Saint or System? Russell Brunson, ClickFunnels, and the Devil’s Charity of Funnel Culture

If you’ve spent any time in the online business world, you’ve heard the line:

“You’re just one funnel away…”

One funnel away from quitting your job.

One funnel away from saving your marriage.

One funnel away from finally not feeling like a failure.

The man most associated with that promise is Russell Brunson, co-founder of ClickFunnels and author of the “Secrets” trilogy: DotCom Secrets, Expert Secrets, and Traffic Secrets.

This post is not a takedown of him as a human being.

It’s an audit of the system he helped build—and what happens to the people who quietly absorb the losses when the promise doesn’t cash out.

I’m going to look at:

• What Russell actually built

• How the ClickFunnels ecosystem makes its money

• Where the Devil’s Charity pattern shows up in funnel culture

• And what ethical funnel education would have to look like instead

If you’ve ever bought into this world and walked away smaller, this is for you.

Who is Russell Brunson, really?

Quick facts, just to ground this:

• Co-founder of ClickFunnels, a software platform that lets businesses build sales funnels, landing pages, order forms, memberships, etc.

• ClickFunnels went from a couple hundred beta users in 2014 to over 150,000 active customers and roughly $265 million in annual revenue by 2023.

• Brunson positions himself as the guy who has “arguably built and consulted on more successful sales funnels than any other human,” and teaches others how to do the same via his books, events, and trainings.

• His “Secrets Trilogy” (DotCom Secrets, Expert Secrets, Traffic Secrets) is marketed as the core playbook for attracting visitors, converting them into customers, and filling funnels with your “dream customers.”

He’s also heavily associated with Funnel Hacking Live (FHL), a huge annual event frequently described as “the rock concert of marketing events,” where he teaches, showcases student success stories, and raises money for charity.

So: we’re not talking about a fringe figure.

We’re talking about one of the central architects of the hero/guru funnel economy.

The Promise: You’re One Funnel Away

Russell’s core message is clear:

• If you learn to build the right funnel…

• Tell the right story…

• Make the right offer…

…you can transform your business and your life.

His books and trainings are framed as underground “playbooks” and “secrets” that will show you:

• How to build funnels that convert visitors into customers (DotCom Secrets),

• How to turn those visitors into “raving fans who buy everything you offer” (Expert Secrets),

• How to get a steady stream of dream customers into those funnels (Traffic Secrets).

Then you have the flagship One Funnel Away Challenge:

• A 30-day online training designed to help entrepreneurs build and launch a funnel using ClickFunnels.

• Priced around $100, heavily promoted as intense, transformational training.

• Often run as an affiliate product with 100% commission to affiliates, meaning the challenge itself acts as a customer-acquisition vehicle for ClickFunnels subscriptions and higher-ticket offers.

From the outside, this is a clean story:

“We built tools and education that turn ordinary people into successful entrepreneurs.”

And to be fair:

Some people do use those tools to build very successful businesses. There are real case studies of people going from small operations to big revenue using funnels.

The question isn’t whether anyone wins.

The question is how the system works for everyone else.

Inside the Machine: How ClickFunnels Actually Makes Its Money

ClickFunnels is technically a SaaS company: you pay a monthly fee to use the funnel-building software.

But like many modern guru ecosystems, the real engine looks more like this:

1. Software subscription

   
   

   • Monthly recurring revenue from the core platform.

2. 
   

3. Front-end education

   
   

   • Low-ticket challenges like One Funnel Away that teach funnels and double as marketing for ClickFunnels itself.

4. 
   

5. Upsells and add-ons

   
   

   • Trainings, templates, certification programs, etc., layered on top to increase average order value.

6. 
   

7. Events and inner circles

   
   

   • Funnel Hacking Live tickets, higher-ticket coaching, masterminds, and inner circles. FHL has been a multi-day event with tens of millions in cumulative sales over the years.

8. 
   

9. Affiliate system

   
   

   • Affiliates drive traffic into challenges and subscriptions, often earning large commissions and bonuses if they bring in new subscribers.

10. 
    

Again: none of this is automatically evil.

It’s a very effective commercial system.

