Frustrated. Angry!
That was my regular experience when trying to locate the pages I’d built in my WordPress site. While I love WordPress, it wasn’t created for sales funnels. It’s a blogging platform that has evolved, but it was never meant for marketers.
As a visual person, I would be frustrated every day when I couldn’t instantly find the pages I was looking for…or for seeing the relationship of all the pages in my sales funnels. It was driving me NUTS!
And when I tried to use other funnel-building systems, I was frustrated by their high prices (or low prices with big limitations!) their page formatting inadequacies and the fact that “hosted pages” simply destroyed any hope of a decent google ranking. I just couldn’t seem to win!
I wanted to use WordPress and I wanted to have a easy-to-use drag & drop funnel builder that could visually design my funnels easily. But there was nothing.
So I asked Matt, the head of my coding team, if he could create it for me. Matt said yes, but he was working on other projects for me and the “wp funnels” idea was placed on the back burner for a couple of years.
Finally, I got so frustrated that I told Matt to stop everything and change his priorities. I gave him the green light to create a new way to use WordPress…and LeadPages…and Unbounce and other page builders. They created great pages, but had no organization and no way to recognize that there were other ways that marketers need to connect with their clients and prospects (ie Omni-Channel Marketing).
Even then, I was just building this tool for myself. I never considered the implications of how I would be revolutionizing the way WordPress is used for digital marketing.
That all shifted when I was on the phone with my attorney. When I told him about my little pet project, he got so excited about it that I was shocked. If my attorney was so blown away by our “little plan”, what would others think?
So I asked some of my friends and fellow marketers what they thought. The response was even more shocking—they all wanted it NOW!
Armed with the knowledge that there was a huge need in the market for a REAL funnel builder that makes WordPress dance a real marketing tune, we hired more coders and started building a robust application that would ultimately become Bagel™.
We needed a name.
Since it was now going to become a viable software product, we needed to consider our brand. I came up with a super boring name. I think it was “FunnelStar” or something, which lacked the passion and mood that was inspiring us.
We needed something fun, memorable and different. What could it be?
I was in Australia with my friend Sanjiv when it all came together. Sanjiv brought me to Coochiemudlo, an island near Brisbane, and as we walked along the beach we started talking. I told him I needed a funky name…something like “tomato” or “carrot” or “pomelo” or even “bagel” As the word “Bagel” rolled off my lips, I felt something light up…and Sanjiv just looked at me and shreiked “That’s it!”
Yes, the “eureka moment” happened on a cute little island with a unique name in Australia.
But it wasn’t smooth sailing…oh no!
We created the logo and branding and I took it with me to Cleveland, where I had the privilege of being on a hotseat with marketing legend Dan Kennedy…who told me that the name was totally wrong and that I needed to have something that was more inline with what the product does.
I was devastated. My guru/idol/hero told me to change my brand! And nearly everyone else in my mastermind said the same thing.
So I played with other names. I settled on “Funnels123”, which does tell you exactly what we do (you can create your funnel fast…just 1…2…3)!
But I still wasn’t happy. I mean, look at the marketplace…what does “Apple” have to do with a computer? What does “Wistia” mean?
I stood up to Dan Kennedy.
24 hours later, Bagel™ was BACK. And there was no turning back. And with it has come the most revolutionary way to creating omni-channel sales funnels for WordPress and other great page builders!
It’s taken many months of development to get it right…to get all the features to operate flawlessly. To get our high-converting templates to work with so many different page builders, such as Elementor, Divi, Thrive Architect, WP Bakery, Beaver Builder, OptimizePress and more.
Yes, it’s been quite a bit of work. But it’s become a labor of love. And now we can say with pride that Bagel™ is coming out of the oven!
-Ken Krell, Chief Enthusiast at BagelSoft