Jason Fladlien - Rapper Turned Webinar Expert

[00:00:05.00] - Martyn Brown

Welcome to the vinyl impressions radio show syndication podcast where we bring you the groove and essence of radio all wrapped up in the timeless charm of vinyl records. I'm your host, Martyn Brown. And on this show, we delve into the world of radio, exploring captivating interviews with station owners, talented presenters, and visionary entrepreneurs. Join me as we uncover the secrets of successful radio promotion and discover innovative ways to elevate your online presence. Whether you're a station owner, a show presenter, or a DJ, our guests offer valuable insights and strategies to help you flourish in the digital age. To get in touch with the podcast or share your thoughts, drop us an email at podcast at vinyl impressions dot club. For more updates, and exciting content, visit our main website at vinyl impressions dot club, and connect with us on our Facebook page, Vinyl Impressions Radio. Today, I'm thrilled to be chatting to Jason , a trailblazer in Internet marketing, webinars, and so much more. With product sales in excess of two hundred and fifty million, Jason's journey from humble beginnings to Becoming a global influencer in Internet marketing, plus Internet radio stations, of course, is nothing short of inspiring. Now alongside wil Matos, he cofounded Rapid Crush Incorporated, a a company that has revolutionized digital marketing strategies and set records in the Internet marketing space. And he's also the author of the influential book, One to Many, which delves deep into the secrets of Successful webinars. In our case, one is radio stations, perhaps, and many, our audience. His achievements really do speak for themselves, but I guess we should speak to the man himself. Jason, welcome.

[00:02:16.00] - Jason Fladlien

Pleasure to be here. And hello to those listening in on the Vinyl Impressions podcast, of course.

[00:02:21.59] - Martyn Brown

Now could we start by asking a little bit more about your early days And what led you from being a rapper, your link to online radio perhaps, and a monk to a leading figure in Internet marketing.

[00:02:35.50] - Jason Fladlien

Yeah. You could really start anywhere at this business. That's the good news. You know, I was always, interested in Music and specifically hip hop. And I started rapping in front of audiences at, like, seven years old, seven or eight, Somewhere along along there. So it felt very natural to me. And I always thought music would be where I would end up. So I tried that off and on throughout the years, but I had a lot of trauma that went through my life when I was growing up. You know, I was in a household that there was a lot of drug abuse and a lot of chaos. And I ended up Being about eighteen years old and just so depressed, I had all these panic attacks all the time. I I end up having agoraphobia, which is Afraid of open spaces, meaning you really don't go outside much. And I'm just sitting there just lost. And A friend of mine who was in the music space, he had went and he traveled with the Hare Krishnas for a little bit. And he came back, and he was telling me about that. So I I was intellectually curious, always was, still am. So I started googling around and looking at it, and I started reading it. And I'm like, okay. I'm I'm at my lowest point of my life. I can't focus. I can't do anything. I'm staying up till seven in the morning, sleeping until three or four in the afternoon. That was my life living with my dad in this little tiny apartment. And so I thought, oh, I'll try it Let's see what happens. So really saved my life. I I eventually got rid of all my panic attacks in a few months, And I just felt really invigorated to go out and do something boldly. And so I tried that with the music. The music, unfortunately, though, It was at about the worst time you could launch your music career because CD sales were dying out, but streaming hadn't been figured out yet. And I wasn't frankly very good at it. I I'd have to work eight or nine hours to do something that talented musicians could do in one to two hours. So I'm not one to give up, though. Yeah. I I was trying really hard, this, that, and the other. And so I started looking at the the business and marketing side of the music, And I started trying to apply those methods to the the the music that I was putting out there, and it wasn't working well. And out of desperation, I kinda said, you know what? I need I need capital. Well, that's the answer to the music business because I didn't have any money. So let me make some money online, and then I'll pour that into the music business. And that was about two thousand six. And now here we are going on in twenty twenty four. Still haven't circled back around to the music. I always thought that The music would be the thing that switched me on, and I didn't find anything else as attractive to me. But The marketing very quickly became as attractive, if not more attractive to me. So I had the passion for it, But I also had the skill set to it. Whereas music, I had the passion for it, but I lacked on the skill set side. So you really want both. You want something that you're passionate about that also comes naturally to you. And even and it still will be hard. Don't get me wrong. But at least you're you're predisposed to getting it, And you can do something with it. And that's what I really saw with with the marketing was, wow. I like it. It's very interesting to me. It motivates me. It gets me excited, and I can get it right away. I don't have to practice Extra hard for many, many more hours just to be barely competent at it. I can pick it up in a decent time frame, so therefore, maybe I can get traction and some momentum, and that's why I don't think I ever came back to the music.

