What's up gigging musicians. It's Jared Judge. And today I wanted to talk about funnels. So when I was starting my string quartet, I realized very early on that I needed a really good web presence. And so that was the first thing I focused on. And I did what I thought I was supposed to do. And what everybody does when they create a website, which is they create a homepage, they create an About Us page, they create a Contact Us page, a Frequently Asked Questions page, a videos page, photos page, and even a song list page. And I just kind of threw it up there with maybe one button, lets like, hey, contact me if you're looking to book my, my string quartet for your wedding. And I just kind of hoped that that would work. What I didn't realize was that by creating a website with so many different options, I was essentially creating a maze for people to get lost in. So if I did a wedding Expo or something, and I started to drive traffic to the website, it wasn't focused on any one goal, in particular, because there was just too many options, people would come to the website, and then I could see on Google Analytics, they would go from the homepage, to the Frequently Asked Questions page to the About Us page, and then leave, or they would take another path, they would come to the homepage, go to the song list page, go to the videos page, and then leave. And so by giving people too many choices, I was actually preventing my group from getting booked. And ultimately, I was preventing myself from having a successful career as a performer. And that's when I discovered I discovered a marketer, an online marketer, by the name of Russell Brunson. And his whole thing is online sales funnels, and basically provided with me a framework to essentially set up a funnel, where when you send somebody to your site, or when you interact with somebody in any way, you only give them one choice, either they do it, or they don't, you don't give them five choices of different links they could visit. Or if you're on the phone with somebody, you can treat a phone call as a funnel to either say, Are you ready to book your date, or not? One choice and one choice only. And so he introduced this concept of funnels to me, I started to implement it by reducing the number of choices on my website, and then realizing that whenever I was emailing somebody, too, it was a funnel, give them one choice and one choice only sorry about this lab car going by. And once I started to do that, all of a sudden, it unlocked a whole world of measuring and analytics and, and truthfully success, because I was giving people one choice, either you ready to book me? Or you're not? Are you yes or no. And so by basically getting rid of the maze, making it so that people only had one choice, I was getting more bookings. I also got rid of the tire kickers, the people who weren't ready to book, they were no longer like just dilly dallying spending time on my page, or even wasting my time by sending constant back and forth emails, or, you know, wasting my time on phone calls. Because I started treating everything as a funnel, they either had the choice to book me or not. And so I started to think about this and other ways to, you know, like emails, like I mentioned, you know, for many people, like a funnel is not just about booking a funnel is about giving people the choice to take the appropriate next step at the right time, or not. So not only did it help me get more bookings. But as I'm building out booklife Pro the software, I realized that, you know, a big part of my funnel for when people book me is the contract. So I send people a contract, just because that's the only way that I will secure a gigs date, I will not accept a gig verbally, I have to get it in writing. And so I realized that I was introducing a contract funnel to these people, where I would send them a link to my page, I would send a link to my contract page, and they would read the contract. And then either they would sign it, or they wouldn't. And so that was a funnel right there. I was giving them the choice of signing it or not. So now the goal becomes how do I eliminate any other distractions from that contract page? Is there like any links on the footer that they could accidentally get lost in other links on the header that they could accidentally click and then not sign the contract? Luckily, the contract typically has a pretty high conversion rate. And I'm introducing the word conversion rate because that's how you measure the success of a funnel. What percentage of people take the required action. So contract has a pretty high conversion rate already. But I realized even just recently like, I treat the contract And then the initial payment as a funnel. So the first required action is signing the contract. The second required action for my clients and for yours, it should be to if it's not already is I, after the immediately after they sign the contract, I need them to pay me a deposit. So I take a 25% deposit via credit card. And I realized, even just yesterday, looking at my contract funnel, that's built into booklife. Pro, that there could be some improvements, because sometimes I will have to chase down people for that deposit payment. So the way that it used to work is that people would go to my contract funnel, they would read the contract, and then all the way at the bottom, there would be a signature box, place for people to type their signature, and then effectively sign the contract. Only once, once they got all the way to the bottom of the page, they would do that and then click the Sign now button. Then, on that very same page, a credit card box would appear with a couple buttons to either pay the deposit or pay the full amount, which keep in mind, this is already a huge improvement compared to what most musicians have setup. But I realized that I was losing people between those two steps. And the reason was, because once they signed the contract, sometimes the page would like scroll back to the top at the top of the contract, and the the credit card boxes all the way at the bottom. And so they would require the user to scroll down, which would lower my conversion rate of people who signed my contract to paying their deposit. So I'm currently in the process of redesigning this, and also making some improvements to the contract page itself. But now that I'm clear that I have a contract funnel, I'm gonna do everything that I can to optimize it so that once somebody signs the contract, it takes them to a page where the only choice is to pay the deposit or not, they shouldn't be able to review their contract on that page. That's just a distraction. And, and honestly, we don't want people to have to scroll down to it, it should be that the easiest thing for them to do is to pay to pay the invoice. So that's currently in progress. Right now we're, as you might know, we're always tweaking booklife Pro trying to make it better for users like you and me. And I'm really excited to see what our designer comes up with. And then we're going to implement it do a little bit of beta testing. And I expect conversion rate to actually be much higher, because we're treating the contract and invoicing as a funnel. So think about how all the interactions that you do with booking your band or booking yourself. And then planning the gig and even getting to the gig is a funnel. So when you're reaching out to musicians, to play with you to get them to respond, that's a funnel. Either they respond, or they don't. One choice, not distractions. That's why I always say like, group chats for band management is a terrible thing. Because if you're not treating it as a funnel, you know you're gonna get distracted people have conversations about you know, did you watch the latest Batman movie, and then you're trying to do business in the same thread. That is not an effective funnel that has a low conversion rate treated as a funnel. Either they do it or they don't. So that's, that's all I got for you today guys. If you're interested in applying funnels into your band or your musical career, go ahead and check out book live pro comm if you noticed this podcast is a funnel to if you made it to the end. Then there's one action I want you to take to visit BookLivePro.com and consume the content there. And that's also a funnel to either you click the Start free trial button or you don't so go ahead and start applying funnels to your music career. And if you liked this podcast, click Subscribe, Like it, share it and I will see you on the next gigging musician, podcast.