The Startup Ideas Podcast - Why 2,500 Subscribers Is All You Need For $1M

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Jonathan "Jicecream" Courtney believes that in 2025, basic marketing still outperforms everything: a simple 90-minute webinar turns 200 attendees into 20 buyers, even with just 2,500 subscribers. The framework is dead simple - 20 minutes on your story, 15 minutes on the solution, 20 minutes showing the transformation, then offering them a choice between DIY or done-for-you. He goes into it in this episode.Key Points:• Detailed breakdown of successful webinar funnel structures and challenge funnels• Discussion of basic marketing fundamentals that still work in 2025• Exploration of how software companies can use traditional funnel marketing techniquesTimestamps:00:00 - Intro03:17 - Greg’s New Year Reflections11:19 - JC's transition from CEO to an advisory role22:07 - How to make deals with influencers25:10 - Detailed breakdown of webinar funnels30:28 - The structure of webinar funnels37:07 - How to use funnels for SaaS products and challenge funnels explained 47:25 - Product recommendations and wrap-up1) The Basic Funnel Formula Still Works:• Email list → Webinar → Product sale• Even with just 2,500 subscribers• Live training converts WAY better than direct email• 90-min webinar can turn 200 attendees into 20 buyers2) Perfect Webinar Structure (by Russell Brunson):• 20min: Your story & struggles• 15min: The "vehicle" (solution you discovered)• 20min: Impact & transformation• Present options: DIY vs accelerated path• Close with clear next steps3) Challenge Funnels Are Underrated:• Perfect for SaaS & digital products• 30-day format with daily support• Free trial + structured program• Examples:- Notion + Second Brain challenge- Fitness apps + weight loss challenge- Meditation apps + mindfulness challenge4) The Warm-Up Step is CRUCIAL:• Direct pitching rarely works• Need a middle step to build excitement• Options:- Webinars- Challenges- Info sessions- Live trainings5) List Partnerships Done Right:• Never cold pitch for list access• Build relationships first• Consider paid partnerships ($10k can be worth it for 1M+ list)• Focus on value alignmentKEY TAKEAWAY:Basic funnels still work incredibly well in 2024, but you need:1. A list (even small)2. Warming step (webinar/challenge)3. Clear transformation story4. Tactful executionNotable Quotes:"Most of the real basics work so goddamn well today. Like 2025, we can launch a product using basically just the same webinar. Just email your list, send them to a webinar." - JC"When a company is doing well, they don't want me involved... They want the strategic advice. They want access to connections." - Greg IsenbergLCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/BoringAds — ads agency that will build you profitable ad campaigns http://boringads.com/BoringMarketing — SEO agency and tools to get your organic customers http://boringmarketing.com/Startup Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses https://www.startupempire.coFIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND JONATHAN ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JicecreamLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtney-4510644b/AJ&Smart: https://ajsmart.com/

Right behind where I'm sitting, you can see this whiteboard. And there's this funnel that Jonathan Jice Cream goes through with us that's printed him millions of dollars. We go through exactly how to do it, why funnels matter. And honestly, I don't know why people sleep on funnels. It's kind of a dirty word. But today we're going to just have a fun chat. and just go through how to think about structuring a funnel that works for your business. So this means you're going to get more customers, you're going to create more sales,

and it's just going to be a big friend for you to grow your business and give your business the highest chance of success. This is a fun conversation. Always with ice cream is always a blast. And let me know what you think in the comment section. I read every single comment. Hope you enjoy. What's up, Greg?

What's going on? Could I call you Jay Ice Cream? You can call me Jay Ice Cream. I mean, you're the only one who does it, but I like it. That's not true, dude. The comment section always. Your comment section and your people on X called me that. What is your girl?

call you. John? Ice cream? John Ice cream? Jonathan Ice cream. She calls me Jonathan Ice Cream. Yeah. I think I never intended it to be spoken out loud because it was my Xbox

Gamer tag, you know? It was one of those things where I was like trying different things and then I was just like ice cream. And then Jay Ice Cream became my... Twitter name or X name. Oh, also my Instagram name. But I don't think anything else besides my original Xbox account. And then...

Besides from your whole identity. Well, besides the fact that you noticed it or some, or your audience noticed it literally 20 years after I did it. Like, no, there was, I think like one person on one podcast, maybe 10 years ago, a German podcast said in a very very very. in a very friendly and naive way, why is your name Jiz cream? And I was like, oh, oh no, it's J ice cream.

and then that was the whole, then there was 10 years of nothing and then now you and your podcast. That's perfect. Yeah, so it's good. I'm keeping it. I'm never changing it. Great.

