Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - How I’m Using AI to Outwrite, Outbuild, and Outlaunch My Competition | #Success - Ep. 116

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

Most entrepreneurs are dabbling with AI right now… testing prompts, playing with tools, maybe even writing a few emails with it. But what I’ve realized over the last year is this: AI isn’t just a productivity hack. It’s a force multiplier. And if you learn how to feed it the right context and guide it the right way, it can become the most powerful copywriter, funnel builder, and marketing assistant you’ve ever had. In this episode, I’m recording from my sauna (yes, really) and pulling back the curtain on how I’ve been using AI behind the scenes to write long-form VSLs, build entire challenge funnels, craft 100+ email sequences in hours, and even script full webinars in a single afternoon. I share the exact shift that changed everything for me - from asking AI to “write me a VSL” (and getting garbage) to building a process that produces scripts as good as, or better than, what I could write myself. The result? Some of the highest-converting funnels of my entire career. If you’ve been wondering whether AI is just hype - or the biggest opportunity of our lifetime - this episode will open your eyes to what’s actually possible right now. Key Highlights: ◼️The "500 words of context for every 1 word of output" rule that transformed the quality of my AI-written VSLs ◼️How I wrote three 50-page VSLs in a single day, and why they’re performing at the highest level of my career ◼️The funnel-hacking + AI framework I used to reverse-engineer multiple 8-figure challenges and rebuild them in hours ◼️How we used AI-assisted emails, ads, and scripts to create our highest-converting funnel ever ◼️Why I believe the next billion-dollar companies will be run by tiny teams (or even one person) leveraging AI correctly The game has changed. The speed of creation, the volume of output, and the leverage we now have as entrepreneurs is unlike anything I’ve seen in over two decades online. The old way of building companies - with massive teams, long timelines, and slow execution - is disappearing. The entrepreneurs who learn how to think, build, and market with AI won’t just keep up… they’ll dominate. And if you’re willing to dive in and master it, you might just find that your next breakthrough is only one prompt away. ◼️If you’ve got a product, offer, service… or idea… I’ll show you how to sell it (the RIGHT way) Register for my next event →⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://sellingonline.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ◼️Still don’t have a funnel? ClickFunnels gives you the exact tools (and templates) to launch TODAY → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clickfunnels.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 slash podcast. That's selling online.com slash podcast. This is the Russell Brunson show. Hey, what's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the podcast.

I'm actually in my sauna. I think a red light sauna. with a juve light on me. So there's a weird sound in the background. That's what it is. But maybe my brother who had it, so he's can kill it with AI. Maybe not.

Maybe you have a little weird humming in the background, but I apologize. I just wanted to hang out and record you as something. It's been, it's been a while. And life's been so busy running and doing and creating and fixing and, you know,

all the things. And I haven't had a lot of time just to sit down and record special podcasts. For you guys, we're getting closer and closer to that. We actually have been building. out an entire podcast studio and stage at the office. And it's exciting. I'm trying to shift up the way we do a lot of our content and things like that. We're shifting a lot of everything.

Like, I don't know about you guys, but the world has changed so much in the last, man, even like six months with AI and all sorts of stuff. You know, I don't think I really understood the the full impact about what AI, how it was going to affect my business in my life until, honestly, it was last year we went to Agora and we took the Atlas group to Agora, which is, you know, they're the biggest financial newsletters in the world. They do like a billion and a half dollars a year. So I was like, it was really cool way of a chance to learn from them and stuff. And their process is so cool, but it's, you're reliant on these really good, really expensive

copyrighters. You know that write these long. 90 minute long Vs, and stuff like that. And so it's interesting because we got back from that. I was like, I want to do a long form VSL like this. But at the same time, I'm just like, I mean, for me to write something like that, it'd be forever. It takes so long.

This was the first time I was like, I wonder if I could do this with AI. And if you've ever had AI, I tried to write something for you in the past, for me, it was just like typically not that good, right? Just something that you'd like, write me a VSL on it. So it's like garbage. And so I started thinking, through like, okay, this AI stuff will be really smart.

I'm like, how do we actually do this correctly? And, you know, if you look at it, there's a lot of programs, a lot of different things out there, but Claude is the one that's the best writer. So I was like, him, folks with Claude. And so I was like, oh, and I had a friend, Peter's manager circle, he said,

like, cool, it was like for AI to do something for you. Like, for every word you want to get out, you have put 500 words of context in. And so, I took that to heart and I was okay how does that work and so I was working on this VSL and it started with me just okay I need to get 500 words of context in for every word I want to hack out and so I was like can we find swipe files what I found swipe files are the best VsLs ever right and I added that to Clawed into the

project file and then I was like you know every time I've sold the thing in the past like they throw those in there so those my stories and those my things and anyway I'm just spending four or five hours just getting stuff into into Claude. And then I was like, okay, I'm going to start writing this VSL. What I've learned is like, you don't say write a VSL and then it pops out of 50 page thing because it's not good. Instead, I was like, I'm going to do section by section.

