Therapy Session 👥 Unapologetic Affiliate Marketing Strategies

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float Shark with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf.

Joe.

Hey, what's up, everyone?

Hi there.

Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast.

We're back and we're sitting in a truck.

Yeah, my voice right now, I feel like I'm on a smooth jazz radio station. Today we're going to be playing some hits from the 1960s.

Boom chicka pow. Boom chicky wicky wicky.

Yeah.

Awesome. Awesome.

All right. So you can live that dream of yours right now, Matt. Right now. Yeah.

That dream of being a smooth jazz dj. I don't even think I could name a smooth jazz artist.

Oh, wait, no. Kenny G. Of course. Kenny G is him.

He is the one. He's probably the most famous smooth jazz artist ever.

Yeah. In that saxophone woo. His skills.

Yeah.

For the longest. And the hair woo. Yeah.

He's got it going on.

Oh, man. Today. So let's tell them about what we did today. Actually, we did. And then we'll get into what we're gonna chit chat about today.

Okay. Before we do.

Oh, yeah, of course. There's an intro.

There's an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

I forgot about that thing.

Yeah. So we're gonna take notes on this episode for you.

Always. Always.

Yeah. So we're gonna take notes. Actually, we're not gonna do it. Thank you, Sue.

You're the best.

So Sue's gonna take notes for you on this episode. And after you listen to this episode, you can go get those notes for free.

Yeah. And these notes we. Time saver. Hello. Yeah. So, you know, if you don't have enough time to carve through this whole episode or pay attention to all the little details or stop your car and take some notes. That's why we do that for you.

Yeah.

So sue, our fabulous note taker. Hi, Sue. Is doing all that for you.

We're saving your life. We don't want you to be in a car accident. We don't want you get hit by a car. If you're listening to this while out for a walk.

Yeah. Don't be looking at your phone while you're crossing an intersection to not be that person.

Yeah. So these notes are literal lifesavers. We are saving your life by giving you these notes.

You're welcome. So you can get these notes for free for this episode. You can get notes for free all the time, but not always for the episode you're looking for. When this thing came live, you know, whatever dropped, released it. You have two weeks. That's about it. So that's your little TikTok. TikTok. If you go to hustleinfluidchart.com comp, c o m p, that's where you get these notes for free. Or free. If you have your mobiles open and you don't want to type in a big, long URL, you can pull up your text message and simply text comp the word C O M P to the phone number Matthew 38472. No.

What is it? Did I say it wrong?

384-70-38470. Dang it.

We don't have our. We usually have the number, like, sitting in front of us on our notes. So we don't say it wrong and we don't have it in front of us today.

Yeah, we're literally looking at a lake right now in Matt's truck. So. Yeah, we weren't joking about that. So if you text three to the. To the phone number 38470, comp and you text the word comp, 38470, comp. Comp, that's what will also get you the notes. So that's about it. So hustleandflowchart.com comp or that thing I just said before.

Yes. Go get them notes, because they're good.

Of course. Them good.

Them good notes.

They have good. You know, I can't even say bad grammar like I'm trying to say bad grammar. I can't think of it. I'm like, not good grammar. They done grammar good on our notes.

All right, don't take notes on that part, Sue.

Just skip ahead.

Just skip past that part. No. So, yeah, what we were doing today was we just got done creating a training course over at the offices of Wealth Fit here in San Diego.

We done did that. And they share the office. They're affiliated with Fortune Builders, who's a very large company. And in San Diego, at least, they're playing radio spots all the time.

Yeah.

So it's pretty cool to be like, hey, all those radio spots that they're playing that. Yeah, we've been in that podcast studio. We've recorded on those mics.

Yep, Yep. It was fun. And their process for creating courses was just. It was really amazing. Yeah. We've been working on this course with them for a couple months now. But the. The process of how they actually script the courses and get you prepared and ready for the actual day that you're recording the training is really, really cool. Maybe one of these days we'll make a little behind the scenes video or something.

And they made it for us. They said. I know, come on.

That's what I was hinting at. Joke. Maybe one of these days we'll, you know, put a lot of effort into creating a behind the scenes video for you.

Yeah.

One of quality and not one of.

Just, I don't know, some weird iPhone.

That I was going to take credit for. Something that Wealth Fit is doing for us. Thank you, Dustin Team.

No, seriously though. So the way. This is amazing. So this goes into our focuses, which we'll talk about later, of creating more content. And primarily that content's living on other platforms. Obviously we have our own platform too, but courses and things like that. Don't wanna do the selling. We don't wanna necessarily do that. We'll get into that later. But Wealth Fit, man. Shout out to the team there, the process. They do business good. Yeah, they do it well.

They do business good.

I was trying to go back to the bad grammar. So Dustin Matthews is one of the founders and their team is just huge. But the production quality, like we literally walked into the studio perfectly. Like there was four people on the team there. Five with a, you know, a designer of the set. A set designer that was matched to our clothes. We had our book on scene. Actually, I left the EGP letter there, but maybe someone will read it. So that's cool. Cause I brought that as a prop. Forgot to bring it home.

Was it the episode that Dustin Matthews was featured in? Because that would have been better.

No, it was one of the newer ones. So yeah, Dustin Matthews. Yeah, Shout out. Like if you want to actually hear more about Wealth Fit. Actually he did an episode with us. Yeah, go check that one out. Six months ago, eight months ago.

Yeah, if you're an EGP letter member, you can actually get the notes from that one too. It's probably a little too late at this point for you to get them for free, but you can get them inside the vault if you're an epic member slash EGP letter member.

For stupid cheap. For stupid cheap, stupid cheap.

$15 a month. I'm just gonna say it's 15 bucks a month.

There you go. There's no reason to hide that. So yeah, Wealth Fit, just big shout out. And one last thing on that. The course, I don't know when it's gonna go live, but we're gonna do our best to try to link that into the show notes when it goes live. Cause it's all about content creation and how we repurpose and then use content to bring a Lot of traffic and convert into sales. Right. So that's pretty much what we're recording there. And when that's live, we'll link her up in the show notes.

Yeah. Also that's also one of the topics we'll be talking about at Traffic Conversion this year, which is at the end of March. Right. March 31st through April 2nd, I believe. Y speaking on day one of traffic and Conversion Summit. And we will be talking a little bit about repurposing, specifically how to repurpose into recurring revenue.

Bam.

That'll be kind of a fun thing to hear, wouldn't it?

Yeah. So that's cool. So this is the first time we're speaking at Traffic and Conversion. Shout out to the digital marketer crew. Thank you guys. Rock.

If you can't wait that long to see us. We're also going to be speaking at PodFest.

That is happening in Orlando, Florida.

Yeah. Which is earlier in March.

That is on March 6th through the 8th. And we're actually having a mastermind on the 6th. So I don't know if it's spilled or not, but if it's not, well, either way, you wouldn't know unless you reach out. So just shoot us an email@infovergreenprofits.com and see if there's a spot we can hook you up on it.

Yeah, I think I would tell you what day we're speaking, but I think we might be speaking all of them.

I believe we are. Thank you, Chris. I'm just giving a bunch of shout outs. This is great, Chris. At podfest, DM Crew and TNC Wealthfit. Dustin. Oh, oh, and one last thing, actually. If you're going to tnce traffic and conversion in San Diego, make sure I think it's on the Tuesday or it's Wednesday. I don't know. It's one of the nights, but I think it's the second night of that event. We always hold our brewery like meetup event.

Yeah, Overtime.

