Why I don't like marketing funnels… (and a healthier alternative)

Do you know what a marketing funnel is? It's something that you're going to learn when you start learning online marketing. And you know what? You don't need a marketing funnel to succeed in business. I don't have a marketing funnel. I used to and then I got rid of it and my business is so much better because I don't have a marketing funnel. So let me first explain what a marketing funnel is. You probably are part of some people's marketing funnels without even knowing it. And that's one of the main problems about marketing funnels. Okay, so what is it? It's when you, the simplest thing is you go to someone's website, maybe you see a pop up, maybe you don't, and then you put your email address in to get some free thing, an article, a series of videos for free, or a free online course, or a series of, or like a book, an online, a PDF book to get for free. And once you put your email address in, you think, oh, I got the free gift, my free ebook or whatever. And then you start getting ongoing emails from that person that are carefully designed. You don't know this, but they have carefully designed the emails to indoctrinate you to buy something soon later, like within a month or within two months. Usually it's within a month, even within two weeks. So a marketing funnel, just like a funnel, starts at the top where you get a lot of people into the top of the funnel. That might be from Facebook ads, Instagram ads, YouTube ads. It might be from a joint venture where someone promotes you. It might be from just organic social media, word of mouth. But a lot of people find you and join your funnel at the top. They, they put their email address in, usually on a website or landing page, and then you send them more emails designed to have you buy a low price thing. What they call a tripwire. Get this, they literally in, in digital marketing trainings they call it a tripwire. Now why do they call it tripwire? When you buy a low price product from someone, then the system that they've designed now says, oh, we've got a prey, we've got an enemy. I mean, tripwire comes from war, it comes from hunting. So it's like, it's like when the rabbit trips the tripwire, then the, then the trap goes down and traps the rabbit. Right? It's the idea or in war when the enemy crosses, you know, when, when you cross the enemy lines that invisible tripwire, then they'll, you know, from the towers, they'll like, they'll like know that you're there and they'll shoot you or whatever. They'll send someone out to, to kill you. Tripwire. Now why are we treating our audience like that? Well, it's because a lot of marketing actually came from war. War planning. It's very, it's very violent. And campaign marketing campaigns, I mean even the word campaign is from war, wartime language, it's not good with a capital G. And it's why it's like this war for mindsets, all this stuff. So marketing funnel. Start at the top with some ads or opt ins or jv, JV joint ventures. And then you buy a low price product, the tripwire starts. They then send you more emails to sell you on a higher priced product and then eventually you end up spending the $10,000 on their mastermind program or whatever it may be. So have you been part of this before? I would love to know what's been your experience with a marketing funnel. Whether being part of someone's or being trained to create marketing funnels for your business. All right, now it sounds, without understanding the spirit of it all, it sounds reasonable. Well, of course I would want to, you know, indoctrinate people into buying my low price thing and then, which then indoctrinates them on buying my mid price thing which indoctrinates them on buying my higher price thing. It makes sense. It's called business planning, George. It's called strategy. Well, even the word strategy is traditionally used in war. Right? Now if you knew you were part of my marketing funnel, now you probably, hopefully if you watch my videos and read my articles, you trust me more. So you probably don't mind being part of my funnel. I don't have a funnel. But, but if you knew that you, you barely know somebody, you barely know this company and then you are part of their funnel. How do you feel? You feel like, oh, they're, they're, they're, they're planning to manipulate me into buying more things from them. How do I feel about that? I don't like being manipulated. Now. I like if someone is transparent with me and say, hey, I understand that you need this. This is what we created. You know it. I think it's good for you. Up to you whether you want to buy it. Here it is. Great. I like directness and transparency. If you're going to sell me something, sell it to me. Don't beat around the bush and say it's a free thing, blah, blah, blah, all this bs, Just sell me the damn thing. Just tell me you've got what you want. If I want it, I, I don't need persuading. If I want your thing, I will buy your damn thing. You don't need to persuade me. You get it. Just like if you want my thing, I don't have to try to strong arm you, persuade you, sweet talk you, and funnel you into buying the damn thing. If I want. If you want it, you'll just buy it. If I describe it well, if I, if I describe it clearly that this is the first. This has been designed to help this kind of person solve this kind of problem or reach this kind of result. And here's why I'm credible to deliver it, then you'll buy it if it's meant for you. And then the rest of the time, when I'm not trying to sell you something, I'm trying to help