- Speaker #0
There's three primary ways of acquiring customers. Paid media in all of its various forms. Earned media, right? Your organic, your PR, kind of all of that. Your customer testimonials, like all of this. And then your partnerships. And so at the end of the day, one of the reasons why people want to add that in is because it provides stability. In order for that piece to be stable, you should also have diversification inside of the program in terms of your affiliate program as well. Your watch.
- Speaker #1
Uh, yeah, well, you know, we shoot the, uh, we film these in batches for those of you listening. So we do these in groups and then, then we put them out. That's the most efficient way for us to do it. But, uh, it's, it's always fun. I look forward to these days because I get to, I get to pick on you. Uh, and, uh, we get to, we get to talk shop with some really fascinating and smart people. And, uh, I know both of us, a lot of times are taking our own notes, uh, as we're talking to the guests. Uh, so it's, it's always great.
- Speaker #2
Yeah. And.
- Speaker #1
the topic today is something i want to learn so much more you know you think that we're kind of fossils in the business and well you know you are a little you're a little you're a little gray i mean you are kind of like i had you carbon dated you didn't know this but you know when we were when we're in that airbnb i actually took one of your shirts it had some of your hairs on it and your beard hairs that had fallen off on your t-shirts and i actually took it down the street and had it carbon dated hey you know what just Just to see what...
- Speaker #2
I was awake. I was awake.
- Speaker #1
I let you do that. These stories that he's been telling me every time we're out smoking cigars, okay, now I believe them, that he was actually there when the revolution happened, when the Civil War, when Lincoln gave the proclamation, when Canada actually became a country. I'm like, all right, he was actually there. Now I believe all your stories.
- Speaker #2
Well, at least, you know, when I carbon dated you, it didn't come back Jurassic period.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, you know,
- Speaker #2
I might be the Triassic period, but okay.
- Speaker #1
So we are going to be talking about-Yeah, we may be old, but we know how to sell things. And you know how to sell things. And you've actually given a shot at doing some of what we're going to be talking about today and using other people to help you basically create your own sales force. But you're going to go out and use others, right?
- Speaker #2
Yeah, but I got to tell you this story. You just said, you know, we sell stuff. I just remembered from about- 25 years ago, we had a reception. We actually had a bricks and mortar office. People actually came in and we had this receptionist, really nice lady that was our front face of what we did. And we sold premium incentives. We were working with event companies and there were mostly Fortune 500 companies that would come into the boardroom. Well, I really didn't realize what she was telling people or what she realized we were selling. So I heard her on the phone the one day. So I was down in the office and the phone rings and she picks up the phone and she goes, I don't, I guess the question was, what do you do? Was probably a telephone solicitor. She goes, we, we sell things to big companies. And I went, I better educate. I better give her some education. I just took it for granted. That was what we did. We sell things to big companies.
- Speaker #1
That's what you do a promotion for. So there's like a catalog of 500, 5,000 things. She's like, oh, we sell things.
- Speaker #2
So I had to say that. Sorry, sorry.
- Speaker #1
Well, speaking of sell things, I mean, it doesn't matter what you have to sell, what thing you have to sell. Our guest today, Amber Spears, is one of the top when it comes to like teaching you how to actually build an army of independent salespeople, how to actually reach out to them, how to deal with them, how to do all this stuff. She's spoken on stages, on all the top stages in the space. traffic conversion back when it existed. It doesn't exist anymore to all these kinds of other things. She's got her own big mastermind that she does. I'm sure we'll talk about, but I'm excited to have her on today. She's probably one of the top of the top when it comes to this. She's spoken in affiliate marketing world, which is a big event that happens a couple of times a year that attracts like 5,000, 10,000 people or something in this space. It's a huge industry that a lot of people, especially a lot of our listeners come from e-commerce. They may know... They know influencer marketing, they know TikTok shop, they know some of this stuff, but they don't realize how big of a business it's been on like SEO and the affiliate side of actually how important that is to actually cultivate that and to do that. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. And I think it's going to be pretty cool.
- Speaker #2
All right, well, let's bring her on.
- Speaker #1
Let's do it.
- Speaker #2
Hi, Amber.
- Speaker #0
Hey.
- Speaker #1
How you doing?
- Speaker #0
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. I'm super grateful to be here and excited to chat with some legends. Apparently some very old ones.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #2
You can say it.
- Speaker #0
I had no idea you looked far.
- Speaker #1
That means old means wise. Old means wise, you know. We'll take that. We'll take that.
- Speaker #0
I like it.
- Speaker #1
So you've been, I understand you've been selling since you were in diapers, basically. I feel like it. One of these people that it's been in your blood since the beginning of time. Can you tell us a little bit about your background before you got into what you're doing now?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, totally. I mean, I feel like we're always selling something, you know, selling people on our opinions and our perspectives and, you know. I think we've done, all of us have done that from the womb in some form or fashion. But I grew up homeschooled, super awkward. Dad was a pastor, fundamentalist preacher style pastor and never really felt like I fit in and didn't know what I was going to do with my future. Ended up getting a scholarship when I was in a group home and ended up getting into the University of Arizona. And. um, just kind of fell in love with like education and, and fell in love with politics as a poli-sci major. And, and then I was the first non-business major, uh, invited to the Eller College of Business, um, which then really kind of got me into that entrepreneurial bug where I was like, oh, wow, you can like make a living just like kind of inventing things to do for other people. Uh, that's kind of cool. And, uh, one of my professors at, uh, Eller College of Business, they asked him, um, you know, what he would be doing if he was starting from scratch. He had sold his company to Oracle for hundreds of millions of dollars. And he shared then that he would get into SEO. And that he thought that would be the future, that Google would be what we would use to find things, not decks and yellow pages, as I'm sure you guys know, what that was like back in the day. And he was like, no, we're going to use Google not for research papers, but to find everything that we want, restaurants or attorneys or whatever. And I would... figure out how to learn that algorithm and hack it and help companies market through that. And that's what I did. I ended up except, you know, finding a Craigslist ad that said, we crack Google's algorithm. And I was employee number one and started selling search engine optimization door to door to people that did not understand for the most part. They're like, I'm paying Dex and Yellow Pages 20,000 a year. Why would I pay you 75 bucks a month? So like, that doesn't make any sense. And I'm telling them like, this is the future this is where things are going and the ones that said yes you know for that tiny amount of money made a lot of money we can see it in the call tracking and that's really where like the evangelist kind of light bulb moment went off for me or i was like oh wow we really can help these businesses like i'm seeing the call tracking i'm hearing the reportings like you know these guys are paying us 75 bucks a month they're getting like 300 new patients every single month from this this is crazy um and i did that for five or six years and then I ended up applying via a long form sales letter to work at Agora and ended up taking a position there learning copywriting and the rest of its kind of history. I love writing but I don't like copywriting. Like I spent all my time behind a computer that's really boring. So I started doing affiliate marketing for that Agora company and crushed it and my career kind of just took off from there. And I think it's probably because I was good at it. When you compare me to people who are used to talking on Skype and chat forums and email, I was willing to pick up the phone and talk to them or fly to them wherever they were. I was like, oh, there's a big affiliate we need to talk to. I'll just happen to be in Austin. Company pays for it. I'll go. I know kids. I was young. So that's where it kind of took off. had some great success worked with a lot of of great companies and have kind of made it my mission to help companies grow their regional revenue with partnerships so those usually don't know who agora is you can you look it up online but they're one of the i think they're a billion dollar multi-billion dollar
- Speaker #1
Yeah, and they do newsletters. So they do email newsletters, print it. They still do tons of physical mail printed newsletters, like you hold in your hands, you know, on paper. And they're masters and masters at marketing. So when Amber, she just kind of passed over that she did copywriting and stuff for them, that's actually a major because they test everything to the nines, like every little apostrophe. I mean, everything just crazy. So. If you work there for five and a half years and beyond and cut your teeth there, that says a lot about what she knows. I just wanted to clarify that for everybody, but go ahead, Norm.
