Influencer Marketing and Running MULTIPLE Businesses at Once: What You Need to Know with Dan Fleyshman

24:40And they're like, oh, yeah, but we have an in-house team. your in-house paid ads people can't be that good and here's why anyone that's really good at paid ads can go make 800 bucks a day selling pillows two grand a day selling chairs yes 400 bucks a day selling freaking lemonade sticks yes because if you're good at paid ads that's what you would go do you can do it for yourself and so when everyone people are like oh yeah i've got this whole team i'm telling you very bluntly they can't be that good because why would they work for you Why would they go make 100K a year for you when they can go make 100K a month selling lemonade sticks?

25:16Right. Or, you know, vitamins or supplements, whatever. Anyways, so the point is when someone brings on agency for paid ads, for influencers, for marketing, for billboards, for whatever, they need to listen to those agencies. The agency exists because they have way more data than you do. Right. Your data is about, oh, I make the best water, the best coffee, the best dresses and shirts and earrings, whatever. That part's fine. Once you tell us about your brand, there's literally no reason for you to talk to an agency. Let us do everything. Not just talking about my agency, other agencies that are good, not saying all agencies, agencies that are good, allow them to do what they do.

25:53And so whenever I see brands that come to us and there's been some amazing household names that come to us with huge budgets, I just turn them down without blinking. I don't even think about it. Because you're not going to tell the influencers what to do. It is not going to work. Yep. You know how many times I've turned down McDonald's and Netflix? household name companies i don't first of all i don't want to promote mcdonald's but their budgets are amazing and they completely overpay for everything and i've watched them spend millions of dollars and millions and millions of dollars other agencies and every time they get screwed up every time so what is your title now in elevator studios founder got it and every company founder founder now one of the things that i found the most interesting as I did it, you took a company public at 23 years old.

26:42How does that impact the way, and that's one of the youngest or the youngest person in like American history? Ever, yeah. Ever to do that. How does that shape the decisions that you make now? Like, how do you look at marketing? How are you looking at marketing then? And then how do you look at marketing now? Like what's changed? Well, I'm old. There was no smartphones back then. So I went public April 1st, 2005. I actually might be going public April 1st, 2025. I might be doing it again I just announced yesterday I joined as a chairman of a beverage company and so my first company was a beverage company and I might be throwing my hat back in the ring wow, congratulations yeah, investment makers it's all a sign already so we just have to decide if we actually want to go public but it looks like we're going to anyways, so going public back then is much different there was MySpace the Facebook was coming out there was no social media and so because of that I was doing ground marketing, marketing with NASCARs, putting shirts on football players and models and wrestlers and whoever I could.

27:44I was out there promoting my drinks. There was nowhere I would go that I didn't have a backpack full of drinks. And it's heavy because they're 16 ounces, so everyone's a pound. And I just traveled the country going to meet with distributors, going to meet with retailers, going to meet with people in the town, going to nightclubs, going to bars, going to restaurants. So from 2005 to 2009, I remember nothing but selling into those 55 ,000 stores. Nothing. I don't remember a date. I don't remember a birthday. I don't remember anything. Nothing for four years. I just sold my drinks morning, noon, and night.

28:18There was not a single time I didn't have my brand on. Even if I had to go to weddings or funerals, I would wear a patch of my brand on my suit. I had to be my brand because my life was online and I had thousands and thousands of shareholders that I had to fight for. Yes. And so marketing was different back then. I was doing cross-marketing deals with NASCAR. I was doing cross-marketing deals like the Utah State Fair. It was the Coca-Cola State Fair for 16 years. Then I made it my brand, you know, as the State Fair. And I would do deals with Smith's Grocery Store because I couldn't afford the$2 million they needed.

28:50But I made Smith's Grocery Store order$4 million of products and then get, you know, like I would do cross-marketing. I couldn't afford the NASCAR because it was going to be$3 million for the freaking NASCAR. 150 ,000 to raise for 20 races. And so I had Circle K, the chain store, put their logo on the side of my NASCAR, order$3 million a year for a two-year deal. So I would make$3 million. Got it. I did a lot of those cross-marketing deals because I couldn't, even though we were doing a lot of revenue, that's not net. When you hear fancy people say I did 10 million in gross sales, that's not what they made, by the way.

29:22Exactly. To be real clear. So that was the form of years of selling your drink and doing whatever it took. And then marketing today and going public today, the Adventist smartphones, how does it change? So marketing today is I can do it right now. I can get more views today in one day than I did the entire four years of my energy drink back then, like legitimately. I can send out care packages to 200 Jasmines around the country and they've got a million followers each and I can do it and trade for product or a small amount of money. And all of a sudden, 200 million people are going to see my stuff.

