism from my corner of the world.
Happy 2024 and wishing you all a wonderful 2025.
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