How the 24-year-old celebrity entrepreneur set a new standard for social media marketing
When Roger Bannister ran his record-breaking mile in 1954, the athlete likely had little idea just how important his under-four-minute run would become. Now, running the four-minute mile is a standard for professional athletes: when achieved, runners enter the upper echelon of athletic achievement.
In the business world, the four-minute mile has become a metaphorical goliath with a similar subtext. When business professionals earn their respective four-minute mile, it sets them apart from other players in their industry.
When internet celebrity entrepreneur Josh King Madrid used AI chatbots to become the first marketer to ever respond to 50,000 Instagram DMs in a single day, he created a new four-minute mile standard. At just the age of 20, Madrid, (who is now 25 years old) also known by the pseudonym JetSet, dramatically changed the trajectory of modern digital marketing.
Long before Madrid earned his current net worth of $20 million, the gen Z digital marketer was sleeping on his parents' couch. It was just weeks before he was set to start his pre-med and business studies at the University of California Irvine, and Madrid was scrolling on his phone when his entrepreneurial instincts led him to a Facebook page for digital marketers.
Within a few minutes of joining, a stranger named Jeff sent him a DM welcoming him to the page. The same Facebook group led to his investment in Online Sales Pro, and within six months, Madrid was earning nearly $10,000 a day. After four months of earning Ds in school, Madrid dropped out of college to focus on full-time marketing.
Just one year after finding the pivotal Facebook page, Madrid’s business was compounded by viral internet fame. To fuse these endeavors, he decided to host a 750-person business conference in early Las Vegas in early 2019 featuring 40 well-known industry experts.
Despite Madrid’s business and internet savvy, there was one major hitch: just 45 days before the event, only 50 people bought tickets.
Coincidentally, Madrid received an out-of-the-blue call from Jeff, his early Facebook connection. Though Madrid was in no mood to receive a sales pitch, Jeff was offering exactly what he
needed: a deal to become the world’s first user for an upcoming chatbot software. For just $2,000, Madrid accepted the offer.
Madrid was weary about risking the security of his Instagram account of 320k followers, but he was desperate to generate sales for his event. Luckily, the gamble more than paid off: the chatbot generated 11,000 leads and responded to 50,000 DMs in one day. Just 23 days before his event, tickets sold out and earned JetSet $5 million in collective sales.
Madrid unknowingly became the prototype for what would become a staple of digital marketing. The Nelk Boys, Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone, and other internet celebrities soon followed suit and implemented Instagram DM automation.
Since becoming the world’s first marketer to create more info conversational chatbots for Instagram DMs, JetSet has continued to grow his net worth to $20 million, host chart-topping podcast The Dropout Degree Show, author two books and created the leading source for NFT news, NFTMagazine.com.
Thanks to his strategic gamble, marketers around the globe now face a new standard when it comes to social media marketing and digital engagement.