Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - The Propaganda Playbook: Iran (How Consent Is Manufactured Before the First Bomb Drops) | #Marketing - Ep. 120

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, I’m breaking down something that most people completely miss when they look at big global events. Everyone is arguing about whether a war is right or wrong - but that’s not actually the most important question. The real question is: how did millions of people already agree with it before it even started? I take you behind the scenes of a real-world example and show you exactly how consent is engineered long before any decision is announced. And once you see it, you won’t be able to unsee it. What might surprise you is that the same psychology used to guide public opinion at a massive scale is the exact same psychology behind every great sales funnel, webinar, and presentation. I’ve spent over 20 years studying persuasion - from Edward Bernays to modern-day marketing - and in this episode, I connect the dots between propaganda, influence, and ethical selling. I even break down how I used this exact framework on stage in front of thousands of people to generate millions in sales in just 90 minutes. Key Highlights: ◼️The concept of “manufacturing consent” and how it’s been used for over 100 years to shape public opinion ◼️The 5-step “Consent Ladder” (moral foundation, promise, escalation, emotional lock, and the final move) ◼️Why people rarely make decisions in the moment - and how those decisions are actually pre-engineered ◼️A behind-the-scenes breakdown of how I used the same psychological framework to generate $3M in 90 minutes ◼️The critical difference between manipulation and ethical persuasion - and why intent matters more than technique At the end of the day, this episode isn’t about politics - it’s about awareness. Once you understand how influence really works, you’ll start to see it everywhere… in the news, in marketing, and even in your own decisions. The big question is: does simply knowing the process protect you from it - or are we all still climbing the ladder without realizing it? If you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, or anyone who wants to truly understand human behavior and persuasion, this episode will completely change how you see the world - and how you sell inside of it. ◼️Watch the Secrets of Propaganda: https://www.secretsofpropaganda.com/yt ◼️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. At 2 in the morning on a Saturday, the president of the United States posted a video on social media saying that the U.S. had launched strikes on over 1,000 targets inside of Iran. The Supreme Leader was dead.

Bombs were falling and Congress found out the very same way that you did. War with Iran. They watched the video. There was no press conference, no vote, and no debate. By the time you woke up, the war had already started. And the question that everyone is asking is whether this war is right or wrong. But that's actually the wrong question. The right question is how did an entire country consent to a war before the first bomb even dropped?

I'm about to show you the exact techniques that they used. It's over 100 years old. And look, what you're about to see might make you uncomfortable. because the same psychology the engineers consent for the war is the same psychology behind every webinar, every launch, every presentation that's ever moved a room to take action. The question isn't whether the science exists. It's whether you understand it well enough to use it for good. This is the propaganda playbook where I take the biggest stories in the news and decode the propaganda techniques hidden inside of them and then I show you how to use the ethical version of those same techniques to grow your business. So let's get into it. Right now people are always about whether the war is justified or illegal, left versus right. But I've spent 20 years studying the science of persuasion. And what I see when I look at this isn't the war.

It's what happened before the war. Because by the time these bombs are dropped at 2 a.m., the consent has already been manufactured. The decision was already made for you. And once I show you how this technique works, you're never going to look at a headline the same way again. Okay, so look, if you lean right on this, then you're probably looking at the Iranian regime

and saying, these people killed over 30,000 of their own protesters. The regime was brutal. They were developing nuclear weapons, and somebody had to do something. And I understand that. That's the real reaction to a real situation, right? And if you lean left, you're looking at this and saying, the Constitution is clear. Congress declares war.

The president launched a massive military operation with no vote, no debate, and now there are American servicemen who are dead. There's Iranian civilians who are dead, bombs hitting Dubai and Kuwait. And the Pentagon's own briefers told Congress that Iran was not planning to strike U.S. forces unless we attacked first. Okay? That contradicts the whole imminent threat justification. And you're saying, this is Iraq all over again. Now, both of these reactions are real. Both of these feelings are understandable. But here's the thing. I'm not going to tell you which side is right. That's not what I do here. I'm a propaganda expert. I've spent 20 years studying the science of persuasion.