- Speaker #2
What I was going to say is, Amber, I don't know if you remember this, but if you were in the SEO at the time, this is going to show how old I am. I used to rent out pages to dentists, insurance companies, charter fishermen. I'd get them ranked number one. And if they wanted to be on that page, they'd have to pay X number of dollars per month. And if they didn't sign up, I would go to their competitor next door and say, hey, have you? And it was all local for the most part. But good old SEO days.
- Speaker #0
So good, man. like those are the days we have like 300 link builders in india just keyword stuff it's like what's the secret sauce is brute force that's what the secret sauce is right like yeah you back up you said you started around the time of google were you doing alta vista or
- Speaker #1
lycos or any of that stuff back when that existed before google the seo as an industry didn't really exist but you could just it's just all the meta tags and my descriptions is that's how you ranked and white text, text on the page and convert it to white color so nobody can see it and all that kind of crazy stuff.
- Speaker #0
We did that. We did that on Google. Yeah. You know, I would say like any good salesperson, I knew just enough to be dangerous. You know, we had a tech team that took care of all that. We just, my job was to sell packages and I started selling $75 a month packages. And by the time I left, I was selling, you know, $200,000 a month packages to Cigna, Aetna, LifeLock, you know. So I knew just enough to be dangerous. I didn't know all the ins and outs of how they hacked in, what they did. I just knew we keyword stuffed and had all these pages and whatever it worked. Fiddle faddle at the end put was that they got a lot of calls and customers and leads and they were happy with us.
- Speaker #1
So how do you see, how has SAO has evolved a lot? I mean, it's a, I think it's like a, somewhere I saw a stat 90, 90, $91 billion a year industry right now. And there's a lot of people. I mean, it's evolved. Every time Google has made a big update, I remember the Panda update and this update, it completely put some people out of business and they had to change everything they're doing to game with them and rely on some backlinks or do you rely on them and this and that. And now everybody's kind of like, how is AI going to affect all this? And SEO, what are your thoughts on how it's evolved over time? It was super easy, like you said, in the days to where it became a true science. So now how it's going to AI. What do you think? Can you talk about that a little bit?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I mean, as far as like AI, right, like I'm worried about Google in terms of like, I use perplexity. And now almost exclusively when I'm searching for stuff, like I will use Google for certain things. But like, you know, for me, I'm using perplexity a lot. You know,
- Speaker #1
as a search engine,
- Speaker #0
not as a search engine. Yeah, this is a pure search engine. Yeah. So for me, it's like, I worry about, you know, their not as a company they just had willow come out and like a bunch of other stuff you know so i'm not concerned in the sense of them as a company although search is a huge part of their revenue um from an affiliate perspective you know i think it's it's interesting to me because like if you look at where the puck is going so much of the puck like anything you guys have seen this right i've been in the industry long enough where it was like all bsls and then it went to long form, then it's flown back to VSL. And you know, all these things started happening, right webinars became sexy, again, they were dead. Now they're alive, right? There's, there's all kinds of things that switch. But when it comes to affiliates, I think it's clear the puck is going towards the influencer creator in a big way. And I see a lot of people moving so much of their stuff there. And at the end of the day, all of this is affiliate influencers, joint ventures, you know, tick tock, all that stuff. is affiliates, right? It's just the type of channels that you work with these affiliates on. And what I tell my clients is like, don't put all your eggs in one basket, meaning don't put it all influences and creators and take it away from traditional affiliates, which is newsletters or SEO or blogs or cashback, you know, sites or coupon code, if you do that, and you know, some of these other things, it's like, don't stop doing that, because you need to diversify, but also don't rely on like, if your whole model has been, you work with these historic sites, that get organic traffic, I would be concerned. Right. Just because that that model is shifting a lot, whether it's going to wire cutter and that kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, that's your only way of generating affiliate traffic right now. I'd be concerned because the way that people are searching for that stuff is changing. Right. So it's like I wouldn't I would not not do business with them. I would also try to diversify my actual affiliate program to be working with influencers and creators if I'm not. you know tick tock affiliates if i'm not right um cashback cashback sites if i'm not you know pr companies like there's just a lot of different ways that i'd be thinking about diversifying who i'm working with to mitigate risk i mean i think it's one of the reasons why companies want to add in a partnership program to begin with why would they do that there's three primary ways of acquiring customers paid media in all of its various forms earned media right your organic, your PR, kind of all that, your customer testimonials, like all this, and then your partnerships. And so at the end of the day, one of the reasons why people want to add that in is because it provides stability. In order for that piece to be stable, you should also have diversification inside of the program in terms of your affiliate program as well, and not just rely on one type of affiliate because then you're not as worried about the rise of AI or the rise of this or the rise of that because you have diversification in your program. Now, that's a sophisticated program. right i don't recommend that everybody just start starting a bunch of stuff all at once it's like nail down you know maybe you're going to be on tick tock and saturate tick tock before you know you switch over and start working with content bloggers or you know someone on instagram what have you right but i think thinking through that is making sure that you're diversified even inside of your program and just know and be aware like if i was relying heavily on seo you know kind of stuff from Google, I should be concerned.
- Speaker #1
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- Speaker #2
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- Speaker #1
That's right, Dorm. Sign up today at stackinfluence.com. Or click the link in the video below and mention Misfits, that's right, Misfits, M-I-S-F-I-T-S, to get 10% off your first campaign. Head over to stackinfluence.com right now. Some of that was focusing on blogs to drive SEO traffic to blogs and over. You think that's going to be diminished or you think that's going to, the AI will still pick that up if you change the way you start developing the blogs instead of... intro, body, conclusion, all the little formats now that, and actually start gearing that more towards what AI wants, or what do you think is going to happen there?
- Speaker #0
Like I said, I wouldn't discount them. I just wouldn't make it my primary strategy. Consumer behavior is changing. So I trust that Google is going to make an adjustment, but also as somebody who's using perplexity a lot and some of these other, you know, things as a search engine, like I don't know how I'm going to go back to Google in its current form. Right. And that's just me as a consumer searching. It's the same thing, you know, when you're looking at like the, for me, I'm always wanting to teach myself to look at where the distribution is happening. Right. I believe very early on that the distribution was going to change from decks and yellow pages to Google. I can see that. It was very clear to me that this is just an easier way for the end consumer to operate. Right. So to me, like, I've always tried to be on the forefront of that, like anywhere that I went. And so to me, when I'm looking at this, it's like, it's pretty obvious to me that it's easier for the end consumer to have somebody like perplexity, right, doing my search queries for me. So if my primary way of acquiring customers with affiliates is through SEO blogs that rely primarily on Google, I think that that's going to be something that I would look at.
