There's a version of your marketing that runs on far less, and will enable you to be able to sell more and generate more leads. And that's what this whole show is about.
Welcome to Less Is the Strategy. My name is Ant Hodges, I'm the author of the book Simplify the Funnel. You can go and get your copy over at simplifythefunnel.com. This show kind of links with my book, and this show exists because I published this book. It's for business owners, coaches, creators, experts, who want fewer moving parts and better results in their business. Keep listening to the show, subscribe wherever you are listening to the show, watch this over on YouTube as well. Or go over to simplifythefunnel.com and grab your copy of my book. I'll post it out straight away, and there's a whole bunch of other resources as well.
But in today's show, I want to really set a good foundation for everything that I teach, why I teach it, and answer one big question. What does it actually mean to simplify? Well, I've got four key things that I'm gonna share with you through this podcast, and if you stay with me to the end, maybe there's something a little bit extra in it for you as well.
You know, simplification for me is the prerequisite for every conversation that I have. With clients, with my community inside my Simplify Business community, with the audiences in front of me when I'm stood on stages speaking about this at business events all over the world. I was on stage in Dubai speaking at an event. I was sharing my Selling Without Selling strategy, which is the third part of my book. And afterwards, I had somebody come up to me, and she said, I'm gonna use that strategy on my webinar tonight. And I was like, okay, cool. But I also felt really nervous. She's obviously got a webinar running that evening, and day two of the conference is the next day, and I'm gonna be there. Should I hide away the next day? Because if it absolutely bombs, then she's gonna come up to me and say it didn't work, or whatever. But if it worked, then obviously I wanna be there to celebrate.
So I was really nervous. I kind of didn't sleep very well. I was waiting for her to come back to me the next day. So I was grabbing a coffee, I was sat on the speaker's table on day two, and she came running up to me. And she was smiling and she was happy. And she said, I used your seven part Selling Without Selling framework as my close on my webinar, and I got more sales than I've ever had on my webinar, it was amazing. Thank you. It just helped me to simplify the whole process, made it so much easier, it was more conversational, I didn't feel salesy, it was literally just like an invitation.
This is what simplification does. It strips away a lot of the baggage that we carry in our own mind about what business, and what marketing, and what sales should be. And we're able to just get down to brass tacks and actually understand what it is that makes marketing and sales work. And fundamentally, that's what I'm about. I want to help everybody to simplify.
That's why, when I sat down and I put notes together on what I wanted to write in my book, it was a decision to close my agency after 20 years of agency work, and write the book, and be on this mission to help people to simplify. That led me to write that book, put the strategies in there, get on the mic on this podcast, start sharing this simplify methodology with you, and help you to move your business forward.
So the four things that I'm gonna cover in this podcast today starts with understanding that simplify is a strategy, and it starts with what you remove. Simplifying really just means deliberately, on purpose, making that decision to step everything down. You know, take every step out. I'm talking about emails, upsells, all of the pages that you put in your funnel. I'm talking about the automations. I'm talking about the AI chatbots that cause friction on your website. I'm talking about stripping things back and making a specific design decision about your marketing funnel and your business processes.
It's about making sure that the connection you can make, and your brand can make with your audience, can be done as quickly as possible, as humanly as possible, to build real relationships, and to get somebody over the line from a perspective of getting them to buy, without forcing their hands, or manipulating them, or using psychological triggers and techniques that a lot of people say to put into their funnels and copywriting.
So simplification is about making the decision to strip back, to remove the friction. A lot of people will argue that you've got to have friction in a marketing and sales process, because it helps people to make buying decisions, and it polarizes people. I'm actually seeing completely the opposite. When you are building an audience, and today what we've got is the ability to build an audience in the public domain, I'm talking the podcast, the social media, the YouTube channels... we've got the ability to build an audience. And when we build this audience, and then somebody wants to make a buying decision, the decision's pretty much already gonna be made, that they want to buy from you. Because they'll have seen countless videos and social posts of yours before they even get onto an email list, let alone before they choose to jump onto a sales page where you're selling something.
