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The Russell Brunson Show
The Propaganda Playbook: OnlyFans (He Made $701 Million - She Made $180 a Month ) - #Marketing - Ep. 124
00:22:47
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- [00:00]
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. This is the Russell Brunson Show. Last week, the owner of OnlyFans died. He was just 43 years old. And I'm about to say something that's probably going to get me in a lot of trouble with a lot of different people. This man was one of the biggest pornographers in the history of the world. He made $4.7 billion by convincing millions of young women that selling explicit content of their bodies online was empowerment. And right now, today, across every headline, they're calling him a pioneer, a visionary, a hero of the creator economy. No. I'm sorry, no. When Hugh Hefner died, I remember being confused. People were actually mourning the guy and celebrating him, and. And I'm sitting here thinking, this is the man that built an empire and exploiting women, and they're treating him like some kind of hero. And now I'm watching the exact same thing happen again, except this guy made Hefner look like an amateur. Hefner had what? A mansion and some magazines. This guy had over 4.6 million creators, 300 million users, and a propaganda machine that convinced an entire generation that pornography is freedom. And the technique he used to pull it off, it's over 100 years old. It was invented by the man I've been teaching about in the series, Edward Bernays. Same trick, same target, same lie, different century. And by the end of this video, you're going to see exactly how it works, who it hurts, and how to make sure that you never use this power the wrong way. This is the propaganda playbook, where I take the biggest stories in the news and decode the propaganda techniques that are hidden inside of them. And then I show you how to use the ethical versions of those same techniques to grow your business. So with that said, let's get right into it. So let me tell you about the man behind OnlyFans, because most people have no idea who he is. His name is Leonid Radvinsky. He's Ukrainian born and grew up in Chicago. He graduated valedictorian from Northwestern University with an economics degree. Sounds pretty impressive, right? But here's the part they don't put in the headlines. While he was still a Student, Northwestern. He started a pornography referral website. That was his first business in college. Then he went on to create a site called My Free Cams, which is exactly what it sounds like. A campsite where men pay to watch women perform on camera. So let me be really clear about something. This wasn't some tech visionary who accidentally wandered into adult content. This was a guy who started in porn from day one and then figured out how to make it mainstream. In 2018, he bought 75% of OnlyFans from the original British founders. And here's what happened next. Before Radvinsky took over, OnlyFans was a general content platform for fitness trainers, cooking channels, musicians, and that kind of thing. After Vinsky, it became, and these are the media's words, not mine. A hive of pornography. He didn't create a content platform that happened to have porn on it. He bought a content platform and turned it into pornography on purpose. Because that's where his money was. And, oh, man, was there a lot of money. Revenue went from $59 million in 2019 to 1.4 billion by 2024. The number of creators on the platform went from 350,000 to 4 million. Radvinsky personally received over $1.8 billion in dividends since 2021. And in 2024 alone, he was paid $701 million. $701 million in a single year. His net worth when he died, 4.7 billion. Now, let me show you the other side of those numbers, the side that they don't put in the headlines. The average only fan creator makes $180 a month. The top 1% earn 33% of all the revenue on the platform. 34% of creators surveyed said that they experienced negative mental health consequences. Anxiety, depression, shame, and fear. Six percent disclos that their traffickers, their traffickers help them to create and market their content. 11% that they were aware that minors were on the platform. So the guy at the top made $700 million in one year. The average woman on his platform made $180 a month. And we're calling this empowerment. That is not empowerment. That's a pyramid scheme with the ring light. And the money is one thing, but what this platform actually does to the women on it, that's where this gets really, really dark.
- [03:54]
Guest or Interviewee
It's not for the weak girls, if I'm honest. It was hard. I don't know if I'd recommend it.
- [04:03]
Russell Brunson
It's not like just having sex with someone. Yeah, yeah.
- [04:07]
Guest or Interviewee
Just one in, one out. Like, it feels intense, like more Intense
- [04:12]
Russell Brunson
than you thought it might. Definitely.
- [04:17]
Guest or Interviewee
Sorry.
- [04:19]
Edward Bernays (quoted voice)
Yeah.
