Motivation Monday?

 How do you handle days when your only desire is to hibernate under the covers? That’s all I want to do today: sleep, or maybe curl up with a book or watch Harry Potter movies in my bathrobe. I certainly don’t want to stir myself into working. 

We stayed up late to watch the Super Bowl’s overtime conclusion and I could barely drag myself out of bed this morning. And it’s rainy and dark and colder than it has been. And my Hashimoto’s Disease has been flaring up lately, leaving exhausted.


I am supposed to be building my new funnel. I was doing great with it at the end of the week but then I put it aside and never picked it back up again. 


What, you ask, is a funnel? 


It’s a special type of website that sends customers directly to your offer instead of to your store or traditional URL with a maze of choices that misleads or distracts them.


I wasn’t sure I needed a funnel until my mother brought home its importance to me. A few months ago I published my new Ultimate Zucchini Cookbook. I listed it for sale on Amazon, in my shops, and on my website and promoted it (with links to the sale page) on all my social media channels. This cookbook is a re-write of my grandmother’s original, which she wrote and “published” in the mid-20th Century ~ she typed it out on her typewriter and had it copied and bound into little paper booklets at a copy shop.


I rewrote it with low-carb adaptations of the recipes included and published it as a much-sturdier hard cover book. My mother decided to buy one. I don’t know if hers fell apart over the years ~ more certainly did! ~ or if she wanted the low carb recipes but she tried to order one from my website. I was planning to give her one for Christmas so I would have told her not to buy it but she didn’t tell me about this until afterward.


Anyway, one night my mother caused me some angst because she called to tell me she pre-ordered my book when it was still in the pre-order stage. I hadn’t gotten any notice of her order so I asked for details and she said she didn’t have to pay because it was a pre-order. (That’s NOT how pre-orders work! She should definitely had to pay and it was discounted during that period due to the wait). Then she said she saw a notice when she ordered her book that my son also ordered a copy. I didn’t have a record of that either.


Visions of hundreds of undocumented cookbook orders coming into my website flooded my brain ~ unfulfilled orders, customer complaints, Squarespace shutting me down…


In a panic I texted my son to ask if he ordered my cookbook, which I thought would be rather odd because I don’t think he even knew about it… like most 25 year olds he doesn’t breathlessly follow his mother’s career! Turns out, he did not order it. Neither did my mother. What did she do? Why did she think she ordered it when she didn’t? Why did she think my son ordered it? 


We may never know.


You would think following a direct link to a product and ordering it would be simple but for a lot of folks, it’s not. A great many people just aren’t used to online shopping. Then if you have a storefront with a ton of choices they might get distracted and start switching between products and become overwhelmed with choices. 


And then many platforms try to offer suggestions of similar products a customer might want before they’ve even completed their first order. Sometimes these are helpful but I’ve noticed they often have nothing to do with the thing I’m ordering. They might even show buyers a lower cost for the same product which ends up in a race to the bottom, price-wise, for sellers. 


You may know the cheaper product will take 2 months to arrive or doesn’t include all the pieces yours has but many consumers don’t look at anything beyond the price. They may not even realize they are going to a different seller if they click on one of those links ~ I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve gotten an angry message from someone who insists they bought something from me when they didn’t ~ even products I don’t offer at all!


So, a funnel allows you to control the narrative, explain why your product is superior, and send buyers to an order form right there on the page without any distraction. It works for any type of business, from local services and restaurants to online stores. I’m making funnels for my best-selling products and then suggesting my stores for complementary items on the Thank You page.


I am such a big believer in this concept I partnered with ClickFunnels to bring you a 5-day business training from industry leaders, including Daymond John of Shark Tank. It’s free and it comes with a free trial of ClickFunnels 2.0. Just click here to register.


I am really optimistic this will be my best year yet, but only if I can manage to get myself back to work on this funnel. So please hit the comments and give me all your best motivational tips! Oh, and don’t worry about Mom ~ I gave her a cookbook for Christmas.