30:00That's right. Today. Like literally today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next month. Today. And it won't be that expensive. And tomorrow, I'll have screenshots from Jasmine and 200 Jasmines out there in the world with millions of followers times it by 200 and all of a sudden people know about my brand. Faster than anything I could do for four years of like... Yeah. Backpacks full of one pound drinks. Yeah, NASCAR had a couple million viewers an episode. Yeah. Great. Right. But what about four Jasmines? If Jasmine Star has a million and there's four of her, boom. And so that's the difference is that marketing today is different.

30:37Also, going public today is very, very different because everything you do is very public to the world. And again, there was no social media back then. So running a public company, there's a lot of rules, there's a lot of regulations, and there's a lot of scrutiny. why did you buy four dollar toilet paper you could have paid 320 why did you buy first class seats you could have said business class like there's a lot of things and scrutiny that comes with the financials of running a public company so in this case i'm going to do chairman not ceo because i don't want to do the accounting side again i swear i'd never go public again i'm doing it one because it happens to be the 20-year anniversary two i really love the company that i'm doing it with it's called rise coffee again if we go public uh and i like building in public and i'm a good boy so like i'm not gonna get in trouble because i don't do those type of things anyway so i'm not worried about the public scrutiny part of it there's no amount of money that would make me do something bad and so that part doesn't bother me or scare me whatever you want to call it and it's just it's different now like on the ride here we were doing fox business news from the back of a car like i couldn't do that in 2005 right how there was no smartphone right didn't exist steve jobs did not make a smartphone yet so like there's a lot of different dynamics of being public now versus back then so when you look at the future so we talked about the past you're building in the present the future of marketing this is what you eat breathe and do and you're good at it what where are we going what does it look like so a lot of things are going to change the algorithm is getting tougher and tougher and tougher yep and it's really stupid it's really really bad what the platforms are doing it's hard for them to realize it because they're making more money than ever yep but the amount of influencers that have cut back or just stopped posting on major platforms is shocking and i did a post about that a week ago and it got a ton of engagement because everyone felt it because everyone across the board is getting less and less reach yeah and it makes it less fun or interesting and less incentivizing yeah why only seven percent of your followers see your post all right not even that bro i mean if you're getting that no to see it not engage to see okay yeah to see it and so when if you have a hundred thousand followers and seven of them seven thousand see it and only x amount a couple thousand maybe interact or a couple hundred interact it's not as exciting as it was in the past so that part is one two ai i don't actually need jasmine yeah i can make a robot jasmine i feel like your your studio is going to be representing AI I've been avoiding it but they're really good I mean it's crazy people are predicting 8 years and I'm like y 'all I think it's like 3.5 I don't know if technology is quite you can tell I can make a Jasmine today I can make a Jasmine in an hour especially if I have Jasmine's consent I can make one without your consent that would look fantastic, speak well etc that might have glitches if you actually talked into a microphone right oh my god yeah there's one main company that's doing it for a lot of our mutual friends that company you cannot tell i don't need jasmine after that if i get you for 20 minutes with these cameras like this and you speak into a camera and you read x amount of words i don't know i want to see that technology because i know of people who are spending buku money on it and you could still tell it talks a little like this and it sounds just like that, but the pause isn't quite right.

34:13You know? So I want to, I'm very - That's the ones that they're not proactively doing. Okay. If you actually go in and read X amount of words and you read it in a certain tonality, you will not - Game over. Okay. So do you see the AI version of like the Kardashians selling in that capacity or do they think it's detrimental? I think that there's gonna be a huge market for people who, for fake influencers who are about super niche, super niche. And it's like, so soon you are representing 10 ,000 super niche influencers and people don't know that they're - I don't want to. I don't like it. I like the real person.

34:45Well, so do I, but do you not see that as the future? Well, it's already happening. I have a friend that has an agency that just does. Yes. He texted me in the middle of the night last night. He's like, oh, I just got this huge contract and he's doing it for hotels and resorts. He's posting models, male and female, at resorts that aren't actually there. I'm serious. I know. Like they're experiencing the resort and you look like they're getting in the pool and they're going to the spa they're going to the salon they're going to the restaurants they're not real yeah and he sent me this thing he's like i just got a six-figure contract from a resort yeah to put not real people there yeah like you don't have why do you have to go there then like you don't have to go he's like i know i'm not even that city right now it's insane so are you saying you won't do it or i'm not saying i won't but i've been avoiding it i have no interest in it if i don't have to yeah but at some point i just think that even when that happens people will want real humans more than anything and then how do we verify they're real i mean i didn't think we're We're going to go here on the podcast, dude.