[00:06:13.89] - Martyn Brown

You mentioned that it was at the time when CDs were dying out and Streaming hadn't yet been figured out. That's probably around the same time, I guess, as the Internet was really finding its feet. We've been through the dot com boom and bust, and the Internet was really starting to come into it. So When did you first get online?

[00:06:39.00] - Jason Fladlien

Way long ago. So I was actually fourteen when I first got online. So it's nineteen ninety seven. And I remember I bought a little two eighty six computer. So this was not a tower. You laid it flat on the desk. And I and I painted houses for, like, a month Just trying to make some money to save up, and I bought this computer, and I got the Internet. And I was really just So fascinated with how the Internet worked. And this is in ninety seven when it was just nobody even barely anybody had the Internet. And I started learning how to build websites back then, and that was really cool. And I was you know, we were doing music back then. I was still I was working on music, so I was Trying to produce albums even when I was fourteen, and I was building websites around anything and everything. Because really to put anything online back then, I had a of different interests and passions. And in order to put anything online, you had no code. It's not like these days where you just go to Twitter and, you know, type it out your phone. So starting when I was fourteen, I really got on to the Internet, and then I didn't look at it as as a way to make money until maybe, like, you know, seven years later with the music. So I'd always Really been a child of the Internet. Nowadays, every kid is a child of the Internet. But back then, it was very, very rare That somebody that was young was into the Internet. So that that also was a huge advantage for me. So I was able to see a lot of things as they came out of their infancy and see what worked and see what didn't work And get this awareness and be fresh about it too. Because, you know, a lot of people in the time and the space that we're starting to get in the space, They were what they are as old as I am now, forty. I've learned at forty, you have a lot of A lot of biases that you've accrued along the way that are hard to set aside, so it makes you very resistant to new emerging technologies. And I didn't have that back then, so I was a rare breed that I could get it on the ground floor.

[00:08:31.60] - Martyn Brown

That's great. So you decided then that the music for now was going to be put on pause and that you're going to focus mainly on the Internet and the marketing side of things. So what happened? What was your First product, and when did you get the inspiration to create that?

