HI, I'M BASTIAN.

AND YOU DON'T KNOW ME (YET).

2015, California

Let me take you back to 2015 ..

At the time, I worked for the guy next to me in the image above ..

His name is Steli Efti.

He throws the party at Close.io. A YC company.

That's where my journey began ..
(and also ended ..)

I lived a typical Silicon Valley life ..

I shared a garage with 3 other startup junkees ..
(4 on weekends ..)

Hustling at day time ..

And coding at night ..

Oh man, 2015 went by fast ..

At the end of 2015, I had to make a decision ..

Stay in Palo Alto and commit to my job ..

Or burn the bridges and jump into cold water ..

No easy decision ..

I tell you.

I loved Steli and Close.io but I also knew that something was waiting for me out there ..

I had to do it ..

Packed up. Booked a flight.

Off I was ..

Next stop: Santa Teresa, Costa Rica.

I knew where I wanted to be in a couple of years time ..

Working on "real-world" problems ..

Look ..

I'm super passionate about two things ..

1) Our planet (environment)
2) AI (Artificial Intelligence)

Ideally, I want to combine both worlds and become Elon Musk 2.0.

So why on earth am I building sales funnels ..?

Good question :-)

I see life like a butterfly ..

It has different stages and each stage contributes to & builds the final stage.

I'm right now at stage #1.
(out of three ..)

What is stage #1 ..?

Well ..

This is where you come into my life ..

But back to Costa Rica ..

I worked from this Yoga temple right from the beach.

Yes. Not. Kidding.

This one day I talked to a friend over Skype.

He runs an online business.

Let's call him Harry, shall we?

Harry needed some input on how to sell his product (online course) on a daily basis ..

He wanted a funnel (system) that builds up a relationship and then sells them a solution to their problem.

That's it.

Oh! And it should happen every single day ..

Of course, Harry ..

And guess what ..

I did what all good friends do ..

I helped him create his funnel.

And voila ..

Wild Audience was born: Sales Funnels for Online Businesses.

I registered the domain while I was in Panama.

And got my first paying customer in Columbia ..

.. Without having even started building my product.

Wait a minute, Bastian ..

How did you get your first paying customer before you started working on your product ..?

Good question, Sherlock :-)

This is how I did it ..

I wrote one blog post.

Just one.

This one.

The blog post is very much related to my paid product.

It's like a very light (light, light) version of it.

Everyone who shows interest for this blog post, automatically qualifies as a lead for my product.

I went on to promote it.

I used a simple & free traffic strategy called Facebook Groups.

Here is how it works ..

1) Research 1 FB group in your niche

2) Join the group

3) Use the “Related Groups” feature to find more groups

4) Find another 10 groups and join them

5) Wait until you get approved to join the groups

6) Research the FB group admin (you’ll find him/her under members)

7) Reach out to the admin and ask for approval to share your blog post in the group

8) If yes, post your blog post link + educational text

9) If no, move on

10) Repeat the process until you reach around 100 groups

11) Focus on the best-performing groups (top 15) in the future (once you have figured out which work and which don’t ..)

And to make it really easy for you, open this Google document to get my pre-written templates. And here is the CRM for Facebook Groups (no email signup required!).

It worked like a charm ..

(click to zoom-in ..)

47 people signed up ..

And a couple of days later, I got my first Stripe email ..

"Congratulations! You have just received a payment of $97." ..

Oh snap!

I had a problem ..

A customer but no product ..

But before I tell you what happened next ..

Here's something to chew on ..

After I split apart from my mentor & job in Silicon Valley ..

It took 6 months and 3 pivots until I found myself in the situation above.

Starting a project (that eventually finances your life) is damn hard.

Harder than I imagined.

I had no-one to guide me anymore ..

I didn't know what product to offer ..

Or how to make money ..

The reason I moved down south was not the beaches or salsa dancing ..

But to decrease my costs and increase my runway ..

No job, no income.

I had to create something fast ..

I knew I was good at ..

1) Writing stuff

2) Tech Marketing

3) Zagging

I mixed everything together ..

Iterated. Made mistakes. Analyzed feedback. Improved ..

.. And picked up momentum ..

Small successes turned into bigger ones ..

Until I received emails like this one ..

Let me tell you why my funnel works ..

I have one single focus at the beginning ..

To establish a relationship with a new lead.

Why?

If you have a relationship with your audience ..

You're able to create trust.

Your people will see you as the expert.

Their advisor.

And that's what you aim for ..

You want to become your audience's trusted advisor.

Are you ready to help, advise & guide your people BEFORE money has changed hands ..?

Think about it ..

Are you willing to do that?

Because I am.

The game is simple.

If I work extremely hard to deliver pure value to you. If I show you that I really care ..

You will care back :-)

If you mix respect-based marketing with funnel-wudhu, you end up receiving emails like I did above ..

Now let me show you how to do that ..