- [04:20]
Russell Brunson
One minute she's crying, she's talking about disassociating. And this is on a platform that's marked as empowerment. That word empowerment doesn't come from her. It was planted there by a propagand, a technique that's over 100 years old. I want to show you the real stories, not the highlight reels, the real stories. What happens to women on these platforms. Because once you hear them, you're never going to hear the word empowerment the same way ever again. So I went looking for some real stories. Not the highlight reels, not the girl on TikTok showing off her apartment. The real stories, the ones that don't get promoted by the algorithm. And what I found made me sick. Story number one, I was a slave. There's a woman who wrote a first person account about her time on OnlyFans. She signed it the way a lot of women do. She needed money. She thought that it was going to be easy. Take some photos, post them and get paid. And that's how it's sold, right? But here's what actually happened. The subscribers started making requests, custom content. And the requests weren't. Well, they weren't dignified. Okay. They were degrading. And she tried to set boundaries. She said, I'm not going to do that. But then the money came, only when she said yes. So she started breaking her own boundaries, one at a time. And before she knew it, she was doing things she never would have imagined that she would do. Not for thousands of dollars, not for hundreds, but for $50 here and $20 there. And here's what she said. She said I was not free or empowered. I was a slave to the dollar and to my subscribers. There's no real autonomy when your audience controls the outcome. After she left, she couldn't date men, didn't want to be someone who'd done it. Career doors were closed. And she said the thing that really got me. She said she could only see the damage clearly after she got out. While she was in it, she couldn't see it. It was like she was under a spell and she didn't wake up until she walked away. The identity collapse. Now, this next one really hit me because of the timing. A woman published an essay in March of 2026 this month about leaving OnlyFans. She wrot 10 days before Radovinsky's death was even announced. And she described what happened to her identity while she was on the platform. She said the moment she made her first $10,000 something shifted, she said. The line I am an Only Fans creator became my identity. That was who she was now. Not a daughter, not a friend, not a woman with dreams and goals. An OnlyFans creator. The platform ate her identity. And then she left. You know how she described the recovery? Like sobriety, like getting clean from an addiction. She said she had rebuild what she was from scratch. And here's the details I can't stop thinking about in her ent, and it's a long essay. She poured her heart out. She never once used the word empowerment, not once. The word she used was freedom. And she meant freedom from only fans, not freedom because of it. Story number three, the escalation trap. Okay, so these are individual stories, but there's a pattern here. And the pattern is what makes this a propaganda story and not just a sad story. A young woman told Business Insider. She said, I regret doing OnlyFans when I turned 18. 18 years old. She started with mild content, but the algorithm rewards the more explicit stuff. The subscribers pay more for the more extreme stuff. So there's this constant pressure to escalate. Do a little bit more, push a little bit further, push past the line you said you'd never cross, and then that becomes the new line, and then you push past that one, too. A survivor of the sex industry described it like this. She said, most performers found themselves sucked into a spiral, doing more hardcore content for less and less money, and eventually turned to escorting just to make ends meet. Now, does that sound familiar to anybody? Because it should. It's the exact same escalation pattern as cigarettes. You start with one, and then you need two. Then it's a pack a day. Then you can't stop. Except with OnlyFans, the product you're escalating isn't a cigarette. It's yourself, your body, your dignity. And unlike a cigarette, you can't throw it away when you're done. That content lives on the Internet forever. The collateral damage. It's not just the creators. The damage spreads. These are high school boys being bullied at school because their classmates found their mom. On OnlyFans. There's a woman who found out her boyfriend, the father of her newborn bab, had been secretly spending thousands of dollars on custom OnlyFans content instead of saving it for their family. There are networks, literal, organized networks of subscribers who buy creators content and then sell it to other porn sites without the creator's knowledge or consent. So even if a woman leaves the platform, her content doesn't leave with her. It's out there forever. Getting sold to people she never agreed to share it with. And then there's the data. That should end the empowerment debate once and for all. In a major survey of OnlyFans creators, 6% disclosed that their traffickers helped them create and market their OnlyFans content. They're traffickers. 30% received messages from suspected traffickers offering to manage their accounts. 11% so they were personally aware of minors who had content on their platform. These are not edge cases, okay? And this is not empowerment. This is their business model. This is what $4.7 billion empire is built on. And today we're calling the man who built this a pioneer. So those are the real stories and those are the women. Now I want you to hear how the media is talking about the man who built the platform that did this to them. Listen to this language. Radvinsky created a website called My Free Cams, according to Reuters, which was a pioneer in letting people pay for explicit content online. Transforming the fan subscription service that lets users pay for exclusive content from creators from a niche website to a hugely popular porn business.
- [09:13]
Guest or Interviewee
Today, OnlyFans is pitching itself as one of the most lucrative choices for all types of creators across the $250 billion creator economy, recruiting athletes, comedians, and adult entertainers alike.
