From Revenue Funnel to User Journey: Mapping Experience, Not Extraction
My ten-step Substack user journey prioritizes human experience over pirate metrics
Most funnels are built to extract value. Mine is built to create an experience.
If you’ve ever looked at the classic “pirate metrics“ funnel and felt something slightly off about it, you’re not alone.
The AARRR framework (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue) and the expanded AAARRR variant (with Awareness tacked on at the front) are undeniably useful. These models give you a straightforward way to measure growth and focus on outcomes. But let’s not kid ourselves about what they actually are. They’re extraction engines: they optimize for business outcomes. They optimize for money. Which explains why growth hackers and startup investors love them so much.
That’s not evil. It’s just how business works.
The pirate’s aim is plunder, speed, and surviving by outgunning the competition. (Which, not coincidentally, explains a lot about modern sales and marketing funnels.)
But I’m not a pirate. I’m a mapmaker.
I’m not building yet another startup. I want to create something genuinely valuable for the Solo Chief.
A Solo Chief is the single manager and leader of a business or other creative endeavor. They orchestrate tools, systems, humans, and AI agents to accomplish what used to require an entire team of managers.
And when you’re working alone on your product, service, or piece of art, you don’t optimize for revenue. You optimize for trust, time, and value. Do that well enough, and the revenue shows up.
Which means the thing actually worth optimizing is the human experience on the other side of your work.
The thing worth optimizing is the human experience on the other side of your work.
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My Ten-Step Substack User Journey
Practicing what I preach, I created a ten-step user journey for my Substack publication. Not a revenue funnel. A user journey. It’s how I organize work on my to-do list and how I decide what needs fixing next. These ten steps keep me focused when the temptation to chase vanity metrics inevitably shows up. (And it always does.)
What follows: my ten steps, the reasoning behind them, and a few practical examples of the work that belongs in each.
Note 1: I do not recommend that you copy-paste my framework! I’m merely offering this as an example of an experience-focused journey. Instead, I hope my example pushes you to draw a much better user journey for your own specific product, service, or artwork.
Note 2: I recently decided to double down on my efforts and focus on improving my Substack. What I’m describing here is my near-future aspiration, not a summary of my past performance. In fact, I’ve been rather neglectful of my Substack. As of now, that will change.
Step 1: Noticing
This is the initial moment someone becomes aware I exist. They don’t know who I am, but my work somehow brushed past their attention.
The experience goal: make the first contact clear, relevant, and not annoying.
Example tasks:
Reach out to adjacent creators for cross-promotion or guest appearances
Repurpose a post into a short, shareable update for various social media channels
Improve discoverability with basic SEO hygiene (titles, internal links, archive structure)
Step 2: Investigating
People noticed me. Now they’re curious and checking me out. Remember, we get exactly one shot at making a first impression!
The experience goal: reduce confusion. Make it obvious who I’m for and what I stand for.
Example tasks:
Write a single-paragraph positioning statement for first-time visitors
Create an Evergreen Library or “Start Here” index for my best work
Ensure my headline, tagline, and bio are consistent across social media
Step 3: Following
This is the “I’d like to stay in contact” stage. Following is a small commitment: a low-friction way for someone to keep me in their orbit.
The experience goal: make staying connected feel worthwhile and lightweight.
Example tasks:
Set up a simple system for staying present (notes, short updates, small wins)
Build a contact system that consolidates warm relationships (email-first, not platform-dependent)
Create a habit of reaching out to existing contacts with something genuinely useful
Step 4: Subscribing
Now they’re letting me into their inbox or their feed on purpose. This is not the moment to impress them with prolific output. It’s the moment to clarify what they’ll actually get.
The experience goal: help them realize that subscribing was a smart decision.
Example tasks:
Announce my mission and write a clear positioning post
Define my key topics and the kinds of posts I’ll publish
Write a simple “Why subscribe?” explanation for fence-sitters
Step 5: Engaging
Subscribing is passive. Engaging is active. This is where my work stops being output and starts being a relationship.
The experience goal: make people feel seen, not harvested.
Example tasks:
Run a reader questionnaire to invalidate my incorrect assumptions
Build a lightweight “core readers” list (top contributors, commenters, sharers)
Create a system for surfacing reader voices publicly (credit ideas, quote replies, acknowledge contributions)
Step 6: Sharing
Sharing is the moment my readers become transmitters. But people don’t share because I ask them to. They share when it is easy and it makes them feel good.
