The Simplest Funnel Business Model

So people ask me all the time, “If you were to start over from scratch, what would you do right now?” And maybe because I’m in a season in my life right now that’s so hectic, so busy that I just want simplicity. However, if I could step back and be like, what would be the business model I would use if I was starting today?

It would be really simple.

In fact, the person who I would probably model the most is Ben Settle. I talk about him a little bit in the Dotcom Secrets book but his business model is so simple. He has a squeeze page where he drives traffic to, and it’s basically like, “Hey, give me your email address, I’m going to email you every day and share with you stuff.” And that’s what he does. He drives some traffic, I don’t think he drives that much traffic, but he does a few things here and there.

He’s not like a hardcore, buy a bunch of ads, and all sorts of stuff. He does podcast interviews and he’s doing things, but he’s definitely not like me out there obsessing over traffic and sales, he’s just doing his thing. So he builds a list and he emails his list every single day and he always tells a story. This is where the whole concept of Seinfeld emails came from in the Dotcom Secrets book. And he writes an email each day about what’s happening in his life, and somehow ties it back to his product. He has only one product for sale and his one product is a $97 a month newsletter. And that’s it.

So once a month he writes a newsletter, a print newsletter that he prints and ships out to his customers, he sells it for $97 a month, and then every day he writes an email and sends it to his list. And that’s his business model. It takes about 15 minutes a day to write an email, and then maybe a couple of hours each month to write the newsletter, and that’s it. And the rest of the time he sits there and writes zombie novels and stuff like that.

I’ve been watching him do it consistently now for probably 7 or 8 years and he just sends an email every day, never misses a day, and is very consistent. And the emails aren’t super complicated, they’re telling cool stories, and that’s why we call them Seinfeld emails. If you watch the show, Seinfeld, they’re about the random thing at the time, and it’s stuff happening in his life and how it ties back to his email newsletter.

So if you go to bensettle.com, he has a blog where he posts his emails as blog posts and you can literally go back and look at the last 8 to 10 years of him doing this. And you can go read every email so you get an idea of what the emails look like. They each tell a story and then they tie back to his $97 a month newsletter. That’s it. And if you go to the blog there are literally however many years, a decade worth of these. He consistently, rarely if ever misses a day.

He just writes an email, sends it out, and promotes this one thing.

And I think sometimes, especially for me, I’m so passionate about the art of this, the funnels, the funnel structure, and all the kind of things, and because of that, I create a lot of funnels. But if I was to step back and say look, I really want to design my business around me and around my lifestyle, I would look at Ben’s model super close. I'd have a squeeze page, drive leads to get people to opt-in, email the list every single day, and sell my one product. I would just consistently make that product awesome, and it’d be a print newsletter or something, or maybe a membership site, but always pushing people to the same thing.

If you think about, the math on that, let’s say it’s $100 and you get one hundred people in there, that’s $10,000 a month. You get five hundred people in there, $50,000 a month. You get a thousand people in there at 100 bucks a piece, $100,000 a month. If you just consistently did that, consistently focused on that, it’s not going to happen overnight, but within a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, you could have that. And if you look at your business at the time, and it’s like, I make $100,000 and I send out an email a day, it’s just 15 minutes a day of my time, and then once a month I write a newsletter.

So I’m just putting that out there for you to think about different business models because you don’t always have to try and build a huge company. And for some of you, that’s the goal, and I get that and I support that. We teach that and we train on that. But for some of you, it’s “I’m looking for something that could be consistent.” So what can you be the best in the world at? Create a print newsletter or a membership site or something around that thing, that’s monthly, have a squeeze page, have an email a day, always push people back and focus continually on your message, the same message over and over and over and over again.

So I hope that helps. I think for somebody out there who is getting overwhelmed by, “Oh, there’s all these funnels and all these things. I need a simpler business model.” There’s a simpler business model and I wanted to share that with you.

So if you could start over from scratch, what would you do? And if you are just starting out, does this business model work for you? Let me know in the comments!!