Overtime it's called. And it's happening literally like across the street from brewing. Yeah, yeah. It's across the tracks, the railroad tracks from the convention center. So it's free. And I think all the proceeds this year are going to one of our buddy's good causes. Yeah. So it's cool. So that is like. And yeah, there's gonna be a lot of people. Hundreds of people.

Hundreds of people.

There were last year at least.

Yes, last year keeps growing. I think there's a 500ish.

But you know, that's what Dustin said. Dustin Massey said he's like. It felt like like 500 or more. Yeah. Cool.

Yeah. I mean, we don't keep a headcount.

So I don't know, maybe next year.

Or this year, but.

Yeah, come on.

We keep bringing people until the fire marshal tells us to stop.

That's our event. So if you're in San Diego, if you're coming out there, go there and let's meet up. Yeah, that's.

Be cool. So what I want to talk about on this episode today is so I want to talk about a little bit of a shift in focus that we had in from 2019 to 2020. We actually did our last therapy session, and it was me and Joe and Shannon, our ops manager, and we kind of talked about what we're planning on focusing on for 2020. And, you know, to be kind of honest, some of that stuff has even changed since that podcast episode was released, which is, you know, sort of sometimes embarrassing feeling.

This is the place of the human.

Yeah.

I feel like we change our minds. I was gonna say the entrepreneur, but no. Like, the other day, you, me, and Bracket Stanza were all walking around UTC after our little mastermind with. I'm gonna do more shout outs.

Yeah.

Bob Serling, Roland.

Are they shout outs or are they name drops?

No, they're shout outs to our boys.

Okay.

We're hanging out with our buddy Elon and Branson Gates and Bill Gates, Rockefeller and.

Wow, how do we do that? No, no, it's our crew. All right. So I'll just move on and not name drop shout out, I guess, Making me all feel weird. So moving on. They're not going to get shout outs. What we were talking. So Costanzo, you and I were all talking about, like, man, it just doesn't feel like we got it all figured out yet. And we're like. Yeah. And I said something like, I don't trust anyone who says they have it figured out.

Yeah.

And you got to get figured out, you know, anything figured out till the day you die. Yeah. Let's be honest. So we change our minds.

Yeah. I mean, quite honestly, it's probably in our business, the thing that we beat ourselves up over the most is when we have, like, an idea for a business or a project or something that we want to pursue, and then we go and publicly announce that we're going to go do this, and then we change our minds. And that's, like, one of the things that I think eats us up the most. But then we realize, like, well, I think that's kind of what happens with businesses? I think you, you, you try something, you realize this isn't the right path and then you pivot and you try something else and you go, that wasn't the right path either. And you pivot and eventually you sort of land on the right course and you're like, this is it, this is for me. And I do feel like we found that thing. But I will disclaim there's a great chance that we'll say we found that thing and three months from now we'll be like, ooh, this path is even better.

Well, we have a lot of reasons why this is more our thing. I mean, Steve Ulscher in that Mastermind, it's just funny because it's kind of an ongoing joke that we change business models all the time. And he's like, oh yeah, what's next week? What's the week before that? It's all in love, I think.

But he made a joke. He was like. We said, yeah, we used to be an agency once. And he was like, yeah, that was last week. Right? Yeah. So.

And I was like, you? Yeah.

I mean, our circles know our tendencies by now. We have a lot of big ideas and then the circles we run in and the masterminds we run in are really, really, really good at going to us and slapping us in the face mentally. They don't physically slap us in the face, but they mentally slap us in the face and say, get back on track.

Well, isn't that what a good peer network should do for you?

Accountability?

That's 100%. You shouldn't be bullshitting. You're like, don't be a yes man. Like, why? How is that helping anyone? So yeah, it's. And so this new direction that we're talking about, so we're not. New direction, not new, sorry. A refined direction. We'll tell you first what we cut out, I think before we actually say what it is. Let's do that. Huh. But so basically I said, you know, we going around the mastermind basically said what that direction is, that focus. And we're used to be met with not criticism but like good feedback that usually shines more of a light on what we probably should be doing. Everyone just nodded their head aggressively. Yeah. And they're like, yep, yep, do that and go big on that. That's the thing. Uh huh. That.

Yep.

So we're like, oh, good feedback.

Yeah.

So that's all I need here.

So some of the things that we're cutting out, we've talked a handful of times on past episodes that we're planning on launching a podcast agency and actually doing done for you podcasting services.

We're not really doing that anymore. We've decided that's one of the things that was a bit of a distraction in our business was trying to do services for other people, however, saying that we have amazing resources in that space and we have a handful of connections that do it brilliantly, that do it better than we could possibly probably fulfill on ourselves. So why are we trying to create another business that competes with existing businesses that are doing it better than we'd probably do it if we implemented it? So if you want to have podcast services and done for you kind of stuff, still contact us. We still want to hear from you, we still want to give you advice. We still want to, you know, point you in the right direction. It's just not going to be me and Jode running your podcast for you.

Yeah, yeah. No, we have, like, a sick team. Like, they're really cool and they've done it for five plus years and have a full team and process. Like, why would we do that? That's not. And it's not our lane. That's not who, like the business model where we really thrive and flow in. And we'll get into what that is, of course. So, yeah, people reach, like, definitely. If you're looking to start a podcast, grow a podcast, or just, like, get a production team that knows their stuff.

We still want to talk to you.

Yeah, yeah, just reach out. Infovergreenprofits.com Shannon will send you my way, most likely, or she'll just pass you to them. But either way, we have the solutions. And most people are definitely confused still in that state. And it's interesting because in the last two or three months, we've talked a lot about podcasting as, like, us doing services, us doing consulting, us having a course around it, the POD Hacker masterclass, and obviously us speaking at podcast events. Like, that's not gonna. Well, the speaking's not gonna change. But it's interesting how the perception immediately goes to, oh, you guys are the podcast, like, services. And we're like, no, but that's not who we are. But it's interesting, like, how fast that perception changes. So we're just here to say we can still help you out, but there's like a different format, basically us referring you to our trusted people.

Yeah. And the other thing that we're going to be kind of slowly phasing out. We're not just turning it off. Like, it's not just gone, but we're gonna be slowly phasing it out is we are planning on making less courses. We kind of want to get back on the track of just putting out content for free, getting back into writing more written blog posts and doing more video for places like YouTube and, you know, really upping the quality of the podcast and continuing to improve this show. I mean, we just, we masterminded a few days ago about how can we make this podcast even better, how can we make it more valuable to the listener, how can we provide even more freely and make it so people listening to our podcast would go, damn, I would have paid for that information. That's really our goal with this show. And so we're going to lean more into that and we're going to sort of back off on trying to sell as many online courses now. The EGP letter is going to be our flagship product still. We are going to still sell the notes to this. We still are going to have that EPIC members area where when we have great guests that come on the show, we're going to ask them if they want to contribute content just for EPIC members. And we're going to keep on building out that library of amazing training for 15 bucks a month inside the, you know, the EPIC membership that comes along with the EGP letter. We're going to keep doing that, but that's going to be like our kind of our main sort of internal course and internal.

It's our community.

That's the way to get that additional access to what we're up to. If you want to go beyond the.

Podcast, that's really like the only way.

Yeah, it's going to be the only way.

This is going to be the only way. And that's where we want to centralize that is like our. They're basically everyone in there, and I know almost all of you listen. The EPIC folks, they're basically our podcast. VIPs are the ones that want to really, like, immerse themselves and save a ton of time too. And then of course get like just all the different stuff we're up to. Basically it's an all access pass. Yeah, but that's not a big sales pitch. Just saying go do that. But you should do that.

Yeah, you should definitely go do that.

I mean, it's 15 bucks a month.

Serious. EGpletter.com right?

Yeah.

