#29 - Funnel Like It's Hot & Why Saying "No" Enables High-Quality Work

Thoughts on the greatness of the "funnel" concept, and how to apply it to macro and micro levels of work

If you work in marketing / know the concept of a “funnel” then skip to section 2. As a reminder, Exonomist is intended to be written in raw form — expect typos, imperfect ideas, and for me to come back later and disagree with myself :).

Section 1: Of Funnels, Ice Cream Shops, Dating, and Gardening

If you work in any business where you are held accountable to targets, there’s a good chance you’ve heard the word “funnel” many times. I first came across it in the context of marketing. Here is what it is (credit to Desi Velikova for the graphic).

(TOFU = Top of Funnel, MOFU = Middle of Funnel, BOFU = Bottom of Funnel. And if you aren’t taking advantage of the opportunity to say “Tofu!” at work, then what are you doing with your life?).

As time has gone on, I am seeing this god damned graphic everywhere in my life. Here are some examples of funnels:

• People standing outside an ice cream shop —> deciding to go into the ice cream shop —> deciding to buy ice cream —> deciding to come back three days late because, damn, that cinnamon toast crunch vanilla mix was life-enhancing

• Dating in the modern era: think about going on app —> sign up for app —> use app —> (hopefully) get some matches —> (maybe) go on dates —> some of them don’t work out, but some of them do. For those that do —> go on more dates (retention) —> decide to commit (loyalty)

• Gardening: deciding to garden —> buying seeds —> planting seeds —> some of the seeds do not sprout healthy plants. Some of them do. — For those that do, a subset of them will sprout yields like tomatoes and peppers.

In each of the above three examples, there’s one thing in common:

1. You start with a lot

2. Over time/space, that “a lot” gets dwindled down

3. After the dwindling, you’re left with something

This is reality in business. Almost everything follows this pattern. You try to generate interest in your product (TOFU) —> you try to nurture intent to actually buy that product (MOFU) —> you try to keep people buying said product over and over again (BOFU). And if you’re not providing enough value to your customers, they do this really painful thing called churn.

Now that we’ve cleared up what a funnel means, let’s move into the main reason I opened up this writing zone today…

Section 2 : Funnels Can Apply to Your Every Day (including outside of work)

I was talking with one of my colleagues earlier this week about the “sheer number of opportunities we can go after, and how we have to be careful to not go after every single thing in front of us.” …And that conversation stuck with me after it ended. Enough that I wanted to share the key points from it. Here are some bullets:

• Just like a company has a TOFU area where many potential customers are coming into contact, you have a TOFU that is comprised of all the things battling for your attention

• You have a choice in what you provide your attention to. Are you going to go after every single opportunity that comes? Sure, you could… but you’ll probably spread yourself thinner than a barely-visible layer of peanut butter on a piece of bread

  • Yes, there are times when you need to pursue a large number of things (like when you’re starting a new business), but my point is that it shouldn’t be your long-term steady state to do that

• Uber point: when you work at a place where you have some degree of freedom over what you work on / pursue… Some…say in the matter, you shouldn’t just jump after each thing that comes before you. You should consider them, put them aside for a bit, and then come back and commit once, and only once, you are sure it’s worthy of being a priority for you

• Real-world example from my past life in consulting

  • 1. You get e-mails asking you to volunteer for proposals (helping to sell work to clients)

  • 2. You get e-mails asking you to volunteer for research initiatives

  • 3. You get e-mails asking you to mentor high-school students

  • 4. You get e-mails asking you to attend an optional training

  • 5. You get more e-mails asking you to volunteer on more proposals

  • And if you say yes to everything, you are fucked. You will not sleep, you might realize the thing you pursued was a near-total waste of your time, etc.

  • EVEN BETTER IF, you don’t just automatically say “YES!”, but you wait … You wait until you know the thing before you is something that is going to be a priority for you, either because you’re going to learn something, enjoy the process, advance your career, or ______(insert point about the investment of your time driving value)

• You know what’s fun? this letter is somewhat of a counterargument to my last one around how #28 Seeing What’s Possible is a Mindset Choice.

  • But I’d argue that there is nothing wrong with clearly seeing all of the opportunity around you… But just because you see opportunity does not mean you should pursue every one.

This whole notion of being selective / choiceful in what you work on just gets more important the higher you go. As a CEO or departmental leader, you are given extremely wide latitude to focus your teams on all sorts of things. If you just have them attacking every single potential opportunity, they will burn out or not do the work well. Sun Tzu said it best:

If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.

And, as this letter closes, I want for you to think about how important it is for you, and your career, to benefit from saying No to some opportunities at your job…To be choiceful about what you work on, to not attack everywhere.

Enjoy the weekend! And if you want to read another letter somewhat connected to this one, see #17 Not Going To Do List

MD

P.S. I want to point out that this advice applies to jobs that are currently running and where you have a degree of freedom in choosing / influencing what work you do. There is absolutely a hierarchy of needs in the world, and sometimes you just don’t have the privilege of being selective. Sometimes you have to take whatever comes your way. This letter, then, is focused a bit more on when someone has achieved a higher degree of freedom at work.