Black Entrepreneur Blueprint 623 - Jay Jones - The Free Marketing Hack That Built A Million Dollar Company

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[00:02:00] Welcome to Black Entrepreneur Blueprint, the number one podcast and resource for Black entrepreneurs. I'm your host Jay Jones and Black Entrepreneur Blueprint was created specifically to educate and inspire Black entrepreneurs to launch, build and grow successful, sustainable businesses. Join us as we help build an economic power base in the worldwide Black community by building and supporting Black-owned businesses.

[00:02:29] If you're currently an entrepreneur or want to be an entrepreneur, you're invited to join us each and every week here at Black Entrepreneur Blueprint. Welcome to the BEB family and get ready to elevate your entrepreneur IQ. Welcome to the Black Entrepreneur Blueprint episode number 623.

[00:02:55] I'm your host Jay Jones and today we have another outstanding and informative show in store for you. Today we're going to be doing a rebroadcast of one of our most downloaded and impactful episodes from April of 2025 titled, The Free Marketing Hack That Built a Million Dollar Business. The Free Marketing Hack That Built a Million Dollar Business. Now let's lock in and get ready for today's show content.

[00:03:20] Today's show topic is the free marketing hack that built a million dollar brand. The free marketing hack that built a million dollar brand. Today guys I'm going to talk about George Johnson, the founder of AfroSheen and how he leveraged a platform that he built to millions and multi-millions of dollars and it's an amazing story and we're

[00:03:47] going to talk about that today and how you can use the same strategy to build your business. Now before we get to today's show content, I just want to share a few things with the Black Entrepreneur Blueprint family. First and foremost, I want to welcome all first-time listeners. Welcome to the BEB family. Please stick around until the end of today's broadcast and I'm going to share all my social

[00:04:10] media contact information and resource links such as the link to my new program $7cheatcode.com $7cheatcode.com That's the number $7cheatcode.com If you're looking to grow and scale your business guys, this is the program for you. Make sure you go to the website. There's a short video on there. Check out the video.

[00:04:37] Look at all the content below it and I promise you it's a no-brainer. It's a $7 investment and this is something that I've been doing for the last, I guess, say probably about three or four months. It's a strategy that I implemented and I talked about it last week on episode number 566 with the $7cheatcode.com.

[00:05:01] It was basically how can I scale my business automatically by a simple system that doesn't take long to create. The problem why most of us aren't selling or growing or scaling, it's not a sales problem and it's not necessarily a trust problem with people trusting your product, yourself or your brand. It's an education deficit and that education deficit is causing people not to convert.

[00:05:31] So if you know how to shrink that education deficit, give people the information that they need in the way that they like to have it received, then you're going to convert more sales. So make sure you go to $7cheatcode.com, $7cheatcode.com, the number 7, D-O-L-L-A-R, cheat, C-H-E-A-T, code, C-O-D-E.com.

[00:05:59] Now let's get ready for today's show content. Today's topic is the free marketing hack that built a million dollar brand. In this episode, guys, I'm going to break down how George Johnson, the founder of Afro Sheen, Ultra Sheen and all those good hair products leveraged a platform that he started to grow a multi-million dollar business.

[00:06:27] Now, one thing that I didn't know was that I was reading an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer last week and this is the impetus of today's show. Uh, I didn't know that George Johnson, not John Johnson of Ebony and Jet, but George Johnson, also from Chicago, was a co-founder and creator of Soul Train with Don Cornelius.

[00:06:50] And one of the reasons that he decided to co-found this with Don Cornelius is, is that obviously they were matching his target market. And so I'm going to read you a little excerpt from the Philadelphia Inquirer, and I'm going to talk about how you can start to create a platform that you can piggyback off of and monetize it without even selling your product or service or before you even sell your product or service.

[00:07:18] So it says, um, Johnson created Soul Train with Don Cornelius in 1971. So as advertising dollars could reach black consumers directly. Soul Train, the hippest trip in America was modeled after Dick Clark's American Bandstand and featured R&B acts creating the community that bought Afro and Ultra Sheen products. In 1974, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff wrote Soul Train's iconic song,

[00:07:47] T.S.O.P., The Sound of Philadelphia, performed by Philadelphia International Records, The Three Degrees. Soul Train laid the cultural groundwork for MTV and Black Entertainment Television. And T.S.O.P. was the first TV theme song to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100. JPC, Johnson Products Company, profits nearly tripled to $37 million a year by 1975.

[00:08:14] So by joining in with Soul Train with Don Cornelius, this was something that was a platform that spoke directly to his consumer and he was able to sell his products for free. Okay. So one of the things is it says that, um, he said that was tremendous growth.

[00:08:37] Johnson said, and in 1980, I gave Don my share with the stipulation that he keep one minute of advertising per show for Johnson Products Corporation. So he gave his shares back to Don or sold them back to Don with the stipulation that he gets one minute of airtime each week.