Okay, so. EGpletter.com?

You should spell that just so. No, I'm just kidding.

Dunking. How do I do that?

Let's give Our audience a little more credit than that joke. Come on.

Oh, no, no. I'm slowing my words. So the idea here, though, is. Yes, the podcast stuff, the newsletter. The newsletter is growing a lot, by the way. So everyone, like those who are joining, who are listening, like, this newsletter is taking off, and it's so cool because people don't leave either.

Maybe it's too cheap. Should we bump the price? No, I'm just kidding.

Well, not yet. So. But. But the. But we're seeing, like, the feedback and, like, it's super cool, and that's what lights up us up, Matt and I, because we love to. We love to experiment and tinker and, you know, go down business models, of course, but we also love to share what we're doing and actually see results from other people. Yeah, and that's like, more like I was telling Matt, like, my big thing is, like, I love to see. I love to help people, but, like, bringing them a result or clarity or whatever that is in the moment. And, you know, Matt, you love to figure the shit out. Like, figure out the system, the hacks, the da, da. You know, so we combine and then, like, if we could achieve all that, we're stoked.

Y.

And then we just obviously were benefiting in other ways, but that's not the primary goal.

Yeah, yeah, we don't. I mean, we don't. We're not the ones who want to be putting content behind paywalls. We want to be the ones that are finding out the really, really valuable shit and then just going, hey, guys, check out what we just found out. Like, we want to be the guys that you come to to learn about the latest tool that we're really digging or the latest traffic tactic that's working, or, like, we want to be that resource for people, and we also just want to give it for free. Like, we just want to put that value out there and just give, give, give. And so, you know, it's hard for us to monetize with courses because at our core level, we prefer to give that value for free.

Yeah, that's why we started this podcast.

Exactly. And then there's the third thing, which we haven't actually started down this path, but we talked about it in previous episodes, was that we're going to dip our toes into the software world, and we still have that sort of on our roadmap, but we're pushing it out on our roadmap, basically. We don't think we could give a software the attention it needs right now, like, in the. Like, the month that we're in, you know, maybe even the year that we're in, we don't know if we could give it all the attention that it needs. And it's, you know, it's a divided focus. We'd focus on software plus the main thing that we're moving into or staying into, refocusing on. And we just don't want that divided focus. And we're going to talk a little bit more about sort of some aha. Moments we've had about how sort of crucial that focus is.

Yeah, I mean that is in. Focus is everything. That's, that's the. We were telling some other folks actually about. I think it was Joel Irwe actually shout out to him now and he. I told him actually this is what it was. This is what I was talking about earlier. Like the perception of what we put out there. It only took a month or two for people to really think, oh, we are the podcast like go to for everything. And that's true in terms of we love to talk about the growth and the monetization. We like to nerd out and all.

We like to tell you what's working. That's what we want to do.

So reach out. We have resources and connections and sometimes we will partner up with folks to, you know, but in a relationship that fits our business model, which we'll get into, but then. But the other side. So Joel, basically the reason why this prompt is he was like, oh yeah, you guys are focused on this this year, right? I'm like, no, actually. And then I said what we're doing. And he was like, dude, focus is everything.

That's it. And I'm like, what are you doing? And he told me what he was doing. It's like the same, but ramping that up. I'm like, uh huh. Yeah, but it's so tough. Obviously it's obvious if you say focus on something that works, do more of that. The tough thing is, and Matt and I haven't gone out to build a personal brand per se, but as this podcast gets more popular, as we get more connections, and this goes for anyone listening who has a platform and has connection, the more opportunities come your way.

That's very true.

The more shiny objects and guests that come on podcasts that sound freaking brilliant and are brilliant and are making a bunch of money and having a great lifestyle with their systems, you're like, oh, that business model looks pretty good. Yeah, but you know, focus. Does it really? Does it actually like, is it you?

Well, and we all think the grass is always greener in somebody else's business model anyway. Right. Like, we're always gonna go and think about it. We've got a podcast that we're releasing two times a week, and we're hearing everybody else's business models. You don't think at least 50% of them sound pretty sexy to us too?

Oh, yeah.

We basically set up a thing where we're almost destined to fail at our focus because everybody's giving us these new ideas. So we definitely run into that shiny object syndrome. And I think it's always gonna be like that. I think it's always gonna be like, ooh, here's another idea. Let's try it. Let's try it. Okay, back to the Focusing on what's.

Working and what's cool is. Yeah. With that, I think once we. Because we are aware of that, we can then channel that stuff into our business model. I think that's key, and I think that's what Joel actually said. It was like, focus is so important, but especially stick within your business model.

Yeah.

And that's really what we've defined over the last. Basically the beginning of, like, the end of December and the beginning of January is, you know, we've looked at our numbers closely, we've looked at how we spend our time closely and kind of audited all the above and more and how we just feel generally about things. Yeah. And we came to the conclusion that we were taking our eye way off the ball from what was actually making us happy and working really well and growing. Yeah.

So.

So that's basically affiliate marketing and referral marketing and our networks and that. And not. Not services, not courses, not all the other stuff that we were adding to our plate.

Yeah. We did some really, really deep analysis with the numbers, and I did a sort of 80, 20 analysis of where our time was going and where all the money was coming from. And all the money was coming from affiliate marketing, but all of our time was going towards trying to sell courses or trying to get people on this new agency concept. And it was going to things that were not the things that were bringing in the money and so.

Or happiness, really.

Yeah.

It was causing actually way more work.

Yeah. So we came back around to. Let's go back to what makes us the money and focus on giving a ton of free value, a ton of content, just, you know, help other people without asking for much in return. But we'll recommend tools. We'll tell you what tools are working. We'll tell you what courses other people are making that we're really digging. We'll point you to partners on things like podcasting, or if you need traffic help or any of the topics that we've talked about on this podcast. We know people that can help you do that stuff in your business, and we'd love to help you. We'd help to refer that. Right. So we're kind of going down this, this. This path of being more that affiliate slash broker, and then also kind of keeping up with the EGP letter and the podcast and the sponsorships. But that. That stuff just kind of is on autopilot. The stuff that we put our focus in on a daily basis needs to be the affiliate stuff, because that is what has worked for us over the last three years. That's the thing that generated the most money for us. And for whatever reason, we decided, cool, that's working. Let's take our eye off that ball and put it on this new ball. This new ball. We're basically trying to shove a square peg through a round hole, right? And we're trying really, really hard to make stuff work. When we had something that was working.

Over here, I mean, literally one of those channels, I won't name it specifically, was doing over seven figures in sales every year, and we weren't focusing on it. We're like, hello. So I want to go to. Before we start breaking down some of the. I want to get into the layer kind of thing. I want to talk about kind of our mental blocks around going down this model, because I think that's important for everyone listening is there might be something that fits your personality and actually brings you joy with your work and feels like you're not, you know, hitting a wall and trying to, like, figure things out over and over and over, but, like, actually identifying something you love and then. And then, you know, shaking out a really good model around it. There's. There were limitations around affiliate marketing and going big in on this because we thought. We kind of said, like, like. And had this underlying feeling that it just didn't feel like a legit business, a legitimate thing that can scale something that's sellable, something that's. That we can put all of our energy into it and time.

Yeah.

And we actually had a chat with Josh Bartlett, our buddy from ThriveCart, and just to be super honest, he was coming from an outside perspective looking towards us, and he knows us really well and essentially said, dude, you guys are legit af, and said, you are content machines. So you create content at a rate and on scale, and all these different channels that no one can keep up with, you know, paid traffic, you know, organic traffic. All be affiliate marketers and go all in on that and scale businesses that you love and help them make more money. Yeah, that's pretty much all we do. And he said, do more of that. You're the best at it.