- [09:25]
Russell Brunson
Pioneer reshape the industry. Creator economy. A woman just told you she was doing degrading things for $20. Another one said she needed sobriety to recover from what the platform did to her identity. Teenagers are getting bullied at school because their mom's accounts 6% of creators and their traffickers, their traffickers were involved in making their content. And the man who built this all is a pioneer. I want to know what you think. Seriously. Is there any version of the story where it could actually be celebrated? I want you to tell me in the comments because I generally want to understand how in the world we. How do we get to a place where A man makes $700 million a year off the backs of women who are averaging 180 bucks a month? And we call him a visionary? And I'll tell you how we got here. We got here because of a propaganda technique that was invented over 100 years ago. And the man who invented it did the exact same thing with cigarettes. So if you've been watching the series, you already know this man. His name's Edward Bernays. Sigmund Freud's nephew. The guy who invented public relations. Okay, Again, this is the first edition copy of his book called Propaganda. And everything I've built in my business traces back to what I've learned from this man. Now, Bernays pulled off a lot of campaigns and we talk about some of them in previous episodes, but one that maps perfectly to what OnlyFans did. I mean, perfectly. Like it's the exact same playbook, word for word. It's called the Torches of Freedom. Here's what happened. In 1929, women didn't smoke in public. It was taboo. It was unladylike. If a woman lights a cigarette on the street, she was judged for it. Which meant that American Tobacco Company is losing half of its potential market. And so because of that, they went and hired Bernays. And Bernays didn't do what you'd expect. He didn't run ads about cigarettes. He didn't argue that smoking was safe. He didn't try to convince women that it's okay. He does something way, way more sophisticated than that. He hires a psychoanalyst who tells him the cigarettes are a symbol of male power. If you can connect smoking to women's liberation, to fighting oppression, to equality, women just won't tolerate smoking. They'll demand it. So Bernays hired a group of young, attractive women. He positions them in the New York Easter Parade, the most public event of the year. And at his signal, they all light cigarettes and march down fifth Avenue. And he tells every reporter there that these women are lighting torches of free. A protest against oppression. And it works. Overnight, smoking becomes an act of feminism. Women all across the country start smoking not because they like cigarettes, but because they believe they were making a statement. American Tobacco made billions and millions of women got lung cancer. He reframed a product that kills you as a symbol of freedom. An entire generation bought it. And now watch this. In 1929, Bernays called cigarettes torches of freedom. In 2026, OnlyFans calls pornography creator empowerment. Bernays says that smoking was a women's right. And OnlyFans say selling explicit is owning your body. Bernays positioned it as fighting oppression. OnlyFans position it as financial independence. The product in 1929 was cigarettes. The result was lung cancer. The product in 2026 is pornography. And the results is depression, shame, exploitation, trafficking and content that lives on the Internet for the rest of your life. The profiteer in 1929 was American Tobacco. The profiteer in 2026 was Leonid Radvinsky, worth $4.7 billion. And the average woman in 1929, she got cancer. And the average woman in 2026, she makes 1 80amonth and can never take it back. Same technique, same target, same reframe, same lie. 100 years apart. If you want the full story of how Bernays pulled this off, from Freud to the Easter parade to how I came across these exact techniques and use them to build my business, I actually made a video that walks you through the whole thing. All you gotta do is go to secretsofpropaganda.com and I'm going to put the link in the description down below. But right now I want to stay at OnlyFans because there's another layer to this that actually makes it worse than what Bernays did. Okay, I want to show you guys this other book. It's called Amusing Ourselves to Death by a guy named Neil Postman. He wrote it in 1985. His thesis is one of the most haunting things I've ever read. I want to read from you something from the very first page of this book. Okay, so listen to this. In this, he's talking about two different authors. One was Orwell, who wrote the book 1984, and the other is Huxley who wrote the book the Brave New World. So these two different authors, what Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book for there'd be no one who actually wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information, where Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared the truth would become concealed from us. And Huxley feared the truth would be drowned by a sea of irrelevance. And then he writes this. And this is the line that changed how I see everything, okay? In 1984, people were controlled by inflicting pain. In a brave new world, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us, whereas Huxley feared that what we love will actually ruin us. That's what makes OnlyFans worse than what Bernays did with cigarettes. Bernays had a trick women into smoking. He had to stage a parade. He had to plant stories, newspapers. He had to manufacture the whole thing from scratch. OnlyFans didn't have to trick anyone. The reframe was so good. Empowerment, independence, your body, your choice. That 