Most “funnels” aren’t funnels.
They’re Plinko boards.
A lead drops in, bounces around your website, your emails, your sales process, your product… and you hope they land in the right bucket.
Sometimes they do. Most of the time, they don’t. And the worst part is you can’t tell the difference between:
- someone who’s almost there, and
- someone who’s already gone.
That’s why Jon Farah, founder of LifecycleX, to joined Roy on the latest episode of the Beautiful Company Builders podcast. Jon helps software companies stop treating customers like random falling tokens and start building intentional journeys that increase activation, conversion, and retention–often by ridiculous amounts (like a 522% lift in paid trial activation).
And here’s the important part: this isn’t “software-only” advice.
Jon is solving a business alignment problem.
If you want growth that doesn’t rely on constantly getting more leads, you need to get serious about a metric almost nobody manages on purpose:
Time-to-Value.
What is Time-to-Value?
Time-to-value is the time between:
- the moment someone raises their hand (signup, inquiry, consultation request), and
- the moment they experience the first real win (the “aha” moment)
That “aha” is when the value proposition finally clicks.
If your time-to-value is long, you’re going to lose people. And the longer it is, the more people you’ll lose.
If your time-to-value is short, people commit.
“The goal,” Jon said, “is narrowing the gap between signup and that first meaningful outcome.”
Once you see your business through that lens, you start asking better questions.
Step 1: Design the Journey
Before you track, automate, or optimize anything, you need a journey to optimize.
Jon described starting with an experience strategy. It’s a journey map of the steps you want users to take. Not every step. Just the steps that matter.
Think of it like this:
Your Customer Doesn’t Need to Know Everything Right Away
They need the next step.
So, define these two things:
- The first “aha” moment. What is the first win that makes someone think, “Oh… this is going to work.”
- The micro-conversions that lead to it. These should be 3–7 small steps that reliably predict success.
Examples
Here are some examples from different verticals.
SaaS example (like Scout in the episode):
- Sign up
- Use a pre-built agent
- Complete a workflow
- Add a teammate
- Connect a data source
- Book a demo or upgrade
Service business example:
- Inquiry comes in
- Estimate scheduled
- Estimate delivered
- First deliverable shipped
- Renewal
Coaching / consulting example:
- Discovery call booked
- Pre-work submitted
- First session completed
- First measurable insight / win
- Next session scheduled
If you don’t define these steps, you can’t shorten time-to-value because you don’t know what “value” looks like in measurable terms.
Step 2: Use Data Like a Flashlight
A lot of businesses treat data like a report card.
Jon treats it like a flashlight.
If you can’t see where someone is in the journey, you can’t help them move forward.
In the episode, Jon described building lifecycle programs “bottom up,” like building a house: foundation first.
- Foundation: data
- First floor: systems and software
- Roof: campaigns
Most companies do the opposite. They start with the roof: “Let’s send nine emails after signup.”
That’s not lifecycle marketing. That’s spam with a schedule.
Keep it simple. Track the signals that tell you:
- Did they do the thing?
- If not, where are they stuck?
- Are they drifting away?
- Did they convert?
Jon broke this down into two categories:
- Attribute data: who they are (role, plan, industry, etc.)
- Event data: what they did (or didn’t do)
Don’t start with the data you have. Start with the journey you want. Then reverse-engineer the data you need.
Starter Event List
Here’s a list of events to track that will work for almost any business.
- Activation event: first meaningful action completed
- Progress events: the micro-steps
- Risk event: inactivity thresholds (e.g., no login, no response, or no next step within X days)
- Conversion event: upgrading to a paid account, requesting a quote
- Expansion event: added user, upgraded tier, booked follow-up project, referred someone
Step 3: Build Delight by Being “Helpful at Scale”
This is the part I love, because good marketing should provide value.
Your automations should feel like a great coach:
- present
- specific
- timely
- focused on the next right step
In the episode, Jon talked about being “helpful at scale” and he described how bad automation looks:
- everyone gets the same emails
- on the same schedule
- regardless of what they’ve done
A Simple Rule
Don’t send timed sequences as a substitute for awareness. Send triggers tied to what the customer actually did (or didn’t do).
Here are three practical “Delight” plays you can build quickly:
- Nudges. “You’ve done Step 1. Don’t forget to do this to get unlock the real value.” Include one short walkthrough or example. And make it easy to take action.
- Progress Reinforcement. Celebrate the win and direct them immediately to the next step. “Nice. Now do this next so you can get the real payoff.”
- Rescue Them If They’re Stuck. If they go inactive, don’t guilt them. Help them. “Still want this outcome? Here’s how to get it.”
Step 4: Make Better Decisions with Growth Sprints
This might be the most important part of the whole conversation. Don’t set it and forget it!
Products change. Customers change. Your market changes.
Jon said the biggest mistake people make in lifecycle marketing is implementing campaigns, then walking away.
Instead, he recommends growth sprints:
- identify where the system is leaking
- run experiments
- apply what works globally
- repeat
That’s how you compound results.
Try This
- Pick 1–3 bottlenecks (ex: low activation, slow time-to-value, early churn)
- Choose one hypothesis per bottleneck
- Run a test (copy, channel, trigger, sequence, offer, onboarding step)
- Roll winners into the core system
- Retire losers quickly
Churn is Usually an Early-Stage Problem
One of Jon’s most interesting nuggets of wisdom was that many companies assume churn happens later, but in practice, a huge percentage happens early.
Why?
Because the time-to-value was too long.
If the first 30–90 days are foggy, confusing, or slow, customers leave. So if you want retention, don’t start with retention tactics.
Start with time-to-value.
Reduce it, and churn prevention gets easier because customers actually experience the promise.
Watch the Episode
If you want the full breakdown of how Jon thinks about lifecycle marketing listen to the episode or watch it below. Jon covers everything from mapping the journey to orchestrating data to running experiments.