Yeah, no, that was a real sort of mental block. I know, for me at least was.

There was. There was something that felt a little illegitimate about affiliate marketing.

Right.

Like you don't have a real product, so you're not a real business.

Right. You're just a middleman.

Yeah, you're just a middleman. You're just, you know, you're an affiliate marketer.

And I feel like there was some term right there. Yeah, affiliate marketer.

There was something in my head that like, real entrepreneurs wouldn't think this is a real business. Right. Like, like if we were to go and talk to like, Elon Musk and he's like, what do you do? And we're like, we, we do affiliate marketing. I think affiliate marketers have that bad rap. I think a lot of people think of like, oh, you're doing like totally scammy black hat type shit to make money off of other people's products or something, you know? Yeah, you know, I.

In here we go right here. Matt, you just sent this screenshot to me last night from LinkedIn. Learning says the skills company need companies need most in 2020. Yeah, there's like a list of five soft skills like creativity, persuasion, collaboration, adaptability, and emotional intelligence. And then there's 10 hard skills. I'm not gonna read them all. It's things like blockchain, analytical reasoning, artificial intelligence. On the seventh thing on the list says affiliate marketing. And that's LinkedIn saying that that's not some Internet marketing thing. It's not, you know, a tiny company. These are legit businesses. The Elon Musk of the world and beyond. I mean, like, that's cool. I would call that a legitimate thing then.

Yeah. I think people are starting to recognize that what we do is necessary. And there's a lot of amazing products out there that have amazing product creators behind them. But the people that are creating the.

Products aren't marketers, they're more content creators are in it.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, a content creator is essentially a type of marketing. Right. But you know, you've got all these amazing products out there that need the help of marketers to drive traffic and raise awareness. And I really honestly believe now this has sort of been my reframe over the last, you know, six weeks or so has been we are doing a valuable service for entrepreneurs. There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there that the product is great, but they don't market. And people like us come in and say, we gotcha. Yeah, right, we gotcha. And on the flip side of that coin, listeners like you, you're hearing what we recommend. And it's not like we're recommending stuff just to make the commission. We only recommend shit that we use in our own business. That is one of our core rules of being affiliate marketers is we're never gonna recommend something that we haven't tested or using our business ourself. So on both sides of the coin, we are adding a valuable service to the entrepreneurs we're driving traffic to, and we're offering a valuable service to the listeners who are in need of what's the best checkout platform, what's the best page builder, what's the best autoresponder? What's the best way to collect emails? On my list, we're providing a ton of value on both ends and we're making a little bit of a commission in the middle. How is that not legitimate? Like, we're helping, we're helping multiple businesses.

It's building value. Yeah, we build the value more so, you know, like pre sell products. I mean, all we're doing is building trust, value, or, you know, like answering questions, objections, all that stuff. And we go deep on this stuff. We go deep on like, we had a lot of folks reach out on Facebook. His name is Marlon Sanders, shout out to you.

And I think even David Frey was in there as well, saying, he was like, dude, you guys do. And these guys have been in Internet, they've been doing marketing for a long time.

Yeah.

And so they've seen a lot. And they're like, dude, no one is doing affiliate marketing like, you guys, this is amazing. And yes, we have a course on it and all that. That's great. And it outlines a lot of it, but at the same time, it just. No one goes deep on affiliate marketing is what we've noticed. Unless you're like, you know, things like NerdWallet, like you were saying in different verticals, or like the dating niches. You said. What were you saying? The. The dating niche and the health.

Yeah.

Or finance.

There's finance, dating and health are the three sort of biggest markets for affiliates.

There you go, affiliate marketing. And like, so there's businesses like Larry Ludwig that was on the, on this podcast, had affiliate site, investor junkie, sold for six mil.

Yeah. Robert Farrington was on this call too. He had a college investor.

He still does. Yeah. And he's running that. He's very successful. And those are affiliate marketing plus content. And they've figured out a handful of traffic sources that work. You know, Farrington, he was doing Quora a lot. He does a ton of SEO, Larry. I forget. I think it was SEO as well.

He was doing SEO, but he was also building calculators and tools that people were linking back to a lot of.

And boom. So they're building value, they're giving resources, they're making their content easy to discover on multiple platforms. They're making it shareable. So then they're affecting more people, helping. It's like that positive ripple out there. Yeah. And. And they're getting paid through commissions. Yeah, that's what we do.

I don't know. I don't know what it is. I don't know if we were just kind of like getting greedy or if we just want to be people pleasers. And we wanted.

I don't know.

And we wanted to try to help as many people as possible. But like, when people would ask us for courses or when somebody would come to us and say, hey, do you offer a service? We were kind of in this mindset of like, yeah, sure, we can, we can do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that. So we, we were trying, I think it was a more of a people pleasing thing. We wanted to make whatever people wanted available.

And I think because we knew we were capable of doing it, we knew.

We were capable of doing it, but what ends up happening is we started spreading ourselves thinner and thinner and thinner and thinner. And the next thing we know, we've got all of our affiliate stuff over here that's sort of declining in sales. We've got our newsletter, which is, you know, it's been doing good. And then we've got these other things that aren't selling as well as we'd hoped they'd be selling. And we're really trying to, you know, force them through, but those take a lot of energy and they take a lot of energy, and we're just. We're trying to please everybody and we end up kind of pleasing nobody. So we kind of realized, where do we add value? We're, we're amazing at networking and connecting with people and getting to know a lot of people and building trust with people, and we're really good at that. We're really good at creating content, releasing podcasts. We're doing written Content, making videos. We're good at that content element of it. And then we're also good at the affiliate marketing. We're good at making recommendations that people find highly valuable. I mean, we literally get emails from people that say, when I see an email with you recommending a tool, I don't even read the sales page. I just buy it. If you guys are telling me to get it, I'm in.

That's so cool. Right?

And that's, that's a responsibility that we need to take more seriously.

Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's, yeah, we are responsible to, you know, giving you the right message and serving you. I mean, that's what we do and that's what brings us excitement, it brings us joy. It's our livelihoods. It allows us to do what we're doing and keeping everything going strong and growing. So, yeah. So our decision is to, with this clarity, with this reframe and not just the word affiliate marketing, even though that's a very common term and that's pretty much what we do. There's kind of like layers of what we do and we can adjust, define them differently to make it, you know, feel like, okay, well, there's a little bit more behind this. This is just like we're giving you examples so you can reframe maybe something in your business that you're struggling with or you don't want to go deep in because you don't feel like it's all connected.

Yeah.

And that's what we've had to do is like almost architect this thing in our mind that like. Yeah, affiliate marketing is one thing we do with things like ThriveCart convert box designer Fletcher Method, like all these, like, friends and tools and trainings and people that produce great stuff.

Yeah.

And we take a commission and then, you know, there's broker stuff that's working with services mainly. And then we'll on the third arm is pretty much partnering with folks and then on a results basis, help them with monetizing something better. You know, mainly like a podcast or a blog or whatever.

It's all kind of spins on affiliate marketing.

At the end of the day, that's all it is. But it's in different forms. That's all we're saying.

It's basically. So we've got sort of two channels. Right. We've got the, the sort of megaphone channel, which is our podcast, our email list, our social media channels. We're good at creating value on that sort of grand scale, a scalable way.

Right.

