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Russell Brunson
Do you have a funnel? But it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com podcast. That's sellingonline.com podcast. What's up everybody?
Co-host or Moderator
Welcome back to the show. I hope you enjoyed the Q and A session from our last episode. As I told you, it's. I was doing a Q and A for the scaling online event that we did and did about 90 minutes Q&A the end and had so much fun and so many cool questions and so I, you know, thought I'd share them.
Russell Brunson
With you guys here.
Co-host or Moderator
So if you hopefully enjoyed the the last set of questions, this is kind of the conclusion of the questions from the event and I hope you, I.
Russell Brunson
Hope you get a lot from it.
Co-host or Moderator
So hopefully in the future you have.
Russell Brunson
A chance to join one of our.
Co-host or Moderator
One of our challenges. I usually do live Q and as at the end of the challenges like this and it's just so much fun to have a chance to hang out and talk to you guys.
Event Host or Facilitator
So.
Russell Brunson
All right, with that said, I'm going.
Co-host or Moderator
To go back to the conclusion of the Q and A from the scaling online event.
Russell Brunson
This is the Russell Brunson show.
Event Host or Facilitator
So up next we have Chris and Chris Irwin Davis. Yes. Chris Irwin Davis. He is a university professor, AI research scientist. His offer is tech career coaching plus coding level AI education for gen X mid career pros who want to stay relevant in six figure jobs. His plan is to run YouTube ads to a webinar to a console call. So the question is what funnel would you build first and what would you skip?
Russell Brunson
Cool. Price point is six grand basically. Cool.
Event Host or Facilitator
Correct.
Russell Brunson
Okay, great question. I would do exactly what like literally you should just Funnel hack the one comma club challenge. Because in one comic club challenge we sold an offer. It was 5500 bucks. Basically six, basically same price. You are teaching a career on tech coaching. So I would look like how do you restructure your offer from being just coaching to certification? I mentioned earlier today, certification is the easiest thing that we sell especially for people who want career like career pros who want to stay relevant. The best way to sell relevant is to be certified in a thing. Okay. I'm working on another certification program right now because certification programs sell so well. It's in a very similar industry you're talking about here, but not exactly the same, but very similar. And so someone who is in a career who wants to stay relevant, the best way for them to stay relevant, even if they never actually learned the thing, is to add something else to their thing, like their little initials after their name, you know what I mean? Like the ba da da da, like whatever it is. And so what someone in this world wants, they want certification more than they want coaching. Because certification means they can go to their employer or to a future boss or someone they're trying to get hired. Like I am certified in, in coding level, AI education, whatever your thing is, right? So if you just structure it differently from a coaching to a certification, that's one of the biggest things. It's just a structure, restructuring how you do how you make the offer. Okay. The difference in coaching program, certification program is not a lot different. Coaching program, you tell them what to do, certification, you tell them what to do and then you have them go through the process to see if they actually know how to do it and then you certify them. Right. And so like that would be the biggest shift I would make is how you structure the offer. And then I would do a five day challenge. Just like one common club challenge. I would go funnel hack it, I would model it. Look how we did everything. And I would do that exact same thing. So yeah, like I said just for context, the one common club funnel is in my career now doing this game 25 years, the highest converting funnel I've had so far. And so I would look at that because your offer would plug into that framework flawlessly. So there you go, Chris. Just model what we just did because we perfected it. Hope it helps.
Event Host or Facilitator
All right, nice job, Russell. Up next we have Sophia. And Sophia runs a London family events site. Newsletter monetization with locals is tough. So she's pivoting to an international tourist with premium trip planning products. So I think the question since tourists only buy once, should she start with a $100 scalable product, high volume or $1,000 premium service, lower volume, higher delivery cost. And how would you structure the funnel? Email in a mostly one time purchase market.
Russell Brunson
Okay, so a London family save an email newsletter for people who were pivoting to international tourists with premium trip plan. Okay, so it's almost like a travel agency. Is that what it sounds like, Myles?
Event Host or Facilitator
It kind of sounds like a travel agency.
Russell Brunson
So tourists are coming in, thinking of.
Event Host or Facilitator
Shifting to a travel agency. So right now a newsletter for local Londonites.
Russell Brunson
Okay.
Event Host or Facilitator
And looking to having a hard time monetizing locals and trying to Branch out into people traveling to London and doing higher ticket packages.
Russell Brunson
Gotcha. Okay. All right. Step number one, I would say some businesses are really easy to make money with, and some are a lot harder, right? And so you're the spot now where you can pick any business you want. There's a billion different ways you can make money. And so it's like, you gotta rebuild whatever it is anyway. Should you rebuild in a business where someone's only gonna purchase once? I would say no. So if you were here and I was your best friend, I'd be like, you know what? That does seem pretty sexy and cool. The event newsletter seemed pretty cool. This seems kind of cool. But the problem is, like, people are just gonna buy once. So it's gonna be really hard to grow and to scale. And the only people are gonna buy are people who want to come to London. There are international tourists who want to come to London, right? And so it's like, that's a good business. But it's probably like a level one or level two opportunity, right? Versus you're going to put in the exact same amount of effort to build level 10 opportunity if you just think about this bigger, right? So there's a lot of money in trip planning, things like that. But if you shrink it down to a spot where you're only focusing on one area, man, it significantly stifles your ability to grow and to scale, Right? And so I'd be coming back thinking, like, is this the right business to be in? Because you did the event newsletter. That's a hard business. So here's another one. I'm pivoting to international tours, the premium trip plan products in a market where customers only likely buy one. So how do you change that? Like, instead of doing it, instead of picking a market where the customers are only likely to buy once, how do you find something where a customer's likely to buy over and over and over and over and over again? Because you're going to pick your business. Pick one that's going to be the easiest to be successful with, not the hardest to be successful with. Does that make sense? I remember, man, this is probably. It's probably a decade ago now. It was New Year's Day. No, it was more than a decade. Dang. It was way pre clickfunnels. So pre clickfunnels, pre everything. I had a business that I didn't love. It made some money, but I was, like, miserable. And I remember it was New Year's