I've seen it time and time again, where brands who are focused on generating that content and building their audience first, not building their list first, are winning. Because when you build your audience first, you can then just have what I call a minimum viable funnel, which again, it's all written in my book. You can set out those four steps in your minimum viable funnel. The traffic, the no brainer offer, the human connection and conversion event, and your main core offer. It's really just as simple as that. It doesn't need to be more complicated. When you overcomplicate things, things start to creak, and you add friction in, and that friction stops people from buying.
So if people are already seeing your content, and you're already an amazing person to follow, they're getting huge amounts of value from your content, and then you say, and I've got this thing, why don't you go and buy it... if you then put barriers and friction in the way, you're going to prevent people from buying. Make it as easy as possible for people to buy. So simplification is a design choice. That's the first thing.
The second thing is that complexity, it was kind of a trend that was sold to all of us. And I got sold on this as well. You know, the rise of digital marketing that came out of probably the late 90s, right up to sort of 2010, it basically turned the funnel itself into a product. And I think people lost sight of what we're supposed to be doing. You know, if we've got products and programs that we wanna sell to people, then all of the focus ended up going on the funnel, rather than the product, rather than making the product the best in the world that it could be, to provide real transformational value for people, to help them to realise their goals and ambitions in a faster way, to satisfy their needs and desires far quicker. All of the focus went on the funnel.
And a whole industry grew up of teaching other businesses how to build complicated machines that their customers never really asked for. And often, and very much still by people today, these trainings, these funnel consultants, they are often people who've never actually sold anything for themselves through a funnel. They have bought into a system or a program, they know how to edit some pages, they know how to stitch some emails together, today they're using AI to be able to do all of that. So is the knowledge actually really there? Is the experience really their experience? Or is it just that they're like a robot now, they're regurgitating everything that's been put out there?
You know, I'm 45 this year, and since the age of 18 I've been involved in this industry. And I think for me, the one thing that I have seen all the way through this industry, you know, 27 years, I don't know if my maths is right, but almost 30 years in this industry, 20 years of running my own agency and being involved in agency work, delivering this for lots of clients... I've seen it time and time and time again. There's a trend that pops up, there's people who jump on it instantly, and they'll start teaching what other people are teaching, yet they don't have the experience, they don't have the knowledge. They just are trying to sell what they're seeing other people selling.
And complexity was one of those things. It was that trend of going, well okay, if you've got a marketing funnel, there's a load of leaks. This was the kind of argument, that you have a marketing funnel and people are just leaking out of that funnel, they're just dropping off. So all you've gotta do is you've gotta plug that leak in that funnel somehow, maybe with another email automation, maybe with another chain of events, maybe with another upsell or cross sell. And when you end up looking at the funnel as a whole, and you're plugging the bucket of all of these leaks, and you've got all of this complexity going on, when something breaks, you don't know where it's gonna break. But the idea we were being sold was that unless we plug these leaks, we're losing money.
But fundamentally for me, when you start plugging those leaks, and I'm seeing it from a bird's eye view, if we were to put a roadmap in front of us, or like the London Underground map, it's so complicated. That's what many people's funnels look like. Everything connected to everything all over the place. And I'm like, do you know what, we need something far better. If someone in your audience is going, I get this, I love this, I'm getting value from this, I wanna buy from this person, and they click a button, they should be able to just go through and they should be able to buy. And that's what we should be doing. The complexity that says plug all those leaks, it's gone, and we don't need to be doing that anymore.
In my own agency and in my own business, I was a proponent of complexity, for want of a better phrase. People were coming to us saying, I bought this $20,000 program, I bought this $15,000 program from this expert or guru or whatever, I want everything implemented. And we would just take on the job of doing the work. Until I got bold enough to be able to say, hold fire, I don't think that's what you should be doing. I think we should set up a very simplified funnel to get leads and sales in, maybe within this month, within the next 30 days, rather than spending six or nine months building this whole thing out. Because unless you've got some deep pockets to invest, and not generate any revenue until this is ready, my suggestion is let's start generating some money and scale up from there.
