 Hi, everyone. So in this video, I want to talk about the idea of a marketing funnel. You may have heard of it. You probably have experienced it. When you go to a savvy online business website, you might be tempted to put your email address in for some amazing free thing. And then once you join that free thing, whether it's a free webinar or a free email course, free video series, special report, a free quiz, or whatever, if they've designed the sales funnel, it means that you'll start getting regular emails that are preparing you to buy something down the road. It is a cleverly contrived system of trying to sell you on something without telling you from the beginning that that's what they're doing. That's my problem with sales funnels. It's the lack of transparency. They don't trust you enough to just tell you, listen, we really believe in this product or service or program, and we would like you to buy it. Take a look. But they're like, well, we want to smooth you into it. We want to, you know, indoctrinate you. Literally, that's the term they use, is indoctrination. Would you like to be indoctrinated? What are we in the cult? Well, yes, essentially, that's what the digital marketers and the clever online internet marketers do, is they are trying to form a cult with their thing. That's what, you know, the old saying, you know, one of the easiest ways to make money is to start a religion, right? And this is why, well, I don't say it often enough, but I don't want to be anybody's guru, right? I don't want to be anybody's guru. I don't want anybody to see me as the end all be all the only person who can tell them what to do because nobody is not healthy for anybody. It's not healthy for your free will. It's not healthy for, for me. So the funnel, back to the funnel, and you have experienced it probably, you get these ongoing emails for the purpose. I'm not talking about email newsletters. Email newsletters are great. You know, I send them, but I'm sending it to you as a courtesy to say, Hey, here are my latest articles. In case you're interested, they're not designed to sell you into a particular thing, the series of articles or videos or webinars or whatever, right? That's what I am talking about. It's a contrived system of persuasion. That is not good for anybody's free will. And it's, it doesn't feel good even to the marker, but they've been taught that that's how they must do it. Well, the truth, even from the results side, having seen so many of my clients go down that path before I started working with them, is most of the time funnels don't even work. And so it's incredibly discouraging for the business owner to say, God, I spent all this money to learning about funnels and then carefully designing this thing that's supposed to convert somebody from a Facebook ad all the way through to buying my program. And it didn't work. And it's so discouraging. Is something wrong with me? If people don't like what I do is my thing not valuable? Well, it's because you didn't test your content. You know, you believed a marketer that said, Oh, you've got a great thing. And so therefore designed the sales funnel. The alternative view and the one that I've been trying to teach all of you for all this time is to test the value of your topics and of your offerings through content, through free content. This is why I do three free videos a week in large part, of course, to serve you and try to try to share everything I know before I die. You know, because none of us know when when how much longer we have to live. That's really what sparked my passion for free content back in 2014 was this kind of waking up moment of like, I don't know if what if I have six months left to live? If I were to answer that question, honestly, I'd say I would I want to teach you everything I know. And so I started doing all these videos and articles. But but besides the mission of your content being your ministry, your content is also perfectly excellent for testing out the ways you talk about the things and whether your audience says, Oh, my gosh, that so resonates with me the way you talked about it. Well, that's great. If that really resonates with your audience, then you turn that further into a low price offering, okay, which then they can buy if they want deeper information or more about what you've talked about. And then from your low price offerings, those who buy it and those who have bought one or two or three, you may then invite them occasionally to a higher price offerings, such as a one to one work with you or a client group program or something like that. So it's not that you don't have any client pathway. I call it a client pathway, a transformational pathway, rather than a sales funnel. Now, is that just am I playing semantics? Am I just this really the same thing? No, words matter because words define the way we use words to define other people and how we relate to other people, right? Continue to influence us on how we treat other people. If I see you as a potential lead as a part of my funnel, that's how I'm going to treat you. I'm going to keep treating you as a number to manipulate through the system. But if I look at you as a as an infinitely worthwhile soul, right, and as somebody I have been given precious opportunity to caretake, to take care of along a client pathway, if you choose