[00:08:49.00] - Jason Fladlien

Yeah. It's I first started to try to be an affiliate marketer, and It it was a it's an interesting story because my, you know, my my dad and my mom got a divorce, and I'm living with my dad now. And I'm, like, Twenty some years old, and my dad wanted to get back in the dating scene. So he bought a product From a guy named David DeAngelo, who's a a a well respected marketer and goes by the name of Evan Pagan, who I've later given advice and and, Yeah. I consulted with him and his wife on a project. It's a small world. But at that time, it was like, okay. I had heard about Evan, because he was the first guy to ever offer two hundred percent affiliate commission. So you saw my forty dollar ebook, and I'll pay you eighty bucks, something like that. And so my dad had his back end because my dad must have bought the book and then bought, like, his two hundred dollar advanced dating secrets or what have you. And we didn't have much space. We lived in this tiny little apartment Right next to, like, a pawnshop, a cash for gold place, and, like, a redneck bar. So, like, not a very good area to live in. And I found this one day, and I just got into marketing. And I'm like, oh, I got source material, so I can kind of write these articles To presell this program and then make two hundred percent affiliate commission. So I tried for about Two months writing article after article after article. My model was really simple. There was a site called EasyinArticles back then. And if you ranked for the if you wrote The right keywords into those articles with the right density, you could get some traffic. So you'd write an article and get a hundred or two hundred clicks in some instances, maybe even more. So I would pick these different keyword focused dating concepts, write articles about them, put a little bio box so you had a, You know, like, twenty five, fifty words you could put at the end of every article, and it would be like, hey. If you want my free ebook on blah blah blah, go here. So I wrote an ebook, And then I wrote, like, fifty articles. I I was writing an article every day pretty much for sixty days and did not make any money. I think I made a total of, like, a hundred and sixty dollars. And then I was like, well, hold on a second. This ain't gonna work because then I don't get paid Until, like, two months after that, there's, like, a forty five or sixty day holding period. So, hey, I'm not making any money. And, b, if I make money, I I don't even see it for a long period of time, and I'm so damn broke. I need money quicker. So because I had learned how to write these articles, I get this brilliant idea one day, then I go, I'm gonna I'm going to write articles for other people as a ghostwriter. Now keep in mind, and I I left this part of the story out, I was painting houses full time during the day just to try to make some money to just keep my article or my music business going. So I could only work an hour or two before I went to go paint houses and an hour or two after that. You know, work a full time job and then sandwich two hours before and two hours after into trying to build my business. And we worked a lot in the painting business. I worked with this crew, and we would typically work six to seven days a week. And I had to drive, like, an hour to and from each day to go to most of the job site sites that we were at. That's why when I say I was working Two hours before and two hours after, that was literally my whole day. I didn't I didn't have much else I could do back then. So I said, you know what? I want to write articles for other people because at least I can replace this painting job that I have right now so I could work from home and move one step closer. So the first day that we had a rain out from painting houses, it was raining outside, and we were working on an exterior job. I can I went home, and I said, this is the day I'm gonna do it? And the problem was I didn't have a portfolio with a different a lot of different articles. I only had dating articles. So I I used one of those, and then I wrote nine other articles on nine other topics just to show that I had this portfolio that was a variety of different topics I could write on. And then I built a one page website Well, that basically said, hey. I'll write articles for you. It's three dollars and twenty five cents an article. I guarantee twenty four hour turnaround time. I was that desperate. Well Yeah. And there was a website back then. The biggest forum for Internet marketers calls the war it was called the Warrior Forum. And just like that bio box on an article, if you posted on the forum, you could have a little one or two sentence bio box. Alls I did was went through and found different popular threads that were happening right now and responded with my two cents for whatever that was worth. And then they would see the bio box. Need an art you know, need a high quality article done cheaply fast? Click here. And then they go to the website. And after posting just on a few different replies, I had three different clients that wanted to hire me to write articles. And I said, oh my god. This is awesome. And then seven days later, I quit painting houses because I was making about I was making a little bit more money. I was making about twelve bucks painting twelve bucks an hour painting houses. I was making Fifteen bucks an hour writing these articles, and I knew I was way under priced. And I knew I could increase the price, and I and I started to have clients that I had to turn down