264: Four Small Experiments That Made Our Funnel Profitable
Marketing Your Business - Marketing Strategies for Business Owners
Stu McLaren
4.9 • 679 Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Do you ever feel like you're getting punched in the gut when you look at how much you're spending on ads? Same here. And those costs just keep climbing. So our team sat down and asked a different question: how could we actually get paid to generate leads?
In this solo episode, Stu walks through the four small experiments his team ran on an AI workshop funnel, the kind of tweaks that feel almost too simple to matter. Together, they took the funnel from covering 70 to 80% of ad spend to becoming genuinely profitable on the front end. You'll hear why raising prices didn't hurt conversions, how a tiny checkbox lifted average cart value, why the third workshop is the most overlooked spot in any funnel, and the famous jam study that explains why simpler offers sell more.
None of these were huge swings. But stacked together, they made the difference between a funnel that breaks even and one that lets you keep pouring fuel on the fire.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why raising your prices may not drop conversions the way you fear (and why it's the easiest place to start)
- How order bumps and a real back-end offer quietly multiply your cart value
- Why simplifying your offer beats stacking bonuses every single time
RESOURCE: Grab the resources from this episode at https://podcast.stu.me
CONNECT WITH STU:
Website: https://stu.me
Book "Predictable Profits": https://a.co/d/4GIi1uz
Instagram: https://instagram.com/stumclaren
Podcast: https://podcast.stu.me
Membership.io: https://membership.io
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Do you ever feel like you're getting punched in the gut when you look at how much money you're spending on ads? |
| 0:04.9 | I know I do. |
| 0:05.7 | And those ad costs just keep going up and up and up. |
| 0:08.3 | So we decided to do a series of experiments. |
| 0:11.8 | And we asked ourselves a question, how could we get paid to generate leads? |
| 0:16.2 | Well, those four experiments took us from covering about 70 to 80% of our ad costs to now getting paid |
| 0:24.5 | to generate ads. So if you want to know what we did, that's what's in this episode. Let's go. |
| 0:29.8 | Welcome to Marketing Your Business. I'm Stu McLaren, co-founder of membership.io, and author |
| 0:34.7 | of Predictable Profits. Now here's the truth. You are one great marketing idea away from |
| 0:40.2 | transforming your business. One strategy can be the difference between struggling and thriving, |
| 0:45.8 | between a business that drains you and one that fuels your life. Every episode, you're going to get |
| 0:51.0 | specific tactics you need to build your audience, attract more |
| 0:54.3 | customers, and scale your business, all without the burnout. These are real strategies, |
| 0:59.5 | real numbers, real behind the scenes. Buckle your seatbelts, my friend. Let's go. So let me give |
| 1:07.5 | you some context. We decided to start a three workshop series and each workshop built on each other. |
| 1:16.3 | And it all really revolved around helping people use AI in their creator business. |
| 1:22.6 | So for example, the first workshop was all about how to clone your voice. |
| 1:28.5 | Because I don't know if you've ever experienced this but like when you are prompting AI whether it be chat GPT or Claude or |
| 1:33.4 | whatever it might be and then you don't get the kind of output that sounds like you it can be |
| 1:39.1 | super frustrating right because then you end up spending a ton of time editing well that's what |
| 1:42.9 | we wanted to show people how to fix. |
| 1:44.9 | And we walked people through a process for creating your very own voice guide. And now with that |
... |
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