- Speaker #1
Do you think people are going to change that search is going to evolve to where in the past it was more keyword based? And now it's more intent or question based?
- Speaker #0
I would think so. I mean, I feel like that's how it's going now, right? But for me, like when I'm talking to my clients, I'm trying to help them hedge their bets. You know, it's even like TikTok. It's like, you know, ClickBank has been a client of mine for years. Some of the top offer owners on ClickBank, I've helped them hire their teams, train their teams, or I work for them as an affiliate agency. And I would be very concerned right now about TikTok. like very concerned the distribution channel is going to tick tock right and so i think some of the things that they're going to have to do maybe not clickbank in particular but any network like that they're going to have to start just being incredibly aggressive they should start lifting the restrictions for affiliates to be on there because it's going to be very hard for them the distribution and the attention is going to tick tock right now for a lot of these offers particularly neutral offers right so in order to be competitive either you need to figure out how to get your offers on there because that's where the distribution is going you know, you can still keep it on Digi or ClickBank and then make those offers even more aggressive and less focused on compliance because that's going to be your alternative, you know? So I just, I think that's something that I try to train myself on is like really looking at trends and, you know, also not putting all my eggs in one basket, right? Just to kind of, to look at that and just to acknowledge what's really happening. You know, what's really happening is that TikTok as a whole and a grip. you know, of attention. I'm not even on TikTok. I'm not on there. I don't need another thing to be sucked into. But we have a lot of clients that make a lot of money through TikTok, through TikTok affiliate and through doing that. And it's, and it has an even added benefit of that halo effect on Amazon because TikTok shop, you know, it doesn't have the credibility that Amazon does. And, you know, even Ryan Moran was talking about this. I don't know if he said it at capitalism.com, but he said it at my event at four rooms multiple times is he's seeing a halo effect. one sale on TikTok pushes five sales on Amazon because people are just more comfortable ordering through that. Right. So.
- Speaker #1
If TikTok goes away, who's going to step into their place? Because of the legal stuff. Do you think there's someone out there that is in your, that might be able to take their place?
- Speaker #0
Not currently. I don't think it's going to go away. It's way too much money. There's way too much money involved. you know, I don't think it'll go away. Could it be butchered? And maybe that algorithm changed? Do I think it's a danger to America? Absolutely. Like, they have so much information on Americans. And like, it's crazy to think that the Chinese government is not listening or using that, you know, it's in their terms of, you know, it's in their, like policies in general as a country that, you know, the Communist Party can come in and ask these companies for stuff, right? It's not like here. So I mean, it'd be crazy to think that they're not doing that. Do I think they're listening to everybody? No, I think they're probably listening to the key. you know, key thought leaders are important people far more important than you and I, you know, so for that reason, from a, you know, it's another reason to hedge your bets, not to just put everything go all in a tick tock. I think, just for anyone listening, I still want to repeat what I said before, which is like, get really good at one type of affiliate partnership inside of your program before you go on to the next, right? Because I don't want them just spread thin and trying anything. I want them getting serious, like and looking at their program and being like, is my current program competitive? Is it going to attract the type of affiliates I want to work with? Or are there changes that I need to make? For example, people will come to me and be like, I want to work with influencers. I'm like, great. Well, all you have is email creative. And you don't have a tracking that does like discount codes. Right? So how are you going to work with them? You don't have any assets that they need. You don't have the right tracking that they need. So I hear that you want to do that. You know, and these are the changes you need to make before you do that, right? And have we utilized what we currently have at the highest degree? Have we gotten all the email affiliates that we possibly can before we start moving and transitioning into this next thing? Because it sounds cool. And do our actual assets support that type of that switch? Does our company support that type of switch? Like if you never want to prepay for anything and you don't have a budget, then you shouldn't be working with them. Because you need to be convincing people that will work with you on all commission, right? And a lot of the higher level people, they want a hybrid. They want a flat fee to create the content. And then they want a percentage. So unless you're willing to do that, perhaps you shouldn't consider going into that realm.
- Speaker #2
I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of D2C companies, Amazon sellers. And the D2C companies, the sellers there, they get it a lot more than the Amazon sellers. But... Very few are using affiliates properly or even using affiliates. And, you know, you got these shows like Affiliate World and it's an Amazon seller is looking like a deer in the headlights. They have never heard of it. There's not. What do I need affiliates for? Yes, we're talking about creators and influencers, but they don't understand it. And I'm just wondering how long is it going to take before you were talking about, you know, three components? I don't know about you, Kevin, but I really only see two components out of that three that most sellers are using.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. I mean, you have that coming now in the Amazon space. That's where we come from. Norm and I come from that space. This is not an Amazon show, but we come from that space and we have our own podcast in that space. Lunch with Norm or AMPM if you want to listen to that, those listening. But there is some coming with LaVonta and Stack Influence. And, you know, there's several that are popping up that are seeing this opportunity to bridge them together because a lot of these big affiliates, they're inundated with with requests and they're like, I. deal with all this uh who do i go with and so there's there's a leverage opportunity there uh and so you're seeing a lot of that pop up plus with amazon giving the 10 referral bonus for anything that comes in from outside traffic um so i think you're starting to see some of that understanding and there's enough new people coming into that space but i think where a lot of people don't understand is i'll hear someone say i tried affiliate marketing it didn't work i tried levanto or i tried i'm gonna say that influencer and it didn't work you And I think that's for a number of reasons. One is maybe you've got a shit product. There's been 100 other weighted baby blankets that have come through, and they just don't want another weighted blanket, even if it's free. Maybe you're not offering enough on the affiliate commission. It's not worth it. Well, maybe they don't believe in the product. Maybe you don't have, like we talked about on a podcast a couple weeks ago, Norm, where the influencer that we saw at the party that was like, I'm not going to do this for you because it's not going to work. the brand doesn't understand what it actually takes. So when it comes to find, uh, Amber, when it comes to looking for affiliates, some people think they cast a wide net and they like, we need a thousand of them. We're just going to reach out and blast out there. Others are like, like Joe, uh, Josh snow from snow is like, well, I'm just going to cultivate 50 or 55. I'm going to find really good guys. Weed them out. This is going to be my core army. Uh, how do you actually, some people look at numbers. They're like, how many, Oh, this one's got 10 million followers. And that's what they look for. Others like, no, I don't care if they got a thousand followers, but the engagement is 30 percent. That's better than the 10 million followers that only had 17 comments on his last post. How do you go about finding the right match for your brand, whether that's a physical product or a digital asset or whatever you may be selling? What's what's some strategies behind that and thinking that people need to think?
- Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, I always encourage my clients to flip things on their head. And instead of thinking about. How can we find these people? It's why would they care? What is it about your program that makes it a standout? Like you said, there's 50 different weighted baby blankets. So really figuring it out. One of the biggest things that I see with Amazon sellers is they just don't offer enough. So for example, you're going to come give me 10% of your $50 product. I don't get up out of bed for that on a regular day, but you would spend $50 to acquire that customer on Facebook. So why are you not giving the affiliate $50, particularly if you have like subscription or monthly recurring or a good lifetime customer value? And that's always the first thing that I tell them. I'm like, give them some reason to say yes to being your all commission salesperson, because they're not going to do it. You're going to really struggle at that level. Like it has to be interesting. It has to be compelling. And if you're going to pay Zuck $50, why are you not going to pay somebody you're going to look into the eyes and see at a conference? or like do things with it doesn't make any sense to me right i would say a lot of people coming to me they want a channel that's going to be less okay well here's where it's going to be less for you like pay them what you're paying to acquire everywhere else and i guarantee you nine times out of ten the conversion rate is going to be better because coming from a trusted source and usually the stick rate will be longer if you have the nonsense or continuity is coming from a trusted Really what makes this work is it's a transfer of trust. You know, you guys have me on this podcast. You saw me speak somewhere. You liked me. You trust me to come on to your podcast. You are, I am taking the brand and the trust of both of you and Marketing Misfits podcast. And it's coming on to me. It's a halo effect of that. I get to speak to your whole audience now, right? So I think that's a really important thing to understand that when you're working with these creators or... these bloggers they have trust built with their audience that's the reason why typically the conversion rate is significantly better so even if you paid the exact same amount that your pain is up you're actually you're going to end up backing out better and a lot of times you're going to pay a little less than you would pay to acquire on some of these paid media channels i just think that from the jump people are like i only want to pay 10 it's like okay well, you're paying a lot more other places to acquire them. So I don't understand like, why we're thinking this way. So I think first and foremost, it's, am I building something that's competitive on their own? If I was looking at this, and I would be like, Oh, wow, that's generous. Like, I'll totally try this out. Conversion rate looks good. The product looks good. Payment looks good. You know, or I see people, you know, shooting themselves in the foot, and they're pay affiliates 90 days later. It's like, what are you doing? Like, you have to have something that's competitive. right like you also have to have a good customer service one of the reasons why a lot of this doesn't work for people is number one they don't build a program that's actually competitive they're like way below industry best practice right like for example like if i connect other people if i'm not a good fit as an agency or as a consultant i send it somewhere else to someone i vetted and i trust and they're not paying the standard 10 referral fee why am i going to do that i just talked to somebody who does great work and wants to give five i'm not going to do that why why would i do all this work for you to close a client and bring it over and you're going to be less than industry best standard i'm not doing it i don't care how good you are you know raise your price or treat me differently because i'm going to bring a lot of business right so to me at the end of the day it's number one what are we building and why are we building it it can't just be i want to build it so i have a stable leg in my business and i'm going to build something that's not competitive the next issue is people you know i see a lot of people like we tried it like who did it oh my ea my va scraped a bunch of stuff okay this is it if if you told me that you wanted to be number one on youtube in your category next year you would buy the books you would hire a mentor you would understand you have to do the thumbnails you understand you have to get on camera and create a bunch of different videos you would be studying the algorithm like anything else this is a people-based business the people are part of the algorithm right so first you have to get the program right then you have to get the people in the driver's seat right who's pushing this forward every single day because if you don't have that of course it's going to be like we don't even know if it's worth it or not Right. And so that's an important piece, just as the piece of who's externally working with us, who are the affiliates. If you don't have somebody who's going to be high touch talking to these people that have 300 people a day in their inbox asking them to promote them, then what's happening here? Right. Because you're not going to get good results. And then the last part that's always broken in most people's businesses when it comes to an affiliate program is an actual process. Like I love Josh Snow's perspective. That's my perspective. Because guess what? If I have a thousand affiliates on average. 100 will be active if I'm lucky and I have 120 will make any meaningful difference if I'm lucky. And so what's going to happen is the other, you know, 980 affiliates are going to bother me with how do I make a link? What do I do? I need my $50 in my sale. Like, I don't need to talk to those people. I want to talk to people who are good at being affiliates because I don't need to train them. And they have the audience and they understand. Right. So, like, for me. You can build a seven-figure, eight-figure, even nine-figure affiliate channel inside your business. I see it every single day. If you have a really good program, you have really good products, and you have people in the driver's seat that are responsive and always on top of it, you're optimizing your offer, you're bringing out new creatives, new hook ideas, you're willing to have a budget, you know, and that's what I see working. Not like I'm half in, half out, because I always say like, okay, great. Well, if that's how you are, then that's how all your relationships are. That's how all the things that you're doing is. It's half in, half out. So you're going to get exactly what you expect. You're going to get half and half results. And I don't know how to help you unless you tell me I'm going to commit to changing it. And I'm going to actually do the work because it's not going to just fall on your lap, just like your business, just like your relationship, just like all the things you're doing. If you don't devote time for it and you actually have a strategy and a structure and cadence KPIs and accountability, it's not going to work.
- Speaker #1
I think there's a lot of sellers, too, and brands, too, that don't understand. what it actually takes to develop exactly what you just said. They are expecting immediate gratification. Oh, give me this influencer. They just went viral. They got a million views on the last video. So I'll pay you a couple grand and I'll give you 10%. Go do that for me. So can you talk about that a little bit?
- Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, I see that every single day, you know, when we're here with clients. You know, one of the first things that everybody wants is, I want everyone to promote me and I don't want to promote anyone back. And I'm like. okay you and everybody else right you and every other person so that can be true if you have the best program in your niche in the industry it's the most competitive pace the fastest pays the most right you have the most responsive team you have all the types of assets they could ever want and need you have proven stuff you don't just test it on your affiliates you actually spend some money testing internally testing on paid before you roll stuff out you have good communication with them if all of that is true then you can be the one that gets all the one-way traffic. If that is not true, then you need to start thinking about how to play nice in the sandbox with other people that you know, like, and trust and respect that have complimentary offers to you. You know, like, for example, if you do, like... Let's say that you do, I don't know, red light therapy, you know, on Amazon and you're selling red lights. OK, great. Well, if people are wanting to get red lights, they're probably also wanting other things. Maybe you can partner with a sauna company, sauna, red light. Maybe you can partner with a cold punch company, right, that have similar audiences. So like kind of get out of your own way and start thinking about people that have that halo effect, that have that audience that I can partner with, that I am willing to cross promote, because that cross promotion is a very good leverage tool. you know that you can use until you have the proven program in the category when you start having the the king of the hill offer that's when you can start people start coming to you you can start being more picky but then if you also tell me i want everything one way on performance test my unproven offers on everybody else's dime and i'm not willing to put money into it and do prepays or drops or whatever then okay well now we've lost all the leverage points right you don't want to play nice with other people you're not willing to do cross promotions you don't want to pay you have an odd proven offer you want to pay a little tiny bit you know then i would tell you no don't do it don't do it because it's going to be a total waste of your time and then if you don't have anybody who has hands on the reins to do it for you then don't do it you know like i think that's it's a hard thing for people to hear because they get shiny object syndrome but it is a channel like any other you know if you came to me like put up one facebook ad and my va did it from the philippines And we got shut down. So like Facebook ads are not for me. You're like, okay, you get exactly what you think you're going to get, right? Those are the types of results you're going to get. So, you know, that's something that you have to take seriously. Yeah,
- Speaker #2
lack of learning, but also a lot of people don't understand this is a job. You know, it just, why should I, what should I pay that much? You know, Kevin, you hit it on the head when it was that 10%. I mean. People are so underpaying and they don't understand this. It's a job. And the other thing that I hate, this is probably going down a different rabbit hole, but we'll get out of it really quickly. But just not paying, taking the creator's work or the influencer's work and then using it as their own and not getting the agreements where they can use it. Not off the affiliate link. Okay. Bypassing the affiliate link and putting it on YouTube or wherever. And you don't think that that's deserving for the affiliate. Sometimes people are just ignorant. They don't understand that some maybe not, but yeah, that's another part of this. I say this almost every episode, also managing expectations. Maybe the knowledge isn't out there. So, you know, we have to, as the affiliate. I'm a big systems person, but understanding and managing expectations so both parties understand what really they're going to get out of it.