And then we're also really good at the sort of one on one or, you know, small group building trust and value among, you know, individuals as well. And so that is our thing. We're just trying to create value for as many people as possible on a one to one basis and at scale through the podcast. And the monetization just kind of takes care of itself because we're recommending people, we're recommending tools, we're, you know, we're, we're making connections where maybe we're getting brokerage fees or, you know, things for making the reference and, and things like that. And it just, it just really is starting to make sense to us that that is our path. That's what we've been good at. That's what people want from us. And I think that's how we can bring the most value to the world. And I wanted to say something too about like a sort of aha moment. For me that was like, recently, and I'm embarrassed to say that it was so recently, like an aha moment earlier today.

Was that.

Did you just stop burping in people's faces all the time? Yeah.

It makes people like you so much more.

No, it's really weird. Yeah. Don't brush your teeth. It's really awkward.

Yeah, I haven't brushed in weeks, so I should probably start doing. No.

No. But I had this sort of. So when it comes to focus, right, there's the obvious thing, right. If we're trying to run like seven different sort of business concepts, our time is just spread thin.

Right.

Like, oh, yeah, we're like, we don't know which thing to be focusing on on any given day. Maybe one day we're focusing on our podcasting course, and the next day we're focusing on the, you know, ramping up the EGP letter. And the next day we're focusing on some affiliate stuff. The next day we're focusing on blah, blah, blah, blah. And so like, like, we're, we're kind of focusing on different things every day. That makes pretty much everything we're trying to do not grow as fast. That wasn't the aha moment. That's just kind of the, that's the obvious, right?

Yeah.

The thing that wasn't obvious to me until we had this focus was this sort of subconscious level of it all.

You knew where I wanted to go next.

Yeah, it was the sort of, it was the sort of like mental element of it all. When we stopped thinking about, okay, what's the next course we can create or what's the next service we can offer, or how do we go sell more of this service? When we took all of that out of our sort of field of vision, the only thing that was in our sort of mental field of vision was how do we sell more affiliate products? How do we sell more affiliate products? How do we sell more affiliate products? And now our sort of creativity around promoting affiliate products has just exploded. In the last, like three days, we've come up with probably 20 new ideas that we're going to implement to promote the affiliate products that we're already promoting and get them in front of new people and make them seem more valuable to people. And that, that sort of. That sort of subconscious focus is what I didn't realize was a sort of unintended consequence of not focusing on one business. Like when I go to sleep at night, my subconscious is working on solving problems. Right? I mean, all the time not sleeping, but all the time my subconscious is working on solving problems.

It's focused.

But because I took so many different projects out of the mix, my subconscious is focusing on how do I do more of this, how do I do more of this, how do I do more of this? And it helps us come up with all sorts of creative ideas to really explode our business with just affiliate marketing.

Exactly. And yeah, it's the difference between going just like scraping some layers of like, say if you're trying to dig a hole, it's like scraping just the topsoil off. That's kind of like the scatter approach that we were taking rather than, all right, let's freaking dig a, like dig a freaking straight down hole. One that actually is like, hey, we're going deep on the subject. And, and what I like what you're saying there, the subconscious thing. I'm actually reading, or I've read a book that is called With Winning in Mind or Winning in Mind. It's one of the two. And they talk about how there's three layers of what you just are talking about. And basically there's the conscious mind. So what? The thinking mind. That's what we do. Actions and actually think through critically. Then you have subconscious, which is what you're saying. We've now actively, consciously shut down these other pieces of our business to refine our focus into what our business model is. So subconsciously we're kind of like, oh, these are the habits. So that's why these creative thoughts are just kind of bubbling up without any resistance. And then lastly, they say there's a self image. It's kind of Like a circle. So it's like a trifecta. So the self image is what you believe in yourself, how you self talk, how you talk about yourself to others and like how you basically see yourself to the world and we see the value we give to the world now with this reframe and with this focus. Whereas before, without that outside focus and that reframing, the self image was screwed up. It was out of balance with the other things.

Yeah.

So now, I mean, the goal is to, I think, keep them pretty balanced so you can have that flow with all of them.

Yeah. And I'm reading a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear right now. Amazing book. We know there's a lot of overlap. We've had this discussion already.

Yeah.

But the identity element is huge. If I have this identity of I'm an affiliate marketer, but a lot of people think affiliate marketers are a dirty word scammer. I'm probably never going to be that good at it, am I? Like, if I.

If that's in the back of your.

Head, if something is in my mind going, this is not a real business, then I'm probably going to sabotage it, like subconsciously, not on purpose, but subconsciously. I'm probably going to sabotage it if I think I'm an affiliate marketer and people hate affiliate marketers.

And I bet you do it subconsciously. And you'd probably sabotage it and sabotage it consciously as well because. And that's what we were doing last year is we were making the decision to go down opposite paths. That took us away from like kind of this core thing. We knew subconsciously, because this is true. We got used to checking constant rebuilds or constant sales through affiliate marketing, like every day. You know, pretty good four figure sales every day. And then that was subconsciously. I know, I was like, oh, man. Yep, another great day.

Yeah.

And we took focus off of that and into things that were not building that. And then we saw those numbers starting to dip and we're like, oh. And that was where the imbalance was happening towards like the end of 2019.

And I really think we can create a greater value and a greater impact among the people that are sort of paying attention to what we're doing. And by the way, it's still bizarre to me that there's even people paying attention to what we're doing, but we're.

Literally in a truck. Like, this doesn't feel like work or like this is no notes in front of us. But yeah, it's really cool.

Yeah. What was I just about to say.

Sorry, paying attention to us and all that stuff.

Yeah. I really honestly think the biggest way we can provide value is for us to focus. Right. Because our. If we're focused on the podcast and affiliate marketing, and I'm using affiliate marketing as a catch all term. Right. That's brokering, that's doing some of these rev share deals where we're getting pieces for doing some of the consulting. But at the end of the day, it's really us just making connections and getting a piece between the connection that we made. Right. So when I say affiliate marketing, we're going to try to come up with another term for it like we talked about. But I'm using that as a catch all for right now. And I really think that being content creators and really focusing on growing the podcast and being affiliate marketers, this is the way that we can provide the most value. And we start to get that thin focus, then it actually not only hurts our business, but it hurts the people that are following us. Because we sound indecisive, we sound uncertain about our path.

Causes confusion. Yeah, yeah. And mixed messages.

And if we just, if we just say, look, our goal is to just provide value by testing stuff, telling people what's working, and recommending the tools in between or recommending the resources in between. If we can just stay in that lane, we could continue to help a ton of people at scale and provide the most possible value.

Yeah. I'm curious, like if you're listening and hopefully this is resonating because in these therapy sessions, I feel like just opening the komodo, which you did earlier at Wealth Fit. Matt.

I did.

It was very awkward of you. Put it away.

I don't normally wear kimonos either.

Yeah. But some reason today you revealed. So. Yeah, so the idea there is like if you have something in your, like listening to this whole clarification, reframing all this stuff we're saying, try to identify something in your business or in your life that you've been ignoring or maybe not, you know, something's out of balance, a little out of whack. It doesn't feel right. Maybe you're, you know, you're, you're feeling it and you're good, or you're getting a little stressed out doing stuff. There's probably some resistance happening where you shouldn't be doing that thing, or maybe that thing's just not optimized to flow with your personality or your vision for your life. Figure it out and do some reframing and cut the stuff that doesn't work. I'll just say in the last few months of doing all this stuff, I've felt like I've aged faster. Don't look at my hair. I just thought you immediately looked at it and you're like, oh, yeah.

No, I mean you have.

I'm not gonna lie.

I'm just kidding.

Jerk.

But the idea, like, mentally, I just feel like it's like there's been a lot more aging when there's. Obviously it's the uncertainty life stuff, but yeah, the uncertainty and just scatter focus and causing more energy to expand into this whole thing. It weighs on you bad.

