The Russell Brunson Show
One Funnel to Rule Them All: The Strategy Revealed | #Marketing - Ep. 22
Mon, 31 Mar 2025
In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, I break down one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned in marketing and business: Every company has one funnel that rules them all! …and the faster you identify and optimize yours, the faster you grow! I share the same framework I taught at Funnel Hacking Live this year, walking through the difference between acquisition funnels (how you acquire customers) and monetization funnels (how you make money from them after). Most people launch 10 funnels hoping one works… but the real secret is knowing which one deserves 90% of your attention, budget, and traffic. We also dive deep into the numbers from my own businesses… Including ClickFunnels, Prime Mover, Dan Kennedy’s legacy brands, and more. And I reveal how each one has a different “one funnel to rule them all” depending on the market and business model. If you’ve ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or spread too thin trying to launch too many offers, this episode will snap everything into focus. Key Highlights: Why “One Funnel to Rule Them All” isn’t just a slogan, it’s survival!!! The difference between acquisition and monetization funnels (and why you need both) How much time you should be spending on social media vs. paid ads The actual CPA and conversion numbers from our Selling Online funnel What Agora does better than almost anyone in the world, and how to model it How to give yourself a raise every single day This is one of those episodes that separates marketers from business owners. Rewind it. Take notes. And go build the funnel that actually grows your company! https://sellingonline.com/podcast https://clickfunnels.com/podcast Special thanks to our sponsors: NordVPN: EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal https://nordvpn.com/secrets Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Northwest Registered Agent: Go to northwestregisteredagent.com/russell to start your business with Northwest Registered Agent. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at LinkedIn.com/CLICKS Rocket Money: Cancel unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster at RocketMoney.com/RUSSELL Indeed: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/clicks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the key concept of 'One Funnel to Rule Them All'?
which basically the concept was in each business, there's like one funnel that is the key. It's the most important. It's the one that you are focusing on for conversions, for traffic, for all that kind of stuff, right? I think a lot of people see my business and they see a lot of funnels and they mistakenly think, oh, Russell's got 40 funnels. I need 40 funnels. Or Russell's focusing on all these.
And the reality is, How do I explain this? There's two parts of business, right? Agora is actually, you know, the billion-dollar brand, Agora. They're probably the best at this. Like, you look at their business model. They have a front-end funnel, right? And the front-end funnel is all about customer acquisition, and it's usually a newsletter.
We sign up for a newsletter for a year for, like, $97, or it depends. Each department's got different pricing. And then it upsells, like, for $500, you get lifetime access to this newsletter. There's some other upsells and stuff, but that's basically their front-end funnel, right? It's the one funnel to rule them all.
Chapter 2: How do acquisition and monetization funnels differ?
So what they do is that's the funnel they optimize, they tweak, they test, they're focusing on, and they're spending tons and tons of money, like tens of millions of dollars getting people to buy that offer because it's the front-end, that's the customer acquisition funnel, right? It's the one funnel that rules them all. And then that's the front side of the business.
That's like the more complicated, the harder side of the business, right? It's very math driven. Like we gotta figure out the math and the creativity of how to get something to convert. But it's like the whole goal is just focusing on getting this thing where we can spend $1,000 a day, then $10,000 a day, then $100,000 a day and beyond, right? Um, it's, that's the harder part of the business.
And that's, that's the one that I think a lot of people don't spend time on. They do a funnel, they launch it and they move the next one, the next one. Right. So in our businesses, like each business has one funnel. That's, that's the focal point. Right.
Now in a Gore's business, you see, like, if you're on, if you're watching the advertising is all going to this one thing, you're like, that's gotta be their business model. But what happens, they acquire the customer, you know, probably the loss, maybe a break even. Um, to get the customer.
Chapter 3: What is the role of a front-end funnel in customer acquisition?
Then there's a whole second department and the goal of that part of the business is then to monetize the lead. How do we turn, you know, how do we make as much money as possible off of this person? And so that's all the other funnels. So if you look at the ClickFunnels or the Russell businesses, right, there's different front-end businesses. So, in fact, we'll talk about selling online.
So selling online is... for the Russell coaching business, the prime mover business, sellingonline.com is the one funnel that rules them all, right? It's a $100 three-day event and we run that every single month and we're driving $100,000 a day in ads as we're trying to get to, you're getting closer and closer to that, but it's all about filling up that event, right?
And then that's like the most important one. So we're testing, we're tweaking, I'm building different ads for doing different copy. We're always in the sales page, always tweaking and changing and adjusting and changing. And, um, but that's the, that's the focal way. That's the funnel we spend the most time on, right? They have someone that signs up for that. They paid a hundred bucks.
They go to the event. They either buy our back end coaching or they don't. Now we have this list, right? And so the rest of my business is like, how do we monetize this? Like, well, we have to have other offers, other things we create. And so we're creating different funnels. And so there's a whole separate team that every single week is emailing out different offers to this list, right?