- Speaker #0
I agree with you so much there. It's so important. And that's why the human touch is so important. You can have amazing AI tools. I wish I had the type of AI tools as an affiliate manager as you do now to do a lot of the outreach and write custom copy for your emails. all this stuff, but that kind of belly to belly management where you're managing expectations, and you're getting things down in writing, you know, and you're treating it like a real important business piece of the channel, I think is like so important. And it requires that human touch and that finesse to kind of drive that forward. And in terms of like your exposure, like, I agree with you, you definitely should be if you're going to use those types of assets on different channels, like taking it from TikTok to YouTube. you should have an agreement with that affiliate because you don't have their permission to use their likeness in that way unless you specifically ask for it and that's usually a bit more money for you to run it on other platforms um and you need to get that down in writing because what you don't want to do is have your affiliate manager you say that verbally it's okay and then push comes to shove and they're like what are you doing you know like i'm i don't agree with that now you have an issue on your hands what makes a good affiliate For me, anyone who makes a cash register ring, baby. Nice. For me, someone who brings me accessories.
- Speaker #1
That's a cash register ring.
- Speaker #0
That's a cash register ring, baby. Like, for me, at the end of the day, like, that's the thing. I talk to teams all the time. They're, like, telling me all these things, you know, that they're working on. I'm like, it's been five weeks, and I see no sales yet. Like all this sounds great, but none of this matters until we start seeing some sales. And so what is it?
- Speaker #1
Do you use affiliates just for performance marketing? Just it's all about the sale? Or do you use affiliates for like top of the funnel awareness as well?
- Speaker #0
I feel like it's more of a mofu style funnel right middle funnel or like yeah you can have them to do kind of brand awareness and stuff but I think you know having partnerships with people where like you are their chosen person of choice for the weighted baby blankets you are their choice in that and we can figure out how to like create a moat around you like we're doing you know things just for you custom landing pages or custom promotion times for different holidays or like anniversaries or whatever or you know sponsoring your email newsletter we're getting solos we're getting on your podcast we're sponsoring your podcast like just really building a moat around the people that send a good amount of volume i think is really important i think that's something that a lot of people miss yeah
- Speaker #1
i would agree and back to your point on the the commissions where you're talking about norm the 10 i see this in the amazon space so many people i i look at it as a launch i she talked about the halo effect and you talked about the 10 percent uh if you look at If I'm launching a new product, let's say on Amazon, and I know that Halo Effect exists, I'm going to give the affiliate 100%. I mean, when I go, nobody does this. I don't understand it. Nobody, nobody.
- Speaker #0
I don't get it either. It's crazy.
- Speaker #1
Here's what I would do. I'd go into a service like Stack Influence or Lamonta or something and say, line up my affiliates and say, I'm going to have a competition because I'm launching this product on Amazon on January 17th. From the 17th to the 24th. Whoever sells the most in that, I'm going to give you 100% of everything you sell in that period. And I'm going to give someone a free iPad or a free Caribbean cruise or whatever it may be for whoever sells the most in that period. Get them to go out there, just blast the product, get that halo effect going so I organically rank and just get that ball rolling. I don't know why anybody, it baffles my mind that why am I one of the only people that does this?
- Speaker #2
Hey, Kevin? Yeah. Thanks a lot. You just gave away our secret sauce over at Dragonfish.
- Speaker #1
I'm not worried about that because nobody's doing nobody knows how to do it right know how to do it uh so I challenge anybody to go out there uh but it's it's crazy uh how much you said it relationships I mean undervaluing these affiliates I mean I think you made an important point and something that norm and one of our companies we actually need to do we need a person that their job is nothing but relationships with it's not Send the email. Here's the latest promotion. We got something for New Year's at 35% off. We got something for Valentine's at this off. Do you want to join the program? Here's a special way beyond that. It's like call them up on their birthday. Call them. Become their buddy, their friend, their whatever. What do you need from us to support you? Oh, I saw you just post on Instagram that you just had a newborn baby. So you sent them a freaking gift of a weighted blanket. No, I'm just kidding. whatever it is, but give that personal touch that, and don't just treat them as a number. Don't just treat them as like some anonymous thing that's just sending you, making the cash register ring, treat them as a human. And I think that's a missing component.
- Speaker #2
Now, a quick word from our sponsor, LaVonta. Hey, Kevin, tell us a little bit about it.
- Speaker #1
That's right, Amazon sellers. Do you want to skyrocket your sales and boost your organic rankings? Meet Levanta, Norm and I's secret weapon for driving high-quality external traffic straight to our Amazon storefronts using affiliate marketing. That's right, it's achieved through direct partnerships with leading media outlets like CNN, Wirecutter, and BuzzFeed, just to name a few, as well as top affiliates, influencers, bloggers, and media buyers, all in Levanta's marketplace, which is home to over 5,000 different creators that you get to choose from.
- Speaker #2
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- Speaker #0
100% dude. And I, you know, I have seen like the power of that, like the power of your relationships. Like I have two great examples. Like there's a very recognizable supplement company in the space. If I said their name, you would know it incredibly clean, like clean brand, like they're not direct response. They're like love organic, like highest quality ingredients. And they started out with affiliates and then they just made the decision that they were done. And to be honest, they left kind of a train wreck behind them because they didn't do a lot of joint ventures that they said they were going to do and just like didn't keep their word. And they're like, yeah, we're done doing affiliates. left, right? And they started doing millions and millions of dollars a month on Facebook. And in
- Speaker #1
March, paid ads.