Happy new year, man. Happy new year. Good to see you. Have you made any like, like, do you over the, holiday period, do any sort of reflection thing or do you, what do you, do you do anything like that? I am a human being, you know, so it would be weird if I did like zero thinking. Yeah, but like I had no. No, but I mean, do you do like any extra reflection or do you, yeah,

you just, you just power down when you're not on this podcast and you're like, wait. for the guests to appear? The honest answer is I set three goals for the year and that's it. What are they? You fuck? Tell us then. I'll tell you one of them

and it's not business related at all. Grow a bigger peepee? Smaller. Yeah, exactly. you're like how much of this will get cut out of the podcast? We basically keep everything in. I love it. Yeah.

So grow a bigger peevee is number one. And what was number two? Number three, let me tell you a story, actually, that happened to me this weekend. So I signed up for my first ever. Okay, so I make this resolution get really good at tennis. Cool. Why? Because tennis feels like it's like part chess, especially singles.

It's like part chess. You need to be really strong mentally, and it's a really good cardio exercise. Just like chess. That's the part that's like chess. It's like, yeah, exactly. So New Year's Resolution, sign up to a tennis tournament. I'm really excited. I get there, matches at 11 a.m.

I see my buddy Corey is like there and he's like, dude, you know who you're playing? And I was like, no. he's like, you're playing Lee. I was like, who's Lee? And he goes, Lee is a 94-year-old man. Nice. So I'm thinking I'm about to just,

you know, absolutely blow this guy out of the water. You know, here I am a extremely fit, 35-year-old spent the, you know, I have been practicing more and more, getting into shape. And then I guess, get to the court, 94-year-old, and he absolutely destroys me 1-0-2-0. Like, I'm not getting any points on the board.

Oh, man. I'm literally, I can't even breathe. I'm sweating, like, profusely. There's not a bead of sweat on Lee's face. Just completely beadless. Just completely beadless. So then I see my friend Corey at the sideline, he's like, oh, I forgot to tell you, basically, that, like, he's a, he won the world champion.

American Championship for top tennis players 85 or older. Holy crap. Long story short, I'm literally like immobilized now. He like, I'm so, like, I can't, I'm so sore and everything. He destroyed you. He destroyed me. I lost the game to a 94-year-old man. Quick break in the pod to tell you a little bit about startup empire.

So startup empire is my private membership where it's a bunch of people like me, like you, who want to build out their startup ideas. Now, they're looking for content to help accelerate that. They're looking for potential co-founders. They're looking for tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them, how do you do email marketing? How do you build an audience? How do you go viral on Twitter? All these different things. That's exactly what startup empire is. And it's for people who want to start a startup but are looking for ideas or it's for people, who have a startup, but just they're not seeing the traction that they need. So you can check out the link to startup empire.com in the description.

That's really, I mean, does it give you this feeling of that's who I want to be? Like, I want to be that 94-year-old man destroying 35-year-olds. That's exactly. I mean, I must admit, we went into a tiebreak. So it was like, it got close by the end. So I almost beat a 94-year-old man. if someone just starts the episode right here. Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, I think that guy was really cool. Like he's, you know, I was talking to him. He's like, yeah, I'm just, I love playing tennis. I play every day. And he's just doing his thing. Like, that's goals. You know what I think is amazing? You have, I think, one of the, you know, one of the bigger podcasts out there in the startup

world, whether you like it or not. And look at your background. The worst background. A whiteboard which you've half as written this startup. If anyone's not listening to this on YouTube, you need to go look at how it's a testament to

how people will take the wrong message. They'll watch like a popular podcast and they're like, oh, I get it. I need to have a really good mic. I need to have really good lighting. And there's your podcast with like 35,000 listens on YouTube alone and you've got a really, I mean, it's almost insulting.

It's amazing. Do you ever think, like, I need to level this shit up visually, or are you just like, I did a round of in-person interviews and the quality is really good. We did a really, really good job. We're releasing our site. I don't know when this is going to go out, but the second. IRL videos going out today with David Senra, which by the way

was probably one of the most life-changing conversations I've had with anyone. Cool. Like on what topic? Like what broad topic? I want you to listen to it, honestly. Yeah. But basically the reason why I was life-changing

was I think what's cool about David Sena, he's from Founders podcast. Do you know founders? Yeah, I've listened to it. It's great. Yeah. Not as good as your podcast, obviously. Yeah, okay.

