How Your Business Can Make $1,000,000 From Partnerships (in 60 Days) | 064

When I first launched my course, the first launch I did it no affiliates. The second one, I invited 8 friends and we ended that launch at 4x the launch that I did on my own.

My guest today is Laura Sprinkle. She's an affiliate marketing expert. Her methods have contributed to over $44 million in partner-generated revenue. In these big launches, what percentage is paid traffic versus affiliates?

It's probably like 95% come from affiliates.

Oh, wow.

The number one thing that we've done that have helped our clients be successful is—

If you were talking to someone considering affiliates in order to scale this to the next level, what would you say to that person?

I mean, I'd say do it. You get to pay your friends, you get to pay your colleagues instead of sending money to corporations.

You have these two ideas, I want to jump up and map them out on the board.

The profitable partnerships flywheel is attract, activate, amplify, and then appreciate.

Most people would say like, yeah, we want to attract, activate, and amplify. And then you're like, no, there's actually another step that really matters.

That's how you can make sure that you are doing everything to incentivize affiliates. So really matters. And that's how you get the flywheel to actually come back around.

Laura, I am just super curious. I see these giant launches happening, whether that's something that like Alex Hormozi does for a webinar or Amy Porterfield or Jenna Kutcher, all of these people, these people that I've met and talked to or I'm friends with, but I see these launches that they're doing and they're massive. Right? People are doing hundreds of thousands of people showing up, millions or $5 million, $10 million off of this launch. And I want to know how it works behind the scenes. And so in an entirely selfish way, I brought you on because I learned at Craft and Commerce this year that you're the person behind the affiliates for a lot of different major launches. So if you're up for it, can I just pester you with questions and dive into like what actually works?

Let's do it.

Okay, I think some people might be listening and they're like, wait a second. One, I didn't know that you do affiliate launches. Two, what's a launch manager? Right? Like, I was super, you know, I launched my own course. I sold $200,000 worth. You know, I'm, wait, but there's more to this? Like, there's actually infrastructure that goes beyond to scale these other levels?

Oh yeah, definitely. So as a launch manager, it was, okay, what webinar are we gonna do? Are we gonna do a video series, a challenge? Like, there's so much. That goes into the marketing on your own before you can invite other people to participate as well.

What does that look like of the, the actual launch window and then like the build up to it and then the follow up afterwards?

So for a lot of my clients, they are using either webinars or challenges. So they have content that's going out regularly anyway, talking about the topic. But then a few weeks before their launch, or I, I, I consider that to be like their launch window. Um, so a few weeks before, they're already starting to invite people into what I call your X factor. So again, that could be a webinar, it could be a challenge. It's something where you're giving people a taste of the transformation, uh, and then you're getting to pitch them on your offer. You're getting them excited about it. Oftentimes it's free, um, which makes it really awesome for affiliates to share too. Yep. 'Cause they're saying, hey, come check out this thing for free, learn more about it, figure out their teaching style, if it's right for you. And then at that event, like you have all this momentum, all this excitement around your offer and you get to pitch it. And then you've got, you know, between a 1 or 2 week window where you're really selling the offer as well.

What are some of the other things in a, say, a $2 million launch or $3 million launch? Some of these big ones that you see, you know, like, I remember early on I was really watching like Marie Forleo launch B-School and some of these other things happening. At this scale of launch, what are some of the things that are happening behind the scenes to pull that off that would surprise someone who's just like, I don't know, I thought you like made a good product and sent some emails.

[Speaker] Yeah, well, I think, you know, there's all the stuff that happens, you know, for their own internal audience, but then really it is affiliates. It is tapping into other people's audiences as that branch of trust that they're saying, hey, come check this out. And I mean, we've all been, we all know when Marie Forleo is launching because everybody is talking about it and it's that omnipresence that you can create with affiliates that's really powerful.

So in these big launches, like what percentage usually is, and I don't know if you could break it down this way, maybe it's like owned audience, paid traffic, and versus affiliates.