It's not a good feeling to wake up in the morning and go, I'm actually not sure what I should work on. And we've had days like that over the last several months where we had. And it wasn't for lack of projects, it was an abundance of projects that caused the problem. Like we had too many projects and I was waking up every day going, I don't know which one of these things I should be focusing on because I don't know which one's gonna hit instead of focusing on the one that was already frickin hitting.

Right. So crazy.

So what I wanna do for the last sort of quarter of this podcast is let's talk a little bit about affiliate marketing and just, you know. So Marlon mentioned in one of our Facebook groups that he kind of wished we talked more about some of our affiliate marketing processes and strategies and thought behind it. And we're not gonna make a whole course. We actually have a course on affiliate marketing right now, but it's in the show notes.

Why not? Yeah, linked up there. And you can find it in our resources on the website too.

Yeah, or yeah, yeah, do that. But we're not gonna get into like every sort of affiliate marketing strategy. But I think it'd be kind of cool to talk about our philosophy. I mean, we have talked about our philosophy behind affiliate marketing. But let's talk about what makes the way we do affiliate marketing different than the way other people do affiliate marketing. And I think the number one thing that comes to mind is most affiliate marketers are lazy asses.

They don't go deep.

They don't go deep. What I see from a lot of affiliate marketers is there's the latest greatest product launch, it's coming out this week, there's a countdown timer on it. They're ramping up the scarcity, they're trying.

To get a bunch of emails, they're.

Trying to get you to Buy now. And they go and they go and post a post on Facebook saying, hey, this tool is really cool. My buddy Freddy just made it and you got to grab it because I'm loving this tool. Right. And then they maybe blast out an email to their list and. And then they go and brag to their friends how they're on a leaderboard. Right. I feel like that's kind of what you think of when you think of most affiliate marketers in the digital marketing space that are like promoting Internet marketing products.

Right.

And what we. We don't do it that way.

No.

We actually treat every product we're affiliate of as if it was our own product. We do deep research on every product. I can tell you right now, for any product we promote what everybody's biggest objections with those products are right now. I know exactly what negative objections people have around those products. I know exactly what everybody is saying is like the top five most loved things about those products. I know the exact customer avatar for each of those products. I know the type of person that would buy each specific product. I try to collect demographic information. We actually track through like Ahrefs and our various SEO tools. What are people searching for to come across these products? We spend hours and hours and hours and hours researching these products that we're promoting as an affiliate. And I don't think most affiliate marketers spend more than 10 minutes promoting a product. Some of them just grab the swipe files and email them to their list.

And say that's why they ask. Yeah. Think of all the people that just take a swipe which is just copy written, all emails written or sales page written from the product owner and given to you as an affiliate to then just copy and paste.

Yeah.

And so many people do that. And that is like, yeah, we'll look at some of the benefits and features and all that stuff that we might not know about the nuances, but we're sure as hell going to go deep on research and all that stuff before we'll ever say a word about the product.

Yeah.

And obviously what we do as well is another phase is content. Yeah, Content, content, content, content. We're leveraging our platform. I mean, we just at Wealth Fit making a content creation marketing course.

Yeah.

And we said in that course too, like everything we've ever done in our business starting 12 years ago started that started with blogging. Yeah, it was content, but we figured out how to monetize it. And all we were monet. We were actually is through, you know, adsense at the time. But Technically, it wasn't selling our products. It wasn't anything like there's. We were just building value and writing and figured out how to bring people to the site traffic. And then there's audio and there's video and we've just compounded that into where we're at here.

Yeah. And then one of the other things speaking into the content thing was Marlin on the same Facebook thread that we're talking about. I wish I knew what thread it was. I'd point you to it, but it doesn't matter. So one of the things that he mentioned on there is, I think most people can't figure out how to buy traffic to affiliate offers. That's the sort of roadblock a lot of people have is I don't know how to drive traffic to an affiliate offer if I don't have a list. Right.

And he was saying, he was like, man, how do you make this work? Because everyone else gets kicked off.

Yeah, well, he. You know, the thing is, a lot of people, I think, believe that Facebook and Google and the ad platforms hate affiliate marketers. I don't necessarily believe that's true. I think they hate the marketing tactics that a lot of affiliate marketers use. Here's what I know to be true based on our own experimentation and doing this for so long now, is that all of the ad platforms love when you drive to content. They love it. If I'm running a Google search ad to a landing page, my cost per clicks are gonna be so much higher than if I'm driving a Google search ad to a blog post with valuable content that people are landing on my page and staying on the page for a while and reading through the content. Google and Facebook love content. They don't give a shit what your business model is. They don't care if you're an affiliate marketer. If you're selling your own product, if you're selling somebody else's product, if you're driving to an agency, they don't care. They don't care about that. All they care about is, is it compliance? Is it like, is it compliant? It's not trying to scam anybody. It's not doing comparisons of like, before and afters. It's not trying to make income claims that you can't back up. You know, is it compliant and is it providing value to users of Facebook? Right. If. If you're putting stuff on any ad platform and people click on it and bounce off really quickly, those ad platforms see it as, this is low quality content. If you're clicking and immediately coming back. We're obviously not serving the right thing to the right person.

High bounce rate.

Let's show this stuff less or let's ramp or let's, you know, charge more for it or whatever. I don't know how the algorithms work. I'm not gonna pretend I know how the algorithms work. But I do know that with our own experimentation, if we're driving to content, we can bring down our costs. And we know that those ad platforms find value in driving to content. And most affiliate marketers, they want to go and get their affiliate link, they want to buy a Facebook ad, and they want to drop their affiliate link. So some. So anybody who's a fan of Frank Kern sees the latest offer for the Product Launch Formula 3.0, and they're driving to their affiliate link. Right. That's what everybody seems to want to do. And they're getting kicked off of Facebook and they're getting kicked off of Google. And it's not because you're driving to an affiliate link. It's because those pages aren't fricking compliant.

Yeah, they're not. Yeah.

And it's not providing a good user experience for people on Facebook. People on Facebook don't want to click on an ad to a sales page. If people are clicking on an ad on Facebook, they want to see sort of valuable content. Right. People aren't looking to buy stuff all the time, especially on Facebook and on.

Facebook specifically, it's more like intent based is how we use it as well. You know, actually. Like retargeting, for instance.

Yes. Most of what we do on Facebook is retargeting.

Yeah. So that's like. We're actually not interrupting an experience with something brand new, something fresh. It's something that they have already picked and, you know, chosen an action to take and be interested in. Mainly in Google first.

Yeah.

And then they're just. We're just following up. That's all we're doing.

So, yeah, I mean, those are. This is why I feel like most affiliate marketers get a bad rap is because they're just lazy. They're not putting in the research. They're not. They're not spending the first seven hours of chopping down a tree sharpening their axe.

Right, right. Abraham. Mr. Abe. All right, so I have a. This is a really good point. And I think that solves pretty much the paid ads thing. Content lead with value don't just go. It's like the whole Gary Vee book. Jab, jab, jab. Right hook.

Well, here's the other thing too. If you do the research and you know the customer avatar, you know the biggest objections, you know the things that people like about this product the most. You know, you know, you know the avatar, the demographic, you have all that information about this customer because you've done the work, you've done the research. Do you know how much easier advertising is if you're putting the relevant ad in front of the relevant person because you've done the research and then they click on it and it's valuable content and they stay on the page and they consume your content. Facebook and Google and all the ad platforms are gonna love you. So stop telling me that they hate affiliate marketers because they don't.