- Speaker #0
And that was our number one customer acquisition source. It got kicked off. And they did not get back on until April of 2023. And this is a company that had reps inside of Meta. No one could figure it out. No one knew why they didn't make any, it wasn't a claims issue. It wasn't anything issue. can't tell you exactly what it is but when i heard i was like what that is so dumb it had something to do with a login so dumb they could not they hired so many people could not so then what they had to do is they had to go eat crow and they'd go back to all those people that they forgot about and treated poorly and asked them to help most of them said you can go screw yourself i don't care like now you need me no they had to do massive layoffs and then they figured out a podcast strategy They started getting the face of the business on podcasts and started sponsoring the podcast worked out for them. And then they built a multi seven figure channel with that. And they figured out some other things, but they really shrunk. And then they boomerang once they got back on in April 2023. So now they had that partnership channel on the head this, right. And so that kind of thing, they could have just come immediately there. And maybe they didn't have to layoffs. They didn't have to do all that stuff. And for me on a personal level, you know, I lost my partner in November of 2019. And when she died by suicide, I just like, I could not handle my life anymore. And I shut down my agency for a long time. At that moment, I was like, I'm done. And I needed some time off. I had some of my affiliate partners and friends come in and step in and help me with that transition, took some of my team members, you know, just like supported me so much. And then when I was ready to come back to work, it was February of late February. of 2020 and the way I got customers was from speaking on stage and so that was shut down and all of a sudden I was like I was literally out of Gora's offices the day Trump declared a national emergency and like I couldn't do that anymore I was there with them like every two weeks for years so like my primary clients and like all these other people that paid to see me one-on-one started doing layoffs started you know everyone was scared it ended up being a boon for us but like I didn't know that at the time And so I launched my first ever group coaching. I'd never done that before. We'd only ever done like one-to-one, belly-to-belly, small, high-end custom consultations. And like all of my affiliate partners, because we had another business in health doing keto offers, recipe books and stuff. They started promoting our keto offers and started sending all their teams and clients and friends into our program. And overnight, we had 300 people enrolled into our virtual training. And it saved our business. it completely saved our business. But if I hadn't have been working on this and maintaining my relationships and thinking through that, you know, and like training other teams and being congruent and actually doing the work of being a good partner myself, I wouldn't have had that reaction, right? And it's a tale of two different types of companies, right? And it's like, this is the kind of thing that's nice. If I'm going to be like sentimental for a moment, it's nice to have. other founders and brands that are invested in my success, because I'm an affiliate of theirs. And to know that if something happens to my paid media, you know, that I have a cohort of people that are making money with me, you know, and for me, and that I have that to rely on. And I don't think a lot of people have that. And it's one of the reasons why I'm passionate about what I do is because, like, I've felt the effects, and I've seen it. And it's not a matter of If you get kicked off of meta or if Google's algorithm changes or what have you, it's when. And so it gives you time to adapt to it. And it gives you time to figure out how to keep monetizing on that channel. Am I going to say that partnerships and affiliates are going to replace your paid media? No, but they can be huge for you. Like I said, I look behind seven, eight, nine figures a year of just partners. And I have many examples of that. Right. So I think that's like the important thing is if you're listening, it's like that's the power of it, but requires attention. It requires you thinking through, you know, what's the end benefit for these partners and how can I make sure to to build a motor on them and take good care of them? Because they will show up for you if you do that.
- Speaker #1
And that's one of the reasons you started this mastermind. You have your own like high level mastermind now, too. Right. So you're bringing in these people that. Like you said, it's relationships. Norm and I preach this on our pulpit all the time about it's relationships. We go to events not to listen to someone on stage. We go to events to make the connections with the people in the audience and at dinners and at the bar and wherever. And, yeah, you sometimes get some good stuff off stage, and you'll get something. But it's. It's that it's, it's, it's in those relationships. And when you, you have a mastermind like you do, that's like you said, Ryan was at it. And you bring all these top level people together. It's the sharing of knowledge. It's the bonds. You all talk the same language. You all geek out on the same stuff and you don't get that anywhere else. And by creating that, it's, it's magical. The power that can have no matter what the cost, whether it's a thousand dollars a year or $50,000 a year, I'm in a $30,000 a year mastermind and it's worth every penny. Uh, you know, it just depends on. Not everybody could afford that. For the longest time, I was like, I'm not going to pay that kind of money to be in a mastermind. That's crazy. But now that I've done it, I don't want to get out of it. How did you come to create your group, and what do you guys do? Can you talk about that a little bit?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, of course. Thanks for asking. That's the thing that I love most doing right now. outside of partnerships and working with a few clients on that. You know, like I shared with you, I had a huge loss. You know, now it's crazy. It's like five years ago. It's like so nuts to think about it. And, you know, before that, I was really sick and I ended up running myself from the ground because I was like a new entrepreneur, right? And I was like, everything on the altar of success. I remember being like, I can make $50,000 a year. Like, I would be the richest person right now. right then he's saying you know while i see you're like some of them are making that day this is crazy you know like what is happening and um you know i i modeled myself after you know just driving so hard and being all about my financial success and when i ended up needing surgery and i lost you know my my partner um you know i just realized like i'd do anything to give get that time back and what am i doing Like if everything is about money and it's not about, you know, I'm attaching my value to the size of my business. You know, it was it was a very eye opening to realize, like, wow, I'm financially more successful than I ever thought I would be. And I'm covering my grandma's mortgage and doing all these things, but I don't talk to her. I'm so freaking busy, you know. And so I had a realization then I was like, you know, I I'm in a lot of the other groups like you, Kevin. Like, you know, I've been in a lot of. the masterminds and they've been incredibly valuable to me and I've loved them and I found a great ROI but I was like I just want to build something different where you know it's about something other than just money and I know that's a really hard thing for a business mastermind because the reality of it is is that everyone mostly is going to go in there so they can get a financial ROI so the way that we ensure that is curation so Four Rooms is based on an Indian proverb that I found when I was recovering from surgery. It talks about four rooms within us, an emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual room, and how important it is to go into every room with regularity or these rooms start to atrophy and die. And that's when I realized I'm not taking care of myself at all. I'm a total trash panda. I eat at bars and airplanes, and I don't work out. I have no spiritual practice. Like, this is terrible. And I started doing that. I felt better. And so when I launched Four Rooms, I was like, what is... like a whole entrepreneur look like? Like what are their four rooms? And just distilled it down to you know your health, the health of your body, the health of your mind, the health of your relationships, you know your wealth which is your impact, your legacy, you know your financial status in the sense that we're not just working just to acquire more, we're actually looking for financial freedom. You know the scale of our business of course it is a business match for me. And we have to do that. That's why we build world class. And then we're your relationship. So the way that we ensure the ROI is won by the curation. You cannot buy a ticket to my event ever. You have to apply. You have to be invited. I have to see you in the wild. Like you guys would be great fits for us. Like I would love to invite you guys, you know, or you have to be nominated. There's no other way to get in. And we keep the curation of that group incredibly high. And that's why we sell out every year. And we have since the very beginning. And you know everyone told me that it was a dumb idea. You know all my all my friends like Glenn Ledwell and JJ Virgin Anyone that runs a mash for I was like stupid like you have you know Perry Belcher. This is stupid. Look at driven you know as 5,000 percent guaranteed return and I'm like dude, I love that and Certainly you can deliver. I'm sure on that promise because you are the guru, but this is not about me This is about everyone else in this room and if we keep the curation the standard high with the mission of like abundance in every area I have a feeling will work and here we are going into year three of the mastermind I've had the mastermind group for six years before that but it was named something else with a different partner. And we just evolved completely as four rooms. And it's crazy because literally every single day I get a text from a nine figure entrepreneur, you know, a multi eight figure entrepreneur, and they want to be a part of it. They want to come join. They want to speak and they love the mission. And, you know, we're seeing Lambos and record breaking months and like all this stuff that we do in other groups that that's not the main focus. Like we're also talking about their marriage and about their identity and about, you know, when things get hard, you know, we've. walk people through suicidal ideations, divorce, death of a parent, a business partnership implosion that got really ugly, all kinds of stuff. And we actually walk them through it. And like, that's important to me. And so, you know, for the little weird homeschool kid that never felt like I fit in anywhere, you know, I just built like a community of people. And I didn't know if people would say yes to that. And they have. And it's been such a privilege to be able to walk them through and to see them getting fantastic results. Like you look at I'll show you guys. Our NPS scores are off the charts. They're like, we just got a 9.4, we did a 9.5, the one before, and a 9.2, the one before that. These are unheard of for people. They tell us how much value they got financially. It's crazy. It's off the charts. And I think that's because everything we do is based on you. You do in-depth intake forms. And from there, we're picking who you're sitting next to at these events and why you're sitting next to them. We're pairing you with experts to get a chance to work with them. you know, one-on-one. Like we're sourcing the experts based on the intake forms, not just on who's cool and like known out there. Like, I don't care about that. I want to know who's actually getting the work done and what they're doing. And I want to, I care that they're world class and they're going to hang out the whole time, not just come in with their rolly bag and pitch shit and get out. Like that's not what I'm building, you know? And so it's been a labor of love and it's growing. Like we like doubled it, you know, this year. in terms of the revenue and the type of people that are coming in. It just keeps happening.
