Everything is a Funnel
Hey everyone,
This week I watching a video from Jack Conte, the CEO of Patreon, about the nature of the creative process. At one point, he was talking about how he realized that everything is a funnel, including being a creator. He used the example of Irving Berlin, who supposedly wrote 10 songs for every song he released. So 15,000 songs written -> 1,500 songs published -> 25 #1 hits -> 12 Oscar/Tony nominations -> 4 Oscar/Tony wins. The world is made of funnels.
This insight really struck me. Conte mentioned that he saw how this phenomenon applied to his life after trying to schedule an appointment with a doctor and getting nowhere. I’ve been having the same problem trying to get residential fence estimates—calling one or two companies every now and then in hopes that this will be “the one,” but often they won’t call me back or don’t do the kind of work I’m looking for. Realizing that I keep ending up at square one, today I broke out a spreadsheet and listed every place I could find in a routine Google search. Now I’m going to make my way through the list, in order to up my potential for a conversion.
Dating, job searching, finding a fence company or doctor…funnels are everywhere. I’m looking forward to applying this mental model in other areas, and I hope you’ll join me.
Pete’s Picks ✅
Series: I’ve been watching I’ll Be Gone in the Dark from HBO, based on the book of the same name about the Golden State Killer case. The author’s research helped crack the case, and it’s been interesting to see more of her process.
Book: I’ve been thinking about I Will Teach You to Be Rich lately, which is one of the best personal finance books I’ve read. One of the main concepts in the book is to spend lavishly on things you care about (like not installing a fence) and relentlessly cut things you don’t care about. This mindset has been very helpful to me, since my default strategy for a flourishing financial life is to be frugal with everything. There’s a lot of other good nuggets in there as well!
This Week’s Blog Post 📝
Should Everyone Really Learn to Code?
Cheers,
Peter