Yeah, so I mean, some launches we've done, It's close to 100%. Like it's probably like 95% come from affiliates.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. And others, you know, it might be like, you know, I've seen anywhere from like 30% to close to 100%. For me as an affiliate manager over the years, I was always like, how can we beat ads? Like, how can we drive more than ads? And it was actually quite easy. And I will say they all play nicely together. It can be really hard to like have super distinct attribution because your ads are going to be going to people that are also seeing emails from your affiliates who are maybe also already on your email list.

That makes sense. If you were talking to someone who is much earlier on, let's say that they've sold $50,000 or $100,000 worth of a course entirely through their own audience, and then they're thinking like, oh, should I be considering affiliates in order to scale this to the next level? Like, what would you say to that person rather than someone who's like, I'm not at the multimillion level yet?

Yeah, I mean, I'd say do it. It's really the short answer. I mean, I, I love affiliates because like you get to pay your friends, you get to pay your colleagues instead of sending money to corporations, Google, Mark Zuckerberg. Like, let's pay people we care about. Let's pay our customers and our clients to spread the word because they probably already are. So let's incentivize them even more. And it's so much fun to like launch with your friends.

What makes it so much fun? Like, is there a moment that comes to mind where you're like, oh, this was—

This was—

Brought a lot of joy?

Yeah, I mean, both in running launches where we get to have like contests and prizes and people are so excited to like win a trip to Tulum, or for example, was a really big one. But even when I first launched my course, Rock Your Affiliate Program, the first launch I did it no affiliates. The second one I invited 8 friends, so. And we're talking small potatoes compared to these like multimillion-dollar launches. And the first 2 days, this is not going to sound fun, but the first 2 days I had no sales.

Okay.

I did my webinar.

What was the, like, how long was the window?

I think I invited people to the webinar for 2 weeks.

Okay.

And the affiliates did. First of all, I had 10x'd the leads into the webinar. So it went from like 25 on my own to like 297. Yep. With those 8 affiliates. I think 7 actually participated and did the webinar. Crickets the next day. Crickets. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm a failure. This sucks. But I got to like reach out to my friends who were my affiliates and say there are no sales. And they were like, okay, great. Let's put on our thinking caps. You know, like, let's get into this. You're not alone, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Because everyone's been in that position first before the launch of like, Is this actually gonna work? I know conversion rates, I know the list size, people say they're gonna buy, but like, when the rubber hits the road, is it actually gonna turn into anything? Like there's all of that fear. And then there's like, usually, you launch it and either two things happen. One, you either get sales and like that initial momentum and then it tapers off and it's dead. I was just coaching a, creator through this, actually 2 weeks ago, where he was in that position of like, everybody bought and then no one's buying at all. Or the other thing of like, you don't get sales. And both of those positions are really, really lonely. And so what you're talking about is like, you have a network of friends who are not just like texting and say, hey, how's the launch going? You know, let me know if you need a reply on LinkedIn or on X or something, but they're actually like in it with you.

Yeah, exactly. And they, they have skin in the game, right? They want to also, they also want to earn commissions. They want to see you succeed. Uh, and, and we ended that launch at 4x the launch that I did on my own. Uh, and being able to send those checks to people, and I still, like, this one affiliate who's a dear friend of mine, you know, she was like, that, that check changed my life in that month. And again, this isn't sounding like fun necessarily, but I mean, It's awesome to be able to celebrate that.

No, I think it's, I am unashamed about the fact that I love to make money. It brings me lots of joy. I love what I can do with money and I just, I love the process of it. I love business. And then I love helping other people do that as well. And so I'm like, more of that. That sounds good. What were some of the things that you did with those affiliates to pull it together and to turn around, you know, a launch that started slow into something really big.

Yeah. And I mean, I could talk about what I did there, but there's also, like you said, in so many launches, there's— there might be that initial momentum and then there's that slump and then there's the, the momentum at the end. And I would say that's, that's the biggest thing in launches is keeping your energy up through the end. Like we've seen. I mean, right now, actually, I'm seeing for all my clients the cart close day, it could be up to 70%. Of all your sales. And so if on day 1 you're not seeing anything and you're like, oh, I'm not even going to send my full email sequence using Kit. I'm not going to do all the things. You know, you're really missing out. So make sure you're going hard on cart close day. Like send multiple emails, be posting about it, be talking about it. I would say as the creator, make sure you're keeping your energy up.