4.6 million women volunteered. Nobody forced them, nobody held a gun to their head. They signed up because the propaganda was that effective. The pleasure was that appealing. The illusion of freedom was that convincing. That's not Orwell, that's Huxley. We weren't oppressed into this, we were entertained into it. And Postman warned us about it 40 years ago. Okay, so I got to tell you guys a personal story, because this one isn't just some academic thing for me. When Hugh Hefner died, I remember watching the news coverage and being genuinely confused. People were mourning this guy, celebrating his life, calling him a legend, talking about his contribution to culture. I'm sitting here in my living room thinking, am I the only one who's crazy? This man was one of the biggest pornographers in the history of the world. He built Playboy on the objectification of women and we're treating him like he's some kind of American hero. I didn't say anything, and I'll be honest with you, I didn't say anything. Partially because I was scared and partially I didn't know that maybe I was the one that was wrong. Maybe I'm being a little too harsh. Maybe I just didn't get it. But now I'm watching the exact same thing happen. And this time it's worse. Because Radvinsky made Hefner look like a small timer. Hefner had a mansion and a magazine that was his reach. A magazine you could buy at a Newsstand. Rudvinsky had 4.6 million creators and 300 million users. A platform that recruits women directly through their phones, through TikTok, through Instagram, through algorithms that target young women with stories about financial independence, how you can be your own boss and own your own body. That's not a magazine in a newsstand, that's a pipeline. It starts with 60 year old scrolling TikTok and ends with an 18 year old posting content that she can never take back. Today the headlines are calling Radvinsky a pioneer, just like they called Hefner a legend. So I'm going to say what I should have said then when Hefner died and I didn't. This should not be celebrated. Making billions of dollars off the exploitation of women is not visionary, it's not pioneering. It's the oldest trick in the propaganda playbook. You reframe the harm, you profit from the pain, you let someone else deal with the wreckage. And I want you to hear the man who invented this trick talk about it. Because the way Bernays describes what he did, with zero remorse, almost proud of it, tells you everything you need to know about the difference between a brilliant techni and terrible intent.
- [16:02]
Edward Bernays (quoted voice)
He said, we're losing half of our market because men have invoked a taboo against women smoking in public. Can you do anything about that? I said, let me think about it. And then I said, Have I your permission to see a psychoanalyst to find out what cigarettes mean to women? He said, what'll it cost? So I called up Dr. Brill.
- [16:32]
Russell Brunson
Zero remorse. He's proud of it. And I'll be honest. Technically, yeah, it was brilliant. The man was a genius at what he did. But the technique killed people. Millions of women got lung cancer because Edward Bernays figured out how to make cigarettes feel like freedom. And so here's the question I keep coming back to. If Bernays were alive today, would he be running OnlyFans because the playbook is identical. Find something that's taboo, reframe it as freedom, target women and make billions. And by the time anybody asks whether it's actually harmful, money's already been made and the damage is already done. I want to hear your thoughts on this. Am I overreaching here, or is this the exact same thing just 100 years later? And please tell me what your thoughts are in the comments. I think this is a very important conversation that we should be having. All right, so here's where this gets practical for everyone watching. Because I teach this stuff for a living. The reframe is the single most powerful tool in all of marketing. Every great business runs on one. And I need you to understand that. Because the technique itself isn't evil, it's what you do with it that matters. I built clickfunnels. I did not sell software. No one wants to buy software, right? I sold liberation. I sold freedom from the tech nightmares. The designers, the developers, the IT people who hold your business hostage. I told everybody, you don't need them anymore. You can do this yourself. That is a reframe. When I wrote the book Expert Secrets, I didn't sell a marketing course. I sold the idea that your message matters and the world actually needs it. That is a reframe. When we created the 2 comma club awards, we didn't celebrate revenue. We celebrated proof. Proof that you can do this. That it's possible. That the dream is real. That is a reframe. Every single one of those worked. They worked incredibly well. And they worked because they're true. The product actually delivers on the promise. ClickFunnels actually does free you from tech headaches. Expert Secrets actually does help you get your message out. The 2 comma Club Award actually does prove that it's possible. And that is the line. That's the line between what I do and what Bernays did. That's the line between what I do and what only fans did. A reframe that reveals the genuine Truth about a product that's marketing. A reframe that hides a genuine harm, that is propaganda. Bernays promised freedom and delivered lung cancer. OnlyFans promised empowerment and delivered exploitation. If your reframe is a lie, if the product doesn't actually do what the reframe says it does, then you're not a marketer, you're a propagandist or a pornographer, whatever you want to call it. So let me give you three questions to check