[00:08:58] And so literally he created a platform and he actually was making money from the platform in addition to piggybacking his product on the actual or advertising it on the actual show. So we're going to talk about several things today. What is a platform? The power of owning a platform. Why other companies buy platforms and how you can create a platform to piggyback off of.

[00:09:27] Now, today's show is going to be a little bit short. Um, cause I got a lot going on, but I wanted to get this content out to you. You know, when I was growing up, I watched Soul Train, but I never knew that George Johnson was a part of that. I used to see AfroSheen advertised all the time. And when I had my fro back in the day, I definitely had that, you know, our household, my mom, my sister.

[00:09:53] Uh, I remember the hot combs going through my sister's hair and my mom's hair. And we always had that green bottle of, uh, Afro Sheen sitting in the, uh, in, in the bathroom. Then they had a black bottle, Ultra Sheen and Afro Sheen. I think, I think Ultra Sheen was the green one, but yeah. So he did a tremendous job in terms of marketing to our community. So let's talk about what, uh, what is a platform.

[00:10:19] So a platform in business is a structural system that facilitates interactions between different groups of users, often through digital infrastructure. It's a model where value is created by connecting individuals or organizations, enabling them to transact, uh, or collaborate. So that's a platform. So this podcast is a platform, right? Uh, uh, email list is a platform.

[00:10:49] A video is a platform. Now, what I have to tell you, and I've been telling y'all this for years, social media is a platform, but you don't own it. So you can easily get kicked off with social media. There are horror stories right now of several BEB family members that pretty much lost their whole business because everything was predicated on Twitter or Instagram or something like that.

[00:11:16] And they got the account shut down and they don't have a way to communicate with their customer base. So we almost had a big scare for people that, that use TikTok with that TikTok ban, right? So you got to de-platform people off of social media and get them into your email database. All right. That's where $7 cheat code.com is, is predicated. That's where the money is made guys.

[00:11:43] It's more sales are done through email than any other channel. Now we're not talking about Amazon and stuff like that, but it's more sales are made through email than social media. So you have to use and leverage social media to de-platform them, to get them into your email database. So that's what a platform is. And the only platforms that you really can control are your, obviously your email list.

[00:12:11] If you have a podcast, uh, if you have a blog, if you have a newsletter, um, if you own a TV show or something like that, but you know, you still can get kicked off unless you're paying for airtime. So you have to understand what a platform is. Now let's talk about the power of owning a platform. So when you own a platform, guys, you control that platform and the revenue sources that it generates. Okay.

[00:12:40] You control that. Let me give you a real, several real life examples with me. Hey, I own black entrepreneur blueprint, right? I own the podcast. Nobody can stop me from putting this podcast out. Only way this stops is if I stopped, feel like doing it. I don't feel like doing it anymore, or I don't pay the hosting bill. Okay. But nobody can come in and say, yo, Jay, this episode isn't going out. We don't like what you're talking about. Not going to happen.

[00:13:10] Never going to happen. Okay. So the revenues on this platform. Now I didn't start monetizing the platform for probably about two and a half to three years because I, number one, I didn't need to, and I wanted to find out exactly, you know, what it was and what the BEB family wanted. So when I have advertisers on here, that's revenue that's generated not by me, right? There's somebody else paying that.

[00:13:39] You know, I have all types of, I've turned down advertisers. I've, you know, which is crazy, but it doesn't fit or suit that, you know, our, our avatar. So I have that now because I built the platform. Anytime I come out with a new product or service, just like the $7 cheat code.com. This actually came from a conversation and a working with one-on-one, uh, with one of

[00:14:07] the BEB family members as a coaching consultant. So we were talking about this and how to scale and grow. And this actually, this program actually came out of that conversation. It was something that I wanted to create for him. And then I said, you know what? A lot of other people can use it too. So the power of owning the platform, anytime I come up with a new product or service, I already have a platform that I'm monetizing that I can put my own stuff on.

[00:14:37] So that's the beauty of it. So the power of owning something guys is you're getting the revenue. So they were already making money on soul train through the advertising, right? So now what George Johnson did said, you know what? Guess what? Every, every Saturday morning I'm getting, you know, uh, 60 seconds on soul train to advertise Afro Sheen, Ultra Sheen, and all your Johnson, uh, products companies, uh, products.

[00:15:05] And so that he was able to take that and leverage that he was actually one of the first black owned companies to go public on the stock exchange because he was able to penetrate in that vehicle, that platform, that soul train was allowed him to get to that point. So I want you guys to understand the power of owning a platform. I know newsletter operators right now making six, seven figures a month.

[00:15:34] I mean, not a month, a year owning a newsletter. There's certain business newsletters out there. There's a company called Agora and they, they're all they do is newsletters. You probably never heard of them because they do B2B newsletters and they make billions of dollars a year of their platform. I get this newsletter. Um, it's called daily clips, C L I P S.