Day, and Tony Robbins posted the video. Him and Sage were out there at the beach or something. And they're like, hey, it's New Year's, and obviously you can change anytime you want. But New Year's, a lot of people think they can change now. So he's like, I want to invite you to change. If you're in a relationship, you're not happy with change. If you're in a business you don't love, change if you're in. And then you kind of went through, like, 10 different things. I was sitting there, I was like, but I can't change. I put so much time and effort into that. I was, like, freaking out. But then I was just like, I'm not happy. What if I just changed? And I was like, but I can't. Because this mental battle all day New Year's Day, you're like, I'm going to improve this. I'm going to make it better. I'm like, da, da, da, da. Or what if I just legitimately just said, I don't like this. Let me change and figure out something amazing? And so for you, I'd be like, why would you pick a market where only customers are gonna buy once you're putting yourself under undue stress and pressure, and I'm not sure why, versus, like, if I wanna be in the travel business. Cool. Like, who are the travel. This goes back to funnel hacking 101. Who are the people in the travel business who are crushing right now doing something I would love to do, having a ton of money and they're having fun, and they're like, look at that. Where's that little segment of the market happening? And go find that and funnel hack it. So I'd go back to the research phase and like, okay, that, like, again, I don't know how much research you put into the family events newsletter ahead of time, but if you did a lot of research ahead of time before you ever jumped in that, you would have known that, like, this is really hard to sell monetization. Like, the companies who are doing, like, who's making a million dollars a year doing this? Is there anybody? If not, like, why would you get in that business? Like, I want to be able to see, like, hey, there's 100 people who are crushing it in this model. Therefore, I will pursue that model, and if not, don't do it. Okay? So I recommend, if I was you, step number one. I'm not sure if you use perplexity yet. There's a lot of different AI out there. Perplexity is the best for research. I go into perplexity AI probably, I don't know, Google Perplexity AI. It's the one that Rogan uses now. And all the Rogan podcasts, they sponsor him. But I go there and be like, hey, I'm thinking, like, I'm thinking about. Actually I would start with your existing business. I would type in like, I'm running a local family events, news. There are rice level things I'm struggling with monetization. Can you show me 10 people who are successfully doing this model and making over a million dollars a year? And you'll go research, pull back like, no one's doing that. You're like, dang, I shouldn't have built my business there. Then like, hey, I'm thinking about doing this. Is there anybody else who's doing five, $10 million a year in this model with one location? Let me know. And it's going to find out probably like, nope. And be like, huh, here's what I'm really good at. Can you find somebody else who's doing this right now, doing five to $10 million a year that I could funnel hack, I could model who's having success? Because I'm going to build a business if there's a proven pathway ahead of me where I can model and make it work immediately. And it'll go out there and find a bunch of research and bring it back. Like, that's what I'd be looking for. Like, if you're gonna be rebuilding anyway, build on a solid foundation that gives you ability to grow and to scale. Don't build on something where you have all these limitations already happening. It's like someone comes to me like, hey, I'm a chiropractor. I'm like, why would you do that? I love chiropractors. But like, you're in a local area, you're in Boise, Idaho. There's 2,000 chiropractors in our valley here. Best case scenario, you're making. I don't know what they make. Not that much. Cause like, you have so many constraints. So you have to be people. Your customers have to find you within this local radi. Not going to drive too much further. There's 22 other people just like you. Like, why would you start that business? Why? It's insane. Take your skill set and start a business that's global. You can do a heck of a lot less work and make a whole bunch more money by just taking your skillset and applying it to a business with a level 10 opportunity versus level 1 opportunity. And so for you, that's My biggest recommendation is like, think through this ahead of time, because you're going to spend the exact same amount of work building on a level one opportunity versus level ten. The only difference is you're going to make ten times more money, ten times simpler, ten times easier if you pick the right business ahead of time. So that'd be my feedback for you and for. Yeah, hopefully that helps. And obviously, honestly, for all you guys, make sure you're building a business you actually want long term, because it's gonna be the same amount of work to build a business as 100 grand a year as does $10 million a year. It's just about the opportunity you pick up front.
Event Host or Facilitator
Awesome. And you know the 2ccx program and Prime Mover foundations, that's one of the first focuses, is building a level 10 offer.
Russell Brunson
Yep. When you jumped into CCX, that's module one deep in that, like a level two option versus level 10. In fact, fun fact, he doesn't like to give credit to anybody, so. But there's public podcasts of him telling this story. But there's a guy you guys know, probably the biggest influencers right now, and he came into my coaching program at the time, he rode three gyms, right. And he's like, why can't I grow? I said, well, you're in. You have a level 10 skill set in a level 1 opportunity, right? Like, that's it. Like, you're stuck. Like, no matter how good you get you own gyms, you can't grow beyond. Like, that's your level 10. Like, that's it. And they shifted from there. And he's like, hey, what if we coach gyms? Help them launch the gyms instead. I was like, cool, that's like a level 8 opportunity with your level 10 skill set. And he blew it up. And they sold that business and created a new one. It's a level 10 opportunity. Help him, you know, and then from there, and he's blown up and getting his biggest influencer in the world. But he was broke coming into my world because he was using his level 10 skill set and a level one opportunity. And that's what I told him. Right. He shifted, done that twice now and rolled up. And he's got one of the biggest businesses right now. So everyone's like, we know how that is. Yeah. He doesn't like to give credit where credit is due, so I'm not going to. But, yeah, there it is. It's kind of funny, but he definitely was broke when he showed up in my world, so we'll leave it there. We showed him how to sell online, then we showed him how to scale online. So yeah, if you know, you know. All right, who we got next?
Event Host or Facilitator
All right, up next we have Savannah Reed, and she sells energy healing sessions and music to help women move out of survival mode and into creating the life they want. She's currently working on messaging through short form content to drive people into a mifge and a newsletter and plans to run ads soon. So the question is, is that the best foundation to start making sales quickly or what would you do? Change, add to get traction.
Russell Brunson
Cool. The energy healing session, like a coaching program or is it like a course, you think? We don't know.
Event Host or Facilitator
If she posts in the chat, maybe we can find out a little more there.