yourself by, okay? Because I think that every entrepreneur needs to run their marketing through these. Number one, if your customers knew everything about your product, the good and the bad, all of it, would they still buy? If the answer is yes, your reframe is honest. If the answer is no, you're hiding something. Number two, does your reframe make a true promise or a false promise? Bernays promised freedom. He delivered cancer. OnlyFans promised empowerment. It delivered depression, shame and content you can never get off the Internet. So what does your reframe promise? And does the product actually deliver on it? And number three, and this is the one I come back to the most, I call it the mom test. If your mom saw your marketing the full picture, not just the highlight reel, would she be proud of you? If the answer is yes, you're good. If the answer is no, it's time to rethink what you're selling or how you're selling it. Bernays fails the mom test. Redvinsky fails the mom test. Don't fail the mom test. All right, real quick, I want to hear from you guys on this one. What is the most powerful refund you've ever seen in business, both good or bad? A product was positioned in a way where the language completely changed how you felt about it. Drop it in the comments down below. I want to read every single one of those. Those. All right? And then I want to get really real for a second because this episode is different from the other ones I've done in the other episodes. The Iran war, the Epstein files, the Holy War stuff. I told you I wasn't going to tell you which side was right. I said I was just going to decode the technique and then let you decide and make up your own mind. But for this one, I'm telling you where I stand. I believe that what Radvinsky built was wrong. I believe it destroyed lives. I believe it destroyed families. I believe it destroys the future of young women who signed up because they were tortured. It was empowerment and found out too late that it wasn't. And I believe that calling him a pioneer today is the same thing as calling a tobacco executive a visionary in the 1950s while people were dying of lung cancer. And here's why I think this matters to every single entrepreneur watching right now. You and I have been given something powerful. The stuff I teach. The funnels, the webinars, the offers, the storytelling, the identity shifts, the reframes. This is the same science Bernays used to sell wars and cigarettes. It's the same science that built only fans into $4.7 billion empire. And it works, man. It works incredibly well. And that means we have a responsibility. Because the techniques don't care how them. They work for good and they work for evil. They'll build a movement that changes people's lives and they'll build a machine that destroys them. The science doesn't judge. We have to judge because we're only on this earth for so long. And you got one shot of this thing. And when it's all over, and it will be over, when you look at your life, we look back at your kids and you stand before your maker. The question isn't going to be how much money did you make? The question is going to be, what did you do with what you were given? Did you build something that made the world better? Or did you use the most powerful persuasion tools ever created to exploit people and then call it impossible empowerment. I want every entrepreneur watching this to hear me on this. Learn the science, master the techniques. Build your funnels, grow your business, make your Money. Get your 2 comma Club Award on the wall. Do all of it. But do it in a way where you can look yourself in the mirror. Do it in a way where your kids are proud of what you built. Do it in a way where people talk about your legacy. They don't have to reframe what you did to make it sound okay. Because Radvinsky needed a reframe. He needed the word empowerment to cover up what he actually built. Bernays needed the phrase torches of freedom to cover up what he was actually selling. If you need a reframe to make your business sound ethical, your business isn't ethical. Build something that doesn't need the spin. Now look, what I just showed you is one technique from a playbook that's been built over a hundred years. It started with Sigmund Freud figuring out that human beings aren't driven by logic, they're driven by unconscious forces they don't even know about. Then his nephew, Edward Bernays, took those ideas and weaponized them. He sold wars, he overthrew governments. He made women smoke. He invented the entire field of public relations. And then again, guy, my mentor named Dan Kennedy, he came along and figured out how entrepreneurs could use those same dark arts ethically. And I spent the last 20 years taking all of it and turning it into a system that bootstrapped click funnels past a billion dollars in sales without any venture capital. And I made a video that tells the entire story, from Freud's discovery to Bernays weaponizing it, to how I use the exact same techniques today to sell stuff online. Now, if what you just saw in this video hit you, if it got you thinking, then that video is going to blow your mind. All you gotta do right now is go to secretsofpropaganda.com or hit the link in the description and go watch it right now while this is fresh on your mind. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to this channel because this is the propaganda playbook. Every episode I take a big story from the news, I decode the propaganda behind it, and I show you how to use the ethical version of those things in your business as well. The same science, same playbook, different story. And next episode is coming out soon. Thanks so much and I'll see you guys on the next one.