But when you zoom out, you see something important:

• By 2023, ClickFunnels had 150,000+ active customers and well over $170–265 million in annual revenue.

• A well-known interview piece proudly claims that Brunson and his co-founders have “created hundreds of millionaires” through this ecosystem.

If we take that at face value and generously interpret “hundreds” as, say, 200–1000 people, then:

• 200 out of 150,000 is about 0.1–0.2%

• 500 out of 150,000 is about 0.3%

• 1000 out of 150,000 is about 0.6%

I’m not claiming these are official, audited numbers. I’m just showing the rough order of magnitude implied by their own marketing claims.

Behind every funnel “millionaire,” there are hundreds of people whose funnels never took off, quietly funding the ecosystem.

That’s not unique to ClickFunnels—that’s how high-variance entrepreneurship usually works.

The problem is that this distribution of outcomes is rarely front and center in the sales copy.

Instead, the messaging is:

“If you do the work and apply the system, you can succeed too.”

Which leads right into The Devil’s Charity pattern.

Where The Devil’s Charity Shows Up in Funnel Culture

I define The Devil’s Charity as:

Any system that sells itself as help, support, or opportunity

while quietly depending on most people failing, blaming themselves, and staying quiet about the damage.

So how does that map onto the funnel/guru world orbiting Russell Brunson?

1. The power-law hidden in the fireworks

ClickFunnels’ own story and community press love to highlight:

• The dramatic success stories (“from zero to 7-figure months with ClickFunnels”),

• Claims of “hundreds of millionaires” created,

• Case studies on stage at Funnel Hacking Live.

That’s normal marketing. But psychologically, it creates a skewed picture:

• You see a parade of outliers,

• You assume that with enough hustle, you’ll become one of them,

• You don’t see the base of the pyramid: tens of thousands who tried, spent money, and never got traction.

When the power-law is hidden behind fireworks, you’re no longer making an informed decision. You’re buying a lottery ticket dressed up as a system.

2. The “if it didn’t work, you didn’t work the system” blame-flip

A classic theme in this space (not just Brunson’s, but across guru culture) is:

• “The system is proven.”

• “If it didn’t work, you didn’t execute, didn’t believe, didn’t niche right, didn’t tell your story well enough.”

The system becomes infallible.

The only variable left to blame is you.

That’s peak Devil’s Charity:

• The program looks like help: education, community, coaching.

• When it fails, the burden of failure is pushed back down entirely onto the buyer, not the design of the program or the brutal odds of new ventures.

3. The emotional squeeze: desperation in, shame out

Who buys “one funnel away” products?

• People who are hungry for change:

  
  

  • burned-out employees,

  • struggling entrepreneurs,

  • single parents grasping for an online income stream,

  • people in debt or on the edge.

• 
  

The funnel doesn’t engineer their desperation, but it targets it.

When those people:

• spend money they couldn’t really spare,

• work hard,

• and still don’t get anywhere near the promised outcomes,

most of them do not write angry Medium posts. They:

• feel stupid,

• feel ashamed,

• and quietly absorb the loss.

That shame is the real fuel of the Devil’s Charity.

It’s what keeps the machine from being held to account.

The Philanthropy Shield: ClickFunnels and Charity

To make this more complicated, Russell Brunson and ClickFunnels are undeniably generous in some real ways.

• ClickFunnels has partnered with Village Impact, donating a portion of revenue to build schools in Kenya. They’ve publicly reported donations of $18,694 in 2015, $59,782 in 2016, and $133,737 in 2017, tied directly to funnels going live on the platform.

• Funnel Hacking Live events have raised tens of thousands for charity at a single event, alongside hundreds of thousands or more in program sales.

• FHL and related promos have highlighted that ClickFunnels as a company has given over $1,000,000+ to charities over time.

That generosity is real.

Kids get schools. Communities get resources. People’s lives improve.

It’s also a halo.

When a brand is tightly associated with:

• community,

• impact,

• “giving back,”

it becomes much harder for everyday buyers to even think critical thoughts like:

• “Was this program structurally set up in my favor?”

• “Did this ecosystem profit from my failure?”

• “Why do they highlight a handful of millionaires instead of publishing clear outcome data?”