Russell Brunson
All right, if you're in the chat, how do you say Savannah? Oh, okay. Course plus group coaching. Thank you for. Okay, that helps. Ken. Very cool. So, okay, so I sell energy on sessions and music to women to help them out. Survival and reading Life I want and working, resisting, Shorter mifke plus newsletter and plan to run ads soon. Cool. One other question. Do you have an existing audience, Savannah, or not yet. Savannah. Savannah. No audience. Okay, cool. All right. So I would say is yes, I think the structure is correct. So what I would do. Mifkies are a great thing to do when you're on your virtual book tour, right? Because it's hard to, like, go to. Let's say you got on a podcast or YouTube channel and they're interviewing you and they're like, where can we get more information about you? And you're like, yeah, go sign up for my $3,000 coaching program. Doesn't work very well. Right. The reason, not the one of the reasons why I write books and I give them away for free plus shipping, is because when I'm on a podcast, someone's like, hey, Russell, what can people get learn more about you? I'm like, oh, well, actually, if they want a free copy of my book, if they go to dotcomsecrets.com they can get a free copy of my book, and it's just free. This guy covers shipping and handling. But that's how they can learn more about me. It's an easy thing to drop. And the host's like, wait, you get the book for free? That's amazing. Yeah, it's like a mifkey is a great thing you can do on a podcast. When someone interviews you, at the end of the time, they're like, so where can someone learn more about you? Like oh, actually I have a really cool offer, a really cool thing where someone can come and they get 14 day trial. I'm going to give them a free da da da da. Just for testing, you know, test driving out. All you gotta do is go to russellsmifkey.com or whatever. It's an easy thing to promote. So I would say yes, right out gate. Get your mifke, get your continuity in place, you know what I mean, with your course and your coaching program. And then again, the first thing I would do, even before ads, I mentioned that a little earlier today, if you heard that part of it, before I do ads, I would go figure out what are 10, 20, 30 podcasts I can get on. 10, 20, 30 YouTube videos I can get starting there. Putting yourself out there. And what's cool about this, this is one of the big secrets. The highest converting ads that I have for almost everything that I sell are the video clips of me on someone's podcast or the YouTube video. And so what happens is you go out there and you go on these podcasts and people interview you and then you have a chance to talk about your free offer that someone's gonna come and get and you start promoting and getting people in there, right? And then you can take the video clips and you can chop those things up. And then when you are ready to start running ads, those become the ads that drive people back in here, leveraging the credibility of the podcast, YouTube post, whatever that might be. But I think, yeah, for you, I think that would be 100% I would do that. I would set the mifke, set the newsletter and getting people into the course, the coaching program and then go out there and start getting your free media, start earning the traffic, getting people coming back there. And that's where I would start for sure. So I hope that helps. Anything else that I missed? Yeah. So the question, what's the foundation to start making sales quickly? So that's the quickest way is getting out there. If you haven't read Traffic Secrets yet, go read that book, read about Dream 100. I'll show you exactly how to do it, how to find the people, all that kind of stuff so you can get on the shows. But that'd be the fastest way to start going and start running really, really quickly. So very cool. Thanks Savannah. Hope I said it close to correct.
Event Host or Facilitator
All right.
Russell Brunson
Jeff Gundry.
Event Host or Facilitator
Yep.
Russell Brunson
Jeff.
Event Host or Facilitator
Jeff Grundy. This is, I'm the worst at this, so I apologize. I can't even say my own name. Alright, so the context for Jeff is. He runs a $49 a month Diabetes Reversal membership. Traffic is native ads on diabetes sites to a bridge page offering a roadmap guide, which is the first three chapters of his book, to a funnel. Funnel includes a $795 audiobook, a $1 bump for a 10 day trial and and then upsells to coaching. So the question is, how would you improve the transition from native ad to bridge page to funnel to increase opt ins and conversions? Cool.
Russell Brunson
So native ads are one of the harder platforms to get to work. Usually native ads you're coming out to cold. Just so you guys know, those who don't know what native ads are, it's like Taboola and sites like that where it's like you're going for cold traffic. And so because of that you have to warm somebody up because there's like it's, you have to get them from cold to warm before they're going to be willing to buy from you. So a bridge page, this is context for those who don't know. So bridge page is basically if you owe Taboola, you're going to be getting your site on like, you know, CNN.com right? So it's like those little banner ads at the bottom, like the lady pulling her face like six inches, you know, or like holding the weird worm, like what is that? Or this magic fruit. Someone clicks on that, it goes to a bridge page, it tells a story to try to warm them up and then the bridge page tells a story about so and so and then they go over there and that's where you get someone to opt in and get into that person's funnel. So the biggest thing is just with conversions on that kind of stuff, it's so much of just like a lot of different, like the bridge pages, different bridge page structures, right. There's like the advertorial, it's like a long form story type thing. There's also like the top 10 list, like top 10 ways to da da da. And the answer's like always back to your thing, right. Or there's like a lot of different bridge page structure to look at. And so I'm not sure exactly what your bridge page looks like. That'd be the first thing I look at is I'd go try to find like 10 different versions of advertorial style bridge pages. And just testing a bunch of those, right? That'd be my first pass is structure. Because when I'm testing something initially there's different layers of testing. Like my first test is really like just Test these two different headlines. It's like, let's look at radical different structures. Right? So again, with bridge pages, there's probably a dozen different structural ways you can structure bridge page. So I'd look at a bunch of versions of that. I would be test driving different ones. So again, advertorial article, PR version, listicle. Yeah, like those kind of things. If you know what those are, just go to the Taboola sites and go find them and just click on a million different ads. You'll start seeing a whole bunch of variations of it. So I'll be trying a bunch of different versions of that until you find, like, which one's gonna be the winner? And then from there it's like, okay, now let's dig down deeper into the messaging. Claude is insanely good at writing. If you guys aren't using Claude for writing, like, it's insane. And so I'd go, after you go start finding all these different bridge pages is like building out a swipe file of it, Especially ones you see a lot, ones that people are spending a lot of money behind. And I'd be feeding those into Claude. Okay, we decided we'd do listicle. Here's 30 cool listicles that we found. Go analyze all these listicles. Tell us what they worked, why they worked, da, da, da. And it would build, like, a structure for how listicles work and say, okay, now based on what you know about my offer, write me a listicle based on my offer. Then 30 seconds later, bust out, like, an insane version that you can go and test. Okay, so if it's testing bridge page types, and that's where you find out the winner, then coming in and then mastering copy, going deep on the copy, that's gonna help you to figure out, like, the best version of that to run. And that's what I'd be looking at. And then also, like, I would just keep putting people, like, we're getting better and better conversion just by putting our existing pages through quad and just being like, all right, give me three more headlines. Give me two different ways to structure software. And, like, just keep coming out with, like, just ways to keep beating it and keep beating it. It's just playing that game of split testing and conversion and just kind of going from there. So that would be my main things. And then also, Jeff, I'd also look at. I'm assuming you're doing native ads because it's hard to get diabetes reversal stuff on Facebook, Instagram, things like that. So I'd be looking at who are the people that have your dream clients in other places. Right. So I had a neuropathy supplement a decade ago. And so we kept getting shut down on Facebook and meta and we couldn't. It wasn't meta back then. It was Facebook. But we couldn't get most things to work there. We did native ads, which worked, but then for us was email newsletters. Like, email newsletters to conservative sites. Crushed for us. Like, it was where we had most of our growth coming from. It's just tons and tons of email newsletters. So I'd be looking at those kind of things as well. Because email newsletters, you can usually most times bypass the bridge page, go directly to funnel. But conservative Republican news sites are. Those are people that are buyers. They skew older demographics. So diabetes stuff works really good for those kind of lists. Like Newsmax, arcsmac, Newsmax, Arc Max. Yeah, like, that's the rabbit hole I go down. So I would just, like, take what I just said, plug it into Perplexity. Like, give me 50 newsletters like this. It'll pull them all out, and you have a whole bunch of places to go start buying ads on. So hope it helps. Jeff Gundry.
