234: Why I Wrestled a Sumo Wrestler (And What It Taught Me About Funnels)
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
Release Date: 03/13/2026
256: She Closed the Doors and Added 3,000 Members in ONE Week - Ali Kay
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
Ali Kay closed the doors on her membership and added 3,000 new members in a single week. In this episode, she breaks down the exact 5-day workshop launch, the $10 coupon that fills day one, and the charity day that turns cart close into her biggest sales moment. Ali Kay is a working artist who built a 6,300-member painting community by doing the opposite of what most online creators do. She closed the doors. She picked up the phone instead of running ads. She gave away her cart-close day to charity. And it worked. In this conversation, Ali reveals: - Why she went from an "always open"...
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255: 5 AI Shifts Changing How You Run Your Business
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
The AI world is moving fast, and it is hard to keep up. New tools, new studies, new shifts in how people are buying, searching, and consuming. So Stu started keeping a running list of the things that kept grabbing his attention, and this week five of them stood out. In this episode, Stu walks through the five shifts he believes will change how you and he run our businesses moving forward. Some are practical. Some are still being figured out in real time. All of them are worth paying attention to. You will hear why audiences are now consuming content through AI summaries instead of watching all...
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254: The STICK Test - Why Your Students Aren't Getting Results
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
If you teach for a living and your students keep telling you your content is amazing, but six months later nothing's changed in their business... this episode might rattle you a little bit. And that's a good thing. A conversation with Scott Paley inside our Impact Mastermind cracked something open for me. Scott consumed all of our Summit content, but didn't show up live, didn't watch a single video. Instead, he ran the transcripts through Claude. And it made me ask a bigger question: what's actually happening to retention when people learn this way? The research is staggering. Students who...
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253: How a Pattern Designer Built a Multi-Million Dollar Business Without Art School (Bonnie Christine)
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
Bonnie Christine bet $42,000 on a trade show booth with zero experience. What happened next changed her entire business. In this episode, she reveals the 10% ad budget rule, the 12-week nurture sequence that fills her course, and the moment in her workshops that makes her tear up every time. Bonnie Christine is a surface pattern designer who built a multi-million dollar business teaching creatives - without ever going to design school. In this conversation, Bonnie reveals: • The "gift wrap strategy" that introduces people to her world months before she sells • Why she allocates exactly 10%...
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252: The Launch Move That Added $100K After The Cart Closed
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
The playbook said our launch was done. We'd sent the emails. Hit the reminders. Ran the countdown. Most teams would have let the sequence ride out. We did something different. We opened a Zoom room for three hours with no slides, no script, and no pitch. Just over 100 people showed up. 30 sales came in. Over $100,000 in revenue. And most of those buyers? People we had never seen engage the whole launch. In this solo episode, Stu walks through the two moves his team made in the "in-between days" of a recent summit launch that completely changed how he thinks about the end of a campaign. You'll...
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251: AI Can Copy Your Content, Not Your Care
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
If you've been watching AI roll through every industry and wondering what's left, what your edge is, what can't be automated, this episode is for you. Because the answer isn't more tech. It's actually the opposite. I was sitting in a movie theater at a VIP premiere of Super Mario Brothers with my son, brother-in-law, and nephew. The tickets, drinks, popcorn, candy, all free. 100 families in the room. No pitch, no transaction, just pure investment in relationships. While I was there, I asked my bank advisor Adrian if AI had impacted his work. He paused, looked at me, and said, "Not really....
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250: He's Got 3 Years to Make $50M or He Loses $100M (His Exact Plan) - Brandon Turner
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
Brandon Turner built a $1 billion real estate portfolio with 14,000 units. Now he's $700 million in debt with 3 years to build and sell a company for $50 million - or lose $100 million in investor capital. This is his comeback plan. Brandon Turner hosted the BiggerPockets podcast for a decade, owns over $1 billion in real estate, and runs multiple companies from Hawaii. In this conversation, Brandon reveals: • Why having a large personal brand is like being a "really hot girl" • The "cross point of two niches" strategy that built his audience • What happened when his Texas...