35:37But I'm just like, this is the stuff that I think about. So TikTok announced this morning that they will make a warning for any AI-generated content. As of this morning. Any AI-generated content, you will know that it's AI-generated. Okay. So, I mean, I'm totally going off script. Are you familiar with an account called Blogilates? Or, sorry, yeah, Blogilates. So she is a creator. She makes athletic apparel. started teaching Pilates, amassed millions of followers, and then came out with her own product line, patented the wear. And then she started seeing a bunch of dupes on Amazon and then dupes on TikTok.

36:14Now, here's the crazy thing. It was eerie. I felt like I was looking at an episode of what is it that show like Black Mirror or whatever. It was freaking weird. She had her own content. She did a side by side and it was neck down and it's identical. And then in that same video, she takes a step back to reveal her face and her entire outfit. And then it was her exact everything and the face was freaking blonde hair blue eyes but it was her and she took her account she has millions of followers on tiktok millions on instagram and she has a verified account on both platforms and she's going to tiktok and saying here is proof this is me this is a patented clothing piece that they're selling on dupes on tiktok shop and tiktok responded and she posted it she had receipts and they're just like sorry we don't think it's an infringement so it's clearly done with AI what do we do?

37:03how do you stop the robots? they can make music songs better than they can now blend Jay-Z, Eminem, Steve Aoki together with Drake and make a song and there's weird rules to get around it for right now and just change some of the beats I don't know AI is coming and we can't stop it and the hard part with AI it's literally artificial intelligence it's getting smarter the time that we just talked about it for 10 minutes Yeah, it's gotten smarter. Yeah, smarter than most technology in the history of human society. That's how smart in last 10 minutes. So if you see the tsunami you being who you are with every tool that you have What are you doing?

37:41Like how are you telling business owners who are listening and immediately you feel like oh my god What is coming? I'm going to tell you guys three words Adapt or die You don't have a choice The problem is that most business owners most influencers choose die. They choose death if you go out there the reason I started sports card stores is because I'm up against blockbuster video we're in Netflix there's been all these stores if you drive around for 30 years it's a father and son they have no blog they have no YouTube they have no Instagram they have no social media they have no videos and they might have one or two of them that they haven't posted on in a year their phone number is still old on Google yeah their address isn't there yeah they don't have a website since 1994 i'm up against blockbuster and the reason for that is is they don't want to change yes so even when i say to the camera adapt or die and all the people yeah i'm gonna i'll learn ai or no they won't yeah why from your experience you've been in the game a long time why do people accept death because they have to do some work huh and they have to change their ways and they don't want to change their ways think about how many years it took before your parents or grandparents felt comfortable putting their credit card on their internet think about that internet's been around for 25 years not two or two to five years over 25 years yeah more like 30 years think about right now would your parents or grandparents feel comfortable getting into an uber just kind of started happening right what if i sent them an uber and we weren't there if i say i know i literally did this my mom's like oh i can't exactly i can't like are you kidding me and I'm like mother I basically live like Uber is my office you're gonna be fine no I couldn't I was like please let me get you an Uber at your house drive this way because I'm just looking at this from a business perspective my mom comes here and then I get to be present and I don't have to lose the commute time and she says no yeah that's how life is across the board so that's why when people are like Uber's gonna take over our whole society or driverless cars you won't get in a driverless car right now yes I would yeah because I adapt baby I'm already looking forward to it Like I am literally like take me to San Francisco.

39:49I'm getting in one of those like hands down. I will. The majority of society in Wisconsin, in Texas, Alabama, et cetera. They're never going to get in a driverless car. They're rarely going to even get on social media. They barely post if they have social media. So when you just take down the layers of like how little people will change, they want to do the same thing. They don't want to change their ways. And it's really difficult for them to even adhere to something. and when they do, they barely use it. So every time I see a new social media platform or a new technology or a new company, it's going to change everything.

40:23It changes microcosms. Yes. It changes certain pockets of our country. I'm like, oh my God, everyone's going to use Postmates. Right. Yeah. In LA, in Chicago, in Atlanta, in New York, in Miami. Good luck trying to get Postmates in Alabama. Yeah. How you live 46 minutes away. You live an hour and 20 minutes away. You're not Postmatesing that. How are you going to get an Uber when you live an hour and 20 outside? Yeah. I go to so many different cities that I can never use Uber because they just - How? Yeah. You're in Tennessee. Yeah. In Nashville, it works. Try to go outside by an hour. Yes. There are no Ubers.