Event Host or Facilitator
Jeff Gundry. Great job.
Russell Brunson
That's the last one.
Event Host or Facilitator
We have one more left. And this is from Sherwin. Sherwin states that that my website sells $60,000 a year and I've made over a million dollars with it. So congratulations. That's fantastic. Sells to individuals and not to businesses. Sherwin teaches two technical design programs, one for 4, 5K or $4,500 or both for 8,000. Only 1% of people who visit schedule a call and 25% of callers buy. So what do you suggest Sherwin does with the website to increase sales and convert more visitors? Also, what do you recommend as a continuity offer? Awesome.
Russell Brunson
All right, easy. This is so fun. Okay. Your gap is only 1% of people who visit schedule a call, 25% of callers buy. So that number is insane. So don't jack with that one. Whatever you're doing there, keep doing that. One percent is what sucks. Okay, so the biggest thing, it means you're. Your copy on your landing page is not good. So it's funny because I literally just did this last week. So we're working on a new book called vsl. So I did what Russell always does. I am a funnel hacker to my soul, to the core. So what did I do before I decided to write the VSL for a book a call. Step number one is go find every single VSL bookacall That's actively running and people are paying a lot of money on ads on. So I spent two or three weeks me Ben Moot. We were going through and just like searching for book a call VSL funnels, right? And so I did that. We went, found, I don't know, a dozen or so VSL book a call funnels. We had really good copy. And they weren't in my industry. Some were, some were. So it doesn't have to be in your industry, but it's just finding like what is the scripting on a really good VSL that's getting someone to book a call. Okay? So I find those. Step number one, step number two, the AI that I use to transcribe, I use Manus. So I take all these VSLs, I go to Manis AI probably, I don't know, I say, manus, can you go and just transcribe all these? So it transcribes all the videos for me. Okay? So after we got the videos back, I get transcripts. Then I go into Claude. Cause Claude's the best writer. I say, hey, Claude, here's all these VSL transcripts. Go and analyze them all and tell me what's the structure of all these VSLs. Okay? And my guess is most of the successful VSLs, their video structure is like 90% the same. They're all going to have their deviations of 10%, but 90% of the structure is going to be identical. It was for me when we did this process, right? I'm like, cool, now I have that. I said, now here's all the context of the thing I'm trying to sell. Take what I sell and weave it into that structure you just found, and it writes a new version. And then boom, now you got a winner. You go back, record the VSL, replace it with one you already have, and I bet you go from 1% to 5 or to 10 or to 20%. But that'd be my thing is just keep redoing that VSL process until you've got something that's gonna crush on it, right? Because that's the bottleneck of your business is just getting that thing to work. If you got from 1% to 5% and you keep 25% of callers buying, you just 5X'd your business by doing a new VSL, which should. I mean, honestly, the research phase could take you a couple days. The writing phase take you 20 minutes in cloud and then you recording and getting back out there. So that'd be the biggest thing I would do. I Mean exactly what I did. We have a book called VSL that's gonna be going live here in probably a week or so. And that's exactly what I did. And then second question is how do you suggest as continuity offer? So I would do is after someone books the call, you can place a MIF key on the thank you page of a book a call. So hey, thanks so much for booking the call. Before you jump on, I highly recommend taking this off. It's gonna give you some of the core foundational stuff that we do. Go check that out right out of the gate. And then that way between them registering for the call and then picking up the call, they have a chance to take the mifke and you get a lot of people who already who just jump in right there. So I hope that helps. But yeah, I would just be, I mean if it was me, I mean you literally could do every week test a new VSL because if you have 1%, only 1% booking a call, I mean the book a call should be high. Book a call. I don't know exact numbers but I mean I would guess 20, 20 something percent is where you should be at. So if you get from 1% to 10 or 20, your business double triples very very quickly. So I mean it'd be worth like testing a new VSL every week right? Until you want it 10%, then 12%, then 15%. And if you keep the 25% callers buying like you're off to the races. So very cool. Looks like we had another question that's popped up here.
Event Host or Facilitator
We did. So this one's from Elaine and the context is that Elaine runs paid workshop that converts 27% of people into a $18,000 high ticket offer ROAS of 11x.
Russell Brunson
Okay, so if you're. Before we get too deep, if your ROAS is 11 times. That is insane. Okay. You should just spend more money.