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249: Why Nobody's Buying (It's Not Your Product)
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
Have you ever watched somebody fall in love with what you're selling, say they'll be back, and then never actually come back? The problem isn't your product. The problem is you're not giving people a reason to buy today. I got reminded of this in the most unexpected way: my daughter's birthday. Marla had a list of birthday freebies on her phone. Starbucks, Sephora, Booster Juice. She dragged us to every single one. And at every stop, the rest of us bought stuff too. A free drink turned into snacks, skincare, smoothies. She was a walking case study in how a small reason to come in turns into...
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248: Love Me or Hate Me, There's No Money in the Middle
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
My wife posts something she believed in on Instagram. Within minutes, a woman comments, "I'm unfollowing you." Ouch. But then the post starts climbing. Comments, shares, new followers, people messaging her saying, "Thank you for saying this." One person left. Dozens leaned in closer. And that's not a coincidence. That's how this game actually works. Most creators are stuck in the middle. They're not loved, they're not hated. They're just ignored. And the middle is where businesses go to quietly die. In this episode, I break down the three layers of content that pull your people toward you (and...
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247: She Sold 6 Tickets and Made $108,000 (Here's How)
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
Eileen Wilder went from 20 years as a pastor to making $108,000 in a single day - with just 6 people in the room. In this episode, she reveals the exact framework for crafting offers people actually want to buy. Eileen Wilder is one of the most sought-after sales trainers in the online business world. Her secret? Understanding the science of why people buy - and why most offers fail before they even start. In this conversation, Eileen breaks down: • The "voice memo technique" for creating offers your audience actually wants • Why more words are killing your...
info_outlineWhat if you could turn one Instagram Reel into actual sales, without ever sending someone to a landing page? About a year ago, I started tracking our drop-off rates and the numbers were brutal.
My family and I are in Japan right now (I wrestled a Sumo wrestler — long story), and while I've been here I've been thinking a lot about this system we've been building. We stopped sending people to landing pages entirely. Instead, we kept the entire funnel inside Instagram DMs. Opt-ins more than doubled. Same content, same offer; we just removed the friction of leaving the platform.
In this episode, I'm breaking down the exact anatomy of what I call the "One-Post Funnel" from the Reel that hooks them, to the DM that converts them, to the $7 impulse offer that upsells 40% of buyers into your next offer.
In this episode, you'll learn:
• The 4-part content formula for Reels that actually convert (hook, teaching points, CTA, caption structure)
• Why DM automation gets 65-90% opt-in rates vs. 30-40% on landing pages — and how to set it up with ManyChat
• How a $7 front-end offer qualifies buyers and leads to membership upsells on the back end
• The repurposing strategy that turns your top-performing Reels into webinars, email sequences, and more lead magnets
⏱️ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - What if one Reel could generate sales without a landing page?
1:22 - Japan update: I wrestled a Sumo wrestler for the kids
2:40 - Why I started questioning everything about our Instagram strategy
3:08 - The drop-off problem: views but no sales
3:42 - The stat that stopped me cold (DM opt-in rates vs. landing pages)
4:06 - What if we just kept people inside Instagram?
4:38 - We tested it — opt-ins more than doubled
5:03 - Part 1: The high-converting content formula (hook + 3 teaching points + CTA + caption)
6:05 - Why you should never say "link in bio" again
6:41 - Caption structure: CTA as the first line
7:37 - Part 2: DM automation with ManyChat
8:06 - Why DMs crush landing pages (65-90% vs. 30-40%)
8:45 - How to set up the automation sequence
10:06 - Why instant responses build trust in 2026
10:14 - Part 3: The $7 impulse offer
10:58 - Order bumps and membership upsells on the back end
11:42 - The math: 100 opt-ins → $400/month recurring from one Reel
12:20 - Part 4: Repurpose the winners
13:00 - Next steps: Your 3-step action plan
13:36 - Experience this funnel yourself — DM me SUMMIT26
14:13 - Next week: Dean Graziosi's 680,000-registrant launch
14:45 - Full recap of the One-Post Funnel system
📥 RESOURCE: Grab the resources from this episode at https://podcast.stu.me
🎟️ FREE SUMMIT: Join Stu and 24 creators for the Audience to Income Summit (April 8-10, 2026): DM "SUMMIT26" to @stumclaren on Instagram or visit https://membership.io/summit
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