40:58There's no Lyfts. So technology in some aspects, in some fashion, is going to critically change the world. In other places, it won't be impacted at all. So many times, people talk about AI. It's going to ruin millions of jobs. Do you know that most businesses don't have a Facebook account or an Instagram account? You think they're all of a sudden going to do AI? They can't spell AI. And they have to hire someone. They have to hire someone to run it. They can't run a Facebook page. How are they going to run AI? Okay, so somebody's listening. What are the three things that you do to embrace change?

41:32What are you doing to say, three ways to adapt? Like how do we get ahead of this? How do we change? Because this is what you've done so well. I've been following you pretty religiously for the past year and some change since we met. And I see you freaking change fast. First thing is I research everything before it even becomes big. I just want to know. I want to know why people are talking about AI. I want to know why they're talking about this technology. I want to know why this platform is causing buzz. Even if I don't think it's going to work out. I want to understand why did it catch fire?

42:04Got it. Why do people care about it? Talk about it. Why did this situation happen? So learning and researching something right away. so if you hear like what is the bitcoin oh check out bitcoin what is an nft even if nfts didn't work out the way that people thought what is it yeah understand it not just be like oh screw bitcoin oh screw nfts yeah oh screw that yeah that's what people said about tiktok too right right there's been dozens of platforms that came and went that weren't interesting but study studies one okay two try it like make an account so whenever there's new platforms or new businesses or new mobile apps or new technology.

42:38I just make an account. What is ChatGPT? Okay, go research ChatGPT. Learn all about it. All right, I'm going to start using ChatGPT. I'm not saying I'm going to go onboard it fully, but research it and start trying it out. And third is talk to people. When you start talking to people in the blogs, in the forums, on social, at events, et cetera, about ChatGPT, about the new social media site, about the new change in real estate or makeup, whatever that thing is, research the thing, try it out and then talk to people about it. So I'm going to repeat back how to adapt and embrace change. Number one, study and research.

43:13Number two, make an account, AKA do it. And number three, talk to people. So when we take these contexts about adapting and change and how we resist to do that, it's beautiful to me that the complete counter opposite of doing all this stuff is getting in person with your toy drives and with backpacks because it is literally the opposite end of the spectrum and I want to end the conversation there because what happens is I feel like people are gonna be like oh he's so bullish and over here and that's so not like me and I'm like no no no the brother's on the ground can you talk about those two organizations because I feel like listeners are going to be super inspired to get a part of the toy drive wherever it exists in their neck of the woods so I like things that people can see feel in touch in person.

43:57I throw 42 events a year. We didn't even talk about, I mean, you kill events. The business conference is like, I'm obsessed with live events because I want the human interaction. We can follow each other on social and I can put in clappy emojis and trophies and root for Jasmine, but it's different being in person, right? You create memories, you create experiences, you create emotional bonds that will never happen through social media. You can carry them on in social media because it will remember these times that we're sitting in your living room. But it'd be, if I'd never came here. Oh, I love that distinction.

44:25We create in person and we carry on on social. That's how we change and go deeper in relationships. And so I throw so many events because of that. I want people to come to my events. I'm throwing five events this week alone in multiple cities. A viewing party for the TV show, a charity event, a Spire tour, a dinner with Dave Meltzer and all those guys, a hundred million mastermind, a tipping dinner where we all tip the waitress. We all surprise tip the waitress, a charity event two hours later, and then a yacht day for business people in Miami. That's half a dozen very different types of events back to back to back.

45:00Two charities, two social things, one business conference and one viewing party. Why? Because those are all different segments of my life and it allows me to interact with people in real time and build relationships. And so when I ask them to show up, people show up. And I hand invite them to things too. Like, hey, Jasmine, will you come to my charity event? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Right? And so that's the distinction for me is I like to throw events in person. Now, the same exact thing applies to my charities. Yes. See, feel, and touch. I started my Model Citizen Fund 14 years ago. We make backpacks for the homeless with 150 emergency supply items inside.

45:41Half of it's food and drinks. The other half is cleaning supplies, a watch, poncho, sleeping bag, things like that. It's a 0 % charity, so I cover all expenses, all staff, all payroll, all shipping, all marketing, all events. I pay for everything so if a dollar comes in a dollar goes to a backpack it's very clear and it'll always be that way and then in between there I throw four charity events a year leading up to the toy drive I do a report card day right before school's over so they can come in and get prizes based on their grades oh that's awesome we do back to school in August to get them shoes backpacks supplies etc that's called the Trina's Kids Foundation we do a Thanksgiving food drive downtown in Hubble Studio so all these are at Hubble Studio in downtown LA and then we throw the world's largest toy drive for the last 10 years we won the guinness book world records for two years for two different categories of throwing the largest toy drive one time we had 165 000 toys sorry 118 000 toys the first time in sofi stadium like on the field wow and then the last year we did 10 cities in 15 days and i was a cuckoo bird and flew around to 10 cities there are toy drives in each city so i want to be on the ground i want to be in person it's crazy to go to Atlanta, Phoenix, New York, Chicago, Miami, Phoenix, sorry, we went to Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Jacksonville, Florida, Orlando, Tampa, Las Vegas to throw a freaking toy drive in every single city.