you. That's it. Help you for free, not help you. And then, you know, it's all the help is really designed to get you to buy this one thing. Come on. So stop the madness of making content about selling disconnect content. And selling your content is not trying to indoctrinate people into buying that thing from you later. You see what I mean? It's, it's. I was going to say the F word. Trying to keep this YouTube Facebook video PG and doesn't get banned or whatever. It's effing ridiculous, okay? If it were transparent, we would think the marketers were psychopaths. And by the way, that's, that's psychopathic thinking. This, you know, charming, right? What was a psychopath charming? Right? With, with deep ulterior motives that are for their own benefit. That's what a psychopath is. Right? So a lot of marketing training is basically training you to be a psychopath. Let's call it what it is. Oh, you better, you know, get people to smooth them into buying from you and, you know, use this technique, use that tactic. All these hacky things like free, anytime I see 3 in all caps, F R E E, all caps, I'm like, okay, this person has gotten some psychopathic marketing training. They probably don't even know it, which is why I'm trying. But. But they feel like something is quite off. It's not. That's not how I would treat a friend. That's not how I would want my loved ones to be treated by somebody. That's not how we want to be treated. Damn it. Why are we then treating other people that way? It's not. Why can't we treat people transparently? With pure intentions and be helpful 80% of the time and 20% of the time, you know me, I sell you very directly. I say, hey, I've got an upcoming course. Do you want to buy it? You don't have to buy it, but it's for people who are interested in this, who don't want. Who, who, who. Who want to experience this in their life. You want to buy, great. If you don't, no worries. You're going to still get tons of free content from me. And then you. You'll see me sell you on something later. No big deal. Why are we making this stuff into such. You know, it's like, why is it such a big deal to sell people something? Just say, this is what I. You know what I mean? And just when I'm. When I'm not trying to sell you, I'm trying to help you. That's it. And lots of you will never buy a thing from me. And I'm. So here's the thing. Lots of you will never spend a dollar with me. And I'm okay with that. So that's a question for you. Are you okay with helping people for free? Now, I know you're going to say, well, George, that doesn't make sense. I'm in business here. I'm not. This is not a. This is even. I was going to say, this is not charity, but even the charity needs money, right? This is not. This is not a hobby. This is a business. George, I'm not just doing stuff for free. I get it, of course, but if you pretend to help somebody. Generous in quotes, but the whole time you're like, I'm. I'm really helping you because I'm hoping that you're going to buy from me. It. Everybody feels it. That person feels it subconsciously. And you, your conscience feels it subconsciously. You're like, this is not pure. This is not wholehearted. I can't really help you fully because I'm always holding back. And it's bs. It's a lot of bs. So separate content from selling and realize that the real promise of content, the real blessing of content is not that, ooh, some people might buy from me because here, here's here's the thing. Okay? Let me. Let me just finish the business strategy part and we'll get into the whole heart of the truth of the matter. Reality with a capital R is if you are wholeheartedly helping other people, the word will spread. Okay? Wholehearted. It's very simple. It's the freaking golden rule that you Learned when you were, you know, three years old, okay? Wholeheartedly help others. The word will spread about you. And then this part is where you need to be trained. Sell. I mean, actually, even as kids, right? If you ever sold anything as a kid, you don't beat around the bush. Hey, hey, you want to buy my chocolate? I'm selling at school. I'm trying to raise some money to. For my school trip. You want to buy some chocolate for me? It's very wholehearted. It's not like, hey, you know, here's. Here's a. I don't know. I don't know what kids would do. I mean, kids are very pure. Just like, I'm trying to sell you some chocolate. Would you buy some chocolate for me? You don't have to, but I hope you will because it's going to support my school. Or I have. I have a product. I'm trying to sell this to you. Very pure. Be as a child, okay, in your marketing strategy, when you're helping, help like a kid for free. Oh, I'm just trying to help you. And when I'm selling, oh, I'm just trying to sell my chocolate to help me fundraise for my product, you know, project or whatever. Just be pure, okay? So be pure in giving content for free, knowing that many people won't buy from you. But if you're pure and helpful, the word will spread about you. Tons of people will consume your free content. And when you sell transparently, of course some people are going to buy from you. It's a very simple damn formula. It's called the freaking golden rule, people. Okay? Wholehearted helping. Word's going to spread about you if you're helpful, if it actually helps them. If it doesn't help them, word's not going to spread about you, Right? So that means you have to get to know people so that you can wholeheartedly help them. Right? Wholehearted helping means also getting to know them. So how can I really help? Oh, that's what you need