That’s what I call the Philanthropy Shield:

Public generosity used—consciously or not—as armor against scrutiny of the underlying business model.

I’m not claiming Brunson wakes up saying, “How do I use charity to hide the bodies?”

I’m saying the effect is that criticism feels socially and morally harder, especially for people already steeped in shame.

If You’ve Been Burned by Funnel Culture, You’re Not Crazy

Maybe you:

• Paid for the software,

• Joined the One Funnel Away challenge,

• Bought a course or two,

• Tried to follow the templates,

• And…nothing really moved.

You got a few sales. Or none.

You then watched people on stage or in Facebook groups celebrating massive wins and thought:

“I guess I just don’t have what it takes.”

This is the emotional bill never shown in the sales letter.

Here’s what I want you to hear:

• You weren’t stupid for trying.

• The odds were never as simple as “apply the secrets, print money.”

• You were stepping into a system designed to work spectacularly for a tiny percentage and “just enough” for a slightly larger slice, funded by a big base of people who never get anywhere close to the case-study outcome.

You’re not crazy, lazy, or uniquely broken.

You were sold a vision where the true distribution of outcomes was blurred behind fireworks and philanthropy.

That’s The Devil’s Charity in funnel form.

What Ethical Funnel Education Would Look Like

I don’t think tech or marketing education is inherently wrong.

I do think, if we want to step out of Devil’s Charity territory, programs like this need to be radically more honest.

Some basic reforms that would change everything:

1. Publish actual outcome data

Not just the highlight reel.

• “We’ve had 150,000 ClickFunnels customers.

  
  

  Here’s roughly how many:

  
  

  • made more than they spent,

  • broke even,

  • lost money.”

• 
  

It doesn’t have to be perfect or audited. Even approximate ranges would be a massive step forward.

2. Disclose the power-law

Spell it out:

“We’ve created hundreds of millionaires, which is less than 1% of all our customers.

Most people will not reach that level.

Here are the more common realistic outcomes and timelines.”

Now people are making a grown-up decision instead of buying a dream.

3. Share downside risk as well as upside

That means teaching:

• How much time and money you should realistically be prepared to lose,

• How to cap your risk,

• When not to sign up (e.g., if you’re already in crisis or debt).

4. Remove shame as the default explanation for failure

Instead of:

“If you didn’t get results, you didn’t execute.”

Try:

“Here are 10 reasons funnels fail, including realistic constraints and market forces

that have nothing to do with your worth as a person.”

5. Separate philanthropy from the sales pitch

Do good—but don’t:

• Use charity as a selling point,

• Tie donations directly to buyer guilt (“if you don’t buy, less kids get schools”).

Let generosity stand on its own, not as a moral fig leaf for an aggressive funnel.

So Is Russell Brunson a Saint or a System?

In my view, the more honest answer is:

He’s a talented marketer at the top of a system that absolutely fits the Devil’s Charity pattern when you look at it at scale.

• He’s clearly helped some people win big.

• He’s clearly helped build a community where people feel seen and excited.

• He’s also clearly part of an ecosystem where:

  
  

  • a tiny percentage win huge,

  • a much larger base funds the whole operation,

  • charity and community are used as optics,

  • and the emotional cost of failure lands squarely on the individual.

• 
  

You can hold all of that at once.

The point of this post isn’t to tell you who to worship or cancel.

It’s to give you language for that sick feeling in your stomach if you’ve been through funnel culture and walked away smaller.

What To Do With This

If you’ve been through a program like this:

• You’re allowed to be angry.

• You’re allowed to tell the truth about your outcome.

• You’re allowed to stop blaming yourself for a game where the odds were never as simple as advertised.

Before you buy from any guru (funnel, fitness, spiritual, legal, whatever), ask:

1. What percentage of people actually reach the promised result?

2. What happens if I don’t? Who shares the downside with me?

3. If this only works when I’m glued to this person forever, is that really freedom?

That’s how you start stepping out of the hero/guru economy and back into your own agency.

This is one “tea dump” in a much larger harbor.

I’ll be looking at other big names and systems through this same lens—not to start a witch hunt, but to finally stop treating the casualties of The Devil’s Charity as acceptable collateral.

If this hit you in the gut, you’re exactly who I’m writing for.