That was my whole simplify philosophy in the later part of my agency life. But it was coming from the fact that I was frustrated, more than anything, for some of our clients, who came to us for funnel builds and then didn't have budget for marketing, then were burnt out with the idea of the process. I remember one client, she came to us, we were building everything out, she was so excited at the start. We looked at it, we wanted to follow this plan that she'd brought in from some guru. We looked at it, and genuinely it was gonna take about six months start to finish. She had to do so much work in terms of creating videos and content and writing and all this kind of stuff. By the end of it, she herself was burnt out on the idea of actually marketing and selling this product, because she'd spent six months working on this project and it hadn't generated anything. That was because we were both sucked into this complexity trap, and the trap that said, hustle all the way to the launch, and then you'll make loads of money. But it was that cult of hustle and complexity that we got caught up in the trap of, time and time again, that led to nothing.
The clients that came in and we just said, right, we're gonna do this, we're gonna ignore the fashionable way of building out our followers and the complexity that is this trend, we're just gonna build something simple... they were the ones that won. So that trend of complexity, it was sold to us, we were brainwashed into it. It's not your fault, it's not my fault. But there's a way out, and that's why I wrote my book, that's why I'm on this podcast, that's why I'm standing firm on this word simplify, and I want to get it out to the world.
The third point, the funnel hacking era has died. You know, the people who proliferated the more steps, more upsells, more automation message, and sold the products and programs and software to match, and to help you to do all of this... the tables started to turn in 2023. It was August 2023 when I sat down and I made that decision in Portugal, there on my own, a little bit of a business retreat on my own, to strategize about the next steps. Those four days were pivotal. They were a pivot, I can't think of the exact word, but they were extremely important. That was the moment that everything moved for me in my business, when I chose to want to hang my hat on telling people to simplify, and sharing this message of simplify.
And I think what has come out from there is, this message of simplify is starting to get out there more than this message of complicated funnels and building complexity, even in this age of AI. I really feel like there's a few people that are out there who are helping people to bring AI into the right place in their businesses, i.e. within systems and processes and things, to help the business owner and the expert to be focused on the human side of things. And that's great, and I think that's where we need to be ending up. But there's an unfortunate number, and probably the majority of AI experts and consultants out there, who are still basically just saying, abdicate everything to AI. That's like the funnel hacking kind of mentality, that basically says AI can plug every gap, it will add every step, it will think about everything.
Now granted, there's a methodology that says that this is good, because the computer will sort it all out for us. But again, what happens when the customer is lost in that system somewhere along the line, and your brand has been communicating to them in ways that you don't know about, telling their customer or the audience stuff that you probably would never have actually said humanly, but the AI has thought that's a good thing to say? They've hallucinated, and even potentially got things wrong. We see the statements underneath all of the AI platforms, ChatGPT can make mistakes, all of that kind of stuff.
The reality is, it's the same, it's funnel hacking, it's adding complicated steps and processes in place, more automation, and removing this gap between you and your customer, which is where we really should be building the relationship as strong as possible. So I think we need to understand that that funnel hacking era has died. We don't need to be doing all of the things that that era taught us.
And the fourth thing, complicated funnels and complexity, you know, it doesn't help. Complex funnels straight up fail. They're hard to implement, they confuse the buyer, they confuse the person who owns the funnel in the first place. They're an absolute nightmare to optimise, and quite often they're too rigid to adapt, or there's too many moving parts to change when the market moves, when things change. And ultimately, if you've got people going through a really complicated funnel and they start getting confused, a confused customer won't buy. Simplicity sells at the end of the day. And I want to be a proponent of that, rather than a proponent of adding complex stuff into business.
So my call to you is to simplify. I want you to head over to simplifythefunnel.com and grab a copy of my book. There's a bunch of resources that you'll get free of charge if you buy on my website there. You can also get this over on Amazon, but if you head to simplifythefunnel.com, you'll get a couple of video trainings. There's a video training around the simplify mindset, the stuff that I go into in terms of the frameworks that are in there. But you'll also be invited, if you purchase a copy of that, to join the Simplify Business Community, which is a growing community of people who are on this mission to simplify. It's business owners all over the world who are in community, and they get to be on a live Q&A with me every single week, from September through to the end of July. We take a break in August.