I own a first edition copy of Edward Bernays' book called Propaganda. And this is the man who literally invented public relations. And I've used what I've learned from that book to bootstrap a company past a billion dollars in sales with no venture capital. just the science of persuasion applied to business. So what I'm trained to see when I look at this isn't who's right about the war, it's how were you brought along for the ride? What happened those weeks prior to the bombs being dropped? Now, it's a textbook. It might be the most clear-cut case

of manufactured consent that I've seen in my entire lifetime. I'm gonna show you exactly how the technique works, where it comes from, and this part, this gets really interesting, how I use the exact same playbook to generate $3 million in sales in just 90 minutes. Okay, so the technique is called manufacturing consent. I want to be really specific here because this isn't some conspiracy theory phrase I made up.

This is the actual technical term. Edward Bernays, the man I've been studying for 20 years, he literally wrote an essay 1947 called the Engineering of Consent. That is his term. He published it an academic journal and he describes it, and I'm paraphrasing here, the essence of democratic leadership. The idea that in a complex society, you can't let public opinion form on its own. You have to engineer it.

And here's what's so important to understand. The word engineer isn't an accident. He wasn't talking about convincing people. He wasn't talking about persuading them with arguments. He was talking about building a psychological structure, just like an engineer builds a bridge so that by the time the people arrive at the decision point, the decision has already been made for them.

They just think that they made it themselves. So here's how this works, okay? Manufacturing consent isn't one move. It's a sequence, it's a ladder. And every rung of that ladder is designed to get you one step closer to the conclusion that you would never have agreed to if someone had asked you cold. Let me walk you through the five-step consent

ladder that was used on the American public in the weeks before the bombs were dropped. Step number one, the moral foundation. Before you can get someone to support a war, you have to establish that the other side is evil. Not just wrong, but evil. So what do you lead with? Well, how about this? The Iranian regime killed 32,000 of their own protesters. You start with something that nobody can argue with. Nobody's going to defend killing protesters, right? And now you've got the entire country agreeing on step number one, that these are bad people. Now, step number two is the promise. Once you've established the enemy as evil, you make a promise to the people suffering underneath them. Keep protesting. Help is on its way.

The president said that directly to the Iranian citizens. And now something is shifted, right? Now there's some expectation. Now there's a commitment, not from the public, but from the leader to the public. And when the promise has been made, fulfilling it becomes an obligation. Breaking it makes you look weak. Step number three is the escalation. After the promise, you start building the physical reality. A massive armada is heading into the Middle East. Aircraft carriers, guided missiles, destroyers. You're not asking the public to vote on this. You're showing them that's already happening. And then every detail and every day the Armada gets closer,

the war feels more and more inevitable. The consent isn't being asked for, it's being assumed. Step number four is the emotional lock. And this is the part that's really, really smart, okay? Right before the strikes, you get the emotional language as intense as possible, not policy language, not strategic language, words like killers, abusers, and they will pay a very big price.

When you hear that kind of language from a president, that's not diplomacy, that's closing language. That's the language. would you use when your decision is already made and you just need people to feel it was the right one. Step number five, the midnight move. And then at two in the morning on a Saturday, when Congress is out, when the new cycle is the slowest, when most of America is asleep, you announce it's already done. There's no debate because there's nothing to debate. The bombs have already dropped. The Supreme Leader's already dead. And now the only question isn't, should we do this? That question's

gone. The only question is, do you support the troops? And everybody supports the troops, right? That's the consent ladder. Moral foundation, promises, escalation, emotional lock, and then the midnight move. Five steps. And notice, at no point that sequence was the American public asked to make a decision. And no point was there a vote. At no point to anyone say, here are the pros and the cons. What do you think?

The consent was engineered. The consent was manufactured step by step and rung by rung. Just like Bernays described in 1947. And here's the thing. That should really get your attention. This isn't the first time this exact sequence has been run. It's not even close. Okay, so let me take you back to where this all started. I mean literally where it started.

