Oct 28, 2024 · 1h 5m · startup-ideas
How to make $20,000,000 with a landing page
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this masterclass episode, host Greg Isenberg and AJ&Smart CEO Jonathan Courtney break down the exact direct-response funnels, VSL mechanics, and psychological copywriting strategies behind a twenty-million-dollar customer acquisition engine.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Greg holds 14.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Greg as informed peer 3.5 Guest teaching 5.8 Guest disagreement 1.9 Greg pushing back 1.9
speaking balance: gold is Greg, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 23:18 Defending obnoxiously long VSL videos against host skepticism
Courtney firmly rejects the idea that video length is a drawback, explaining that gating and extreme length filter for high-commitment prospects who convert.
Hardest push from Greg ▶ 5:34 Host pushes back on the irrelevance of core websitesIsenberg directly challenges Courtney's claim that websites do not generate sales, asking why founders spend immense time optimizing them for conversions.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 12:17 Debunking the website sales facade versus backend funnel realityCourtney breaks down how competitors mistakenly copy external website designs without realizing all high-ticket transactions happen through detached, invisible landing funnels.
Greg holds their own ▶ 10:54 Isenberg calculates the compounding power of conversion rate optimizationIsenberg demonstrates sharp analytical expertise by contrasting standard 1-3% website conversions with 10-25% funnel efficiency and calculating the bottom-line business impact.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Greg as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Greg pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcoming Jonathan Courtney and Setting Up Funnels 101 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | The interview opens with friendly banter about Courtney's appearance and qualifications. Courtney clarifies upfront that he is an active practitioner rather than an academic marketing teacher. | |
| Funnels vs. Websites and the Shadow Funnel Concept | 4 | 6 | 3 | 4 | Courtney outlines the core distinction between websites and conversion funnels, calling standard company websites 'shadow funnels'. Isenberg plays devil's advocate regarding website design investments, prompting Courtney to explain why high-ticket sales bypass main websites. | |
| Sponsor Break: Startup Idea Bank Giveaway | 1 | 5 | 2 | 0 | After an ad read for Isenberg's Idea Bank, Courtney breaks down the economics of high-ticket corporate training versus lifestyle branding. He explains why web design agencies often fail at conversion optimization and direct response copy. | |
| The Commercial Impact of a 10x Conversion Rate | 6 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Isenberg contributes meaningful domain context regarding typical 1-3% website conversion baselines versus 10-25% funnel benchmarks. Courtney illustrates this with a case study of selling out $14,000 live workshops. | |
| Meta Ad Targeting and Long-Form Landing Page Architecture | 3 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Courtney shares his screen to dissect Meta ad audience targeting strategies based on book-reading audiences. He demonstrates the high-density copy architecture used on mobile landing pages. | |
| Sponsor Break: BoringMarketing.com and SEO Scaling | 4 | 6 | 3 | 4 | Following a sponsor read, Courtney reviews his 70-minute VSL mechanics and gated call-to-action triggers. Isenberg playfully challenges the effectiveness of an 'obnoxiously long video', leading Courtney to defend gating and email retargeting. | |
| Assessing Funnel Viability Across Business Verticals | 4 | 7 | 2 | 3 | Isenberg probes whether direct response funnels translate outside of workshop consulting into SaaS, e-commerce, and agencies. Courtney analyzes where funnels thrive (bootstrapped businesses, agencies) versus where they fall flat (funded brand brute-forcing). | |
| Why Ugly High-Copy Funnels Outperform Beautiful Designs | 5 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Courtney shows how aesthetically unappealing, copy-dense landing pages outperformed beautifully redesigned assets, generating $20M in revenue. Isenberg provides a sharp takeaway: if you aren't disgusted with your funnel, you launched too late. | |
| Qualifying Surveys, Calendly Bookings, and B2B Upsells | 3 | 7 | 1 | 1 | Courtney details using Typeform surveys as intentional friction to filter inbound leads and enforcing strict 3-day Calendly booking windows. He highlights how consumer-facing funnels unexpectedly closed $300,000 corporate B2B contracts. | |
| Monetizing Organic YouTube Traffic Through Focused CTAs | 3 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Courtney explains how YouTube channels fail to monetize when they lack unified calls to action. He advocates aligning the entire marketing and content team around driving traffic to a single calendar-booking metric. | |
| Retargeting Pixels and Tiered Lead Magnet Segmentation | 5 | 6 | 1 | 3 | Isenberg prompts Courtney on tracking pixels and audience retargeting workflows. Courtney explains how lead magnet downloads feed tiered email sequences and segment non-buyers into discount campaigns like Black Friday. | |
| Physical Book Funnels and the Two-Thousand-Euro Upsell | 3 | 7 | 2 | 1 | Courtney outlines the mechanics of physical free-plus-shipping book funnels and the '2K funnel' instant upsell strategy. He reflects on the high logistical friction of international shipping despite stellar conversion rates. | |
| Direct Response Playbooks and the MIFGE Incentive Concept | 3 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Courtney concludes by detailing the MIFGE (Most Incredible Free Gift Ever) direct-response incentive and demonstrates its use by premium tech brands like AG1 and Endel. Isenberg affirms the high utility of the frameworks presented. |
Statements from this episode (22)
Courtney: Websites function as 'shadow funnels' for legitimacy, not conversion
“So website is a shadow funnel. It's almost just there to prove that you're actually a real company. And sometimes it's almost just there. So you yourself can figure out what you do and just have like a home for your stuff”
Courtney: AJ&Smart completely isolates sales funnels from main website URLs
“You actually can't reach the funnels From the website and you can't reach the website from the funnels. They're completely separate projects. They're completely separate URLs, and they're actually living in their own separate worlds and like project teams, con…”
Courtney: Standard websites fail to convert sales without exceptional SEO or ads
“Unless you have unbelievably good SEO and you're spending, you know, good money and have good talent to get the Google ads to go towards your website, unless you have a lot of brand recognition, your website is not going to sell things for you necessarily.”
