I was 7. It was a warm Friday. On Fridays we had large public markets. Everyone could sell and trade during a few hours. It was in the middle of the city. As I walked back from school, I saw all those stands with toys. Next to them I saw pirated games. These black DVD cases with cheaply printed front and back cover. As I walked Friday after Friday I started to come around and check out these games. I would have to save my lunch money for two days to have enough for the game.
As I see now these people had an interesting product funnel. Kids like me used to pass every Friday. With every passing week they would stay there for longer, until we started buying. They built trust, and acquired us as customers. Then, we brought our friends, free referrals. They did the same thing that is done on TikTok today for most of the goods sold.
Recently I became a part of a group where most of the people are of "hustler" mentality. It took me a few days to understand what makes a hustler a hustler. It's not so much the hard work, but the thinking. While I was surrounded by about 10 people, all I could notice is how they think in funnels. Now what does that mean? As new members introduced themselves and spoke about what we do, the rest of the folks were assessing where we are in the process of selling to the customer. The questions were about how we got till the point of sales. Everything seemed to spin around the process. Most of them have SaaS or micro SaaS businesses. These exquisite minds seemed to just think about how far up the funnel a business is.
After that meeting all I could think about is all the ideas I previously had, and how the funnels for these ideas of mine would look. Not just that, but I see the way existing businesses sell and I think how they do so. From the moment the person sees the first video, to their first click, over the landing page, signup, email sequence, 5th email 50% discount, acquisition, and offer for the referral.
Pay attention to funnels. Every business has them - everywhere.