If you're listening to this podcast at the time I'm recording this, we're in August right now, we're in a season where we've got our summer boot camp, which is weekly training released into that community, so that people can still take action during August, but we don't have any live calls. And this is because people are traveling all over the place. But simplify can be done together in community, when we keep each other accountable as well. So I'd love for you to grab your copy of the book, go to simplifythefunnel.com, and then after you've purchased your copy, please come and join us inside the community. Get access to the current summer boot camp training, get access to the calls from September onwards. And if you're listening to this podcast outside of that, then come and join the community now, our next live call is gonna be this coming Monday.
But I promised you a fifth thing. I've given you four things that I really wanted to cover off in this podcast. I've talked about strategy being the decision to make, complexity being a trend that has just disappeared, the funnel hacking era has died, and complex funnels fail straight up. I really just wanna kind of give you one more thing to walk away with.
Everybody is saying simplify now, and I'm celebrating it. I have recently had a number of conversations with some people who basically have said, you know, how do you feel about this person, they're robbing your message, they're now talking about simplification, but they were the biggest complicated person out there, and their program had all these kind of things, and now they're saying simplify, they're just copying you. Listen, I don't mind.
I built my framework that I wrote into my book, that talked about SEED marketing, the idea of becoming the expert and focusing on audience building first. I talked about the minimum viable funnel, where we can take our audience from and put them into a minimum system and a minimum structure that removes friction and gets people buying. And I also added in the Selling Without Selling methodology, with that seven part framework that is used as a conversation to invite people to the next step, rather than trying to be pushy and salesy. I put all of that into my book, and it was published by the first publisher that I went to, which was amazing. And yes, I put that in writing, I made that decision in 2023. It's now a few years on from that, and yeah, this message is starting to get out there on the internet. Everyone on the planet seems to be saying simplify.
And it's a good thing, it shows that to exist and to stand in the gap is a good thing. And if you wanna make waves, just be consistent with the message that you have. If you feel like nobody's really talking about it right now, and you start putting your message out there, whatever your message is, whatever your message of transformation is for the people you wanna serve, stand on it and be consistent. If people then start talking about it along the way, you know you've got the right thing. If other people are picking up on it and starting to say the same thing, you've hit the nail on the head.
I love it when I see some of the top business gurus on the planet putting out their YouTube videos, their podcasts, their videos on social media, and they say the answer is to simplify. I love it, because I started to write the book, and now they're starting to say it as well. Whether they read the book or not, it doesn't matter, they've come to a similar conclusion, that actually complexity is the thing that kills a business, and simplicity is the thing that wins. So I wanna be the one that champions the word simplify, I wanna be the one who stands in the gap and is consistently telling everybody we should simplify. And if other people are saying it too, absolutely fine.
This podcast is here to help you to simplify. The five things I've covered: simplify is a strategy, complexity was a trend that's disappeared, the funnel hacking era is dead, complex funnels fail, and everyone is saying simplify and I love it. It's the foundation of everything we'll cover on this show moving forward.
If this episode has resonated with you, then do me a favour, share this with somebody else. Make sure that you're subscribed wherever you are listening to this podcast, and if you're watching over on YouTube, make sure that you subscribe. If you're listening to this podcast and you wanna watch a video version of this, just head over to YouTube, find my YouTube channel, look for Less Is the Strategy podcast, look for Ant Hodges, and you'll find it there.
Please let me know what you're thinking. I'm genuinely interested in whether this resonates for you or not. If it doesn't, then argue back with me, put it in the comments on my YouTube channel. Because genuinely, it helps us to move forward with this kind of conversation. If we can talk about it more, I really truly believe, and I'm standing on this soapbox to say, that simplify is the way forward. I wanna share it with the world, and I'm so pleased that you're here, that you've listened to this podcast all the way through to the end today. I want you to now just share it with the world as well.
So let's simplify, let's move forward. If you wanna go deeper with anything with me, then do grab a copy of the book over at simplifythefunnel.com. Accept the invitation to join our community, be part of what we're doing. If you're interested in anything that you wanna do around working with me, head over to anthodges.com. Or, you know, Instagram's my playground, you can reach me there. I cannot wait to hear your stories of how you're moving forward and you're simplifying. Let's do this, let's be on this journey to simplify, and let's scale our businesses in an easier way. I've been Ant Hodges, this is Less Is the Strategy, the podcast that helps you to simplify. I'll speak to you again next week. Bye for now.