because I had too much demand, so they were willing to pay me more money. And so in seven days, I started working for myself, and that was what changed everything. My god. I I I now had proof that I could make money online, which is everything. If you're if you you know, I was trying to do things That without any proof behind them. So it's really hard, like writing articles on dating, but I'm not a I wasn't interested in, you know, being a pickup artist or anything like that. There's no proof associated with that. There's no authority. So that's why it's really hard. In in the inner marketing space, there's no authority. But now I had authority. I could show people that I could Make money online, and I had a system in order to do that. And and that's really was the game changer. So after about six months of writing articles, I decided to publish an ebook on the topic, and I wrote an a little ebook about About six pages, it wasn't that long, on my article writing system. Because I could write an article on any topic, and I could write it fast, and it would be high quality. And so I taught this article writing system and showed people how to do it, and I sold the thing for four dollars because I was so I I didn't think anybody would pay me any amount of money. I I was so scared that to take money from other people for an ebook because I didn't want them to get a bad deal. I didn't have any confidence. I didn't know what I was doing. So I sold this little ebook for four bucks, and I took out a classified hat on the Warrior Forum. Twenty bucks to take the thing out, and I basically the pitch is brilliant. I didn't know what I was doing, but it worked really well. The pitch was essentially, like, I am confident I could cut your article writing time in half the first time you read my ebook. And it's only four dollars for you to find out. And if you don't like it, I'll give you your four bucks back. Wow. That was almost the whole pitch. I think I threw in a couple other bullet points, and and then I said, go here and buy. And that was it. I made more money in two days selling an ebook than I did all week writing articles. And I'm like, This is this is really cool. And something happened that I wasn't really tuned into consciously, but I recognized when I saw it. People were buying this product, and they were reporting back, Oh my god. In, you know, thirty minutes after they bought, they were seeing a benefit in telling other people about it. And that's very uncommon even now, but back then, it was very uncommon in the info space that somebody could buy a product within thirty minutes already got more than their money back because they're like, Jesus. This is already improving my life instantaneously almost. So I saw that in, like, a Neanderthal. I was just like, I'll just do more of that. I'll just find one little thing that I can improve upon for people that the first time they understand it, they could apply it. So they could obviously see they got a good deal, And I'll sell really cheap products, and I'll just make them really short ebooks, very down down to the second, do this, do this, do this, do that, do that, do that, done. All step by step without much else in between, and then the pitch is basically like, it's not much money. Even if all it does is save you Time, it will be worth it for you try me out. And people really responded back. So I did that for a few months straight where I was just going out, Trying to find these one little problems, one little solution type of products I could create, and I developed a reputation very fast As somebody that was up and coming, somebody that really had some value to to offer out there, and that got me really pumped up. But it also what was cool is building these products. You know, they say the best way to to learn something is to teach it. So I would teach these topics that were kind of not connected, but there was some overlap to them. So then I was able to connect them. So then that made that made me what I call trade up. So I could trade up the skill set that was small and make it larger. So for example, there's not a whole lot of difference between writing articles and writing emails. So email content that people needed for their autoresponders. So I started teaching people how to do that. I had clients that had hired me to do that during my article writing days, So I could teach that. If you think about it too, like, a lot if you take three info products that are on one specific topic, if you have if you found three related topics, You could combine those three together. So I was able to to combine different elements together or add a little bit extra on top of a foundation. So membership sites were very popular back then. So I'm like, okay. I already know how to create information and package it. So let me show how to let me make the small leap to selling it with a subscription basis instead of a one off basis because I had to write sales letters for all of these Products I was launching, let me teach people how I write sales letters. And then it was, let me teach people how I create products Because I'm creating all these products. So I would do something. It would create proof and experience that I could then publish on the next thing. And so within twelve months, I was really cooking, and I was always looking to trade up my skills. Now that I can do this, what can I build on top of that? And that's when my world forever changed I did my first webinar ever, and, man, I never looked back. That's when I really found my edge.