47:01But by doing that, I interacted with people and that memory will be on, live on forever. Yeah. And those children that got thousands of toys or tens of thousands of toys in certain cities, that wouldn't have happened if I wasn't there. If I didn't say, Hey, I'm crazy. I'm going to go throw a toy drive in all these cities. Those tens of thousands of children wouldn't have got those three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 toys per kid. And so knowing that makes me obsessed that if I don't do it, who will? And so my goal is I know that I can't do it all over the planet. I want to inspire people to do their version of it.

47:38And so I break down through the toy drives. I don't need a pat on the back. I show them, here's how you can throw a toy drive in your city. you can't make it to Atlanta and you're in Detroit you throw in Detroit with zero dollars here's how you do it and I walk them through how to do a toy drive with no money you can't make it to my Thanksgiving food drive no problem I would love for you to throw a Thanksgiving food drive with no money involved here's how you pick a location here's how you get a sponsor because I want it to be bigger than me our tipping dinners we did two weeks ago over 4 ,000 dinners happened around the world because we organized everyone to do at the same time 7pm all over the world there's probably more than that we don't know because they didn't tag us my goal for the tipping dinners where we surprise the waiter waitress with a tip from everyone in the room is for it to be infinitely bigger than dan right if you look at the world's largest toy drive my name's not on it you look at the model citizen fun you look at the tipping dinners my name's not on it yeah i'm i would cap it right meaning if it's about dan it's capped at how big dan is yes my name's nowhere i don't i don't want you to think about me i want you to go do them and you post about it you share it.

48:43I don't want to have reference to me. Because if I can do that and 4 ,000 tips that happen around the world, that means that hundreds of thousands of people got together for dinner because of me. That's fine. I don't need them to know that I did it. The butterfly effect of that is crazy. The network effect of that is crazy. What happens when those 4 ,000 waiters and waitresses and kitchen staff got those thousands of dollars times up by 4 ,000, that's millions or maybe even tens of millions of dollars that got distributed two Thursdays ago at 7 p.m. That's right. That's crazy. And so my goal in life is to replicate that as many times I can so that long after I'm gone, people are throwing tipping dinners and toy drives and food drives, et cetera.

49:23Ladies and gentlemen, Dan just blew our dang minds. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. I want to hone in on one thing in particular. He started off by talking about how his wings were clipped as he was the CEO doing everything in his business, thinking that, And can somebody even do something as good as 85 % of what I am currently doing? You might be in that exact position of your business and your business can only be as big as you. Those were Dan's exact words. So he brings in somebody who blew his mind and then allowed Dan to be the best version of Dan, the connector. And he used the reference that he became a butterfly fluttering along.

50:03And at the end of the episode, he used the words butterfly effect. and I can't help but think how that all dovetails that he was allowed to become from chrysalis to butterfly to the butterfly effect. And I think to ourselves, if we could do that as entrepreneurs, then we won the dang game. Dan, thank you for teaching us and walking us through what it looks like to have multiple businesses. Thank you for talking to us about the history of marketing that included carrying bags of liquid on our backs to then creating content that multiplies over influencers and how we might be able to do that in a smaller way for our businesses, wherever that is.

50:41Thank you for empowering us and creating and challenging us and inviting us to the challenge of giving as long as we continue to receive and expanding our legacy beyond just our names for people who want to get to know you more for your masterminds, your events, the toy drives, the charities, where's the place that you want them to go and connect with you? All my social media is the same. It's just at Dan Fleischman. It's also important for you guys. Have the same bio, have the same photo, and has the same screen name across all the platforms. That's amazing. We'll also be able to link those in the show notes.

51:11For those of you who have been impacted by the knowledge and the business and the generosity of him sharing everything he's done, be sure to give him a tag on Instagram. And for those of you who've gained at least one thing from the show, as you review, it makes a big difference. I ask for it every single episode. So if you've listened to more than two episodes, your time has come. May we all create the butterfly effect that Dan has inspired in all of us. Thank you so much, Dan. and thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Star Show.