How do you see— what's the difference that you would notice in a creator that let the energy taper off versus one that kept the energy up all the way through the close?

I mean, it is— so it is sending the emails, but it's also showing up online, showing up, continuing to post, showing up and continuing. I mean, specifically for affiliates, continuing to cheerlead all of your affiliates on. Like when I, like, I send an email to affiliates every single day of a launch with updates, with a leaderboard, with here's behind the scenes of what's happening in the launch. Here's another idea on how you can promote. Here's, I think I already said the leaderboard. You know, and reaching out personally to affiliates. So like if we have, you know, a list of prizes and like the top 10, for example, get something, you know, I'm reaching out to number 11 and I'm like, You're not that far away. Like you should send another email.

3 more sales and you'll jump into that.

Yeah.

What are some of those prizes that work? Like I have not ever done the leaderboards and prizes or seen that on the inside, but what like, what's a really fun example that you've seen of someone executing on that really well?

Yeah, so it's funny, like there's definitely been like some huge cash prizes. I remember the first launch I did with Amy Porterfield, she was offering like $80,000 to, to the top spot, and yet we would see more people take action to win like a Starbucks gift card sometimes.

Okay.

Because like, if you have a lot of affiliates and they've like written themselves off from earning the top spot or the top 3, you know, they're like, oh, I'm not going to get the top spot. So you also want to have incentives for just like taking small actions. So if you say, okay, if you post something in the next 24 hours, you'll get, you'll unlock Starbucks, right? It's like action, reward, action, reward.

Right.

So I love Starbucks. I love sending people plants, which does double duty because then people are like, I still have my plant, Laura, and I'm thinking about you like years later. There's also behind the scenes. People love like behind the scenes of the launch. Like how did the launch go? The launch debrief.

So you're saying like if you hit, sell at least this many, then I will give you access to the full launch debrief and you can learn from it alongside everyone else.

Yeah, that's a— okay, that's a great one. Live events are also like masterminds. So, you know, the top 10, we're going to fly you to Hawaii was an example. When you get— when you make 10 sales, you're going to win a mastermind in Tulum was when we did with Selena that people had it every single year. They were like, I'm going to Tulum, I'm going to make the sales of this many sales. And then you can build on it too. It was like, okay, when you hit 10, you get a ticket. When you hit 20, we'll pay for you to fly there. The like sneaky extra thing with that that's really cool was her launch was in March and Tulum was in December. So we get to film content for the next launch at the retreat. So it's a flywheel.

That is a flywheel. Yeah, and some of those things, I mean, it's rare to have a flywheel that operates on an annual cadence like that, but it totally works. Because then you have a group of people where the common thread is that product and that launch. And so bringing everyone together in that way is really interesting. What are some of the biggest mistakes in leaderboards and prizes or something that you were like, oh, this is going to work great and then it ended up flopping?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is just to be sure of your numbers. So when you're first launching with affiliates, like you don't know how much revenue they're going to drive. So make sure If it's your first time out, you're not like, okay, the number one prize winner is going to win a private jet around the world or something like that. Like, make sure it makes sense. And so something—

And right, if the whole launch flops, then not only do you not have the revenue, but your top person sold 12 and you're now on the hook for a $50,000 prize.

Exactly. Yeah. So something I love is a ladder contest rather than a leaderboard. Uh, so it's like you already know that your revenue is covered. It's like, okay, you make one sale, you unlock this prize. You make five sales, you unlock this prize. So I love those, especially for a first time. And then for your leaderboard, if you're going to do it, just think like, okay, if, if running this leaderboard contest helps me make, you know, one more sale, what can my budget be for these prizes?

Could you do it where you do the latter? And then if it's going well, add the leaderboard?

