Decode-and-Re-encode
Take what works in one arena, break it down, and rebuild it for yours.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 78%
Fladlien learned marketing by taking mechanisms that worked in one context and rebuilding them for another. He studied Dan Kennedy (anti-internet), Zig Ziglar's one-to-one pots-and-pans sales closes, and Milton Erickson's therapeutic conversational hypnosis, then decoded each and re-encoded it for selling one-to-many on the internet. The real skill was the nuance of adjustment — the mechanisms wouldn't work at first, so he'd iterate on the battlefield rather than in a laboratory. This is his stated 'great magic trick' for figuring things out before anyone else had.
Origin
Fladlien describes teaching himself internet marketing with no direct mentors, extrapolating from Dan Kennedy, Zig Ziglar, Richard Bandler, and Milton Erickson into the then-new medium of internet webinars.
Core principles
- 01Decode a mechanism from where it works, then re-encode it for where you need it.
- 02The magic is in the nuances of adjustment between the two contexts.
- 03It won't work at first — iterate, ask what happened, reconfigure, and try again.
- 04Insights come from the battlefield, not the laboratory.
How to run it
- 1
Find a proven mechanism elsewhere
Study what works in an adjacent or unrelated domain, even one hostile to your medium, and identify the underlying mechanism.
Pro tip Fladlien mined Zig Ziglar's face-to-face pots-and-pans closes for one-to-many internet selling.
- 2
Break it down
Decode why the mechanism works in its original context before trying to move it.
- 3
Re-encode for your context
Rebuild the mechanism for your medium, focusing on the nuances of adjustment that make it fit.
- 4
Iterate on the battlefield
Expect it to fail at first; ask what happened, reconfigure, and try again in live conditions rather than theorizing.
Pro tip Most insights come from doing it live, not from studying it in the abstract.
In the wild
Fladlien took Zig Ziglar's one-to-one closes for selling pots and pans and figured out how to extrapolate and design a system to sell one-to-many on the internet, and did the same with Milton Erickson's therapeutic conversational hypnosis.
→ Built a webinar selling system by porting mechanisms from face-to-face sales and therapy into a brand-new online medium.
Common mistakes
Expecting a clean transfer
The mechanisms won't work on the first attempt in a new context; treating the first failure as proof the idea is wrong, rather than iterating on the nuances, kills the transfer.
Is it for you?
Best for
Self-taught operators working at the edge of a new medium where direct mentors don't exist.
Not ideal for
Well-established domains where proven, directly-applicable instruction is readily available.
From the transcript
“the idea was how do I decode it from over here and then re-encode it over there”
“that's really where I got most of my insights was on the battlefield not in the laboratory”
From the episode
Jason Fladlien: The Quarter-Billion-Dollar Webinar Man Reveals His Best Marketing and Sales Secrets
Jason Fladlien