So like, all right, now you have all this stuff. Let's do the intro. And then I talk through it. Like, I want to do this and this and this. Make sure we cover these, you know, whatever. And then it would write it. And I'm like, oh, it's pretty good. But I'd export it, edit it.

I put it back in like, okay, it's good. Now I've edited. This is how I want the next one. The next one's moving forward looking, you know? And I do the next one and it would get a little better and a little better. And by the time, like, I did three or four sections, like, it was nailing it really good, actually. And I'm like, okay, this is, this is kind of exciting. Anyway, I did the whole thing.

And then from there, after the script was done, one of my friends named Ray, he's a great animator who worked him over the years. I was like, can he use AI to, like, animate this whole thing? So he took it and spent, I don't know, a month or so animating it. And then we got done, it was like, this video was just insane. and so we launched it and it blew up and I was like okay I get it now I see how AI can do these things and so I started becoming obsessed with all the things and so yeah I did I've done other BSL that BSLs for our continuity programs and Vs for click funnel that it'd be like started making all sorts of different things it was crazy

like in fact one day I wrote 350 page um Bs like that are insanely good and I'm I'm I'm pretty good at writing copy. And so I'm going through it. I'm like, this is, this is, like, as good if not better than I could have written by myself. Because I did the way I kind of explained earlier, you know. And we published those and got those live. And now they're making, like, they're cranking out money, which is really cool. And then email sequences, I was like, we're going to do this challenge.

You probably saw we did a couple weeks ago, the one Comic Club challenge. I was like, okay, how do we, how do we, how do I do this? And at the time, Dean and Tony had just done a huge AI-based challenge. And, you know, we funnel hack everything. So we can funnel hack it and we went through all the emails and text and everything. Got it. And there was like, 120 messages or something like that. And I was like, okay, for our one comical challenge, we need the same thing,

upload all the 120 messages. And they put it in our context and our stories and what we're keeping in. And then got there in a few hours, we wrote 120 emails for our challenge, you know. And it just, and it turns out so good and it's so fast. I did the same thing before we did the one column club challenge I'm like okay you know one of Russell's rules is always

funnel hack first so I'm like a funnel hack first and so I found everyone who has a really good challenge right now because I haven't been a challenge in two years I'm like well what's who's got the best ones how's it improves I found a couple people who had really you know 20 30 million dollar challenges and it's like okay

so I took all these had AI analyze them all break down the process the scripts the offers the bonus it just it gave me this like insane cool framework for me and then to weave in our challenge. And, um, you know, we did the challenge, between the challenge and the email sequences and the ads and like everything that was like AI assisted. Um, we had the highest converting, um, the highest converting funnel, um, in my career,

honestly, like, which is crazy. Like, could have a lot of things. And somehow this one became the best so far. We're about to evergreen it and rolled out. Um, anyway, things just moves so fast. and we're learning how to use it in so many different ways. I just focus on obviously the marketing stuff, but then internally, however, anyway, I just hope that you guys are all paying attention and you're doing stuff with it and you're trying to figure it out

because look at the volume of things we're able to create and how fast we can actually create these things. And it's like, I don't know how anyone else is going to compete with me. You know what I mean? And I'm hoping that you're doing the same thing. I'm like getting into this, because if you start really understanding how to leverage stuff, like no one's going to be able to compete with you either.

You know what I mean? Yeah, so it's just, it's so cool. You know, it's interesting, like, there's, you know, talk that a lot of people like, there's eventually businesses that are built that are run by one person who's running AI that will do a billion dollars in sales. I think there's one last year that got sold, one dude with AI, and he built a company and sold it for like $70 million. It's like, it's so cool.

So anyway, I just hope that I just hope that you're not falling behind on these things. You know what I mean? I think we're going to do some bigger like community-wide trainings on the AI stuff because it's like, if I could show you guys what we're doing behind this. And I believe it's it's hard. The next time, or the first time I'll have a chance to actually share all this stuff is with my inner circle. We're doing in April of the inner circle meeting.

And I'm going deep and showing everything, the scripts, the concept, the process. Because I want to get those guys all just crank it on this at a high level. but I just want to make sure that you guys at the same time are thinking about it and doing it. It's been fun because it's also like a lot of the revamp I want to do for this podcast, right? My podcast, my social media, like, I really want to change all of it.

