How can creators like us, who are new to building online businesses, who have high-value skillsets, how do we scale our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) to get us the freedom we desire? That is the question, and this newsletter will give you the answers. Be sure to subscribe if these are the type of answers you seek.
My name is Boysie Gordon, and welcome to Boysie Talks Business.
And welcome to episode 11!
In the last episode, we discussed attracting business through content marketing to an ICP. Inspired by yesterday’s episode, I decided to revise my ICP a bit. It was fairly dated, and I realized that I hadn’t been as detailed because I didn’t have enough data.
Well, after 100+ days into the journey I have all the information I need.
By completing the ICP detail, my mind was flooded with potential problems I could solve for Judy.
In today’s episode, I want to discuss my current content funnel and success criteria.
I even fooled around in Figma to create graphics!
Behold: the basic foundation of a funnel as a graphic!
It helps to think of making money online as solving a maze to the cheddar and the funnel as the path to get there.
I made the mistake of overcomplicating it in the beginning…
My First Content Funnel
When I first started this journey, I had no clue what I was doing!
My thoughts were everywhere
My process was non-existent
My crisis was existential
I had a Medium, and I was writing full-length articles there, practicing copywriting, and making a couple of bucks.
I started my Substack in an attempt to build an email list. That was just a daily journal of my journey, mainly my feelings and daily activities.
I had a website that I was constantly updating to be attractive to my target ICP. That had all my services, my packages, and my calendar.
This was my original funnel:
Medium > Website
Medium > Substack
Substack > Website
Website > Medium and Substack
Website > Meeting > Offer
Medium > Offer
Substack > Offer
Yea… it was confusing, even for me.
I’d get people interested in me with my content and have no clue where to send them. My original funnel had 7+ points of entry for my target audience, with no outlet!
I didn’t have a funnel, I had a bagpipe…
And I was playing myself!
The New Look
Now, my funnel has a direction.
It’s definitely not beginner-friendly, but I am not a beginner anymore. Now that I know what I am doing, I can leverage my tools and creativity to maximum efficiency.
Check out my current funnel!
The simplified version is X > Substack > Meetings > Clients. As a beginner (or someone who is stuck), you ONLY need three pieces to your system to form a funnel.
Amplification - get your voice out there
Community Nurture - build/store relationships
Client Acquisition - turn relationships into paying clients
Personally, I decided to drop my first funnel completely and start over!
That is how this newsletter/podcast came to be and why a majority of my time is spent on X. If you have an over-complicated system, it might be best to just start over
Start From Scratch
The first thing to do when starting a funnel is to choose the three platforms.
1 Amplification Channel (Social Media)
1 Community Nurturing Channel (Email, Private Groups, etc)
1 Client Acquisition Channel (Meetings, DMs, Email, etc)
Lucky for you, there are apps that have all or most of these channels taken care of: X, Facebook, Substack, LinkedIn, etc. So, in reality, you only need one, but the features may not be ideal for your situation, so do your research.
Below is my funnel stack, and I prefer this template for my funnel:
Front-end: Social Media Site
Nurturing: Email List Newsletter
Closing: Meetings and Sales Letters
This is a pretty standard format as of now and you can get tons of support and advice from people already doing it.
It’s Not That Easy
Even a simple 1:1:1 funnel needs monitoring.
While monitoring the different parts will be easier, you still need to know what to look out for and adjust your strategies properly.
The most important part of your funnel is the conversions!
These numbers will tell you what is working and what needs to change.
Below, I have highlighted some key conversions for my funnel.
My X to newsletter conversion
My open rate for my newsletter
My meetings booked from my newsletter
By tracking these, I can adjust my content, CTAs, ICPs, or whatever else I need to. It is critical that I continue working on my funnel so that there are no bottlenecks.
Bottlenecks kill revenue AND momentum.
The key to scaling from 0 to 1 or 1 to 3 is momentum. Taking only half the time to go from 1 to 3 as it took you from 0 to 1. As far as the funnel is concerned, its momentum is how you continue to attract customers in your sleep.
I hope you have gained some value from this!
Thanks for reading!
P.S.
There’s only ONE slot left this month (and next) for anyone looking to scale their online business.
If you are interested, reply “scale,” and we’ll hop on a free strategy call to see if we are a good fit.
EP. 11 This Simple Funnel Strategy Will Scale My MRR to Over $15,000 in 2024