Because the science of manufacturing consent didn't come from politics. It didn't come from the military. It came from one man and it came from one special moment. In 1917, America entered World War I. And the problem was that most Americans didn't actually want to fight. This was a European war. American boys dying in European trenches for a conflict had nothing to do with them. Nobody was excited about that. So the government created the committee on public information and they hired a young press agent named Edward Bernays. And his job was simple. Sell the war to the American people.

And the slogan they used, make the world safe for democracy. Now, here's what's so fascinating to me about this. Bernays didn't argue with the people. He didn't present evidence and let them decide. He engineered an emotional environment where supporting the war felt like the only moral option. You're either for democracy or your fatality.

There's no middle ground. Does that sound kind of familiar? And Bernays was so good at this, so disturbingly good that when the President Wilson went to Paris Peace Conference at the end of the war, the crowds treated him like he was a god. People were surging around him, screaming and losing their minds. And Bernays was standing right there watching this all happen.

He saw the President of the United States being worshipped by people who had never met him. People whose sons had died in a war they'd been sold through propaganda. And in that moment, Bernays had a thought that changed the world. He said, and this is basically a direct quote, If you could use propaganda to control people during war, why not use it during peacetime? And that one thought, that single idea is the reason that public relations exist. It's the reason political campaign

work the way they do. It's the reason that advertising shifted from here's why you need this product to here's how this product makes you feel. Everything changed because Bernays realized a consent machine worked in peacetime too. And then Bernays went on to perfect it. He learned from his uncle Sigmund Freud, yes, the Sigmund Freud, that human beings aren't driven by logic. We're driven by our unconscious desires and fears. And if you can tap into those fears, you can move entire populations. Not by convincing them, but by engineering the emotional environment so that they arrive at the conclusion that you want and they believe they got there themselves. And he proved this over and over again. He got women to smoke cigarettes by calling them torches of freedom. He changed what America

eats for breakfast by convincing doctors that bacon and eggs was a medical recommendation. And in 1954, he helped the CIA to overthrow a democratically elected government in Guatemala. And the Guatemala coup, this is where it gets really relevant to what's happening right now. Because Bernays was hired by the United Fruit Company. Guatemala had elected a president named R. Benz, who wanted to take back the land that the United Fruit Company controlled. It was popular. The people wanted it, but the United Fruit wanted him gone. So what did Bernays do? He didn't lobby Congress. He didn't make a business argument. He manufactured a communist threat. He convinced the American press and the American public that Guatemala,

this tiny country, was becoming a Soviet outpost in America's backyard. He refrained a corporate land dispute as a matter of national security. He engineered the consent of the American people for a CIA coup, and it worked. As one historian put it, he totally understood that the coup who would happen when conditions in the public and the press allowed for it. And he created those conditions. Does that sound familiar? Take an existing crisis,

whether it's a real one in Iran or a manufacturer one in Guatemala, and reframe it as an existential threat that demands immediate action. Build the emotional environment step by step and rung by rung until the action feels inevitable and the consent has already been manufactured before anyone fires a single shot.

That's the science, that's what Bernays built. And here's what this gets really interesting. For people like us, because I've used this exact same playbook, not to start a war, not to overthrow a government, but to build a business. And I did it in 90 minutes in front of 9,000 people and it generated over $3 million in sales.

Okay, so I wanna take you behind the scenes of something that I did that most people have never heard the full story. I'm sharing this because the parallels of what we just talked about, honestly, they're kind of scary about how precise they actually are. A couple of years ago,

as you probably've heard, I had a chance to speak at Grant Cardone's 10x conference. There were 9,000 people in the audience, sales people, entrepreneurs, business owners, And my goal was simple. I wanted to set the all-time record for the most cells generated from a single presentation. Three million dollars in 90 minutes.