[00:16:00] And what that is, it's for the newspaper or media industry. And it has advertising in there about jobs. It has job searches, not job searches, but, um, you know, uh, classified ads. Uh, they have people advertising for jobs. They have software that's being advertised in that actual newsletter. And I know the guy that started it and he was in the newspaper business and he was starting

[00:16:27] to compile and aggregate information about how to be successful as a newspaper publisher. And it turned into daily clips and every day it's a very concise magazine. It has a whole bunch of stuff. It's not a magazine. It's an email newsletter and he's making hundreds of thousands of dollars on that platform. And guess what else he does? He actually owns a newspaper.

[00:16:54] He actually runs classified ads or help wanted ads for himself. So he's marketing on the platform that he created. That's why ownership is so important. Uh, here's another real life example for me years ago in a previous life. I used to be an ADT security, uh, system dealer. So this was in the early, yeah, early to about mid nineties, mid nineties. And I had two offices, one in Philly and one in South Jersey.

[00:17:23] And, uh, so the one in Philly was in West Philly and I used to spend my money in advertising these money mailer, uh, coupon, uh, delivery things. They still, I think they're still out there now money mailer. And there was a couple of other others that were out there. So I'd spend like $800 to get mailed to, you know, X thousand of, of homes in the local area. And I say, well, damn, this is costing a lot.

[00:17:51] So what I did was I went through the money mailer and I started calling, uh, other advertisers in there. And I said, you know what? I'm going to create my own money mailer version, but it's going to be cheaper. And I'm going to hit a more, uh, concise area. So what I did was, um, at, at my height, I probably had about 25 or, or 30, 25 to 30 different advertisers in the, uh, in the money mailer or in my mailer.

[00:18:20] And I was making about four or five grand every time I mailed it. And I got to mail my ADT advertising for free. It was a piggyback. I created a platform. I profited off a platform and it costs me literally nothing to add my insert into the money mailer. And I made sure that there were no other alarm companies in there. Right. So I owned it. So I made sure I even took it further.

[00:18:50] I created, um, a heritage direct mail, which was a national direct mail company. Same thing as money mailer that went to black households in major, uh, metropolitan areas that had incomes of over a hundred thousand dollars. Now I had direct TV. I had, uh, Comcast, what it was called at the time. I had AT&T. I had a lot of major companies.

[00:19:18] I was in the Philly area, uh, Chicago, uh, DC and about six Metro areas. And I created that platform. And I was running all types of stuff in those mailers when they went out for free. So that's why it's important guys, you know, to own your own platform. Nobody can shut you down and you own it. And we're talking about the free marketing hack that built a million dollar brand.

[00:19:47] And we were talking about George Johnson, the founder of Johnson products company. That is the founder of Afro Sheen, Ultra Sheen, and all of those different companies. Um, and how he basically was a founder of Soul Train and use Soul Train and leverage that, that reach that it had to sell that product that he had. So it's, it's a beautiful thing, guys.

[00:20:12] Um, now let's talk about why other companies buy platforms and other companies buy platforms because they recognize the lucrative opportunity to control revenue. You can also control narrative if it's a media company and you have the structure there. So that's why other companies buy other companies, especially if they're media platform. I'm going to read you a little something. And I talked about this a couple of weeks ago in another episode.

[00:20:41] I don't know if you're familiar with bankrate.com, but bankrate started out as a magazine, but now they're a, um, they're a series of websites, publishing company. And I'll just read it. Bankrate LLC is a consumer financial services company based in New York city. Bankrate.com. Perhaps it's best known brand is a personal finance website.

[00:21:04] As of November 8th, 2017, it became a subsidiary of red ventures through an acquisition to know, uh, excuse me today. Bankrate, uh, bankrate Inc. Online network includes bankrate.com, uh, as well as creditcards.com, caring.com, interest.com, bankaholic.com,

[00:21:29] mortgage.calc.com, creditcardguide.com, thepointsguide.com, bankrate.com. Now bankrate was acquired by red ventures for listen to this $1.24 billion would it be in November of 2017. Bankrate was a platform. They were making money with affiliate offers and they had some of their own offers.

[00:21:58] It was a platform that they controlled. It was a website. It was a blog. Okay. This is why it's so important guys to own the platform. So, I mean, trust me there, there, they were purchased by a venture firm. The venture firm understood the bank ability of owning a platform. So why wouldn't they do it? It's just like in my industry, in the mortgage industry, um, what you would call them?

[00:22:28] Just bought, uh, red fin. Yeah. Rocket mortgage just bought red fin. So rocket mortgage now has a real estate, uh, platform where people buy and sell homes. And they also obviously have a mortgage company. So they bought that platform. I'm not sure what it was for, but I know it was a lot of money. Right. So you want to have that ownership and it's a lucrative opportunity when you buy somebody else's platform.