Totally. Oh, that's another thing I would say is like have contests in your back pocket. You had asked, okay, what can you do kind of in that mid-launch slump? And that's where we're like consistently brainstorming. Okay, like how can we add in a fun contest like in the middle of a launch to kind of boost sales? You know, it could be like a weekend contest or a 24-hour or something.

What are the things that you can do either as the affiliate manager or the creator to help those affiliates along the way, help them make more sales?

Yeah, I think the number one thing that we've done that have helped our clients be successful is to help them understand how they're doing in the launch, which means they need to get more leads in for the X factor. So if you have a webinar, if you have a bootcamp, if you've got, you know, sales calls even, whatever the free thing is or the top of funnel, We need to help your affiliates get more people there so that they have more people that they can follow up with. And so a huge, like the number one reason why I started Rootable was because so many platforms didn't have leads lists built in. And so I wanted transparency of like, okay, this affiliate is sending emails, is posting on social, is inviting people into the webinar. I want them to see exactly who's signing up for the webinar so that they can follow up with those people.

Right.

And say, hey, do you have any questions? Like, how did you think of the webinar? Like, I think this is right for you, you know?

That makes sense. And I could see a lot of people just not knowing, like, how am I performing? Hey, I sent 3 emails and all of that, but what leads did I get? And then also what you're talking about of the leading indicators, you know, I know that I have zero sales and I'm like, oh, that's disappointing. Oh, but I sent in 280 leads. Some of those are bound to turn into sales. It just takes more time. Maybe I'm going to like double down on my efforts on social or some other things in order to help convert those people and maintain that excitement. If I know how I'm doing as an affiliate.

Exactly. Yeah. And then you can also have contests around getting leads too, right? So you can have swipe copy, um, like templates for them to share out, but also have contests and prizes. For getting more leads into the webinar as the example.

Right. Okay, so hypothetical example that's like not quite so hypothetical. Let's say you have a course about flywheels that might have theoretically just done a six-figure launch.

Congratulations.

Thank you. And that was sort of our like, beta launch, getting everyone in the final program, like what we record in the studio, all of that. And then we're building it out over time. But that was all like my own audience entirely. All right, so I guess it's not a hypothetical example. It happened like 2 weeks ago. But I'm thinking about like that position as an affiliate. So first in this funnel where I'm gonna go next, what I'm planning is a lot of paid acquisition. Where I know from my experience growing Kit, I know that I can run paid traffic. I can grow a big audience. I can reach the types of creators I want to reach. And I know that will work, but I would personally much rather, you touched on this earlier, I would much rather pay my friends, my customers, my community than like nothing against Mark Zuckerberg. I think that he's done a great like image transformation. Like the gold chain, the surfing, I'm all about it. Still would rather pay my friends than pay Meta. And so I'm thinking about like how, you know, how do we go about that? Would you be up for brainstorming that for a little bit?

Yeah, let's do it.

Okay. So what are the, like, if I come to you and bring in this, you know, here's the situation, maybe first, how far in advance would you be wanting to start planning? To plan this?

Yeah, a lot of clients come to me and they're like, we're launching next week, let's do something.

And you're like, okay.

But in an ideal world, you know, we'd be chatting at least 6 months before. And it's not because you need to do a bunch of work 6 months before, right? You know, we talked about a 2-month launch window, but people's calendars book out, right? So that's the biggest thing.

And you're saying people's calendars book out, like the potential affiliates, their calendars book out?

Exactly.

Both their own travel, you know, conference vacation schedule, but also their content calendar of what they're promoting.

Exactly. And then really the next piece that I would ask you and I would dig in is like, how did you sell it?

Yeah, so I sold it almost entirely over email. And so built up the, the waitlist there, got very targeted. And then we did— we didn't do webinars, or I guess on that one we did like a group sales call where we answered questions and had And that was sort of like a final before close type thing.

Okay, so that would be your X factor.