Courtney: AJ&Smart operated without a polished website for 14 years
“We didn't have a nice website for like the first 12 years of the company. This website only are 14 years of the company. This website only launched Last week, and we only did it as a branding exercise.”
Courtney: AJ&Smart sells training programs for up to $14,000 per participant
“What we sell is we sell Training to corporates, which is, which can be pretty high ticket. We also sell training to individuals, which up to, you know, 14,000 dollars per, per participant joining one of our trainings. We also, of course, sell then digital hybr…”
Courtney: Polished website designers are generally terrible at building sales funnels
“People who make really nice websites are generally not good at making funnels at all because funnels require really good copywriting and mostly it's about conversion optimization for that specific flow.”
Isenberg: Typical websites convert only 1% to 3% of visitors
“A website will on average convert, you know, one to three percent of people. To buy something, or book a call, or something like that. That means that, roughly, 98% of people who come to your website don't do the thing that you want them to do.”
Isenberg: Marketing funnels can realistically achieve 10% to 25% conversion rates
“Now, a funnel, it isn't crazy for a funnel to convert at 1015, 20, 25%.”
Courtney: High-ticket offers fail when sold directly through standard website listings
“If that was how we sold, if that's how we expected to sell out three events per year at 14,000 dollars this, my business would not exist because no one would ever buy it because it's too high ticket. And also like, why, why would you buy it? It's just on the w…”
Courtney: AJ&Smart avoids LinkedIn ads due to lower ROI than Meta and YouTube
“If you're wondering why we don't run LinkedIn ads, it's just because they don't tend to work as well for us. That's the answer to the question. We're just choosing the ads that give us the best ROI.”
Courtney: AJ&Smart updated its core VSL just once in four years
“So it's actually the only update we did in four years.”
Courtney: Direct-response funnels are ideal for bootstrapped businesses seeking immediate ROI
“Like this is, I think it's best for bootstrapped businesses because you're getting the direct ROI from the ads. Whereas if you have loads of funding already, then maybe you can just brute force it with branding and different types of Deals and having a huge sa…”
Courtney: AJ&Smart’s ugliest funnels generate seven figures; polished ones make nothing
“So the like shittiest looking funnels we have tend to be the seven figure funnels and the nicest looking stuff we have tend to not make any money at all, which is very annoying because we're like also a design agency.”
Courtney: One unpolished AJ&Smart sales funnel generated $20M in lifetime revenue
“So this launched in 2020, this one funnel, which I can barely look at, Will has already passed twenty million revenue in it, but in its lifetime, just to be super clear. So in the last four years, actually it started officially in May. So in the last three and…”
Courtney: Restrict sales call bookings to three days to prevent no-shows
“So we only allow people to book calls three days ahead of time. That's because if you allow someone to book a call next week or four days, or like this, basically what happens is you can guess, they'll be like, ah, forget it. And they'll just won't turn up to …”
Courtney: AJ&Smart's general funnel converted a $300,000 internal corporate training deal
“So one person who came through this funnel in September, Who was interested in coming to one of our trainings recently booked us for a 300 K internal large training session at their company.”
Courtney: Direct all content traffic to one specific funnel, nowhere else
“Your content team's only goal from today on is to send people to this one funnel that we're going to create together. There's no other place where you send people and all of your content, always the CTA is sending them to this one place.”
Courtney: Websites dump everything at once while funnels reveal steps progressively
“Website dumps it all in one go. A funnel lays it out step by step. That's really the difference. It's all separate steps that you actually can't see.”
Courtney: Nothing in marketing is more effective than physical books
“Nothing is more effective, nothing like in marketing than holding a goddamn book in your hand.”
Courtney: Workshopper Playbook generated 250k downloads and massive book shipments
“This has had like 250,000 downloads and like a ludicrous amount of actual physical copies shipped.”
Courtney: Stacking limited-time free gifts ('MIFGE') dramatically boosts conversions
“So a Mifki is most incredible free gift ever. And it's about stacking one time free gifts onto a current offer, which you would think is like too cheesy to work. But it works so well and dramatically increases conversion rates to the max.”
Courtney: Use Facebook Ad Library to reverse-engineer competitor sales funnels
“Go to Facebook ad library, type in your competitors names and click on their ads and see if they're running funnels. Seriously. That's one of the best ways to learn what funnels to run for your industry. See what other people are running for their industry.”