So, David, you know, he studied all these billionaires and founders and stuff like that. And he's just got these amazing, like, one-line zingers and stories that go with everything. I love when people have that, when they've got their, like, you know, backlog of really cool quotes and anecdotes and all that stuff. I never have that. I mean, I have it for only really have it for my, my like very specific facilitation world. Yes. Like when I do like my show and they're not like saved anywhere,

but they come out. But I have heard it's a really good idea. I heard this from Russell Brunson that it's a really good idea to have like your, he has, he calls it like story archive or something like of your best stories that you can tell. Apparently people do that when they're like media trained. apparently. Yeah.

I forget who said it. Again, we suck at this. But it's like never show up to dinner without stories. Maybe it's Anthony Bourdain. Showing up to dinner with really inappropriate, really long stories. But it's because no one told me the rest. Like, what do you mean? Okay, I'll just learn some fucking horrible shit.

Did you hear about the guy who fell down the crevasse and died and had to eat his own legs? I've got a three-hour story about it. Don't go for dinner with ice cream. to sell. Do not go to dinner with me. It's bad. It's very bad. Well, I made a pretty big decision over the holiday period. I decided to step out as CEO of Facilator.com. Oh, wow. Fully. I'm now, so basically last year, I think around September, we publicly launched a section of, so we've split, I split the company into three different companies. Actually, obviously, inspired by the way you did it with the holding company sort of thing.

And so I split it into Faciliterer.com, AJ and Smart Studio, which is the design studio, and then partners, which is like where myself and my team advise other companies on really funnels and growing their company using funnels. And it just clicked with Laura and I

who run Facilator.com over the holidays, we're like, why don't we just advise Facilator.com the way we're advising other companies to grow and we had a chat with one of the employees who seemed like the best fit to essentially take over. He said yes.

And so for the last three weeks, we've been advising facilitator.com the same where we're advising everyone else. And it's been a massive, massive change. Like out of being super reactive every day into being a lot more, having a lot more headspace and a lot more time to think. although to be really honest I don't know what to do at the time yet like I'm kind of in a confused state where I'm like okay should I what do I do should I read books should I meditate should I clamoohoo I know literally boohoo should I do fucking beat up a 94 year old man like Greg no with this like yeah I'm not I'm not going to make that the topic but it's really that's pretty huge because last year I was

was like hardcore, fully operational across the three companies. And now I'm more advising. And it feels like a nice change of pace. Okay. So do you, are you worried at all that this person is going to drive the business into the ground? I'm sure they all listen to this podcast. So I would say that I always assume, I mean,

for me, it's always easier for me to assume the worst. It would be stupid for me to assume that someone who hasn't had that role in the same way. I've had the role of CEO for 14 years now, and it's very challenging. I'm not worried that he'll run it into the ground because, first of all, I'm the advisor and Laura's advising, so we can be very helpful along the way. But also, facilitator.com now is a well, oiled, well-running entity with all the funnels and everything. So it's, it just needs someone really like, who really knows the ins and out of funnels and Dom who's running it, Hey Dom, is really good at all that stuff. So I think he's going to do a great job. And yeah,

I'm not worried about it being run into the ground personally. It's low on my worries list. The hard thing to do, and I'm guilty of this sometimes, because I'm in a similar role with Late Checkout is some, you know, you might be, you might be working with a CEO and see that the CEO is making the wrong decision. And you have to be like, you know, you have to be kind of like out of it, right? You can't just be, don't do this or I would do this this way. And that's the hardest part. That's going to be the hardest part of your role.

It's very, very difficult. very difficult for me because I did hand over the corporate side of my business to to a CEO a couple of years ago and they did eventually sort of lose track of it and it did pretty much crash and burn and had to be rebuilt. I obviously left it go a little bit too far because I was like, I just need to. I went so hands off that it actually went too far. So I try, I've tried kind of that approach where I'm like, okay, I'm going to be almost like ignorant of it. And now I'm taking, I think it was helpful for me to be, to have this partner's business where I'm an advisor to others so that I know how to advise while being checked out a little

bit, while being like, I'm going to answer your question, but I'm also not going to check up and see if you did it right or something. But yeah, I mean, look. So let me get this straight. I don't know. So let me get this straight. So you had a business, a few businesses. You started coming on the pod. You started wearing glasses like me. You started changing your business like me. I had these glasses before he started his pod. You started talking like me. You started telling the same stories that I tell. You started beating up 94 year old men like I do. Hell yeah. I'm just like, you know what I said? I said one day when I woke up, I just said, I am Greg. Euro, Euro Gregg.

That's what people say in the comments. They're like, oh, are they brothers? I have glasses that look really like, do you have your like lighter colored glasses? Yeah. All right, I'm going to go get mine. Like these kind of... I don't have those.