Event Host or Facilitator
Hopefully I read that right. Maybe it's 1.1 because 11 is insane, but it looks like 11. The real constraint is ticket acquisition cost per $47 ticket is around $429. But that performance only holds when doing heavy organic promotion alongside the ads. When organic effort decreases. Paid traffic alone does not convert. Ads by themselves simply don't carry the front end. So structurally, my model is dependent on high intensity organic energy to make paid acquisition work. This creates two problems. It's not repeatable at scale and it requires significant personal effort and limits frequency. So the question is, if you were looking at this purely from a business architecture, standpoint, how would you redesign the front end so ticket sales become consistent and scalable without requiring heavy ongoing effort to warm the traffic? What structural shift would you implement so the workshop can run regularly and predictably independent of my personal organic push?
Guest or Participant
Cool.
Russell Brunson
Love it. Alright, scroll up a little bit so I can see it. Okay, so it sounds like your event crushes so 27% 18k, which is amazing. $47 a ticket and your acquisition's $429. So my first thing I would do is I would make sure because I don't know what else to happen in that funnel, but I'd have some upsells and downsells because for us right now selling a line ticket is 100 bucks. It costs US$350 to sell a ticket, but we get about 140, 150 of that back from the funnel. Right. So for upsell one upsell all kinds of stuff. So my guess is from 47 you could probably. 47, I bet you probably get 80 or $90. Should be what you're getting back on the ticket sale if you've got the right upsell down sell sequence. If you look at how we did it for this event or how we did it for the selling online event, it's very similar. Basically we have a VIP upgrade which is this one's different than selling online, but basically it's we have a fly on the wall version for like I think songs. There's 97 bucks. Fly on the wall. 97 bucks for VIP night. Fly on the wall. And then we had like $497 for ask a question, which the very first time we did it live is that way. Now that option's sold out because it's evergreen now. So we don't have that. But the VIP day is still we have $97 and then we have another upsell for like 497, which is it'd be worth funnel hacking selling a line funnel to see how it works. We have a $497 offer where basically after the event's done, they get a call with one of our coaches and to answer any questions they had from the challenge and then our coach has a chance to upsell them. So it does great because it's like a pre sell call but Also it's a $497 offer. So it gives back a lot of contribution back to the ticket cost. So that's one thing I would do is to increase that. The second thing though is over time your CPA is going to go up no matter what, right? So if you look at selling online, we ran it for a year and at first, you know, this is the sad part. You really wish like the ad costs would stay the same. Over time, what happens is the more people see it, the warmer, the colder traffic, you know, like the cost just go up. So for us, like the first, the first month of selling online was like, it was, we're, it was a hundred dollar ticket. We're paid $100 ticket. I'm like, I'm a genius. I'm the smartest man in the world, right? And then it got, then the next month we read it, it went from $100 ticket to $150 a ticket. But I'm like, I'm still pretty smart. Then went from 150 to 200, then 200, 250 and 250 to 3, 350 to, you know, 3 to 350. And I'm like, I'm not as smart as I used to be. And he kept getting up to like 500, 550, 600, right? And so for me, and what most people do is that when it hits like five or six hundred bucks, like, ah, sounds like we're at 429. You're like, ah, this sucks. And so that's where we came up with that $500 upsell, which helped, you know, contribute back to it. But it was still like, it got 500, 600, $700. It was just like, dang, do we shut the whole thing down? Like we have a machine that's working, convert, like everything's perfect. I don't want to screw this thing up. So what do we do? How do we fix this? Okay, so for me, what I did is like, I need a new way to sell this. I need a way that's going to speak more to the colder audience, right? Because again, I was speaking to warm traffic. Like selling online, how to write your own webinar, how to. Like that was the messaging here. It worked. But over time, more and more people see it and so there's ad fatigue. People see the messaging, people already registered. So the cost go up, up, up, up, right? So for me, it's like I had to transition to cold. Like, how do I get a new message that's cold, that's new, that's unique, that's different. So what I did is three months ago, I wrote a new vsl. Actually, let me pull it up. Can you pull up secretsofpropaganda.com I'll show you. But I wrote a VSL. I used Claude AI to write the thing. We had a team design it. It wouldn't have to be as intense as the one that I made, but it could be, right. It could be very much simple. But It's a new VSL that's got a colder message. And this VSL, it's a 50 minute long VSL. Cool. Let me show you guys a page. You've probably seen the ads for this, but we've been running this now for the last three months or so. Sorry. I give my team a heads up. They're gonna pull back here in a second. We can do screen to screen if that's easier. Whatever's okay. Cool. So if you go to secretsofpropaganda.com, you'll see this right now. Scroll up to the very top. I think we're missing the headline. Oh yeah, here it is. Okay, so this is like propaganda. Secrets exposed. And it's telling the story about Edward Bernays and Sigmund Freud. And it's like this, like kind of a cool story. A different angle. Right. And so there's the video actually. Do you want to click play and just watch it for like five seconds? Can we pull the audio in or no?
Event Host or Facilitator
We should be able to, yes.
Russell Brunson
How many of you guys, by the way, have seen this VSL or seen these ads?
Guest or Participant
Right now as you watch this, your brain is being hijacked. You think you're in control, but there's a backdoor to your mind that 99% of people don't know exists. In 1914, a discovery was made that should have stayed buried. The hidden switches that control human behavior were exposed to for over a century. A select few have used the Schnullers to manipulate millions. They've made women smoke, nations fight, and complete strangers stampede to buy things that they never even wanted. The man who started it all wrote, we are governed. Our minds molded. Our ideas suggested by men we have never heard of. He called it the engineering of consent. And it's being used on you right now every day. The ad that read your mind, that video that made you buy, that posts that made you furious. It's the same playbook, same psychological trigger, same invisible stream. In the next few minutes, you're going to discover the exact system that's been hidden for over 100 years. The same dark psychology that built empires, toppled governments, and created billionaires. The question is, do you want to remain the puppet or learn to become the puppet master?
Russell Brunson
All right, some of you guys are.
Event Host or Facilitator
Like, I saw that.