to walk that pathway with me, you don't have to. But it's totally about free will and so about, hey, you can take this pathway if it's meant for you. And if you like the pathway, you could stop anytime. It's a pathway, right? It's like, Hey, if you want to go on, come on. So versus the marketers who say you are part of my funnel, that's what they're thinking. They're not telling you that. And if you leave the funnel, then you're a leak. That's literally the language they use, right? You are a funnel leak. If you exit the funnel and you're no longer part of it, you all you didn't buy or you're a waste of resources, right? So let's reframe how we look at her audience and see them for who they really are, which is incredibly infinitely valuable human beings, souls who have who are suffering in certain ways that our business is able to serve and help. And they can choose to come along with us. And we simply serve them as best as we can through free content. And occasionally we offer the low price offerings as a very gentle way to say, Hey, if you want to go further along my client pathway here is one entry point, very easy entry point, a $10 epoch, a $30 one time, one hour, you know, group session, workshop kind of thing, a $50 online course, something that's real gentle. Oh, they enter. They have an experience now of what it's like to be in your client pathway to buy from you. They trust you a little bit more now because you've earned their trust through your free content. And now you've earned their trust through your low price offerings. And then you have the you've earned the right to then offer them something of a higher price. You're one to one, you know, closer into working with you, having more of your personal contact, right? So that's a client pathway. But but the key to this client pathway is I'm not trying to make you go down, go down that pathway in a particular way. I'm not saying you must consume these three free pieces of information that I've carefully designed to try to sell you on that trick tripwire. That's what they call a tripwire, a low price offering that trips the system. A little like it's like you enter a home and you access a tripwire, then alerts the home to instantly sell you, you know, the next thing, not a home, but a funnel, a system, right? So keeping it organic and keeping it transparent, rather than cleverly trying to get you to buy this thing eventually, I'm direct with you to say, hey, this is my workshop this month that I'm wanting to really highlight. Hey, here's the thing that I really believe in. Will you buy it? It's low price. It's gentle. You can, you can say, no, I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm going to keep serving you with free content, not because you might buy it from me one day, because it's my ministry, because it's my mission. I am fine with the majority of my audience never buying from me, because it's my ministry. Also knowing just statistically, just without even trying, some of my audience will of course buy from me at some point. And same with you, if you keep serving with your free content, it is inevitable that some of your audience will buy from you eventually. And then some of those buyers will eventually obviously want to work with you more, one to one. So keeping it organic, rather than contrived and designed, and keeping the entry level to working with you gentle and low price, to say it's easy, no. So anyway, I think I've said enough and I need to go to my next appointment anyway right now, but if you want to read more, there's the article that I've put into the notes of this video. You can read my more organized thoughts on this. But I hope, I hope I've communicated just the importance of keeping a heartfelt, rather than making it so analytical and ego control driven, which is what most marketing is, and that's what they teach you. But if you keep it service oriented, the intention is everything, isn't it? The intention is everything. If a clever marketer looks at my system, he says, Oh, George, you have a very clever funnel. That's what they might say. But my intention is totally different. And because my intention is different, it's service and heart, you know, and a surrendering, a blessing and then letting go and a trust, then it works organically. It just works. It just works. And another marketer will try to contrive and design this analytically controlled system, looking at you as a lemming, you know, and it doesn't work because it comes from, it comes from manipulation. The intention is everything. So if we come from this intention of service, trusting that life will take care of you. Life will take care of you. Seek first the kingdom of God and everything else will be given to you, right? That's how I'm trying to apply it here in business and marketing. But you've got to seek the kingdom of God, which for me means prolific, consistent, authentic content. If you're not doing that, you're not really seeking to serve, right? You're not serving with the full heart. So that's what I encourage you to do and know that you will be given everything that you need. Blessings to you and wishing you a wonderful rest of the day. And thanks for those of you who are here live and commenting. Vickness, thank you so much. Michelle, thank you. Liz, Amira, Yule, thank you so much, everyone. Be well.