I don't have those. But those look great. They're like more like yours. Yeah. I have shorter hair. And then, yeah. So yeah, look, I have stepped out of the business a few times. That's why I like started my whole.

unscheduled CEO persona and everything. But what keeps happening is like this thing of just when, just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in or whatever that fucking meme is. So I do end up getting pulled back into it. Do you not get pulled back into your companies? Honestly, you want to do the honest answer? Yeah, you're going to say no. When a company is doing well, they don't want me involved.

Yeah. They honestly, I don't have like the context that they might have. I shouldn't say they don't want me involved. They don't want me to like in the weeds. Yes. They want the strategic advice. They want, you know, access to connections. They want how would I do XYZ?

But they don't want like I'm sitting in meetings and I'm asking like a million questions. Like that to them feels like I'm taking the wheel. and that's not the deal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's really hard to, if you were the CEO and now you've given the role to someone else, if you get at least if I'm in the room, it'll default to people feeling like my opinion maybe has more weight.

Exactly. And so it's better for me to just simply not. And what's cool with Dom is like he's also being like, yeah, you like, we basically decided I'm going to be in like the kickoff meetings, new product meetings, things like this. Actually, I made a pretty extreme decision as well, which is that I am no longer doing, so I was personally sometimes physically going and running large scale corporate trainings just because they bring in quite a lot of money. And I also decided in December I'm not doing them anymore. Like full stop, I'm not traveling. So a lot of things.

the big B2B corporate enterprise travel plans for 2025, I've handed over to the team. And that's something I was always kind of like scared of, I think, because it's like a little bit the Jonathan show, like the teaching facilitation thing, the way we do it at A Jane Smart. And now it's not the Jonathan show anymore. The Dom show.

The Dom show, exactly. So yeah, that's going to be the team running those. And so that's, yeah, I'm really, really curious and excited to see how it goes. But what's cool for your podcast is that now I've gone from, you know, focusing obsessively on, you know, a facilitator.com funnel and then like two weeks later going and helping another company with their funnel and whatever. Now it's like I wake up and I've got, I just do it on I message because it's just so much easier. And I've got like five companies, which we're helping.

with different funnels and different projects. And pretty much what I've been able to, or what I can pretty cleanly and clearly say, I started doing this kind of advising a couple of years ago, but now it's like really part of my actual day to day. It used to be a bit more like on the side. Most of the real basics work so goddamn well today. Like 2025, we can launch a product

using basically just the same webinar, just email your list, send them to a webinar, in that webinar, talk about the product, the end, send loads of follow-up emails. Like that's still the multi-million dollar recipe that we're reusing over and over and over and over again. We've got two big launches coming up. Next week we've got, maybe you can like beep.

Will it get beeped out if I wanted to get beeped out? Yeah. You just have to say what you want. Yeah, so we're launching. So we're launching that next week. And we're just doing webinar. So on Wednesday, all the different lists that we have access to, including like some third party lists.

And so we've been working with a couple of different leads and lists. So all of them push towards essentially a webinar funnel. Okay, so we've leaped out who those people are, but basically for the listener, there's someone who's launching a book, right? You're helping them with orchestrating the funnel to get as many people, as many people, you know, in their ICP to buy the book. There's another big podcast, big, you know, list that you're going to be working with to get even more people on it. How do you structure a deal with, like, you know, someone who has a big list or a bigger list? Like, how does that even happen? Well, I mean, there's a couple. We have, I think we have for this particular launch, there's going to be like four different lists being tapped into. Sometimes it's just a favor.

That's in this case what it is. Like, you know, we were friends or we've done something together before and can we just like tap into your list and then we can do this other thing? It's actually all that. Isn't that like awkward though? Like I don't, I feel what I would feel awkward. Just yeah, okay, take off your sweater. Of course you're wearing black. Like I'm wearing black.

I want to be more like you. You literally looked at me and you're like, oh my God. I don't look as much like Greg today. I need to. Maybe I can do this so I'm more like you again. Yeah. So yeah, you never just ask someone. Like what's definitely not a good idea is to reach out to someone

and say, hey, can I be on your list? We actually had an episode. I think you and I did an episode before the holidays where we talked about this idea of just like asking people for favors and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, you never reach out. Okay, if it's like, okay, I actually asked you about this exact book launch. And I didn't just say, hey, Greg, since I've been on your podcast already,

let me just have access to your full audience and promote the book, right? I didn't say that. I asked you very like carefully, hey Greg, is like I have this, we're going to promote this book. We've got this book launch coming up. The person who wrote it is like,

in my opinion, great for your audience because this, this, this, this, this, this. Do you think there's any chance that this person could come on your podcast? I asked that like relatively carefully with no,

So in my, at least hopefully not from your perspective, I didn't have any assumption that you should just say yes. My assumption was it's an absolutely maybe situation. And that's if I really know someone. So if I really know someone or if I'm, if I've talked to someone a lot like I've talked to you, then I might do a direct ask like that, but still very carefully. And if I don't know the person so well, for example, with Chris, dough when we did our first promotion, I just said, hey, how much will it cost straight up? And often they'll just be like, I don't need, I don't want your money. Let's just do it.

