In 2019, the young SAAS entrepreneur had turned his extraordinary ability to automate Instagram DM conversations at scale into a business by launching the world's first automated and interactive DM chatbot which spawned all the other projects under the Josh King Madrid umbrella, including NFT Magazine, ATM Franchise, M3 Accelerator Business Conference, and The Dropout Degree among others. Along the way, he authored two top-rated books and honed a wild, controversial-while-motivating speaking content that became as integral to his fame as the message he was delivering.
How did someone juggling so many titles and roles manage to consistently set new benchmarks in the digital and marketing industry, much less develop a brainchild that would challenge the current marketing strategies on social media?
“I wasn’t cut from the same cloth as university graduates and professors with multiple masters and accreditation. I needed to create my own path in order to discover the full potential of the world. Formal education will only shape you to think a certain way. Did anyone ever pause to think who traditional education benefits the most? Corporations who wanted docile factory workers,” The 24-year-old has truly broken away from the conventional path and forged one a path filled with milestones in the tech industry. His unwillingness to do anything tried and tested has taken him on a journey to developing a new type of marketing campaign using Instagram. Within 21 days of the technology being implemented into Instagram for the first time ever in the history of the platform, the campaign had already generated millions of dollars in revenue.
Originally from a small town called Menifee, he moved to Irvine to attend UCI - until he dropped out after just four months after being inspired by digital content that claimed that making money online was a sustainable and very real opportunity.
It didn’t take Josh Madrid long to reap the benefits of the ballsy move and he earned $27,000 in the month following his departure from conventional education. At just 18 years old, Josh felt that the internet held a world of opportunities and he wasn’t afraid to take risks or experiment.
“I didn’t go from zero to hero overnight,” Josh said of his accomplishments, “Everything I did was a calculated risk. I made sure that I had a steady source of income from my passions before I dropped my education.” True enough, the $27,000 may have come a month after he left university, but it took him six months to get there.
His big break came when he joined a Facebook page aimed at digital marketers. Jeff reached out to Josh to welcome him to the group. Jeff Mcpherson, a Canadian software entrepreneur, is the creator of the original technology used in the world’s first conversational Instagram chatbot software was built for Instagram direct message before Meta replaced direct with Messenger. When JetSet reached a level of fame, Jeff offered him the opportunity to be the world’s first ever beta-tester for his soon to be released chatbot software for only $2,000 to own. At that point, Josh was going through hundreds of DMs every day and the risk was a small price to pay if it meant the software is able to sort through the information for him.
He paid for the development cost and created an AI-powered chatbot. Josh ended up generating over 11,000 leads, with the chatbot responding to over 50,000 DMs a day. Not only was Josh Madrid the world’s first ever marketer to use AI chatbots on Instagram, but his beta test run ended up making over $5 million in sales for his business conference. “I’ve recently worked with Josh to run a campaign for his event that generated over 7,400 emails at a 97% email opt-in rate using conversational chatbot marketing on Instagram.” writes Jeff Mcpherson in an early-2019 email breaking down Josh's marketing campaign as a case-studying to Direct Heroes customers. By 2020, Jeff, using Josh Madrid's case study as a proof of concept, was able to demonstrate the effectiveness of conversational marketing leading to the onboarding of The Nelk Boys, Grant Cardone and even Tony Robbins as clients of his software tool — all of who routinely use conversational chatbots in the marketing efforts as of 2022.
He produced nearly $15 million in online sales utilizing A.I. chatbots and admits that he has been recognized as a power-user by Manychat where he has used the same-type marketing campaigns to sell out 5 NFT projects for clients, collectively generating 200,000 leads from Q4 2021-Q3 2022.
“My goal is to just keep improving and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the digital marketing world with smart chatbots,” he says, explaining that his strengths are figuring out what's needed to build relationships through DM and understanding the art of applying psychology into his copy with automation to create DM conversations that feel personalized but says he still keeps all the campaign flowcharts in his own head and struggles to remain organized.