To monetize the list, to make as much money as possible from them, right? Because for us right now, for us to get $100, to get somebody to spend $100 to buy a ticket to the Slug & Line event, it costs us closer to $300. I spent $300 to get a $100 ticket, right? And then obviously we have upsells and downsells and stuff.
And then there's a percentage that actually 5.5% of people who register for the event and buy our $10,000 ticket at the end. And that's that part of the business, right? Which means there's 95, 94.5% of people who didn't buy anything other than the ticket, right? And it cost me $300 and they paid me a hundred. So like I'm still $200 in the hole.
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Chapter 4: How does Russell Brunson optimize funnels for ClickFunnels?
so like how do we make money like well now we have this whole other arm of the business that's selling other things and so we have different offers we have different funnels we're sending emails out every single week different things uh it's just trying to figure out what do they want to buy maybe they want to buy the expert seekers book maybe they want to buy um software on the helps with copywriting maybe they want to buy and so we're just setting different offers and ideas we're training giving videos building a relationship we're always selling other things to try to to try to get that money back you know that we spend to acquire that customer then hopefully make a profit
And that's the business. So even though, you know, the Russell coaching business, there's, you know, a dozen, you know, more than that probably, but you know, a couple dozen funnels, there's only one funnel that rules them all. And that's the selling line. That's when we're spending all of our effort on split testing, testing, tweaking, all that kind of stuff happens there. Right.
And so that's that business. And the ClickFunnels business is different, right? For a long time, the one funnel to rule them all in the ClickFunnels business was the webinar, right? It was the ClickFunnels funnel action webinar. For probably seven or eight years, that was the front end thing. When we launched the new ClickFunnels, we had an event called Your First Funnel Challenge.
And that became the funnel that for over a year, almost two years, we ran that funnel. And so every day we're spending as much money as possible, optimizing, tweaking, optimizing, tweaking, making that better and better and better. And that was the funnel that ruled the whole business, right?
Right now in the ClickFunnels world, we have two or three funnels that we're testing and the jury's out on which one will be the best. But right now we have a lot of data we're testing and I have three or four in front of offers that we're trying to figure out what's the one funnel that's going to rule them all. And so they figure that out.
Then we double down and now we can spend more money on ads and things like that, right? And then all the other funnels, we send the people in the follow-up sequence, right? It's just shifting the way you're thinking about this, right? In Dan Kennedy business, it's the Mifki funnel, right? No BS in the letter.com. That's the front end.
And that's when we spend all the money and the effort and the energy trying to get people to buy. Secrets to Success. It's the Secrets to Success Mifki, right? Secrets to Success.com. You go down to the... to the offer there. And that's where we send, that's where we're driving traffic there. So, um, so that's kind of the concept now.
So each business should have one funnel that rules them all, right? Like that's the, that's the thing you got to be thinking about. Like what's the one funnel that I can profitably, um, or even at a loss, acquire customers that bring somebody in and, Um, and then hopefully builds a relationship. They want to send it, ascend up the next thing.
Like it does all the, the, the jobs that needs to do to then move somebody up to the next tier of the value ladder. Right. And bring them in. But then after you have men, you've already spent the money to acquire that customer. Now it's like, what are other things that they would want to buy? Um, they're similar to what they came in initially. Right. Someone comes in for selling online event.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of social media vs. paid ads?
And you probably, if you're on any of my lists, you're seeing them, you notice like every single week there's one for click funnels and there's every single week one for prime mover, uh, where it's like that whole week we're focusing and there's a whole bunch of really cool value packed content that we send people, you know, like three or four videos that all push to one offer. Right.
but it's very much like value driven upfront and it pushes the offer. Right. And so for me, it's like, those are all the backend funnels, right? Again, you don't, they don't, those don't have to convert as high. We're not split testing a million different variations and all sorts of stuff. It's like the person has a relationship with us. If we did the front end funnel, correct.
The one funnel that rules them all, then they probably have a, you know, then, then they probably, uh, had a good relationship and now they know who we are. They know, like, and trust me, it's been three days of live event with me. You know, like there's, it already sent 90 minutes on a webinar or whatever it is, but now like there's this trust.
So the other funnels, I don't have to try as hard to get people to buy, right? And I don't really care if you buy in the first funnel, the second, the third, like I'm just, I'm sending out different ideas and concepts to that audience that are related to the core thing that I sell. And then maybe they're going to buy one of these tangential offers if they didn't buy the main thing, right? Yeah.
So that's how I look at my business and how I'm structuring things. So I'm going to share it with you guys. Cause that's like step number one, Deb.
Step number two comes down to like, okay, how do I, how do I actually focus on the spot where I, this one funnel that rules them all, where I can focus enough to get the spot where I can spend a thousand dollars a day in ads and then 10,000 and then a hundred thousand and beyond. Right. Like that should be the focal point. It should be the only thing that actually matters. Um, what I'm,
in a new business like the whole the hard work is in like figuring out that first funnel the one that can be profitable on paid ads you're tweaking you're testing you're tweaking you're like doing all the work on that's the hardest part right except you have that now you got a customer generation machine it's just creating customers on demand for you profitably or at a small loss
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Chapter 6: How can businesses focus on effective ad strategies?
you know, a break-even funnel and now you can bring in and sell them all these other things. So that becomes a focal point, right? And so then it's like, well, how do I consistently spend a hundred grand a day or a thousand dollars or whatever the number is for you, right? Everyone's at different levels figuring out what that is.