[00:19:17.29] - Martyn Brown

And product eClass was one of the next, I guess, membership style sites that you started work on. So how did that come about?

[00:19:26.40] - Jason Fladlien

Here's the story. It's really interesting. One day and and this is a technique I still use to this very day. I run a I run a it's a thirty thousand dollar mastermind now per year. It's called Driven, and I run it with Perry Belcher and Kasim Aslam. And I'd I'd instruct these multimillion dollar business owners the same strategy that I've used myself and then I I I first stumbled upon Many years ago with this first webinar that I ever did. And I call it the I don't know if this will work or not strategy. It's a I saw webinars as a thing, and I was looking for an edge to get into them. So I go to my list one day. It says, hey. Listen. You've seen me be super productive because I'm publishing all these products creating all this content all the time. I wanna teach you how to create a time you know, what I do for my time management. Now I've never done a webinar before, So I don't know how it'll work. It could be a complete train wreck. I could mess the whole thing up. So if you'll indulge me, you come to the webinar and you show up, I'll give you the recording of the product for free because I'm gonna create my next product live on a webinar. And that was a time management system for Internet marketers. That was the name of the product. Terrible name, but whatever. You know? You you learn. And I was all jazzed up thinking everybody and their brother was gonna show up to this thing because who wouldn't want a free product? These are people that are buying products from me constantly. Only seventeen people showed up. No. I didn't know that that was a small number. I was super excited. I was like, cool. Seventeen people. Awesome. I'm excited. This is September seventh two thousand eight, by the way. I just looked it up. That's the first webinar that I ever did on this time management system, and I taught it. And A lot of people liked it. And out of seventeen, six left me a really good testimonial. I go back to my list the next day, And I say, hey. You screwed up, but I'll give you a second chance. I plan on selling this product for thirty seven dollars. The next forty eight hours, you can get it for twenty seven bucks. And I watch more people buy that product than any product I'd launched previous because they missed out. They coulda got it free the day before. They screwed up. I'm giving them a second chance, so they better make good on it. But I noticed that I could feedback from the results of the the live webinar we just did. Now that was a pure Training webinar in the sense of you come for free, you get the product. If not, I'll sell the product later, Which is a great model to this very day, very effective model. So then I started thinking. I'm like, okay. That worked out well to fulfill. What could I use it for next? So I had this little product called three hour ad, and it was how to write near world class copy in less than three hours. So everybody back then taught this really complicated copywriting system that would take hours and hours and hours of research and then days and days of toiling over every single word, And I never wrote copy like that. I I would just sit down and say, okay. I've noticed that there's four ways to basically write a headline. So I've studied all these all these different sales letters, and There's five categories I could put them into, and the fifth one was miscellaneous. So there was typically four ways that I would write a headline and then a lead. There's basically five ways to to open the sales copy and then bullet points. Well, there's there's a really easy system to write bullet points if you're not trying to be creative. So I was creating templatized type of copy and spitting it out there. So I wrote a little book on it, a little ebook. People really liked it. They liked it so much, in fact, that they would write into me asking for more examples, asking if I could expound on a certain point, so on and so forth. So I get this brilliant idea. I say, hey. Listen. And this is a twelve step copywriting process. That's how many steps I had in it. So, I'm thinking, wow. Webinars are great to teach on. I'll just do one session a week. So a twelve week e class. And I told the audience, I said, hey. You bought the book, But some of you wanna go further, so I'm gonna try this new group coaching program. I've never done it before, so I don't really know what I'm doing. So I don't wanna open it up to too many people. I wanna be hands on with the people, and then we'll sell the recordings later. But I wanna make sure everybody who joins gets the best experience possible. That's why I'm limiting I think I limited to, like, fourteen people, And I charged either two hundred or three hundred bucks. I can't remember now. What I do remember is this is the first time I hit triple digits on a price point. Because before that, it was, like, forty seven bucks was the highest price point I think I'd ever sold at. And so I I took in all these people, fourteen people, For, like, three hundred bucks. So it was a lot of work to do this product, but I was able to do training on a webinar, so I got better at it. Because each session will be about two hours. So twenty four hours of of experience on the webinar. So the second webinar that I ever did was a series of webinars packaged up as a group coaching program. So then the third webinar that I ever did was was a fulfillment for product eClass. So I thought, well, that worked for copywriting. Let me teach people the same stuff I put in an ebook, but put it in motion, had more depth, had more interaction, and then that became product eClass. And so that was the third webinar that I ever did. And then after that Well, this is the greatest thing that I made the the leap towards. I thought if I'm fulfilling on webinars, Then I should use a webinar to sell the series of webinars that I'm offering. Because then the pitch is kinda simple, isn't it? Hey. Did you enjoy this free webinar that we did one time here? Would you like x number more or the same where we can go even more depth over a period of time. Would you be willing to pay something for it? Okay. Here's the deal. And so this is a nice free preview Of what they could pay for, and that's how I did it. So I went from, a a class that if you attended Free, you'd get the recorded product of. So I was recording the product on the webinar. Then I went to pay me money, and you'll get a series of live webinars that you also get the recordings of, To a webinar to sell a series of live webinars that you would act that you would get the recordings to. And then only after that, after doing that several times, Then we decided to sell use a webinar to sell things that weren't fulfilled by webinars, but that's the progression. So a lot of people wanna skip that. They wanna fight the black belt the first day they take karate, And that's no wonder that they fail. I stair step my way up there by getting comfortable in this setting and then trading up and then trading up And then trading up. And that's when it really hit, man, because nobody knew how to do webinars back then. It was a new emerging technology, And I was making the rules up as I went because I didn't have any previous experience to draw from. I didn't know how to sell on stage. I didn't know how to do teleseminars. So I was able to organically build it from the ground up very much like Tesla built their vehicle from the ground up. They weren't like Ford or GM that had a hundred years of, quote, unquote, experience, But couldn't apply it in a new paradigm as easily. So I was able to really get an edge in that business, and that's That's what took it over for me. I said, man, let's just figure out everything we can about webinars. And here I am sixteen years later still trying to figure it out.

[00:26:21.50] - Martyn Brown

Well, you've just released the book about this as well, One to Many. How did that come about? Is that just another extension of what you've already done, or is it something that you've always had a Burning Desire to Do.