- Speaker #1
It's awesome.
- Speaker #2
I have an event that's a baby bird.
- Speaker #1
I have something that's a baby bird. Nothing near to what you're doing, but I do something. I have an event in the Amazon space called $40 Seller Summit. It's all about Amazon tactic.
- Speaker #0
Cool. I think Molly Mahoney went to that.
- Speaker #1
She did last year. Oh, yeah. She actually came for that, but she spoke at the second event. That's what- is the baby of what you're doing. And it was called Level Up. And so my idea was like, I go to Funnel Hacking Live, I go to Go High Level, I go to all these other events outside of the Amazon space, but most people in the Amazon space where Norm and I are most known, they're in this fishbowl and they're not growing themselves as entrepreneurs. They're not growing themselves into other disciplines. So I started an event called Level Up. And the first one was last May in Hawaii, Molly spoke at it. And so I brought her out to speak. And I had someone speaking on attractive character. I had someone, Perry spoke, I had to do an AI. So it's a mix. I had someone speak on mindset. I had someone speak on how they were abused as a child and how they had some of the most fortunate times when they were going through some of the roughest times in life. So it's a whole mix. And I've changed the name because of trademark reasons to Elevate360. I'm doing another one in April in Iceland. So I do these. So I'm doing my event. And I have the level of speak, the speakers that are there, everything from Jesse Elder, I'm sure you know, to the guy who helped Mr. Beast make himself on YouTube, to someone who has six kids, owns 10 companies and on the board of 20 others, and gets invited to lunch regularly with Peter Thiel just for him to pick her brain. And then I have a nutritionist, someone talking about nutrition, and not a nutritionist saying you need to go to this diet. but more the psychology of eating is called intuitive eating and talking about that. So it's a mix. So it's not nearly at the level you do. But then Norm and I, we have something called Collective Mind Society that we've done two events. And it's turning in. We're about to turn into a much bigger deal than it has been. Well, we started off like, look, we want to get people together that think similar. Entrepreneurs, there's just something about entrepreneurs, whether you're doing Amazon or Facebook or affiliate. There's just something different about you. You're a misfit. You're just, you don't fit into the normal routine. Let's do something that's not presentations. That's not, you know, Chumwan trying to sell stuff or bringing their suitcase in to pitch you and then leave. Let's do a cool event and just bring a small group together. So we did the first one at F1 in Austin in 2022. We rented a cabana, a $10,000 a day cabana. We went to Marsh, had VIP tickets at Marshmallow.
- Speaker #2
That was a... Wasn't that $100,000? $100,000.
- Speaker #1
$100,000 a day plus food, and it was expensive. And everybody paid. You know, it was not cheap. We didn't make any money. Norman actually lost money.
- Speaker #0
Well, I loved it. We think so similar around this stuff, and I love meeting like-minded people because, you know, what you're talking about, Evan, like we talk a lot about that, and you have world-class people there. I mean, Molly's one of our members, and I admire her and respect her and love her. Jesse as well. And, you know, all these people, they're just world-class what they do. And I also think it's just important to talk about those things because the six inches in between our ears are our biggest obstacle, you know, and we can talk tactics all day long and teach tactics all day long, but there's so many people that won't take action. And it has something to do with this, you know, and something to do with this, their heart and their head is like, you know, they got their head. their gas and the brake pedal going at the same time they don't believe that they're worthy of success. They're afraid of failure. It's all these things. I think those are the challenges for entrepreneurs. And we need to talk about them. And so many entrepreneurs are such workaholics and their relationships are decaying. And they keep thinking like, oh, well, my wife or my husband's going to be fine. I'm going to work so super hard for the next 10 years and sacrifice everything so that we can retire. And it's like, you look at the end and you don't have a marriage anymore. And that's not what we're designed to be. is just workhorses and not enjoy the rest of our lives. And I think what you're doing is really important, Kevin. I think it's important work for these entrepreneurs and they need to hear it because you can only hear so many tactics anyways. You know what I mean? Like you're not going to do all of them. We know that. A bunch of events. If you can get a couple huge nuggets and you work on that, it's going to change it and make it worth your time.
- Speaker #2
The strangest thing is when you go out, I'm just going to go back to, the collective mind or what you're doing is that when you're not doing the set presentations and you've got a group of people who think alike, we always say it's like sitting around a campfire and you just start talking. Usually you'll get more out of those conversations than what you would get out of the traditional event. I don't know how many times, I know on our train trip, Kev, within the... first couple of hours, I'm looking like Lauren Pibworth was there and she was telling me about something I could do in travel. I said, Lauren, you just saved me 20 grand. It just was coming up. But these are the things that I love is just not, okay, it doesn't have to be just grind, grind, grind, grind, grind. Around friends, talk a little bit of business when it comes up, learn about life. I can take that.
- Speaker #0
Well, it's crazy, too, because the most relaxed people I know are the wealthiest and, like, have the biggest businesses. Like, literally. Because they're smart. They put their money into investments and they're, you know, they're figuring out they want that freedom. They might still be involved in their business, but, like, they're the most relaxed. They have the most time, you know. So they're doing something right. You know, I see my friends that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars and some billionaires, you know, that we know and spend time with. Like, they're relaxed. You know, it's not just because they have a bunch of people working for them. It's their mindset, you know. And, like, I think that's a really powerful thing for me because I'm watching it. I'm like, man, my business is nowhere near it because I have way more shows. I have way more on my plate. I have way more calls, you know. Like, there's something here, right, that I need to work on. Being around people with that type of mentality just teaches me a lot.
- Speaker #1
I think some of that's when you hit a certain point, whether the number is different for everybody, then you don't have to worry about we're still in that. If you're in that middle stage, we're still, like, grinding. We're still, like. trying to get that 50 million or 100 million in the bank so we can live off of 4% interest per year and maintain our lifestyle or increase our lifestyle versus they've hit that. They're like, okay, now they realize some of them still want to go out and do things that it's in their blood. Like I need another challenge. I need another challenge. Other ones get depressed. Sometimes when you have a big exit like that, they're like, what do I do now? I'm bored. I'm depressed. And it causes issues. But the smart ones, like you said, they realize that the most valuable asset in the world is not money. It's time. You said it earlier with your grandmother, not being able to pay her rent, but not being able to talk with her or see her. It's time. And that's where a lot of, I think, entrepreneurs get caught up is time just flies by because you're doing what you love, but you're also ignoring what you love.