Russell Brunson
I Watched part of it all, the whole thing. Okay, yeah. So that VSL we put out there three months ago and what happened is the ad costs dropped again. We went from like 7, $800 an ad thing to like 200. And it was like 250, 275, 280. So right now, the last 60 days we've been kind of, we kind of settled in about $350cpa and it's working good and it's nice because it's scaling too really well to cold traffic because it's not saying how to write a webinar. It's like this mind control persuades. Like I tried to make a colder message, right? Again, think about me. Oh, here's my. Here at the food court, I'm like, who wants to learn about how you're being persuaded and mind controlled? Da da da. And people at food court be like, that's actually interesting, right? It's a bigger thing. So I'm thinking like colder traffic messaging. But if you watch that, it's a 50 minute long VSL at the end of it sells $100 selling online ticket. Okay. And so that's running right now. So what's happening? That's running and it's good. We're leveled out $350. But I know within I don't know, two months, three months, four months, the costs start creeping up again because so many people have seen it, right? Ad fatigue. And so then I'm like, okay, how do I do this? So right now I'm in the behind the scenes working on new vsl. So I have a new vsl. The angle so cool. You see how CIA uses MK Ultra to mind control people. I have an ex CIA agent who's actually going to be doing the voiceover for it. And so I'm working that one. Then that will come out. When this ad cost gets too high, boom. Next one comes out and we run that one until it goes. So it's just like always making new creative on the front end. Now again, you don't have to be insane. Russell, where I produce a 50 minute long video where I'm just going crazy. But you could. Or you can make a VSL where you're just talking to camera, right? Nowadays I don't know now that AI can write such good scripts. We bought a. Where's that big teleprompter? Can I show it to you? Is it hard to show? So I bought this. Oh yeah. Okay, we'll pull it back. So we just write a vsl. Okay. Have Claude write a really good VSL for my market, put it out. And then we bought teleprompter. I hate teleprompters. So I bought this big one. It's like a big screen tv and they put it on and I speak at it, right? And I do my entire, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 minute VSL in front of it. Sorry, I didn't even warn them ahead of time. This is what you get. This is like the VIP day stuff. Okay, so this is the one we bought. You guys see this? It's huge. But I can see the whole thing. I see the whole entire script. And so they have like a teleprompter and they go through and I just sit at a desk and I read it. Actually we pull up on driven67 just to show them like literally what we did, right? And so like if you don't have a teleprompter, you can get smaller ones. But anyway, it's really cool. And so we set this whole thing up and then they put it on there and I sit at my desk and I just read the script, the whole thing. And then we take that and then from there, like this is a good example of one. So this was much cheaper and much easier to produce. So push play on this one for a second if we can. You wake up and your inbox pings, your browser opens. You start scrolling through social media, the top diets, the best business plans, productivity hacks.
Guest or Participant
The universe of information is endless.
Russell Brunson
With one good prompt you can ask.
Guest or Participant
AI to create a hyper personalized tactical plan for you to succeed.
Russell Brunson
And yet you're not at your dreams.
Guest or Participant
Yet you're not living with the body.
Russell Brunson
The bank account or the freedom that you want. The one that you know is possible but feels just out of reach.
Guest or Participant
So what's missing? It's not the strategy, it's not the blueprint.
Russell Brunson
It's not the gym membership or the course or the magic tool.
Guest or Participant
It's you. And here's the thing that nobody will talk about.
Russell Brunson
You are okay. So that one was like much easier produce. It was 90% of me just talking the teleprompter. And we, we put in like B roll and some music and some stuff afterwards. Engaging, but it's a lot easier. And this one I did on a treadmill because I thought that would be interesting. So I was literally on a treadmill reading a script. It was hard, but the most part you guys noticed again, we're writing again. Last week I wrote three 50 page long VSL scripts and then we came in and recorded them the next day. Now we're being produced. But it's like you can produce really good copies so fast nowadays. And so it's just like knowing that like ad costs are gonna go up. So they make a new VSL to sell this thing and then do it hitting different angles, right? One angle is how to do webinar. One angle is for me, secrets of propaganda. One of them is CIA MK Ultra mind control things, right? And just picking different angles, different ways to hit the same message from there. So anyway, someone said have you ever run a 50 minute long video as a Facebook ad? Yes, we run 100% run it right now. So we have the short version of the ads that run to the vsl. We have the entire hour long one on there. I started doing it because if you look at Vishen Lakhani has a 90 minute long VSL that he's running as an ad for Mindvalley and it's insane. And so we ran the secrets propaganda as a 90 minute ad. It's crushing. So anyway, that's just the way to start thinking this. As your ad costs start going up, it's new creative, new landing pages, new messaging and that will help you get that $400 back down to 200 to 150. Right? And it's just playing this game. It's like ad cost keeps going up, a new creative boom, new one comes in, ad costs go up and a lot of it's just like rotating all your creative as well like selling online. We hired a new team to start writing ads for it and month number one they rolled out 1100 new ads for us, right? And it dropped the CPA directly. So it's like a lot of creative, a lot of ads, a lot of things. And so you gotta learn how to leverage AI to start mass producing creatives and mass producing VSLs. Cause that's how you can start lowering all the cost across the board. So anyway, there you go. We're geeking out you guys, hopefully having fun. I heard there's one more question, is that true?
Event Host or Facilitator
That is actually very true.
Russell Brunson
People keep buying so they can get their questions like these guys just bought right over here.
Event Host or Facilitator
Anyway, we love it. So this is from Clint Rogers and the Context is our AI SaaS converts once people try it but webinars flop. We're launching a tech stars backed AI SaaS that creates AI digital twins, AI brand ambassadors, hyper realistic spokespeople that generate content ads selling assets 24 7. We have 84 paying customers at 99 to $5.99 a month. Cold outreach plus paid ads work once people try the product. But two live webinars flopped. Low show rate, poor conversion. So the question, should we keep iterate or reiterating live webinars or switch to automated webinars to test hooks offers fasters, and should we pivot the avatar, stop pitching the make money with AI opportunity and go straight to founders businesses with a direct software offer or run both paths?
