The Real Reason Your Funnel Isn’t Converting (And How to Fix It)

Hey Revenue Writers,

If you are trying to build a business based on your words, it can be so frustrating.

You post on social, write blogs and newsletters, do videos, podcasts, come up with your first product and don’t make any money.

At least that is how it worked for me.

Everyone on the internet (at the time) was yelling about how you needed a sales funnel.

A page dedicated to one thing… shoving customers through it and forcing them to decide if they would buy from you or not.

Maybe you’ve heard of this stat before, but it takes 6-8 touches to turn a lead into a customer.

The problem with funnels is it takes 6-8 touches to convert a LEAD… not random stranger… to a customer.

A funnel is often executed as a one and done opportunity.

Ad (random stranger) → Sales Funnel → Cart

Now Sales Funnels CAN work.

I’ve made $2k launching books because I was selling other things behind the book.

But what I’ve found if funnels work best inside of a flywheel.

See the reasons funnels typically fail isn’t the color of the buttons or offer… it is the lack of belief we’ve built.

Below is an excerpt from Mini Book Flywheel: How to Design a Category That Makes Your Business Unforgettable talking about the difference between funnels and flywheels.

I hope it helps you.

A Funnel is like a Tornado, but a Flywheel is like a Hurricane

When you’re just getting started in business, it’s easy to get drawn into an obsession with funnels: they’re quick, they’re powerful, and they can spin up anywhere there’s a thunderstorm.

But funnels are like tornadoes that are born out of strong weather systems, lines of storms already charged, clouds already swirling, and already full of energy. A tornado doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It feeds on energy that already exists.

Funnels work the same way.

They don’t create energy. They borrow it.

A funnel only works when there’s already momentum in the air, people searching for you (or your competition), talking about you, trusting you, or wanting the solution you offer. If that atmosphere isn’t there, a funnel has nothing to pull from.

That’s the key difference between tornadoes and hurricanes.

Tornadoes (funnels) spin fast but depend on someone else’s weather.

Hurricanes (flywheels) build slowly but make their own weather from scratch.

Every business needs weather. But I needed to listen to the advice I’ve been giving the adjusters in my courses: it’s better to own the weather than to chase the big storms.

Without a flywheel, you end up chasing pressure systems other people created. Launch after launch. Hack after hack. Always spinning up something new because the energy disappears the moment you stop.

This is where funnels break down:

If you haven’t built trust yet… If you don’t already have people searching for you… If you’re still early and trying to get anyone to care… then throwing a funnel into the world won’t do much.

That’s why so many business owners end up frustrated. They treat funnels like a magic lever. When in reality, a funnel can’t extract value from a market that doesn’t believe in you yet.

The Flywheel Law: 1 Flywheel = 1000 Funnels

Hurricanes last 1000x longer than tornadoes. While a tornado spins up fast, it dies out within 5 minutes, on average. Hurricanes average 10 days.

It’s the same with funnels and flywheels. You can use a funnel, but the effect it has on a single customer lasts only minutes and is often forgotten. Flywheels, like hurricanes, compound belief and impact for 1000x longer.

That’s what I call the Flywheel Law.

Flywheel Law: Hurricanes (Flywheels) last 1000x longer than tornadoes (Funnels).

I was watching one of my friend Max’s documentaries about tornadoes, when it hit me: We don’t name tornadoes.

Even the worst tornadoes don’t get their own identity. They’re referenced by city and date:“Joplin Tornado, 2011.” “Moore, Oklahoma Tornado, 1999.” “Tuscaloosa Tornado, April 27, 2011.”

But hurricanes have names.

We all remember them: Sandy. Irma. Katrina.

Hurricanes are branded into our minds forever.

So if you want to be someone that people remember, you have to be a hurricane, not a tornado. You have to do the work of building a flywheel instead of pinning all of your hopes on the next funnel.

Escaping the Tornado Trap

Funnels aren’t bad. They can work brilliantly. But they work best inside of a flywheel.

When a hurricane is at its strongest, it produces tornadoes. Alex Hormozi, when he launched $100m Money Models, had a simple funnel at checkout. But this wasn’t a one-off tornado. It was a small part of the big hurricane.

The funnel made the purchase process easier for customers and presented options they were excited to see.

That’s how funnels should work, as focused events that bring people in, powered by the deeper, longer-lasting system in a flywheel.

The danger comes when you mistake funnels for the whole storm (which is what most business owners do). Funnels, by themselves, only work if you keep feeding them new traffic or constantly create new offers. That’s the trap: you become a storm chaser, always trying to cash in on the next tornado.

The Tornado Trap accelerates the Belief Breakdown by creating motion without momentum—attention spikes that never compound into belief.

Funnels are how you operate the cash register. Flywheels are how you build the belief and demand for you and your category.

You don’t start with the register. You start with the belief.

This is how you escape the Tornado Trap. This is how you quit being a storm chaser.

You don’t need to spend years building a massive flywheel like Alex Hormozi.

I built my business on a faster, simpler flywheel that started generating momentum with one short Mini Book. You can write a Mini Book in under a week and publish within a month.

You can build a Mini Book Flywheel that uses that Mini Book to create your own Belief Flywheel, a system that keeps your business spinning even when you’re not pushing.

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If you want to take action implementing a Flywheel strategy in your business, check out Mini Book Flywheel - Smart Book Edition.

You can read, watch, listen, fill out a workbook, and get AI assistance applying everything all on one screen.

- Coach Chris Stanley