[00:26:33.29] - Jason Fladlien

Yeah. So that's an interesting story. So that book, I think we released it on two thousand seventeen or two thousand eighteen, somewhere around there. So it's a relatively old book. I joke that it's probably perfect for the market now because I have the curse of expertise. I'm so far ahead of of you know, I'm so unconsciously Competent at the thing that it there's a challenge for me to bring it back to people who are just learning to be consciously competent with it. So the book is, like, perfect timing for twenty twenty four in my opinion. But that this is a lesson, and this is how I always think very strategically. So I I had wanted to create a a training program on webinars forever, but The first time I did it, I think I did in two thousand eleven, the market wasn't ready for it yet. So I tried it again in two thousand fourteen, and the market still wasn't ready for it yet. So I'm like, People don't wanna learn how to do webinars because you know, think about it, man. You gotta be a good public speaker. That's hard. That's, like, the thing people are afraid of the most. Then you have to be a good educator, so that's hard. Then you have to be a good salesperson, and that's hard. And there's a lot of moving parts. So the technology is also challenging when it comes to webinars too. So I was using webinars to sell other things to my audiences. So I was not selling shovels. I was using the shovel to dig for the gold. And so I didn't even have an audience that came to me to learn how to do webinars. So I just kinda pushed it away in my my initial attempts to be successful with it. I was too ahead of the market. But then finally in two thousand seventeen, I thought, man, maybe it's time to do this now. So I'm always looking for these elegant solutions. How can we do one thing that that gives us many solutions? And so I created a program that I initially sold for five thousand dollars in person. Seventy some odd people could come to this This room so I partnered with Joe Polish because he had the audience. So I'm like, dude, you have the audience. I'll do all the work. We split the money. Well, just you record it, and I'll prepare everything, and we'll split it fifty fifty down the line. So we created a program called Genius Webinars. And the way it was created was people paid five thousand dollars to be in person And because there's an interesting market dynamic that a lot of people aren't aware of is to a millionaire, five thousand dollars is What is that? Point five percent of their net worth? Mhmm. It's nothing. Yeah. To to to somebody who's worth fifty thousand dollars, A five thousand dollar offer is ten percent of their net worth. It's twenty times as much. K? Now people generally will either have too little of Time or too little of money. And if they have both, too little of time and too little of money, there's one that they'll have even less of. And so people that are super successful, they almost always have too little time. It's crazy. They have so little time. It's it's it's Scary in a way. So they'll buy time. And so the way that I'm selling this is if you come in person and we Cram it down your throat for two days. That's probably the only way you'll get it. If you're too busy otherwise, I gotta force feed it to you. The second way successful So people buy time as they get they get the advanced version of the thing. So I pitched it as, hey. We're gonna do it. We're gonna train it in person, and then later Ron, we're going to take it, edit it, record it, put it out there. So if you wanna wait a couple months, yeah, you could pay less for it. But to the person in the right condition, waiting a couple months It's far more expensive to them an opportunity cost than it would be to pay a premium on the product. So everybody knew going in. I'm gonna create this recording of this product that we're gonna sell for fifteen hundred dollars. So you can pay five thousand and be in person at the live concert, right, or you can download the m p threes later for fifteen hundred dollars. Your choice. Yeah. I knew we'd sell it out because there's also this Concept of scarcity, supply and demand. So if there's seventy three spots and if you don't get it, somebody else does. I knew we could find seventy three people. So we created this course. We got paid to create it in advance. I go and I I do it in person. We take the training of the program, and then we package up when we sell it for fifteen hundred the course, we deprecated it now. It's not available anymore because I just finished a new training, in October twenty twenty three called goat webinars, Which I don't even know if we have that live yet and ready to sell. But that's what we were using before Go Webinars was Genius Webinar. So we sold the recordings for fifteen hundred dollars. And then from that, I took it and wrote the book off the same exact materials. And everybody knew all along the way. This is all derivative. I never once hid it from the audience. I told everybody up front because the book is it's two dimensional, Whereas the recordings are three-dimensional. You don't get to see me demonstrate the book in action with the techniques whereas on the recordings that you do. And so we were able to derive from a five thousand dollar product to a fifteen hundred dollar recording of the product To a ten dollar ebook or a twenty dollar paper book, paperback book from that, one activity. And I've learned that throughout the years is is, man, you can take one thing, put it into three different things, not pretend and hope people don't find out about it. Just tell them straight up that that's what you're gonna do, and different segments of the market will assort themselves accordingly. And so that's what that book ended up being. And then what's cool about the book, and I didn't anticipate this. I just we put a book out there because at the time, we were dabbling with the idea of doing webinars for people as an agency. Did not work at all. Terrible ideas. But, nonetheless, the book is a very effective way to help get lead gen for for agencies. This is one of the most effective ways. And if you're speaking and doing podcasts, a book is one of the most effective ways to get clients. So we created the book to do that. Well, the good news is is, man, the book is also the thing that has the most longevity. Has the slowest burn in terms of profitability, but it has the longest Longevity has the most longevity. So that book continues to this very day to bring in very high high profile clientele to me that start By reading that book. So that that's where the book fits into the thing, but it was an afterthought. It was a strategic byproduct That we could also capitalize on from an existing foundation of intellectual property. And so there's a lesson to anybody listening. If you can get Really unbelievably good at one thing. There's two two byproducts to that. One, you can trade up, like we've talked about. But two, you can also go horizontal. You can create a lot of different variations of that one thing, and that's almost Always better than having ten separate things.