Russell Brunson
Cool. All right, Clint, great question. So when we first launched clickfunnels, you guys know the model? We did a webinar, thank you page, give them for a trial webinar. I'd shown the software and we'd sell something. And that worked for us for a decade. It stopped working as good. So Anthony Morrison started doing this with one of his Shopify offers where he shifted his webinar from just like showing a demo how the software works, like, we're gonna build it together. And so he does the first 30 minutes of his webinar and then he's like, all right, go get a trial right now. And he's like, if you don't get a trial right now, you need to delete because there's no purpose for you to be here. It only works if you get a trial. And he puts a 10 minute countdown clock and he waits. Like whenever he goes to trial, we'll go, okay, everyone got a trial. All right, Everyone else, you didn't get a trial, hang up. There's no purpose for you to be here. You don't need like, just hang up anyway. So we end up going from like, you know, a couple percent of people signing up for trial. It's like 70% of people who are on his webinar end up creating a trial, right? And then he does the demo with him. So they're actually in the software using it. So you say when somebody using software, you win, right? So when we did the 1 comma club challenge, you notice I did the exact same thing. What happened was day number one, we talked about the new opportunity. Day number two, we got them in the software. So it's like you actually create the exact same thing. Anthony. I was like, hey, in 10 minutes now we are building a funnel. Clickfunnels. You have to have it open on the screen. We're doing it together, so you have to have account. So like go set up. And some people had to go actually go get a trial and then come back. And then we actually built together. And that's how we got ended up getting 1800 people through the trial or the thing to create a trial, then they actually use the software and then they stick longer. So for you, I would do some version of that. Like don't look at a webinar, get a quick demo, but look at this webinar where like they're actually doing it with them, right? And so like getting them to open the software and use it. Like look at the live webinar from like just just pitching something. But like using the. If you're doing the perfect webinar structure or secret number two is literally like them with the software, you guys working together, doing something, like getting something so they get the result while they're actually live on. So that'd be the first shift. Second one is just if you have a low show up rate, My guess is make money with AI is gonna also attract like you know, the broke people who want to make money with AI who are gonna register. Those ones are less likely to show up. They're easier and cheaper to get to register, but they're less likely to show up. And so it could be shifting the market or it could be shifting both. Like having a landing page, talking about making AI, having a landing page, talking about founders. And the webinar can be exactly the same, right? It's similar to selling online. Like we can go to sellingonline.com and buy tickets to selling online. Or you can go to secretsofpersuasion.com and learn about Edward Bernays and Sigmund Freud and then sign up for. There's different things all coming to the exact same thing, right? So just try a different version, try pitch by the AI, try another one, different reg pages, same webinar. And it's going to attract different people, right? And so it's putting out more different hooks out there, out there to grab more people. So that's what I work at is shift the webinar to get people to actually build with you live. And then try a couple different hooks, different landing pages on front end to bring different avatars into it. And from there you'll find out which avatars are the best, not just like the cheapest, but like which ones, which ones actually show up and which was actually buy and then, and then you can cut the ones that don't. Just focus on like going deep on the ones that are the most likely to buy from you. So yeah, there you go. Clint, is that everybody? Then you guys? What a fun VIP day. In my head I was like, it's probably about three hours long, but I had no idea. I was like, I don't know how many questions we got, but in my head I have three hours. But hopefully between like showing you guys all the examples, the first 90 minutes was fun. Q&A. Last 90 minutes was fun. There are a lot of unique questions from different perspectives. Hopefully all you guys got something really, really cool with that. So with a thousand ads with AI, what will this look like going forward? I don't know. I don't run the ads manager, but whoever runs ads, it's mass ads. You gotta create a lot of ads nowadays because that's what you're competing against. People like me are creating a thousand ads a month. Right. So anyway, all right, really quick, before we break for today, let me know what is your guys biggest aha or takeaway from the last couple days or maybe just a session? I'm curious, like what were the things that you guys got that like, that was the thing that like your biggest aha. Your biggest breakthrough? Whoa, someone posted a big long question. Anyway, I like seeing that. Obviously everyone's coming through here from a different lens when you come in this training and coming to the program. So just curious, what, which ones that you guys are like your biggest aha. The biggest takeaway was I hope all you guys got something really, really cool as you guys are typing those things in. Using perplexity to search for people doing their funnels. Very cool. Reminder to double down on the Dream 100. Great. Focus on continuity. Levels of continuity, mass ads, mini VSL angles. Perfect. Your email list is everything. Grab the pile of cash in front of you. Clinton, 20 takeaways. Cool, cool, cool. Using AI to talk to people as well. That's smart. Oh yeah, AI like. Anyway, I love our copywriting team, but we let go our copywriting team because I'm able to write with AI. I can write such good, such fast copy. When you learn how to use it, it's really cool. And like I said, those of you guys from 2Cx, when you come out here in a month or two at the event, I am literally teaching my process, showing you my swipe files, what I'm doing, how I'm doing it. So if you're in 2ccx, you're going to backstage past all that kind of stuff, which would be cool. Let's see. Understand the big picture, big breakthrough. I already do everything, but it's like a draft for excellence. It's not done yet. That's all very cool. Focus on email lists, more creatives. The mifting continuity is customers gathering and paying for ads. Scaling online 2.0, selling online. Great SQL. The list is pile of cash. Yeah. You did 10 drag demonstrations for one book. Do more. Yes, do more drag demonstrations. They're fun to do. It's like the coolest part. You get to hang out with your audience, share cool things. It's really, really fun. I think that my plan is we're putting out a lot of front end offers and stuff right now as a business, just during Q1, Q2 throughout, and then when everything's in place, my plan is just for me not to create any more products at all. It's just like doing more dramatic demonstrations, putting people in the same book, same product, same everything. I need FHL to return. Looking for my level 10 opportunity. Very cool. Very cool. All right, you guys, I appreciate you all. Thanks for hanging out for the last three hours and honestly, last three, four days, I hope you had a great experience scaling online. If you did, send us testimonies, post on Facebook, tag me. And it's fun for us to see the results and ideas you guys got from it. I'll have my team pull up the page again one more time. Just so if you guys haven't yet again, a bunch of you guys joined 2ccx in the last two days. We're excited to have you guys here, excited to have you out here in Boise as we go deeper on some of the AI stuff. But if you haven't yet joined 2ccx, it's the upgrade from here, right? You guys know this is a level two dramatic demonstration. We practice what we preach. We served you guys like crazy for the last three, three and a half days. But if you haven't yet, I would recommend joining us in the 2ccx program. It's really, really good. It's the next step. It's going to help you guys again. Two CCXs going from where yard today to a million dollars in sales. That's the window where this program is for. And then from there after that, we'll get you in a circle and keep on growing, keep on scaling along with you. Again, I'm not going to go through the whole offer. You can see it on slides here. But it's going to be helping you to implement the lynchman, getting all these pieces done in place so you can grow and you can scale. You know, having an offer is really good. Again, selling online is about creating an offer, creating a webinar, sell that offer, getting a funnel and getting traffic. I was like, now you have an offer, you're making money, you have Cash flow coming in, scaling the lines. How do you take that? We're building out the value ladder and we're structuring it through the linchpin and then we can start growing and start scaling. So if that's the phase you're in right now, you got an offer. It's working.