You just gotta give value. Another piece that I wanted to bring up that I think we do very, very well and people do notice in it, obviously it's seen is that we integrate not only our own products like the EGP letter and all of the different channels of marketing like our pss, our newsletters, our physical printout newsletter is that we integrate affiliate marketing in with what we're doing. It's a very hybrid way. It's not a pushy way. Obviously we'll shine more attention on something if like a price is raising or if there's a special deal. Because if we legitimately think it's this, like you should get in, then we will highlight that for you because we're trying to do right by you always. And what I feel like we do really well is constantly try to make a hybrid between what we have full control over and then where we can really build a lot of value, influence and trust and have a good relationship with you. And then we pair up all these tools and it's constantly like, that's what makes it such like an evergreen play for every affiliate promo we do. It's not even a promo. It's like it's a relationship. It's a long term relationship. We're not in it for a quick win, for a quick launch. Unless it's just a small window, then okay, if it fits into our criteria. But really we don't want it to seem like, all right now we're the Thrive Cart guys. Completely. It's like, no, no, no. We're integrated. That's just a tool. It's a mech that we use and we evangelize because we freaking love it.

Yeah.

So of course we will, but it's not us.

Yeah. If something is a game changer for our business, I feel like I'm Doing a disservice not to tell people, hey, this thing changed our business and it has added lots of dollars to it. You know, if you're a listener, don't you want to know about something that's changed our business and added a lot of dollars? That's, you know, so there's a lot of value there. But also speaking into the, this isn't a short term play for us. The other value about creating content when you're driving ads to content that promote these products is that content over time is going to rank. Right. Some of our best affiliate promotions right now, today that are making us the most money are from blog posts we wrote two years ago.

And it's all SEO.

Yep.

Organic traffic for free. Obviously we did the work, but yeah, it's paying off years later. And we're talking affiliate commissions that are recurring and making sales daily. And also including. This is another thing that we're doing more of is second tier type sales. So obviously we're good evangelists for products, but there's also other people that might want to sell that product. So we are evangelists to those folks as well. And that's just part of it. And that's really cool. It's. We don't have to work as hard and basically, again, it's all content focused. So we're noticing, yeah, a lot of this stuff hits after time has passed.

We wrote articles that when we wrote them two years ago, didn't generate crap.

Oh yeah, Commissioner duds.

And we just thought, okay, that article didn't do anything. But we left it online cause we felt it was valuable.

Right.

And then here we are two years later and we're going, dude, that thing's making us sales every day. Why did it suck so much back then? But who knows? Who knows?

But yeah, that's why. All right, boys and girls, always optimize your SEO. Do right by that Yoast. SEO is a great thing. Follow yo and get all the green light. Just do it right. Because you never know what will hit and what keyword you might be top high ranked for. For like some money. Keywords.

Yeah, I don't want to say ours because I don't want people to go compete with us.

But. Well, I'm just saying. Yeah, just make it really optimized all across the board and make a process out of it. It's not that difficult.

Yeah. And then the other thing that we do that I don't, I mean, some affiliate marketers do it, but you don't see it quite as often is we actually build lists based on products you're interested in, even if they're not our product. So ThriveCart's a great example we've mentioned a handful of times throughout this episode. We actually are building an email list of people who are interested in ThriveCart. So if they don't buy on day one, when they land on one of our pieces of content, we say, hey, look, let us send you some content around conversion optimization. Because if you're looking at ThriveCart, then you obviously want better conversions. So let us send you some content around conversion optimization. Opt into our list here, and we're tagging those people as these people are interested in ThriveCart. And we're following up with them and saying, hey, have you grabbed ThriveCart yet? Here's another bonus we'll throw in if you grab it today. Or that's another thing is bonuses too.

Right?

You know, so we're actually building lists around affiliate products. Like, who else is doing that? People aren't building lists going, okay, this is a list of people interested in ThriveCart. This is a list of people interested in convert box. This is a list of people interested in Designer. Right. People aren't doing that. But we have those mailing lists.

We track all that too. We don't even need a. Well, like, we're actually tracking affiliate promotions as well.

Improvely is a great tool.

Improvely is what we're using for that. So we're seeing data points now. We're like, oh, this person came from Google from this ad and they clicked over to this blog post and they clicked onto our email list here and they got a companion, this companion, usually from a podcast or a show notes page. Oh, and then eventually they bought our newsletter and then they got the upsell and then, hey, they bought ThriveCart and. And like, holy crap, it's so cool to then start stringing this. And this is what I'm saying, this hybrid approach, it's so valuable. And if you could build your business around that and then affiliate marketing, a lot of people think you need to be in or out. Like, you are an affiliate marketer, you're a product owner.

Be both.

Yeah, like we've always seen affiliate marketing as like, no, that's a perfect add on to your business. It's a way to serve your clients and your folks further with a solution that you might not have yourself in house, but it's a value builder. You build value in referring a person or a thing or a service or whatever, you know, and you can get paid on that and you don't have to have all that overhead of fulfillment and people and pay whatever support stuff. Don't worry about that stuff. So. Yeah, that's really good. Shoot. I was gonna say one more thing about affiliate marketing that I thought would have been valuable. I'm thinking, yeah, say something Matt.

Something, something, something, something.

Do, do, do, do do the tracking thing ca. Because I thought that was really interesting seeing the path of people now we're.

Not even affiliates of Improvely. Go check it out. It's an awesome.

I know we're not yet. Hey, Improvely, reach out to us. We need to talk. Yeah, it's. Shoot. Dang it. I'm pumped. I'm bummed. Yeah.

So I think at the end of the day, long story short, most affiliate marketers are lazy. You can't be an affiliate marketer and just, and just treat it, you can just kind of treat it as a side thing if you have another main thing, right? Like if, if you want to, if, if you have info products, you sell courses, you sell software, whatever, you know, you can hit your list with affiliate marketing offers and you can create content that has affiliate marketing links in it. But if it's not your main thing, you're gonna make, you know, a little bit of extra money off of it. If you're going to make affiliate marketing one of your main things, like we're kind of going down. You've gotta treat it like a real business. You've gotta do the research, you've gotta create the content around it, you've gotta build the lists, you've gotta do you of the things we were just talking about. You've got to integrate it with the other stuff. It can't look like an afterthought. Like if you buy the EGP letter from us, we're going to also promote affiliate products to you. Once you're on the EGP letter, if you've bought affiliate products through our links and you're on our list because you grabbed our bonuses, we're going to promote our products and other affiliate products to you. We've created this sort of closed loop system which no matter how you get into our ecosystem, you're going to kind of see it all and it's all going to kind of feel like it fits together and it's all going to feel like, well, I need this and I need this and I need this, you know, know. And that's been purposely built that way. So you know, kind of speaking to what you were just saying, I think you've got to sort of make a decision. Are you going to be a product creator that has affiliate marketing on the side or are you going to be an affiliate marketer? We're putting our flag in the sand and going, we're affiliate marketers and we're unapologetic about it, Right? Yeah, we're, we're affiliate marketers. We're unapologetic about it. But knowing that here's the work we got to put into it to make it what we want to make it. If we want to keep on generating, you know, six figure months off of affiliate sales, we've got to just go for it. This is what we do.