That was the target. Now, to understand what we did to engineer consent, there's a documentary I want you guys to watch. It's called Push by Darren Brown. And the premises documentary is kind of insane. He asks the question, using nothing but social pressure and escalating micro commitments, can you get an ordinary person to commit murder in just 90 minutes?

And they set this whole thing up. And three out of four people actually push off of the roof. They think that they actually killed someone in 90 minutes from zero to murder, just through a sequence of small commitments that escalated one by one until the final act felt almost inevitable. When I watched that, I thought, okay, if you can get someone to go from zero to murder in 90 minutes using escalating commitments, can I get 9,000 people to go from zero to point their credit cards out in 90 minutes using the exact same psychology? And the answer is yes. And here's exactly how I did it. Step number one, the microcrow.

commitment. The very first thing I did when I walked on that stage, the very first thing before I taught anything, before I even introduced myself, I asked every single person to pull out their phone and turn on their flashlight and hold it up above their heads. 9,000 phones, lights everywhere. It was beautiful. And yes, I wanted to get the photo. I'm not going to lie about that, but that wasn't why I did it. I did it because I needed 9,000 people to physically do something I asked them within the first 30 seconds. That's step one on the consent ladder. It's tiny and it costs them nothing, but now they said yes to me once. Once they said yes to something small, you're more likely to say yes to something bigger. Step number two, the moral foundation. Same as the war playbook, right?

I spent the first 15 minutes building an identity. I told the story about my mentor, John Reese, making a million dollars in a day and how he broke my four-minute mile. I then introduced a two Comic Club award with hundreds of entrepreneurs who had already crossed a million dollars in sales using funnels. I wasn't selling anything yet. I was building the belief that funnels were the vehicle. I was establishing the moral foundation that this is the right path. Step number three is the escalation. I call it the price marinade. This is where I did something that I've never done before and honestly, I was terrified.

15 minutes into the 90 minute presentation, before I showed a single piece of proof, I told 9,000 people exactly what I was going to ask them for. I said, at the end of this presentation, I'm going to ask you for $11,552. And then I did the math with him. If you're a $100,000 company and I can 10 extra company, that's a million dollars. Would you trade $11,000 for a million? Now, if you're a million dollar company and I help you to 10x, that's $10 million. Is $11,000 a good deal for $10 million?

And that's the escalation. I was taking the price from, man, that is a lot of money to, wow, that is nothing compared to what I'm promising. And I was doing it before the proof. The same way the Armada was deployed before the bombs drop. You make the conclusion feel inevitable before you even get there. Step number four, the emotional lock, the public commitment. And then I asked them to do something that honestly,

I still can't believe it worked as well as it did. I said, repeat after me. And 9,000 people repeated after me out loud. I commit that as soon as I know that funnels are the key to 10xing my company, I will go all in. Nine thousand people said that out loud together in public. Before they'd seen a single piece of proof that funnels actually work. Do you understand what just happened? They made a verbal public commitment to act on a conclusion that they hadn't even reached yet. That is manufactured consent. That is engineering consent in real time. Step five. the close and then after all that I spent the next hour proving to them that funnels were the key story after story case study after case study testimonials

demonstrations the whole thing and when I finally showed the offer which was actually 2,997 dollars not 11,000 it wasn't even a decision anymore the consent had been built the commitment had been made and the belief had been engineered all I had to do was open the door and let the people walk through it three million dollars in 90 minutes now I need you to hear this part the psychology behind what I did on that stage is I identical to the psychology behind what happened with Iran. Identical.

The consent ladder is the same. Micro commitments, moral foundation, escalation, the emotional lock, the move. The difference, and this is the difference that matters, is intent. Bernay's manufactured consent to sell a war that killed millions. He manufactured consent to overthrow a democratically elected government so a fruit company can keep its land. I manufacture consent to sell software and coaching that's helped thousands of entrepreneurs to build businesses and to change their lives. Same science, same sequence, completely different intent. And that distinction is everything.