Or they'll also realize, oh, well, our lists, let me do something on your list and I can do something on your list. Sometimes though it's worth paying someone $10,000 if they have a $1.3 million list or person list. So it is a mix of those things. I would say. You have to be very tactful and careful to not overstep boundaries. Is your big insight overall that the basic funnel, the webinar funnel, is just what works today? In my opinion, what makes the most money in the shortest amount of time is you've got a list. So ideally, this won't work if you have zero list or you're like, this is not one of those situations that works from zero the way I'm describing it now. But let's say you have a list of 20,000 people or something you've been building up over years.

Or even honestly, 2,000 people. Wait, you want to do something? Should we write it on the board? I've never done this. Let's do it. So you've got a list of 2,000 people. Actually, 2,500 people. I've got like my unscheduled CEO, like, blog, which I almost never post to,

has around 2,500 subscribers, which is essentially nothing. So you can't see it, right? I can see it. Yeah, it looks good. It looks good. Yeah, it looks good. Yeah, it looks good. So what I will do is I'll invite those 2,500 people to a live training. So this is what I literally will do with this group. I'll give you an exact funnel that's coming up that I'm going to launch soon. So I'm going to invite 2,500 people to a live training that I know will appeal to those people. So those people in my community, they kind of like talking about how can you like be a CEO but also have like a normal life and all of balance family, whatever. I'll do some sort of training on that topic.

then in that training, I will talk about the thing I want to sell, which in this case will actually be an in-person event that's three days. So I'll sell that in-person event on that training. At the end of it, I'll say, hey, by the way, if you enjoy this training, there's two ways you can go forward. One is read all these books. They're really amazing. They're really cool. Whatever. Number two is come hang out with myself on my team in Berlin for three days and we'll do it in a hackathon style. If I just emailed those 2,500 people with the exact same information, two people would buy. Like, I've experienced it multiple times. If I do a live training, a 90-minute live training in between, which is a webinar, like out of the, let's say, 2,500 people will get invited, maybe 200 people might turn off. I'll get like 20 people buying tickets right there and then.

Question. Of the, call it 90 minutes, would you say that it's 90% giving value, 10% talking about the offer? Like, what's the breakdown? The breakdown is structurally I use the structure from Russell Brunson, like 50% of the structure I take from Russell Brunson's book, um, expert secrets. So that structure is basically, I'll just tell you the structure I'll use for this one. It's going to be, hey everybody, here's what the last few, you. years have looked like for me. And the last few years for me have been pretty stressful because loads of things have gone on in my life, blah, blah, blah. And I believe that that will touch on a lot of people's issues they're having as entrepreneurs. So I'll talk about sort of my story for, I'd say, 20 minutes. I'll talk about the biggest learnings I've had in those couple of years. And from those biggest learnings, I'll distill down like what big things I'm going to do to move forward and at the end of that I'll say then I'll start talking about the event or the thing or even the service like this could even be a coaching service that would accelerate that learning

for other people so it's not even 20 minutes me what was it's like it's like 20 minutes my story yeah it's 10 minutes of me discovering something that's has helped. So that's like called like the vehicle. I'm discovering the vehicle. So in my case, it could even just be funnels because funnels can help me to not have to be owned by my business. If I know I can switch something on and make money. So it's like 20 minutes, my story and the problems, 10 to 15 minutes, the vehicle. So me discovering the thing, that could even be meditation, that could be climbing, that could be whatever. Then it's like, like another maybe 20 minutes will add it up at the end of using this vehicle and why it was so

valuable and useful to me. Then I give people two options. You can go on the same journey I did by learning all these things. It will take you this much time or come hang out with me and you'll just learn it faster. That's kind of the two options at the end. Cool. I'm actually going to erase it just because it's making it too complicated the funnel. but I will include in the show notes of this episode notes from this episode where people can go and access that.

I can tell you also like, okay, we've got two webinars coming up for two different clients. They're always almost the same structure because they're always like, Jonathan, what should, but what do we do on the live training? And I'm like, all right, guys. So both are launching a new product. and both are launching almost sequels to their previous product. So they had something and they're launching new things. So in both cases, I will say, first talk about why you created the first product. Like, why did you create it?