Yeah, yeah. And that's who we are. And also, in addition, check out your personality and where you find yourself really being the best. And that's where Matt and I were talking about it. Like, we're just chatting with some of our peers and talking about how they're like, dude, you guys are some of the most relatable. Nice. But like fricking. You just don't hold anything back when you're teaching, like at the Wealth Fit. And they're like, oh my God, there were so many tool and things like, this is amazing. And that's what you always hear us do on the podcast too. That's why we basically made the notes. That's why that even started. But so it's just really cool to get that feedback. And we realize, yes, that is very true. We want to be the cool dudes that just talk about what we're up to and what we love or who we bring on, who's an expert that does something cool. And then we just say like, yeah, that'd be really cool. If you're looking to enhance your checkout, out, conversions, drive, card or like email list, whatever, we'll point them in a direction if it seems like a good fit and if they ask and people resonate with that. And then individually, you love to fricking dive deep into the research that you were just talking about and really get super analytical around that. And then you and I come together with some ideas, brainstorm and then go execute where I'm out there doing a lot more of the, the connections, the brokering and the chat about that. And then we both create content that fit the modalities that we create content best around. Obviously podcast is one of them, but we both do videos, we both do writing in different formats. So then they can go on different channels. We just have identified like, oh, here are the personal skills and the Passions and things we love to do, and then paired it up with this business model.

Yeah, for me, it's all research and testing and email. Well, I mean, really, it's just. It's. I like to research stuff. I like to test stuff. You know, different tools, tech tools, ad strategies, things like that. So research, testing. And then I like to share, Like, I'm just like a. I'm just like an excited school kid that when I'm like. When I discover something new, I'm like, dude, dude, dude, dude. Have you seen this yet? You got to check this out, right? Like, I'm essentially just doing that at scale. Right.

That was like the old. You're like, hey, dude, dude, you got to go listen to the CD.311 just dropped a great new hit.

I probably never said that.

No, I know.

I'm kidding.

I think I said that because we made a joke about who puts a 311 sticker on the back of a car.

Can we talk about that? I don't know.

Maybe. I don't know. To your point is like, yeah, you become. You're like, holy crap.

Yeah, I like making discoveries. And the discoveries can either come through research or they can come through testing. And then once I make those discoveries, I just want to share them. And it's always sort of. Like we said at the beginning of this, it's always sort of bugged me that we're putting a lot of this behind paywalls. And we've actually, I hate to say it, we've had podcast episodes in the back, like, in the past, like, year and a half, two years ago, where we said we're gonna stop putting stuff as much stuff behind paywalls, you know, so obviously, times change. We pivot, we experiment, we get shiny object syndrome, and we test new stuff. But quite honestly, that. That is me in a nutshell. I like to. I like to make discoveries through research and testing. And then I like to go, you gotta check this stuff out. Look at me.

Look at this.

Look what I can do. Look what I can do.

Exactly. And we both want to genuinely help people at the end of the day and get results. So that's what's kind of cool, is like, we've identified all that stuff through our clarity, through our banging our heads against the wall, through frustration. And I'm talking about the end of 2019, mainly. And then also just the constant flow of opportunities will not stop.

And keep an eye out for our new E Commerce business coming next month.

That was a joke.

I know. I sure as hell hope so. Or I'm going to steal your truck and drive away from you, leave you at this lock lake.

I was going to get into play with the ducks. I was going to get into custom dog collars.

Oh, there's some dogs around here you can hawk your collars. What are you going to do? Weave some bushes and say, this is custom wolf collar?

Yeah. Wolfcolars.com with a Z.

With a Z. I'm sure it's taken now. Probably everyone's going after it and it's going to squat on it and charge you about $5 million for it because that's a huge business. Made by the lake.

Made by the lake. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not doing an E comm business.

All right. No ecom business.

Next month, Affiliate for Life with a 4 and a Y.

Okay. Yeah. Here, let's.

Maybe that's the name of the episode, Affiliates for Life. But it's gonna be the number four and the letter Y for life.

Sure. It's gonna be great for SEO. I'm sure everyone's putting the four forever.

Yeah, Yeah. I want to see people search Affiliates for Life Forever.

Oh, man. All right, maybe it's time to wrap this thing up.

Probably.

I think this was good. This was. I just hope that this res with some folks and you got to learn kind of the. Some affiliate strategies that work really well for us.

Yeah. Some affiliate philosophies. And then also just like, you know, the focus thing. The focus thing is just. It's one of those things that we just. We need people to keep kind of slapping us whenever we start talking about new ideas. We need them to go, shut up. What you're doing is working. Stop fucking it up.

Yeah. So we have a bunch of mastermind groups. We do that. So you listen, go find some accountability partners if that's your business partner. Nope, that's probably too close. Actually. Get someone else. That's like, for us, we have mastermind groups. We have our buddy Brad Costanza. We have all these other people that we basically already told that we're going to do this. And now to you guys as well, Podcast listeners, keep us accountable and we'll do the same for you how we can. But find an accountability partner. So somewhere, for sure.

I want to give two quick shout outs before we wrap this thing up.

Surely.

So one of them, Thrive Cart. If you actually haven't checked out the new cart builder, it is really badass. And I'm not just saying that because we're affiliates of Thrive Cart. Like, we're going to do some ninja shit. And I always say I hate the word ninja and I'm going to stop using it. So I already regret saying that. But we're going to do some really, really cool stuff. We've got some experiments we're going to do with this new drive cart.

I'm looking up checkout cart build.

We've got some really cool ideas and this builder is insane. Like, you could literally build the sales page now inside of thrivecart.

All right, so I'm gonna give another shout out, this one to a podcast listener. An epic subscriber EGP letter subscriber is Chris Benetti out in Australia. Dude's cool. He's got a cool website too. But basically he's like. He texted me the other day, I think like the day after the thing dropped. The Dragon drop cart builder, Thrive cart. He's like, new Thrive cart drag and drop editor is so lit. So glad I bought through y' all way back when with a big old smiley face. Love it. And I figured I could read that. Yeah. So because I'm giving you a shout out, Chris. What up, Chris?

Love it.

So, yeah.

And then the final one, I want to give a shout out to one of our silver supporters.

What up, Casey?

Casey over at Easy Webinar. Easy Webinar is an amazing webinar platform. You guys, you can do live webinars, you can do automated webinars, you can do hybrid webinars, you can schedule things.

I don't know, pretty much every webinar you could think of. Yeah.

And you know, I think it's. Of the webinar platforms out there, it's the most cost effective webinar platform. And he's actually got a special deal that he set up over@easywebinar.com Hustle.

Are you sure that's it?

Yeah, pretty sure. Easywebinar.com Hustle.

I'm like Matt Stall a little bit. I got to type this into my phone.

Yeah. So he set up a really cool page. I believe there's some sort of discount there off top of my head. I don't remember the discount. So you got to go to check it out.

I believe there is some kind of trial and we were being bad hosts on this sponsor. Yeah.

But we love you, Casey and we love Easy Webinar.

Yeah, just go to easy webinar.com hustle. Look at it. Casey and the team over there are very awesome people. Like, super cool. Casey's been on the podcast. If you want to learn about him, go Check him out. I think he's been on twice, actually. Right?

Probably.

I don't know. Look him up. So Casey Zieman's his name. Easy webinars his thang. You like that?

Yeah.

And I thought you were gonna say.

Easy webinars his game.

Damn.

Casey's his name. Ez Webinars his game. All right, see, we're making up for our. We forgot the URL because he's giving.

Him a lot more airtime.

He's getting a lot more airtime for this. So go check out easywebinar.com hustle. He's got a rad discount for you. And it's a really great tool. I mean, when we do webinars, it's what we're using these days.

So, yeah, it is. All right, that is a wrap. And we're not going to read any reviews this time, but hey, always a shout out. Like, if you haven't reviewed or subscribed to this show, wherever you listening to, you know, whatever platform you're on, don't matter. Go do it, please. Yeah, we'd love that. And it just helps more folks find us fo show. Thank you.

Thanks, everybody for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, for taking the time to listen. We want to give you you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliffs Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to, and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

Go get it, Wiki Wiki. We love you.