Okay, so here's the principle. And it's the most important thing that I can give you today. Never ask for the big yes until you've collected a hundred small ones. This is true in politics. It's true in war. And it's absolutely true in your business. So if you're selling anything, whether it's coaching, software, physical products, services, whatever, here's how you build your own consent ladder, okay?

Most people, and I see this every single day, they build a sales page, they throw up an ad and they send cold traffic straight to that offer. That's the same as walking into a stranger saying, give me $3,000. It doesn't work. And then they wonder why their conversion rate is garbage. Instead, think about this. What if before anyone saw your offer, they had already said yes to you five, ten, or even 20 times? And those yeses didn't have to be big.

In fact, they shouldn't be. The first yes cost them absolutely nothing. Get them to watch a video. Get them to download a guide. Get them to answer a question. Get them to comment. Get them to show up for the webinar. Get them to raise their hands.

Then get them to make a small public commitment. Reply this email and tell me that you're in. Put your goals in the comments. Tell somebody what you're about to do. they told somebody they're emotionally committed, then build the belief. Don't sell your product, sell the vehicle, sell the new opportunity. Get them to believe that this approach, this method, this framework is the key to getting the result that they actually want. Once they believe that the vehicle works, your product is just the obvious way to get on the road. Then show the

price early and let it marinate. This one's huge, okay? Don't surprise people with the price at the end. Introduce it early and spend the rest of the time building so much value on top of it that by the time comes that you get to the close, the price feels like nothing compared to what they're getting in exchange. And then, and only then, do you make the offer? And when you do it right, it doesn't feel like selling. It feels like opening a door that they've been walking towards the entire time. That's a consent ladder. That's what Bernay's built for governments. That's what I built on for the 10x stage. And that's what you can build in your business starting this week. Okay, so here's the question I want to leave you with. And I want to genuinely hear what you guys think about this.

We just talked about how consent is manufactured, how governments do it, how I do it, and how you can do it. And Bernays believed that the masses needed to be managed this way because people are too irrational to make their own decisions on their own. He literally called it engineering consent and said that it was the essence of democracy. So here's my question.

If you now understand the consent ladder, if you can see the micro commitments being stacked, the emotional environment being built, the inevitable conclusion being engineered, just knowing the technique protects you from it. Or is it so deeply wired into how human beings work that even when you can see every rung of the ladder, you still climb it.

Because right now, millions of Americans are on one side of the world, war or the other. And most of them got there through this consent ladder that we just mapped out. They climbed it step by step without even knowing it was there. Now you can see it. But next time, when the next crisis hits and the next ladder is built, we'll seeing it be enough. Drop your answer down in the comments because I read every single one of them. And seriously, this is the one I think about a lot. 20 years of studying and stuff, I still don't know if awareness is enough to break the machine.

Now, what I just showed you is one technique from a playbook that was built over 100 years ago. And actually, it started with Sigmund Freud figuring out that these are unconscious forces that drive everything that we do. And then his nephew, Edward Bernays, took those ideas and he weaponized them. He sold the World War. He overthrew governments. He rewired what an entire country desires and fears. And then there was a man named Dan Kennedy, who was one of my first mentors. He figured out how entrepreneurs could use these same dark arts ethically. And I spent the last 20 years taking all of it and turning into a system that bootstrapped click funnels passed a billion dollars in sales without any venture capital. I actually made another video

that I want you to watch that tells the entire story, from Freud's discovery to Bernade's weaponization to how I use the exact same techniques today to sell online. And if what you just saw in this video fascinates you, this next video is going to blow your mind. The link is in the description and the pin comments or if you go to secrets of propaganda.com, you can go and watch that. That's at secretsofpropaganda.com. Go and watch it right now while it's still fresh. And if you haven't already, subscribe to the bootstrap Secrets channel because this is the propaganda playbook. Every episode, I take a big story from the news and decode the propaganda behind it. And then I show you how you can use those exact same

techniques to grow your business. Same science, same playbook, different story. And our next episode is coming soon. So that said, thank you so much. And I'll see you on the next video.