- Speaker #0
Damn. So true.
- Speaker #1
Hey, Kevin King and Norm Farrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We've got some more valuable stuff coming up. Be sure to hit that subscribe button if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast player, or if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, make sure you subscribe to our channel because you don't want to miss a single episode of the Marketing Misfits. Have you subscribed yet, Norm?
- Speaker #2
Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, but what if you forget to show up one time? It's just me on here. You're not going to know what I say.
- Speaker #2
I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair too. And we'll just, you can go back and forth with one another. But that being said, don't forget to subscribe, share it. Oh, and if you really like this content, somewhere up there, there's a banner. Click on it and you'll go to another episode of the Marketing Misfits.
- Speaker #1
Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm.
- Speaker #0
So true. Dude, wise. I love that I got a chance to dive deep with you on this stuff, because I think it's just so important, the work that we're doing to bring this to entrepreneurs'lives, because I think they're just the best people. They care so much. They're such hard drivers. And just a reminder that their value is not tied to the size of their business or the enterprise value of their business. They're innately valuable as they are.
- Speaker #1
They're misfits. The misfits that don't march by what society says you should do. This is society. We do this, this, this, and this. And I'm like, screw that. I'm going to do what I want. This, this, this, and this. And that's what entrepreneurship, uh, and gives you, it gives you that freedom, uh, to do, to march to your own drummer. And I think that's, there's nothing more valuable, more valuable than that. And by building an affiliate army to do, to do that for you, even better,
- Speaker #0
even better, dude, it feels good to have a bunch of soldiers out there saying,
- Speaker #1
yeah.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, it does.
- Speaker #1
It feels good.
- Speaker #2
I want them to be fighting with swords and not like sticks.
- Speaker #0
Exactly. Exactly.
- Speaker #1
So Amber, if people want to reach out to you, find out more about you or find out about the master, or you got to be invited. Sorry, everybody. You can't find, you got to be invited.
- Speaker #0
You can apply.
- Speaker #1
You can apply. So if they want to apply to the mastermind or if they want to reach out to you, I know you have an agency that helps people do a lot of this stuff. What's the best ways? to do all that? What's the yellow page directory ad say?
- Speaker #0
Thank you for asking. If you want to be a part of 4Rooms, the mastermind for 7, 8, 9 figure founders, then 4Rooms 4 fully spelled out. 4RoomsMastermind.com You can email me directly, Amber at 4RoomsMastermind.com and you too are invited. Anyone listening that's cool can apply. uh if you meet those metrics uh if you're someone that we want to have dinner with and and really grow with and invest into because that's really what it is it's like i'm Ausha because i'm investing my robodex and you know my best clients and my best friends you know my best affiliate partners my mentors right that's all who's in there um and then if you want help growing or reaching your revenue with with partnerships uh you know east fifth avenue is my company that we've trained over 2,500 companies and we can help you hire an affiliate manager or optimize your program or, you know, make intros, kind of all that. So if that's something that you want, then, you know, amber at eastfithavenue.com. It's my email. We do check it. You know, I always feel like if someone's going to take the time to listen to me talk for an hour or so, and then they spent a lot of time with me and they want to email me, then I'm happy to have them contact me and see if I can help.
- Speaker #1
Awesome. All right.
- Speaker #2
Very good. Now, I do have to ask you a question. At the end of every podcast, we always ask our misfit if they know a misfit.
- Speaker #0
So many. I feel like, do you know Nate Ginsberg?
- Speaker #2
Sure.
- Speaker #0
Okay. I feel like he would be interesting because he does a lot of work with Amazon. People don't know if that's their primary one on here, but like, dude, I have so many. I mean, I've got Precious Metals. I got Aurora. I've got... like pitman i got like you know any of these peeps just i'm sure you know a lot of them too what about steven ezel do you know him what he's doing with truly free no i love guy steven ezel um started uh truly home truly home free and it's a suite of like non-toxic amazing like products for every product that he sells um he helps a blind woman in jamaica this guy's just like amazing If you want to talk SEO, David Feinberg is a genius with Peaks Digital. He's got some really interesting stuff. I've got contacts, I'm sure you do too, with Kevin Richards from ClickFunnels or Kelly Household or any of those guys. There's some really interesting people that I have in my community that I could connect you to. Someone that has a really interesting affiliate model that you might want to consider. Do you know the guys who sphere rocket VA?
- Speaker #2
No,
- Speaker #0
no kids. Okay, so they're like in their early 30s, late 20s. And they started their VA company in 2020. And they're already over 60 million a year. Super interesting affiliate model I've never seen. So Steven, he's got some really interesting stuff there too.
- Speaker #2
Very good. Okay, Amber, we're going to remove you, but we'll come right back and talk to you.
- Speaker #1
Thanks. All right. Thank you.
- Speaker #0
Thanks,
- Speaker #3
guys.
- Speaker #1
That was good stuff. Always, always cool to talk to cool people that are doing good things. And Amber is one of those people. You can just tell she's good people.
- Speaker #2
And just as willing to share. Just take a look. We asked for one misfit, and we've got a whole.
- Speaker #1
We got your whole roll of that. We're like, damn, we got to like spin the wheel, see who comes on. No, that's awesome. And it's always good stuff here. As you can see, if you're a regular listener to the Marketing Misfits, we cover everything. It's from affiliate marketing to branding to CPG to whatever. I mean, AI, we've covered it all. And if you haven't listened. to we started this podcast norm and i as most of you know we have our own podcast that we've been doing for years in the amazon space that's all amazon focus this podcast is not amazon focused but if you want to check those out it's lunch with norm and am pm podcast but go back to marketing misfits we started this at the end of april of 2024 and we have not missed a single uh week well that might have been one week i think we had a technical problem but because of kelsey one week If you're listening, Kelsey, you're fired.
- Speaker #2
That's not true, Kels. That's not true.
- Speaker #1
No, just kidding. There's one week we had a technical issue. But other than that, every single week, all the way back to Katie Wells, who was the very first one, who's actually going to be at Elevate 360. That's the woman who has the six kids, 10 businesses, 20 boards. And that's the type of guest. And you can see by Amber. So if you just are checking us out for the first time, go back on our YouTube channel. Go back on your Spotify or Apple and listen to some of the episodes because there's some really good stuff. Or you can just go to marketingmisfits.co or.com. I'm getting old.
- Speaker #2
You said we started this in April, right?
- Speaker #1
I did.
- Speaker #2
And how many episodes have we done? Quite a few.
- Speaker #1
What is this? 40 or something. Oh,
- Speaker #2
you should know it's.co.
- Speaker #1
That's right. It's.co. So marketingmisfits.co.
- Speaker #2
You got it.
- Speaker #1
Or if you like this episode with Amber and you know someone that would benefit by listening, forward it to her. Don't just tell them about it. Forward the link. You can actually forward that in Apple or Spotify or on YouTube and get them to come in and join us as a Misfit. And if you're looking for more information on some of the stuff that Norm and I do, like Collective Mind Society, you can go to collectivemindsociety.com and get information on that. But we'll be back again next Tuesday. I think next Tuesday, right, Norm? You got it. Next Tuesday. Tuesday with another episode of the Marketing Misfits.
- Speaker #2
All right, everybody. Until next Tuesday. Ciao. See you later.