The experience goal: make forwarding my work feel valuable and effortless.
Example tasks:
Design shareable formats (quotable principles, checklists, short “field notes”)
Write “send this to…” posts aimed at a specific target audience
Add one intentional share cue to posts that genuinely deserve it
Step 7: Paying
For me, getting subscribers to pay is not the end goal. It’s a deeper commitment. When someone pays, my job is not to feel victorious. My job is to deliver value fast and repeatedly.
The experience goal: remove friction for people who already decided I’m worth it.
Example tasks:
Interview paid subscribers to learn what they value and why they churn
Write a “Why pay?” essay that explains the paid value without guilt or pressure
Offer a corporate expense template so professionals can subscribe easily
Step 8: Onboarding
This is where most paid subscriptions quietly die. Not because the content isn’t good. Because people don’t know how to use what they bought.
The experience goal: confidence transfer. “I’m glad I paid. I know where to start.”
Example tasks:
Define the “first-win moment” for new paid subscribers in the first fourteen days
Create a welcome sequence with orientation content (3–5 touches max)
Build one canonical “Start Here (Paid)” artifact that everything points to
Step 9: Consuming
Consuming is where value becomes tangible. This is the difference between “I like this creator” and “This subscription improves my work.”
The experience goal: make value easy to find, easy to use, and easy to remember.
Example tasks:
Map paid content to specific jobs-to-be-done (what problem does this solve?)
Create a paid content index by problem, not by date
Run paid-only tool experiments and publish them in a consistent format (”use it when… don’t use it when…”)
Step 10: Offboarding
People leave. Timing changes. Budgets shrink. Priorities shift. Offboarding is not a failure. It’s a time for feedback.
The experience goal: let people exit with dignity and leave the door open.
Example tasks:
Create a short cancellation survey that captures the real reason they left
Write a calm, respectful exit email (no guilt, no desperation)
Offer a re-entry path that’s based on legitimate future value, not discounts
A Note for Agile Practitioners
If this journey feels familiar, that’s no accident. It’s closely related to user story mapping, which also designs work around an end-to-end user experience instead of isolated tasks or metrics.
The difference is scale. User story mapping is a rigorous team practice for building products. What I describe here is a lightweight, generic version for Solo Chiefs: single leaders managing their work and attention without ceremonies and traditional teams.
If this approach resonates and you want more depth, user story mapping is well worth exploring!
Organize Your Work by User Journey
So what’s the point of all this?
Simple: when you build a funnel around revenue, you optimize for extraction. When you build a journey around user experience, you optimize for trust, time, and value.
When you build a funnel around revenue, you optimize for extraction. When you build a journey around user experience, you optimize for trust, time, and value.
You can use my ten steps as a starting point for your own design. You can rename them, merge a few, and add several of your own. Remember, your product, service, or artwork is not the same as mine. I urge you to be smart and define the user journey you want your users to experience.
The important thing is doing the uncomfortable thing most chiefs and creators avoid: mapping the experience end-to-end, then managing your work according to that map.
I’m not a pirate. I’m a mapmaker. A pirate chases treasure. A mapmaker creates orientation. Pirates optimize for speed, capture, and extraction, taking what they can before moving on. A mapmaker explores carefully, documents the terrain, and leaves behind something others can actually use. Where pirates push people toward destinations that serve them, mapmakers reduce uncertainty and help travelers choose their own paths. In a world of Solo Chiefs, AI, and relentless change, we don’t need more pirates. We need better maps.
Do you like this post? Please consider supporting me by becoming a paid subscriber. It’s just one coffee per month. That will keep me going while you can keep reading! PLUS, you get my latest book Human Robot Agent FOR FREE! Subscribe now.
Reminder: I’m not offering a template. I’m offering an example.
So consider this your challenge:
Go list the steps of your own user journey. Ten if you’re ambitious. Six if you’re sane. Twelve if you enjoy the suffering.
Then pick one stage that feels weak and write down:
What a better experience would look like
What you can do this week to move it
What you’ll measure to know it improved
Then do it. Not because it increases revenue, but because it respects the human on the other side.
That’s what Solo Chiefs do.
Jurgen
P.S. I’m very interested in reading about your user journeys.
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I love this.
Lovely. Lovely.