The B.S. Funnel
A few days ago we looked at the Marketing Funnel, aka the Product Funnel. Today we’re going to look at another funnel that we all spend too much time in – the B.S. Funnel.
The B.S. funnel is where you spend your time when you should be in the marketing funnel. The marketing funnel makes you money – the B.S. funnel is everything you do to avoid working in the marketing funnel because it’s too scary/hard/unknown/boring etc.
Just so you all know, I’ll freely admit that I spend way too much time in the B.S. funnel. This morning my husband asked me what I was doing. I told him “I’m procrastinating writing a post about delaying doing the work that earns you money. So I’m doing exactly what I’m going to be writing about!” It would be funnier if it weren’t so true….
And what kind of things are in the B.S. funnel? It’s your busy work, the time spent surfing the net when you should be working, twittering for hours on end, Facebook quizzes in work time, housework done to avoid the ‘real’ work (you know you’re in serious trouble when you find yourself cleaning toilets to avoid work). The B.S. funnel is the endless tweaking of your website, the editing and re-editing of articles and posts in the drive for perfection, the being caught up in endless minor details that have little or no effect on the end results.
None of these things are bad in themselves, Social media is fantastic for promoting your business and networking, websites do need tweaking, you need to do housework and your writing needs to be good. The difference here is when you take these activities to an extreme and use them to avoid doing the work that will earn you money.
Below is a picture of my marketing funnel. It’s on the wall right in front of my face while I’m working. See the note in the bottom left corner? MmmHmm.
Where are you working today?
Melinda is the founder of SuperWAHM.com and started this site to share her best work from home ideas to help other Work At Home Mums become more financially independent and able to spend time with their families.
@ Marc. You and your twisted logic! Only a welshman…. 😉
Ah yes, my home away from home. Wait, I work from home so the BS funnel is my home? But then again if it is my home then I can’t be working so it’s not my home?
Convoluted logic, the likes of which no Star Trek Voyager writer could even dream of achieving is what I do in my BS funnel 🙂
Hmm, I sometimes get caught up in the BS Funnel. But not when I ought to be working. Unless you count housework as work, then yeah, that’s me in a BS Tornado, right next to that flying cow.
@ Alex. Yes, earning money is good! I’m terrible at finding myself in the BS funnel as well, I’ll suddenly look up and Lo and Behold! that’s where I am… Oops… I wrote this post for myself as much as for everyone else! I’m working on setting a timer when I have breaks between working, a very audible reminder that my time is up and I need to get back to work.
@ Samar. There’s nothing wrong with doing all those other things – we all have a life apart from work. It’s only the BS funnel when we use those things to avoid work. 🙂
I’m mortified to say that you caught me in my BS Funnel!
I have to work, but since morning I’ve done the laundry, dusted the entire house and changed the sheets 😛 To be honest, these chores really needed to be done cuz I had ignored them all last week in favor of a big project.
But now I need to get working on my smaller, less stressful project and I’m here going through my RSS reader.
Thank you for the wake up call!
Samar’s last blog post..Keeping my ‘zen seat’ warm
I’m bad at the BS Funnel so I now timeblock. For example right now I really want to work on my novel outline, but that’s scheduled for later today. The priority right now is stuff that has a greater chance of earning me money in the short term. 😉
Alex Fayle | Someday Syndrome’s last blog post..7 Things We Already Know About Our Lives