How do we get to the spot where we can spend that much consistently, right? And so you start looking at all your efforts. And so for me, it's been fascinating because it's like, like right now, this week, there's a selling online event happening. We sold about 3,000 tickets.
And like 2,800 of those came from paid ads, mostly from Google, or sorry, Google properties, so Google, YouTube, and then Meta properties, so Facebook and Instagram. Most of it came from that, right? And so we have a small team running that. And it's obviously expensive to get those people. But we're doing a lot of other efforts too. Like we're doing social media. We're doing emails.
We're doing a bunch of stuff like that. It's fascinating. Like I look at our social media. Like we have millions of followers, all sorts of stuff. But not many, I think only 18 people or 20, something like that, people came from social media. So all of our social media efforts, which everyone spends so much time on, and we do too, is time, energy, money.
through the social media thing, the amount of people that actually bought tickets from that were actually relatively small. Now our other channels email, and we don't promote email every single time, but we do notice is the email is a huge driver for us. So what's interesting is they look like paid ads are a big driver of tickets sold. Email is a big driver of traffic sold.
Social media is not, right? So I started looking at that differently. Okay, well, you know, right now if I'm spending, if every day, if every week I'm doing a YouTube video, right? Like in the YouTube videos bringing me 18 customers maybe and the paid ads are bringing me 2,800. Like where should I be focusing my time on?
Like what's more valuable, making a YouTube video that week or like creating an ad, right? So it's like I should be creating at least a one-for-one comparison. If I do one YouTube video, I should be making at least one new ad to test. But it should be probably 10 to one, right? Like I should create 10 new ads for every one YouTube video since I'm getting, you know, whatever the numbers is.
I'm driving, so I don't have the numbers in front of me. But, you know, 18 versus 2,800, like it's a big difference, right? You're spending that much more time on the ad side. One of my Atlas members, Bill, he spoke at FHL Mind and Half, FHL International. He's spending $150,000 a day on ads. And essentially, he was like, why would you waste time on social media? It's a waste of time.
The only thing I'm focusing on now is more ad creative, more ads, more ads. That's all he's doing, right? He's not optimizing his funnels. He's just focusing on ad creative, right? Because ad creative, it drops the CPA, gets more customers in. It's like, that's where all his efforts at.
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Chapter 7: Why is finding the right 'who' crucial for business scaling?
The focal point of social is to get people from social to email because email does make sales, right? How do we move them off? So when you understand that, it's like, okay, maybe my social strategy is different. Like me pushing the funnel, one funnel rule them all is probably not going to be the thing socially. This may be not on Instagram or TikTok. I don't know. It may be different for you too.
Again, this is just my experience. I want you thinking through this for yourself and for your own numbers, your own business, right? Like what, what should be the focal point? Do you ever get one of those ads that makes you go, why am I even seeing this? Not long ago, I kept getting served ads for these super fancy chef grade pots and pans, like premium artisan cookware.
And I'm sitting here thinking, you guys, I barely even know how to boil water properly. I'm more of a protein bar and a podcast guy. Now I'm not knocking the product. It just wasn't meant for me. And the real problem is that the company probably paid good money to show me that ad. And that's why I always tell marketers that relevance is everything. And that's where LinkedIn ads comes in.
Thank you so much for having me. And here's the best part. LinkedIn will give you $100 credit on your next campaign so you can see it in action. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash clicks. That's LinkedIn.com slash C-L-I-C-K-S. Terms and conditions apply. Only on LinkedIn ads.
If you've been following me for any amount of time, I always talk about as you're growing and scaling your company, the most important thing is finding the who, not the how. Who is the person that can help you drive more traffic? Who is the person that can be your CEO? Who is the person that can build your funnels?
Understanding the who will dramatically speed up the growing and the scaling of your company. Now, the best place to find the who's who can help you with your vision is Indeed. When it comes to hiring the right who's, Indeed is all you need.
Indeed gives you the ability to stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other sites because Indeed's got a sponsored job listing where you can stand out in front of your dream hires. With these sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates. That means your funnel builder is going to see it.
That means the person driving traffic to your funnels is going to see it. It means your new CEO or CMO or whatever you're looking for is gonna see the exact ad for your business as soon as they open up Indeed. And that makes a huge difference. In fact, according to Indeed, data-sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs.
One of the things I love about Indeed is it makes hiring so fast. You can post the job and within minutes, you're getting applications who are coming in looking to become the who inside of your business. Prior to that, I was often posting my help-wanted ads on Facebook and Instagram and then getting tons and tons of responses from unqualified people who had no idea what they were doing,
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