[00:33:08.70] - Martyn Brown

And that's just one of the things that you can learn from being a product e class that actually

[00:33:14.40] - Jason Fladlien

Just to try to figure that one out. I mean, so mostly with strategic partnerships. Nobody can do everything excellently. So if you look at and you break down, there's really four elements to any online business. So you gotta drive the traffic. You gotta have conversion. You gotta have fulfillment, and then you gotta have support. K? So traffic, how do we get people to come to the thing? Conversion, how do we get as many of them as possible to buy the thing? Fulfillment, How do we make the thing as excellent as it possibly could be? Because then that not only obviously increases the brand affinity, but it also increases the back end potential. The easiest thing to sell to somebody is, hey. You just bought something from me, and it was awesome. Wasn't it? Yes. You also need this thing, don't you? Yes. Would you like to buy it? Yes. Because the last thing I bought from you was excellent. And because I bought that thing, you know something about me that most other people don't know. And so this is what you wanna do. You wanna create excellent products so that way people can come back and buy more from you, so people can get a better result, so they can brag about you, and And so they can refer other people. And then the support is the glue that holds all that together. So support presale, port during the sell, support after the sell really sets that thing up. It it's it's almost impossible for you to be a ten out of ten in all of those categories. And there's there's a significant difference between being a ten out of ten and a nine out of ten. In every in every market that matures, there's usually one or two, Almost always just one, occasionally two dominant players in that space. So in the tablet space, there's iPad and then there's Who? Right? Surface? Mhmm. Maybe, kind of. Right? There's Coca Cola, there's Pepsi, and then there's who? There's nobody. The electric car market, there's Tesla, and then there's Prius? I don't know, man. It's not that not that it's hard to figure that out afterwards. So most markets, they can only manage one person. If you if you break through, then you get all the attention. But if you don't break through, you're in obscurity. You see the same thing on algorithms. So on YouTube, if you can tip the algorithm, you can get millions of views. But if you can't tip it, you're lucky to get hundreds of views. Mhmm. So being a ten out of ten is often the difference. Nine out of tens fight for crumbs, but the ten out of ten takes everything. It's just how markets work. So you wanna be a ten out of ten, But you in order to be a ten out of ten, it's something you almost have to sacrifice everything else. So you can be like a ten out of ten in one category. You can be like an eight out of ten at best in another category, then you can be like a five out of ten at best in a third category, and then you're like a three out of ten in the fourth category. Over time, maybe you can improve upon it, but it's unlikely. So Amazon, you know, biggest company on the Internet, for many, many years had the worst customer support for their vendors you could ever possibly imagine. Now they had good customer support for their users, but at the expense of their vendors. It was terrible. And and by the way, that's a lesson in itself. Their vendors are these third party sellers. Amazon couldn't create all the products, so So they had to partner with people that could create all the products. So this is what we look at. We say, okay. If we're really excellent at conversion, which is where I spend all my time, And we can focus on that, then we'd need to partner with people who have the best products. Because I can't always create the best product. And if I can I can create the best product for only a segment of a market, not for every segment of the market? So we gotta find the best product, so there's a partnership there. And then we have to drive traffic, so we do it with affiliates. So that's another partnership there. And then we just try to be excellent because over time, you can be a ten out of ten at two things. But it takes a while. So ten out of ten in the first decade, then then ten and ten out of ten in the second decade. So we have the support that glues all that Together. So we're good at conversion. We're good at support. I'm very good at at fulfillment, but I can't do Excellent fulfillment and simultaneously do excellent selling. I can't do both at the same time. So either gotta find somebody to sell the thing, and then I could spend all my time on fulfillment, Or I can spend all my time selling it and then partner with somebody who has all the fulfillment. So a lot a lot of our big successes came Through strategic partnerships, taking their very best thing so I I here's what I try to do, Paul. I look at the market and say, What does the marketplace need the most right now that if they had the best version of it would make the biggest difference in their life? And then I say, can I create it? And if I can't create it, can I find somebody who's created it? And and if they've if they haven't got there yet, can I help them get to there And then partner with them? And then because we have affiliates, here's where conversion drives traffic. People know that I can when everything aligns right, nobody can outconvert me. We hold all the records. Right? We have biggest product launch record in our space. We hold biggest affiliate promotion in our space. So if all the stars in the moon line up, nobody's gonna be flatland on a conversion event. So affiliates like to promote my stuff, because it will make them more money than promoting their own stuff or somebody else's stuff. And so that's that's the other side of the thing. So that's how we got there. But I started by really focusing on being excellent at fulfillment. That was my first thing. The cool thing, and this is double dipping it, this doesn't apply to every business, but the lesson applies to every business. I got so good at fulfillment, I could shift fulfillment to the sales pitch. Mhmm. So because I could create transformational products in one sitting on my On my info products, I just had to switch that to the front end. So the things that I would sell for four or five or ten bucks became the the content portion of my webinar That I would then give away for free. And then I would sell other things that were higher ticket on the back of that. And I'll tell you one thing, and this is this is always The truth, it's very hard to do, very easy to understand, though, is, you know, compounding is the greatest thing you could ever do to your money And your skill set. So Mhmm. Buffett Warren Buffett says compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understand it benefits from it. He who doesn't pays it. So everybody Pays compound interest on their credit cards, and they they stay broke. Yeah. And they pay compound interest on their homes when they take mortgages out on them. And it sounds only four percent or whatever. It's way higher these days, but, generally, let's just say it's four percent. It's like on a half million dollar home, you're gonna pay double that. Yeah. On the interest rate, that's how that's how they get you so they can become richest through compounding. Buffen has made all of his money because his His favorite holding period is forever. If you take a penny and you double it, in thirty days, you will have over a million dollars. K. So compounding is the most effective thing you could possibly do. And so what I did was compound a skill set repeatedly To the point where I became the very best at it. And then nobody could compete with me, and nobody wanted to compete with me, and everybody wanted to learn it from me. And that's what you gotta do is you gotta stay true to this one skill set. And if you can, you can get in at four bucks. You can start there, and then you can end up setting all the records, which is incredible. And it's crazy, but that's how you do it. People will overestimate what they can do in a year, but they underestimate what they can do in ten years. Mhmm. And what I am suggesting is is Get really good at something and compound it by trading up and finding the strategic byproducts for it, And then you will win. This is why I'm struggling so damn hard in the in the YouTube space these days because I've I've decided in to become more present on social media because I did all this stuff without any social media falling.