In the past it's been hard because it's like, there's teams and there's people and there's video editing. It's just like all these things that make it hard and make, how do we shrinkify this? How do we simplify this? How do I create better content for you guys to get you more excited, you know, and give you more powerful things to leverage

and to learn. And so it's been fun because I'm going through like all the best podcasts and getting to send me analyzed and figuring out like, what are the, what are the structure things that are different? And I'm trying to be like, how do I make mine different, unique? I don't want mine like, I'm like in a business world. It's like everybody's got the same podcast. It's all interview shows, talking to the same people, same time, the same stuff.

I'm just like, I want to create something truly unique and interesting and and fun and funny. And so that's what's been taking a while for me to re-brand, relaunch, whatever you want to call it the new version of what we're trying to do, but it's going to be really cool. So I'm going to throw some ideas. It's incredible. Idea number one. I own bootstrap.com, and I've always wanted to tell the bootstrap story. I thought someday I was going to write this book called Bootstrap and share how we built ClickFunnels from zero to billion dollars and bootstrapped it.

But the reality is like the way we did it over the last decade is not the way that I would do it now. So I was like, okay, what if the shift is like how we built ClickFunnels from zero to billion dollars in 10 years and how I'm going to have. now I'm building my next billion dollar company in one year, you know, or less or more, I don't know, how we're going to do it 10 times faster now with AI. And then showing like, here's the principle from, you know, from we did the first time, then here's how I'm replicating it with one, one thousandth of the staff with 2,000 times the speed and precision and, you know, whatever that might be. That could be really fun. So yeah, anyway, that's one big idea. and thinking about for the podcast, I think it would be more interesting.

So you get some story time with Russell, but then you also get like, like, here's the practical application of how you guys can replicate it now. And then even giving you guys the ability to come back and like, and, you know, get things used to. Like, again, here's the problems I use. Here's the script. Here's the copy. Here's the swipe files. Here's the state.

You just like, as I'm showing it, then it's like, here, you guys have to do it too. I think that'd be really fun. So, anyway, this year's going to be insane. I said January launch, one comic club challenge, which sold a certification program. and lifetime access to click funnels, a bunch of other stuff. And each month, rolling out new things that new companies, new businesses, new offers, new, like, it's, I sure a lot of guys are like, Russell, you're doing so much stuff. It's like, yeah, because I can.

There's so many things that are happening where it will create such amazing things at such speed. And it's tough because I know, I get people come to my world. Maybe this is you. Who's like, I'm on every email, Russell, and I'm so confused, you're doing this and this and this. And I just want to remind everyone that, like, if you look at my world, like, I've got, you know, six or seven million people on my email list. And so if we do a big challenge and we get 15,000 people sign up, it means there was $5,000, 995,000, you know, whatever the number is that they didn't sign up.

And so I got to make new offers, new opportunities for them. And I always tell people, like, in certification, like they saw right now we're working on an e-com challenge. And they're like, oh, this is a shiny object. What should I do? I'm like, focus, just focus. Like, this is, for those who didn't respond to the, you. to certification.

They don't want to be building funnels for other people, but they may want to do e-commerce. Like, there's a challenge for them. Like, we're doing something different over here, you know? So, um, anyway, yeah, it's, it's fun. This game's been getting really, really fun again. And it's fun for me because I'm getting my hands dirty

and I'm in the middle of it. Like, I'm doing the copywriting and the funnel building and that, like, I got, I got to play in all the pieces and it's been so much fun. So anyway, I hope that, hope you're joining the game and, uh, and doing it. I hope to play the AI to learn how to do it.

There's never been a better time in live to build and launch a business. All the stuff that used to be hard to do is so simple. For our prime movers, you know, we have a coaching program that teaches people I build a webinar and people go in there, they spend six, eight weeks building out a webinar and launching it. And it's great. It's the fastest, most proficient way to build a really good webinar. But, you know, the last two weeks, I've took all the training and I rebuilt into software and now write the webinar form. And I haven't given to him yet. If you're the prime mover, you'll be getting it soon. But what's crazy is in a test, Annie Grace, he's one of my friends.

I was like, I'm going to put the webinar for her. And so I sat down and and in about three hours, I wrote and scripted the entire webinar, word for word for her or her coach or whoever just to read. And it is insane. Like everything I've ever taught or said about webinars is all weaved into this flawless, amazing thing.

Yeah, it's insane. So that's the world we live in, you guys. It's fun and it's moving fast. I hope that you're keeping up with it. We're going to plan on again doing more training for people to get everyone into this AI world and understanding it and seeing how to leverage it for so many things. Because, yeah, those who understand it will be the rulers of the world in the next 10 year, five years. I don't even know.

Who knows how long if hoping is going to laugh before the world comes in, the robots kill us. But right now we have a window where you can make a lot of money in a very short period of time if you leverage these things correctly. So that's what's happened in my world. I appreciate you guys. Thanks for listening. And hopefully soon we'll have the full bootstrapped secrets podcast built out in a really cool way to teach you guys all this stuff too. So appreciate you for listening and we'll talk soon.