What problems were you having? What was the journey? Now talk about in the meantime, since you created that product, what were the things you realized about that product that are no longer working for you as you've developed. and become better at what you've done. Cool. Talk about that for a while. Now, what are the things that have you've discovered

that have improved and helped you on the new part of your journey? And I'm going to give you an exact example in a second. And now talk about, well, there's a gap between the thing you've created and now the thing that you would need to have existed for you to get to this point. And that's the new product. An example is I'm learning, I'm doing climbing, bouldering. It's like a bouldering, whatever. Indoor climbing, that's probably the easiest thing that it's called.

So I'm currently one year into learning indoor climbing and I'm completely stuck. And what always happens when I get stuck is I try a million different things to get past that point. I'm currently watching loads of YouTube videos. I am this, this, this, this, this. But I have a very strong feeling what's going to happen is now I've booked a coach. this coach will probably be able to tell me like, oh yeah, no, you need to move your leg a little bit like this and this and this and this. And that will have like completely short-circuited the entire process of learning. Like me doing it by myself might have taken another year for me to go up one grade.

With a coach, it might take me another two weeks to go up one grade. And so if I were telling the story, if I were later trying to sell coaching like, for climbing for some reason. I would just tell the story of, if I was the coach, I had this client who was stuck on grade 5B, don't laugh at me if you actually know climbing, 5B for six months.

He tried all of this. He bought new shoes. He kept spending loads of money on it. Eventually he was giving up. He wasn't having any more fun with it. Then we met and I realized actually it was just this one thing. That's why it's better to get a coach than sometimes than trying to learn everything yourself. So webinars are just always about.

showing this gap between where you think your audience is, where you'd like them to be, and because you're usually there where they want to be, what needs to go into this gap to bring them over there as fast as possible. And webinars are mostly that in a nutshell. Okay, let's finish this funnel. And then after we finish this funnel, I want to talk about is this when I think of funnels like this I think of info products and you know me I'm more of a software guy so can you use funnels like this to spin up apps and spin up business SaaS products and sell via webinars we can talk yeah we can talk about that at the end but I want to finish this funnel okay so this funnel is basically list to live training to paid live event paid you charge for it no no well

The live training is the webinar. That's free. But then I sell them a live event. Or, so like there's two arrows coming off the live training. Actually, a paid live event. And actually, there's an arrow after this, which is one-on-one coaching. Okay, actually, let me tell you then this one-on-one coaching is actually more like advising with a cut of profit. So that's like how it works is someone listens to my podcast or reads my blog.

They come to a free training. Then some of them come to a paid event. Then some of those people who have companies that are making over a million end up being part of our partners program where we take a cut of their business. So it's like it's a funnel. It's also not a common funnel you people use for almost a getting a cut of someone's company process. You people? Are you talking about Americans here?

What do you, what are you saying? Did I say you people? That's what I heard. I don't even remember what I said. No, I said it's not a funnel that people commonly think of when it, like, I actually can't remember what I said actually. You said you people. I don't know if you're talking.

You people. That's what I meant. That's what I meant you people. Yeah. But it's like people don't generally, when someone's thinking, oh, I want to start a business. I want to be an advisor and take equity in companies. They're not thinking that's the exact type of thing people would think funnels. doesn't work for, but it does work very well.

So I actually, to me, that's like the most interesting piece of that, this whole funnel, to be, to be honest. Like the, I mean, isn't that similar to Alex Hermose's funnel? Like he ultimately partners. I mean, actually, he does, he has this funnel now that I'm thinking about it. I think so, yeah. I don't know so much. I know he takes like, I actually don't know exactly what his funnel is, but I'm sure it's also

highly optimized for whatever is at the end of that funnel. I also know that he is and what was a Russell Brunson guy. Yes. And I'm sure he has more than 2,500 subscribers. Yeah. I think what he does is he sells paid IRL events in Las Vegas. I think it's $5,000 or something like that. and then he buys pieces of companies. He literally takes ownership in the companies. Yeah.

I mean, that's also really smart because what I like about that is you get to test out whether this person is worth being your advisor or not. You get almost like a free, a low cost trial of them being your advisor. So like this is my very small funnel for getting a,

advisory gigs basically. Okay. That's cool. You asked about SAS, SAS, software as a service funnel. I mean, I think this is just a class, this is just a very basic fundamental way of selling things. It's doing a demonstration of the thing you have. But like, actually thinking of Alex Hermosi, he has this product called School, S-K-O-O-L. and that's a software.