[00:41:04.80] - Martyn Brown

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:05.40] - Jason Fladlien

Which is insane. It's a whole different topic for a whole different day. But now I'm frustrated because I I know that I can reach more people if I use social media, but it's very humbling because I have to start over again. And, you know, I've struggled for the last year on it. I say struggled. We look at the numbers. We had over a million views and, you know, grew, you know, three times the subscriber base on YouTube and so on and so But I have no idea what I'm doing, and I feel like I'm lost, which is crazy because a lot of stuff seems similar, but it's not. And that's the beauty of it. So, like, an open loop on a webinar, I could do that all damn day long. I could set nested loops and all kinds of crazy stuff. We so the concept of open looping still is important on on YouTube. Very different, very nuanced and slightly different, but that slight difference is everything. And so I'm humbling myself and having to learn it from the scratch again. And now I'm like, okay. I gotta do it for five or ten years to become really excellent at it or get lucky. The harder I work, the luckier I get.

[00:42:05.09] - Martyn Brown

You never stop learning as Jason, for anyone who wants to find out more about you and also your successes and also about the Rapid Crush Inc, Where do we need to head to?

[00:42:16.69] - Jason Fladlien

Yeah. Get my book. It's on Amazon. It's called One to Many. And then subscribe to the YouTube channel, because man, dude, I'm I I am going extra hard on that stuff right now. So there's some really good value there. So Jason Fladlin, just, you know, put me in YouTube, and you'll find me there.

[00:42:31.00] - Martyn Brown

Great stuff. Thank you so much for your time today. It's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you, and good luck for the future. Thanks again, Jason.

[00:42:39.30] - Jason Fladlien

Oh, you're most welcome. And thanks to all the radio station owners and radio show presenters for listening to the Vinyl Impressions podcast Well

[00:42:46.90] - Martyn Brown

Thank you for listening. For more details of any of our podcasts, please visit vinyl impressions dot club.