[00:22:56] You don't buy it just because you buy it because it's valuable. All right. And what we're talking about the free marketing hack that built a million dollar brand. And last but not least, let's talk about how can you create a platform to piggyback off of? Okay. So just like when I had my direct mail piece, I was sending out direct mail for free, right? Nobody, you know, people were paying me. They were paying me to be in my direct mail, uh, program.

[00:23:26] So that was my platform. So you want to create a platform that's synergistic to your business. Something that's synergistic, which is going to allow you to piggyback, uh, on whatever that platform is. So for example, if you are just say in the, uh, finance business, right? You may create a newsletter for investors. So you might be a financial advisor. You create a newsletter for investors.

[00:23:55] I know that's tricky because you got FINRA regulations and all, but you create a newsletter for investors and guess what? Your services are marketed in that newsletter. Okay. So you want to look at a, a platform to create that synergistic to your business. Look at some of the platforms or type of social media properties that you currently advertise on. Right.

[00:24:18] I know that a lot of people were talking about, uh, creating, uh, uh, subject pages on Instagram. Right. So there may be black wealth or something like that with somebody has all types of posts about black wealth. They may have a million followers. You go pay them $35 so you can get on their quote unquote platform. Now they don't own that platform. That's rented land, but it's the same concept.

[00:24:44] But think about the types of social media properties that you currently advertise on or, um, places that, that have synergy, you know, for you and your business that you can actually start. So I'm in the process right now, starting a new newsletter, uh, for entrepreneurs. And some of the ways I'm going to monetize that obviously is through advertising, but I have several products. I have several SAS products that I'm looking at.

[00:25:13] I have affiliate products that I can sell on there. So I want to provide solid quality, useful information on a weekly basis, build that platform up, have a whole bunch of, you know, subscribers. And I'm going to give the subscribers what they want. I'll let them tell me. So when they come into the newsletter, they'll be taking a short survey. What are your interests? You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:25:40] So I can understand who they are, what their position is and what's going to help make their, their jobs or their lives better in terms of business. So that's what you want to look at guys. So, you know, you, you want to have something that's going to help you.

[00:25:56] So just like when, when I did the money mailer, I was like, man, why am I spending all this money when I literally can create the same thing for less money and actually advertise my ADT security services for free? I'm making money and still getting the, uh, the actual publicity and, and the recognition and the views on my actual, uh, advertisement.

[00:26:24] It, man, it doesn't, it doesn't get any sweeter than that. Right? So you hitting them from, from both sides, you making money off of the people, you know, that are on the platform and you're actually generating revenues and leads through the platform itself. So definitely do not sleep on that guys. Once again, also, uh, George Johnson has a new book out. I think he's 97 years old. I forgot the name of the book, but let's see.

[00:26:53] Um, Afro Sheen, how I revolutionized an industry with the golden rule from Soul Train to wall street, a 320 page story of entrepreneurship, civil rights, and black culture spanning nearly a century. Now, before we close it on out guys, let me just share my social media contact information and resource links. Everything I'm about to tell you is on the website, black entrepreneur blueprint.com.

[00:27:20] So I mentioned at the top of the show, my new program, $7 cheat code.com. Go to learn more. The number $7 D O L L A R cheat code.com. Go watch the short video, learn more about that. And if you need to grow and scale your business, this is the program for you. Now, in terms of email, if you want to connect with me guys, anything long, hit me on my email. Jay Jones at black entrepreneur blueprint.com.

[00:27:50] Uh, Instagram to IG accounts. Jay Jones for real. J A Y J O N E S. The number four R E A L. Second one is black entrepreneur blueprint Twitter, which is now X. You can connect with me at Jay Jones, zero zero one J A Y J O N E S zero zero one, uh, Facebook black entrepreneur blueprint and LinkedIn. Make sure you connect there. Just type in Jay Jones black entrepreneur blueprint and connect with me there.

[00:28:20] And YouTube guys, make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel. Cause I have additional content on YouTube that is not on the show. Yes. The show does come out on YouTube every Monday morning, 5 a.m. Eastern standard time on YouTube and all your major podcast platforms. So wherever you watch this show today or listen to it, make sure you hit that subscribe button. So you'll be alerted when new episodes drop.

[00:28:47] Now I say this each and every week family, because it's true. We get more and more downloads because of you, the B E B family. And I appreciate you guys so much. Please continue to spread the word about the podcast, the blog, the online courses, the whole ecosystem, because we're trying to get this good word out there. Family. We're trying to help you elevate your entrepreneur IQ because it's not about me. It's not about you. It's about us.

[00:29:15] It's about building an economic power base in the worldwide black community by building and supporting black owned businesses. Love you guys. See you same time next week. Peace.