Would you consider that software as a service? Yes, absolutely. I mean, they're using the classic challenge funnel to fill up school and get people creating new schools and paying for new schools all the time and they use a webinar at the very top of that challenge funnel. Okay, explain what a classic challenge funnel is. It's one of the most,

common types of funnels and it's actually kind of genius. A lot of, so the structure of a challenge funnel is basically you ask someone to join a 30-day challenge and this could be like a challenge to lose weight. Once I explain this, you'll see them everywhere. It could be to lose weight. It could be to like get all your taxes organized. It could be getting your first customers, whatever it is. There's lots of 30-day challenges or 10-day challenge.

that you've probably seen before. And how these are used is most of the time they're free, but sometimes you actually have to pay for them, like $100 for a 30-day challenge. It's like every single day you have live coaches helping you with the challenge. So let's say it was a, picked like a software that we would try to fill up, and I'll just come up with an example.

Notion. Notion. Okay, so the 30-day challenge for Notion is we are going to, okay, I'll come out. All right. Notion is, for anyone listening, Notion is like a note-taking kind of organizational note-taking app. For anyone who's listening, they know what Notion is. They know what Notion is, all right. My mom is listening.

This audience is with it, you know? Okay. So I am, so Notion hires me. to just get way more customers, right? But they don't want to, they've tried everything. They're like scraping the bottom of the barrel of their return on investment in ads. And I'm like, all right, we're going to do challenge funnel. Here's what's going to happen.

At the start of January, you're going to do these ads, which are going to be about helping people build their second brain. And it's not even going to mention notion. It's just like how to build your second brain. And we're going to team up with Tiago Forte, the guy who wrote the second brain book. and what we're going to do is a 30-day challenge. We're going to try to get as many people signed up as possible. It's going to be free plus a free trial of notion and a free 30-day trial of notion.

And over the next 30 days for a couple of hours per week, Tiago and multiple different people who are very good at this topic are going to help like hundreds of people in your audience and thousands of people from Facebook in this mass challenge to help them build their second brain using Notion. Every one of them gets a free trial of Notion. Of course, they can cancel very easily. Do you believe some people, number one, lots of people will learn how to use Notion who never had any reason to use it.

Number two, lots of people will get a lot of excitement and fun out of it and actually build something valuable for themselves. Number three, you're going to get a shitload of people now paying for notion after that point. So a challenge funnel is simply letting someone use your product, creating a fun challenge around what you think some people might want to use that product for, and then X amount of people don't cancel after the free trial because they want to actually use the product.

That's a challenge phone. They're used all the time. You just don't see them because they're not, they don't call it challenge funnel. Yeah. And I think the ones that work the best are when people are most susceptible to the challenge, right? So like, you know, January, New Year, you know, people think about weight loss, 30-day weight loss challenge, for example. Yeah. Would work better in January than in August.

Yeah, totally. But I bet I could come up with a challenge funnel for every month of the year. Yeah. I think if you just kept giving me different pieces. of software in different times of the year, I could create a challenge funnel for them regardless. But I mean, it's obviously easier when it's the January is so easy. But building a second brain you could almost do any time of the year. Like spring cleaning could be another topic for a lot of people. And then there's probably products. Like I am now currently advising

it's going to be obvious a product. I'm currently advising a product. I'm currently advising a product which I'll just say the name of it to you just so we know what we're talking about like yeah something like that. Anyway it's a product that teaches you something over. You want to you want us to blow? Yeah please

block that out. Yeah that would be very important actually. The reason is it's like an NDA to the max for now. But this product is a very simple challenge. They say they tell me we need to

increase our monthly active users by 100% by the end of the year. And so for me, like, a challenge funnel is a great way to start a project like that because you just get this massive influx of people. And especially it's, so I'll ask them, they said they have like 40,000 people on their list. And I'm like, okay, so how many monthly active users do you have? We have like, I don't know, 500. I'm like, okay, so we've got most of the people on your list have not being activated yet. And in many cases, it's because they don't really know why this product is really useful.

And a challenge can be a fun and useful way to get people actually into some routine of using the product. And then they don't want to, some of them won't want to not use it anymore then. I like it. Challenge funnels are great. I don't do enough of them. I mean, we don't do enough of them at AJ and Smart because they're like kind of hard to set up and a little bit tricky to run, but they're very explosive from a growth perspective. Yeah, I like it a lot. I'm just, I think that in like Silicon Valley startups, let's say, they don't use things like that as often

as they should. It's just because it's mostly, most of these things are used in really cheesy products, you know, but sometimes you see these products like crossing from cheesy into non-cheasy and like cool like AG1 was kind of one of those you know it was more on that funnely side of things right now it's like a cool thing but like i showed you also during black friday a lot of very cool and hip products use funnels they just you just don't realize it because they're kind of behind they like they look nicer basically right that's the dream that's the dream that's you want to get to. What else, is there anything else you want to talk about today? I mean, all I'm doing is making funnels. I'm trying to think, is there any other, like,

honestly, if you have a list and if you've ever, okay, if you're someone who's listening to this and you have a list and you have a, maybe a blog, whatever it is, you have some content thing, and you've ever tried to make an event or sell something and it just didn't work, if you just emailed everybody or if you just posted about it, it's not supposed, it shouldn't have worked. It's unlikely that it will work without this middle warming up step. And I think this warming up step can be a challenge. It can just be a training.