help from. Got it. I'm gonna make stuff like that. Wholehearted helping. Word will spread about you. More people will consume your content. When you sell directly, transparently, some of them will buy. Even if it's 1%. That's enough to make $100,000 a year. Seriously. Right? If you have, okay, you're gonna sell products and services all year long, right? And I'm assuming you're going to sell thousands of dollars worth. I mean, if you add up your products and services, if you have a one on One coaching. That's thousands of dollars per year that a client pays you. If you have online courses, it's several hundred dollars a year that a student pays you. So whatever. Let's say every student. On average. On average. Every student or client spends a thousand dollars a year with you. Very reasonable. Whether they're a one on one clients, a mix between one on one clients and, and, you know, course buyers and group programs. On average, every client spends a thousand a year with you. Very reasonable. Okay, and you have a hundred. I mean, with all your free content, you might build up a thousand fans, ten thousand fans. And you only have a hundred who buy from you every year, spending $1,000 on average. That's $100,000. Why do you need more money for? Seriously. All right, I mean, yes, you, you know, you can make more money after that if you want to, but it's. It's pretty simple, people, right? Content from the heart, that's truly helpful. And then selling from the heart, that's truly transparent. That's the whole thing. F. Screw the marketing funnels. Just let go of it. You don't have to manipulate people. And most of the time those funnels don't work anyway. Seriously, have you been, have you done a funnel before? Have you noticed what did the person tell you was going to convert 10% of your audience? What did it end up converting? 1% if you're lucky. How? And you still keep trusting the funnel people. Give me a break. Seriously. Anybody here? Teach funnels here. I will debate you because I've been in this industry, I've been Digital Market For 10 years, I've seen everything. Debate me, okay, Because I will tell you, you look at your own stats, you look at your client stats, it doesn't work most of the time. It works. 0% conversion most of the time. And then, okay, some clients get 0.5% conversion. Some clients, oh my God, got a 3% conversion. Now tell me, does it work again? It worked.3% for this launch. Now the client, first of all, work 3% converting a launch using a funnel the next time they're exhausted. After the damn. They're freaking exhausted. Do you want to tell your client to do it again? Another marketing funnel for another damn launch they want to give up. So it's all this manipulative effort. So like, first of all, the client already doesn't like it because like, okay, you're telling me to manipulate people, secretly manipulate them, and I'm getting a 3%. And you call that a success? Are you effing Kidding me. And you want me to do that again next time with all that damn effort? What the hell are you doing? Okay, so stop the funnel madness. Just stop it. You don't need it at all. When you stop the ulterior motives and the hidden intentions and just serve from the heart, you already remove this giant burden from yourself. And if those of you who are funnel experts listening to this, you remove a giant conscious conscience burden, there's a burden to your client's conscience. When you teach them funnels, there's a burden to their conscience. They know something's not right. And there's a burden to your conscience. Now, you probably have ignored it, suppressed it, because you're making money teaching people this stuff. I get it. Because I used to do the same thing. I get it. I made lots of money teaching people funnels. But my conscience was always like, ah, something's not right here. This is not. This can't be the way of doing it. And then when I let go of funnels, everything opened up. Now, when I said, can I serve from the heart? Can I give from the heart? Here's what happens when you give content from the heart, try to be helpful. You get smarter faster. The creator actually benefits the most. Not the audience. The creator benefits the most. They get smarter faster. They build an audience by word of mouth. People actually like them. They actually like them. The creator actually likes their audience. Right. Actually wants to help them. And then when it comes to selling, the audience goes, God, I already love you. Of course I'm going to consider what you're going to sell me. I know you're a business. Of course I'm going to consider it. Whereas before, with the funnel stuff, it's always this resistance. It's like the marketer is trying to persuade and swindle the audience, and the audience got a shields up going, oh, my God, are they going to try to sell me now? And everybody has shields up. What the are we doing? You see what I mean? Like, come on. Right? All right. So. So, yeah, funnel teachings, literally, digital marketers literally teach the word indoctrination. Can you believe it? Can you effing believe? They literally say indoctrination and they say tripwires and they say bait. You bait your audience into opting in. What the f are we. How. How are we possibly going to build a real relationship with people when we're looking at them as prey, P R E Y to be baited and. Or people to be indoctrinated and converted? Conversions, right? It's. It's it's either war, it's either hunting language or war language or religious trend conversion language. How the heck are you going to build a truly loyal audience when you treat them like that? And how will you be able to sleep at night? I couldn't sleep for years. Now I sleep very well. So it's. You remove the conscience burden from, from, from yourself. And if you're teaching it to people, remove it from your clients and you serve from the heart. Now you still got to manage your time. You can't be like, oh, someone emailed me at 3am I better respond to them. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when you, when you structure your time to do your work and to do your marketing, quote unquote, you are doing it in a wholehearted way and still strategic. You're not gonna, you know, everyone, anyone who wants your help, you go to their house and you help them forever. No, no, you still are keeping good boundaries. You do content in smart ways, but the smartness is really about. This is what I'm able to give. I'm wholeheartedly giving this. I'm giving it in a way that, that they can receive it. And then when I sell, I'm very transparent. Hey, I've got this thing to sell you. What do you think? Want to join me? If not, no worries. I'll sell you something next time. Got it. So I hope this helps. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate those of you who are, who are commenting here. Let's see here. Thanks for joining me. Judith, Emily, Daniela, Jeffrey, Marco, Maria, Corrine, Corey and Mickey, Denise, Christy. Let me see some of the comments here. Yeah, Mickey says I've slipped into so many of those funnels, like a water slide, you can't stop. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, totally. And Patricia is lucky that she's never gotten caught in that trap. Good for you. My gosh. Yeah, keep just, you know, watching YouTube videos, you get all the information for free, right? So, yeah, you don't have to opt into anybody's email list unless you want to. See, the thing is, I have an email list too, but I don't make you opt in. Like, I don't. Like, all my content's for free on YouTube, on Facebook, on Medium, on my blog, on, you know, Instagram. It's all, it's all over the place. But you can join my email list if you want to get an email once a month for me or once a week for me, it's up to you. You know, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's. It's a service. In other words, my email newsletter is a service of convenience to my clients or to my students or to my audience. It's not a. I better get you to join so that. Now I gotcha. I'm gonna sell you now. Hopefully you'll buy if you never join my email list. I'm still gonna sell it to you. I'm still gonna. I'm still gonna sell you on YouTube. I'm still gonna sell to you on Instagram. I'm still gonna sell to you on Facebook. I don't mind selling to you because I'm only offering something that I think you might want. If you don't buy it, no worries at all. Right? Just gotta be really bless and let go is what I call it, because then it's good for our conscience. It's good for everybody. So, yeah, Christy wrote that. You know, I felt I was pushing, indoctrinated. I was doing it wrong and never felt right. I just want to help if it happens to make money. Gravy. Totally. Yeah. And it does. That's the thing. It does make money. If we. As long as I, you know, I. I always talk about how we need an offer of. We need a rhythm of content, and we need a rhythm of offers. If you do the rhythm of content, rhythm of offers idea, you know, 80, 20 rule. It's very simple. It works. So let's see here. Okay. And Mickey has a good question. Mickey says, isn't it a good idea with a funnel to keep those who are interested in your products up to date with what you have to offer? Now, I don't call A funnel is a designed, contrived series of emails or videos that leads up to people buying something, that specific thing. Oh, I'm gonna educate you on this, then that, and then you'll buy this. What I do is I sell on a regular basis, Mickey. I mean, every single Wednesday, I'm selling you something. If you go to my Facebook business page every Wednesday, I sell you something. I'm very transparent with it. It's like, hey, this is my upcoming course. Do you want to buy it or are you interested in it? Or what do you think about the title of it? Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'm going to post that. Hey, I've got some titles from my upcoming course. Which one do you think? It's my upcoming course. So. So it's not. And of course, I also email my. I have two email lists. One of my email lists is just content but even my content email list, I include my upcoming course at the bottom of the email. I have a separate email list for those who want to buy my things or who have been buyers of my things. I email my, my buyers regularly. Two, three times a month. I email them my upcoming course. So, Mickey, I have a rhythm of offers, but it's not manipulative design. It's just like, hey, I'm gonna offer this next. But I don't have like content leading up to it, like for weeks. Like, ooh, I'm coming up with this thing. It's, it's just like this build up, which, which is really gross. I think it's because it's like you're building it up without them knowing that you're going to sell them. It's, it's this, it's this ulterior motive that I'm talking about here. Okay, so Patricia says, I wonder if Patreon, Vimeo, etc falls into this category of people wanting to join you for, you know, paid information, paid content, stuff like that. I don't think, See, I, I think I, I think the patron, the patronage idea, right? You like me as a YouTube creator, you like me as an article writer, you like me as a performer, you