Dan Fleyshman is the Master of Marketing and Branding

Dan Fleyshman, is probably the most connected man you’ve never heard of, with clients like Steve Aoki and the Kardashians. He also happens to be the youngest man to ever take a company public.

Speaking with Steve Sims on The Art of Making Things Happen podcast, Fleyshman spills his secret to getting so many well-known people to attend his events right off the bat: “The main secret is I’d pay them money… We spend $60 million a year paying influencers and celebrities for brands and products.” The “why” is simple; their participation in Fleyshman’s free events starts a whirlwind of introductions to more and more people.

In addition to investing in influencers, Fleyshman also puts money into charity, funding 100% of a charity that provides emergency supplies to the homeless. Explains Fleyshman, “It’s a 0% charity. So I cover all overhead forever. So $1 comes into the charity, $1 comes out of the charity, nothing goes to overhead. I pay for everything.”

But Fleyshman couldn’t always afford to put so much money into business and philanthropy. Speaking about his childhood, Fleyshman recalls, “right out of the gate in middle school and high school, I was working multiple jobs at the same time. I was selling candy and cereal… saving up money so I could start a company or pay for college.” His entrepreneurial spirit was strong, and at 17 years old, Fleyshman trademarked the catchphrase “who’s your daddy?” to be sold on clothing and products.

Starting a business at such a young age was difficult, explains Fleyshman, but enlightening. “It made me evolve into an adult really fast cause I started hiring 40- 50- 60-, 70-year olds that were the real clothing entrepreneurs and clothing executives in the space. And so it was a great learning experience.” By 19, Fleyshman’s company had made 9 and a half million dollars, and he’d taken it public on the stock market by 23. At 27, Fleyshamn decided to try something new. He moved to Malta, started an online poker company, and became the third biggest poker brand in the world within ten months.

Of course, all of the quick success couldn’t last. Fleyshman’s poker competitors got shut down by the FBI, leaving him vulnerable to being the next bad guy. Instead, Fleyshman made the difficult decision to pay back 41,000 people so he could sleep at night. That was the turning point: “I had lost this huge eight-figure company overnight with no direction of what the heck to do the next morning,” says Fleyshman. “And that’s when I launched the social media agency, became an angel investor, and started throwing these free events called elevator nights to get my network together.”

For listeners interested in growing their own business with social media, Fleyshman offers three key tips. First, he cautions to never post about politics, religion, or race, explaining “You will never win. You will always alienate 50% of the people at least. And there’s nothing going to change.” Beyond that, Fleyshman says, “you need to be set up on every social media platform. Same bio photo, same bio, same registration website and a way to get your email address and we’d be able to contact you.” And, unless you’re a social media influencer, you can repurpose the same content across all of these platforms, making it much easier to manage many social networks at once.

To get important knowledge like this out to as many people as possible, Fleyshman is in the process of launching the Hundred Million Academy, which he calls “Netflix for entrepreneurs.” Members can pay a monthly fee for access to “a bunch of different speakers, bunch of different business people, a mixture of celebrities and athletes and influencers.”

Explaining why he’s so accessible and so involved in many different projects, Fleyshman offers some closing words: “I just like when all this different stuff happens cause there’s so much bad negativity and drama in the world, that I feel like if I put out charity events and toy drives and closets and books and do this and podcasts, like I want people to focus on real stuff to move the life forward.” Fleyshman, at any rate, is sure to be moving forward — and fast.

To learn more about Dan Fleyshman:

Listen to the Podcast: Dan Fleyshman on The Art of Making Things Happen

Subscribe to: The Art of Making Things Happen with Steve Sims