The opening keynote speaker at the inaugural Youpreneur Summit John Lee Dumas, founder of the popular Entrepreneur on Fire Podcast, shared his Fire Funnel process for digital entrepreneurs. John started out by suggesting that you start with a “Funnel Up Process” to understand who you are going to serve before you design your sales of your “Funnel Down Funnel”.
The Funnel Up process
- The Idea. What is your big idea that you want to build upon.
- The Niche. Get that initial momentum is key, not easy, but once you get it, you can get things going. Then you can expand your scope. Rather than being Mr or Mrs Social Media of London, you’d be better off helping female dentists in Soho get one new client via Facebook Ads.
- The Avatar. Who is that perfect customer, the listener to your podcast, the reader of your blog. Get to know that person in and out and try to identify their struggles.
- The Medium of Choice. Blogging, podcasting, video, etc. Which one should you focus on?
- The Content Creation. You need a system to setup to make sure you have a process to create great content on a regular basis.
- The Repurpose. Once you have a good platform you can find content that can be used on other platforms as well. John uses Repurpose.io to get his podcast episodes elsewhere.
- The Growth. How can you help others discover you.
- The Audience Engagement. He gets millions of listens of his podcast each month which is absolutely absurd to him but he doesn’t want to forget about doing things that don’t scale. Don’t be scared of having a one-on-one conversation. Yes, they can be time-consuming but that is where the gold is. You can learn about what works and doesn’t and develop relationships.
- The Solution. How can you help solve their problem and serve them. If you keep this in mind from the start, you will focus on generating the right leads and nurture them from the start.
The Funnel Down Process
Once you have gone through the Funnel Up process, you better know how you can help your audience and then you can design your Funnel Down Process to serve them.
- Your lead generation. Now you know who to target.
- Your Call to Action. Have a specific thing you want them to do.
- Your Audience’s Email Exchange.
- Your Solution Delivery.
- Your Audience Consumes.
- Your Next CTA.
- Live Training. Here John Lee Dumas emphasized the power of live webinars which is where he has made millions.
- Live Q&A. Perhaps there is just one remaining obstacle remaining for someone to buy and if you make yourself available live, you can have it resolved right then and there.
- Offer. Provide an offer that is supremely valuable for your audience.
- Monetize.
The Fire Funnel by EO Fire
Finally, John Lee Dumas shared how he built an empire around daily podcasts with interviews of entrepreneurs. Check out Entrepreneurs on Fire or EO Fire and enjoy the show! John’s final perspective he shared that sums up much of his perspective was a quote by Albert Einstein: “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”
Great write up and so quick too! I have been catching snippets from the event and this looked like a powerful keynote. Thank you for sharing.
Hi Chichi, well, I thought I would try taking my notes directly in WordPress and happy to hear you found it valuable still. I have too many conference notes in Evernote that never got to any blog sharing format but rather just stay there so maybe I’ll do more of these going forward!
What a great recap! Thanks for this NM!
Thanks JLD, appreciate it and thank you for a great keynote! I shared some highlights with my students yesterday and many were intrigued 🙂
Hey, thank you for this recap it’s very helpful and love the idea of a funnel up and funnel down.!!
What I like the most about JLD’s advice is when he says: “do things that don’t scale”, because it’s so true and at the same time if you do it right, then the product that you can get as a result can be scalable so is a win-win.
My pleasure, Tatiana, and I loved that distinction as well! Also, non-scalable activities should not be forgotten, I agree, getting myself ready to hand write some Holiday Cards this year perhaps 🙂
Thanks so much for posting this. I’ve been working through the actions needed to achieve my fire funnel today and your notes are much better than mine! This is my favourite keynote from the event.
No worries, Marion, and glad to hear you are taking action! Lots of value bombs by JLD for sure!