like. And if you want, I do additional things for my fans, you can join me there. But even if you don't join my fan base, you could, I'm still going to keep creating free content for you. It's not, it's not really a funnel. It's like two steps. It's like, you like me, you can join my thing for more. That's it. I mean there's, but there's no. Yeah, I'm sure some of the Patreon people, they have a funnel basis. But if it's just like, hey, if you want to support me, I've got more stuff. I don't see that as a funnel. I think it's just, it's just patronage. Yeah. So let's see here. Judith, thanks for your comment as well. Denise says. Yeah, Denise says. Here's a frustrating one. After you watch, after you watch, after giving your email and then comes into the 9, 000 emails, a final chance, final offer special only for you messages. It's thank you. It's bs. Anytime someone says, this was, I made this just for you, I'm like, please stop with the obvious lying. It's not just for me. It's for me and the other 10,000 people or the thousand people or the 100 people. But it's not Just for me, okay? It's not just for me. So. So we don't need this crap in order to sell people. I have a very good business secret. I mean, some people know this. This year, my business, my financials, my business has done better than 2019. In 2019, my business did better than 2018. In 2018, my business did better than 2017. It's been up and up every single year. The more authentic I get, right, the business, the better my business does. Of course, it's because. Because of authenticity, because of genuine helpfulness. The word spreads. More people follow me, more people trust me. I mean, all that's natural. But I'm not trying. So here's the key. I am not trying to get you to trust me. You see the difference here? If someone. If you knew that someone was trying to get you to trust them, how does that feel? Feels creepy, doesn't it? You're trying to get me to trust you. What do you. What's your agenda? But if someone is authentically expressing themselves and, or just genuinely trying to be helpful and not trying to build your trust, you don't. You're just like, wow, what a. What a great person. And you trust them. Naturally. Trust has to be earned, not designed and captured. You don't capture people's trust. When you capture people's trust, that's called psychopathy. That's called psychopath, right? You earn people's trust because you are trustworthy. And how do you be trustworthy? Because you are genuine. What do you mean by genuine? Without agenda, without. Ooh, I'm going to do this so that you'll do that. No, I'm doing this because it's an authentic expression, or I'm just trying to be helpful. And whether you're helped or not, I hope you're helped. But if you're not helped, then I have to do a better job. Or. You know what I mean? So. So there's a very big difference here. Okay? So. All right, Suzanne and Phil, thank you for your comments as well. Phil, I'm. I'm doing. This is stream yard. It's 20 bucks a month. So it's not free to do this, but it's worth it for me. Jeremy says, what do you think of sales funnels for calls where you are transparent with the other person? Completely transparent with your intentions? Yeah, so that's what I mean. I. When I sell to you, I sell transparently. I mean, if you're, if you, if you go on a call with me and the call is saying, hey, this is a discovery call where you might, I, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna help you in this way. And then you might, we might decide that we're fit to get to work further. If it's transparent, then it's fine. You know, ideally, I'll tell you ideally, to be honest with you, the most ideal situation is when you don't even have discovery calls, when people just email you and says, can I hire you for your services? Like, the best thing is when they ask you if they can hire you. And then you say, well, okay, well, let's do a call first to see if we're a good fit. That's like the great thing if you have to reach out and say, hey, let me do a free call for you, and it's a gift and they have like, oh, okay, well, you might try to sell me. Yeah. Then it's, it's a little, it's not as ideal, but at least you're transparent that there's going to be some selling involved. So, but how can you get people to just contact you? Well, you do helpful content. You, you sell regularly to your audiences. Hey, for those of you who want to work with me, I got this available. This available. Let me know if you're interested. They contact you, I'm interested. Okay, great. Let's get on a call, see if it's the right fit. Everything feels so good. Everything is so good. Because they're pursuing you. Let your audience pursue you to pay you instead of you trying to get them to do this or this or this or this or this to trick them into doing something. All right, I think this video has gone long enough. Thank you so much for joining me. I so appreciate you. Honestly, I appreciate your trust. I hope I earn it. I, I, I really try to bring you, you know, in terms of free content, that's a whole other topic. What's free content versus paid content? Free content, essentially easy to consume. It's casual, it's a big map of where things are going. Or it's a very, it's, it's one's perspective on a particular issue. That's free content. The paid stuff is the how to step one, two, three, do this, do that, and here's my accountability, all that stuff. So anyway, but that's a whole other topic that I've written and spoken about. Thank you for joining me. I will see you in the next video. Take care. Bye.