Call it like places like Stanford use something called info sessions. If you go to their website where you can like sign up for a session where they'll show you what it's like to, you know, do their courses and whatever, the executive education courses. I think we expect people to just buy our thing just because we mentioned it or email them. Whereas most of the time, I think in practice, you need to have this middle step to get people warmed up and excited enough to actually spend their money. And for me, that's where webinars, challenges, these types of things come in. Beautiful episode. I don't know if I have anything else. That's perfect.

No, I think that's great. I'm really sorry for all that beeping that I'm asking for. I know that's probably annoying for your team and I don't want to be like fake, mysterious. It's just that I know now that my clients listen to this podcast because Alan, hello Alan, one of my clients was like, oh, I was listening to Greg's podcast and you mentioned me and I'm like, oh shit. Yeah, no worries. Apparently your podcast isn't a secret.

Despite how low budget my studio looks. I love it. I love that you even started writing on it and everything. I love it. I'm like, is this marker going to work that I got at the dollar store? I think it looks amazing, dude. It's beautiful. The Startup Ideas Podcast.

Look at how well, even the The, you can. It feels like you wrote Startup Ideas podcast and then you kind of realized there's a the and added that in later. Exactly. Oh, my God. I forgot the name of my own podcast. I'll end it on one question for you. Not that I can end your podcast,

but it seemed like you're about to end it. Do you have a favorite product of 2024? Or most useful? Yeah. For, you know, people of the pod know, I like to sip. You know, I'm a sipper. You do like a lot. I like the, it's called, it's a, I'm sure a lot of people know about it.

The fellow. fellow products brand. I have so many fellow products. Yeah? I love them. So they have a kettle. I don't have the fan, like, there's one kettle with like, here, I can share my screen. I'm pretty sure I have the exact kettle you're about to share.

No, I don't think so. No? I don't think so. I have that exact. You probably have this kettle. I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew it.

You're so European. Is that the loser one? No, no. there's the European one, which is the EKG electric kettle, and then there's the American one. What do you mean European and American? I'm kidding. I'm actually joking. It's because it's like, it's all fancy and European. Yeah, this is like this, look at it.

Look how fancy that spout is, that thin spout. I love it. Look how to the point this spout is. chunked. Chunked out. So this one has been really great because just being able to set it to, I want it at this 175 degrees Fahrenheit or whatever it is. Yeah. Is a no-brainer. Oh, it looks like they even have refurbish ones. You can get one for 132 bucks. Fuck that. Don't buy those. The ones that don't work. No, but I mean, honestly, it's not worth it. Yeah, you got to have a fresh one. I like the white-looking one, but it doesn't fit in with all my other

fellow stuff. They also have very nice water bottles, the fellow crew. Oh, water bottles, really? Like, are in drinkware. I have this, uh, Kate Carter, Carrey water bottle. I've got two of those. They have this. Did you see their new coffee maker? Yeah, I want to buy it. So I'm going to get, I really want to get it. The Al, Aden, whatever. Let's look at it for a second. Is it Aiden coffee maker? This guy, Aiden. So I have a Mocha master and I love how it looks, but this seems cool. This looks so cool. I know.

It looks so cool. Do you use milk in your coffee? I do use milk in my coffee. So I like for years didn't use milk because it, you know, you taste everything and everything and it's like all fancy. But I get such bad heartburn, like acid reflux when I don't put milk in. So now I'm like, these machines are kind of pointless if you're going to use milk. Why? because that's what fancy coffee people say.

You don't even, you're just tasting like the milk then. No, no, no. First of all, even if you didn't even drink the coffee, looking at this machine every day is a vibe. It's absolutely a vibe. So that's number one. Yeah. Number two, don't let anyone tell you, people listening.

Don't let anyone tell you how to drink your coffee. Except for me. Especially a funnel guy. Don't let the funnel guy tell you How do you Funnels are a big part of coffee making You put it down a funnel And then

Have you seen this Beauty Yeah That's the The O PXY It is So that's to make music Yeah

It's so great Wait I don't know how much you can actually hear We can hear it perfect Oh yeah Really? Yeah Let's do

much to my chagrin we can hear it okay we gotta end the podcast thank you for listening it's been fun later dude all right Greg see you later man