Event Host or Facilitator
Cool.
Russell Brunson
Come to linchpin now. It's gonna restructure it, build up the value ladder, put it in the right space and start growing and scaling it. That's the next phase for all of you guys. So the way to upgrade Again, go to scalingonline.com go. If you are already in the prime mover program, the $10,000 you guys paid for prime mover gets applied towards us, which is really cool. And so, yeah, so if you invest in that, you're getting a huge discount because we're rolling it in. If you haven't done that one yet, then come in here, sign up right now for 2,500 bucks a month or $25,000 for the year and jump right in. And if you have any questions, again, we have an AI assistant line set up. This is our first test for this. Hopefully it worked really good. 12082488726 and talk AI person. And if you get stuck or you have a question, they can book you a call with one of our coaches and they can walk you through. Or if you're like, this is cool, but I think I need to do the prime mover coaching program first. Like, they can hook that up with you. If you're like, I'm already past a million dollar sales, I want to jump into inner circle. They can hook that up with you. Or for most of you guys, just come into CCX and plug in and have some fun with us. Let's run from where you are today to your 1 comma Club Award and get you to the next tier and the next level. Very, very cool. All right, guys, I appreciate you all. If you have any other questions again, hit up our team. There's the phone number. If you're ready to get started. Scalingonline.com go. I hope you guys enjoyed this experience. It was really fun to put on for you. It's just fun for me to talk about scaling stuff. I don't get to talk about this stuff very often. And so thanks for geeking out with me at a fun level and hopefully you guys got ideas and insights to help change your business and change your life. Appreciate you guys all and we'll see you guys all on the next trading the next event. All right, see you guys.
Date: February 18, 2026
Host: Russell Brunson
Podcast Theme: In-depth Q&A from the Scaling Online live event — dissecting real-world funnel strategies, business pivots, marketing challenges, and how to scale offers for entrepreneurs, course creators, SaaS founders, and coaches.
This episode is the conclusion of a two-part, rapid-fire Q&A session featuring Russell Brunson answering tough, specific questions from online entrepreneurs. The topics range from funnel structuring and monetization of newsletters, to pricing high-ticket offers, troubleshooting low-converting webinars, scaling ad campaigns with creative, and using AI to do rapid funnel hacking and copywriting. Russell delivers actionable, sometimes hard-hitting insights, always aiming to help listeners build scalable, repeatable systems in their businesses.
[01:04–03:48]
"Someone in this world wants certification more than they want coaching.”
— Russell Brunson, [02:15]
[03:48–10:34]
Memorable Quote:
"Why would you pick a market where only customers are gonna buy once? You’re putting yourself under undue stress and pressure, and I’m not sure why."
— Russell Brunson, [07:21]
[12:02–15:36]
"The highest converting ads that I have for almost everything that I sell are the video clips of me on someone’s podcast or YouTube video.”
— Russell Brunson, [13:46]
[15:37–20:30]
"You just keep coming out with ways to keep beating it and keep beating it.”
— Russell Brunson, [18:37]
[20:34–24:47]
Notable Quote:
“If you got from 1% to 5% and you keep 25% of callers buying, you just 5x’ed your business by doing a new VSL… Test a new VSL every week.”
— Russell Brunson, [22:48]
[24:47–37:22]
Memorable Moment:
“People like me are creating a thousand ads a month… You’ve got to create a lot of ads nowadays because that’s what you’re competing against.”
— Russell Brunson, [44:16]
[37:24–44:16]
“Don’t look at a webinar as just pitching something, but using the… structure where they’re actually doing it with you live.”
— Russell Brunson, [39:01]
| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|---------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:15 | Russell Brunson | “Someone in this world wants certification more than they want coaching.” | | 05:12 | Russell Brunson | “Should you rebuild in a business where someone’s only going to purchase once? I would say no.” | | 07:21 | Russell Brunson | “Why would you pick a market where only customers are gonna buy once?” | | 09:59 | Russell Brunson | “You’re going to spend the exact same amount of work building on a level one opportunity versus level ten.” | | 13:46 | Russell Brunson | “The highest converting ads...are the video clips of me on someone’s podcast or the YouTube video.” | | 18:37 | Russell Brunson | “You just keep coming out with ways to keep beating it and keep beating it.” | | 22:48 | Russell Brunson | “If you got from 1% to 5%… you just 5x’ed your business by doing a new VSL… Test a new VSL every week.” | | 26:38 | Russell Brunson | “You probably get $80 or $90 should be what you’re getting back on the ticket sale…” | | 31:54 | Guest/VSL | “You are governed. Our minds molded. Our ideas suggested by men we have never heard of. He called it the engineering of consent.” | | 39:01 | Russell Brunson | “Don’t look at a webinar as just pitching something, but using the… structure where they’re actually doing it with you live.” | | 44:16 | Russell Brunson | “People like me are creating a thousand ads a month… You’ve got to create a lot of ads nowadays…” |
Russell closes with an encouragement to focus on “level 10 opportunities” for the same amount of effort, to leverage AI to systematize funnel research and copywriting, and to continuously funnel hack, iterate, and test — with dozens or hundreds of creative variations, knowing that the market rapidly adapts. He also underscores the importance of picking a business model where growth and scale are simply “built in” from the start.
Next Steps:
Listen to the full episode for direct examples, stories, and Russell’s signature high-energy breakdowns!