Yeah. And that drove sales, though honestly, like more of the sales came, like I think we did a really good job building up demand and momentum. Like I had the texts from people and the emails of like, just let me buy the damn thing already. Like, I'm so ready. Like, just let me buy it. That we actually front loaded most of the sales that we got. Yeah, so it was almost entirely email.

Okay, so I think for you, for getting affiliates on board, you'd want to have a stronger top of funnel for something that they can promote because they are not as likely to dedicate as many emails as you are to your own product.

Right.

Sometimes people are, but you also, like, it was you selling the thing. So your emails is trust building for you and also sort of your pre-launch is every email you've ever sent. Yes. Right, like working with Nathan Barry.

Is saying we need the webinar, the challenge, the bootcamp, like whatever that is that affiliates can first drive to that's free. And so that then it's like, okay, here are the people that have raised their hands and now we're not like emailing the entire list a whole bunch. We've narrowed it down to a smaller subset. Is that right?

Exactly, yeah. And then within that, like you're providing, you know, they're getting to know you, they're getting to trust you because just because someone said, oh hey, check out Nathan, he's really awesome. That's going to like make me look you up, but that's not going to fully, not like, okay, here's all my money quite yet. And so getting some experience with you, getting some nugget of transformation already. And then also the biggest thing in that X factor, going down a different lane here, but the biggest thing in that X factor is helping them understand like the mindset of like, okay, yes, I can see how Flywheels work for other people, but will it work for me?

Right.

And that's what you want to answer in that next chapter.

What are some of those like email capture, early interest capture things that you've, you've seen work super, super well?

I think just something that is so targeted to exactly what people need before they need your Flywheels course in this example. So what would you say people need before they're ready?

You know, helping someone unlock their first flywheel is something that I've toyed with, or if there's one flywheel that's like really relatable to everyone, maybe it's around content production. Like maybe I narrow in on a specific problem. In this case, it would be targeted at people, at existing creators.

Existing.

Yeah. Okay. Because all of my content is focused on existing creators. I'm not really focused on beginners. And that would actually be an interesting point. Like in these affiliate launches or things that work well, is it better if it's like much more broad beginner-focused, like really accessible, or do you see it work well at the like, hey, this is focused on mid or professional tier customers?

I mean, I think referral programs and affiliate programs can work on either level. Like, I mean, and that's something that I love about what I do is like we've helped people that have like puppy training classes, you know, like, No, they're not doing millions, but you know who is doing millions is someone who teaches teachers how to teach writing better.

Like, I've seen many similar niches on, on Kit, right? Where you're just like, oh, the sourdough blog is making half a million dollars a year. Interesting. Yeah, I love it.

Knitting courses are doing multi-millions. Like, it's amazing. Um, So I don't know that, I mean, I think what I would say is you would want to invite affiliates based on who their audience is. So if their audience is beginners, amazing. If their audience is more advanced business owners or more advanced creators, awesome. And so I think where you're going, like you're saying, okay, if I'm a YouTube creator, and I want to reduce the time I'm spending.

Right, you can narrow it in.

That's where having more, I guess, a streamlined flywheel makes a ton of sense.

Right, yeah, and so we're not talking any type of content. It could be your social media production flywheel. Yes. Right, we've narrowed that in. That makes a lot of sense. One more question that I want to jump up on the board. How do you think about the offer to affiliates? Right, is this, I've seen things like 20 or 30% paid to affiliates. I feel like 50% is something that I see pretty often on a, you know, a course or an information product launch. And then you see some where the offer is like very top of funnel and there's a whole backend. And so you might even say like 70, 80%. Yeah. Paid affiliates, like what are you seeing across the board and what are the trends there?

I would say that's where it's really important that you do know what your entire like backend system is, right? Because you could see people who are giving 100% You know, Amy just gave 100% on her bootcamp, but it's because she knows, okay, a certain percentage of those people are going to take the next offer and then she's giving a lower percentage.

So if she's giving 100% on her bootcamp, is there a ladder and a leaderboard and other prizes on top of that?

She does have contests for her bootcamp, yes.

So she is actually like cash flow negative in the short term, but I mean, she knows her business and end that downstream funnel very, very well.

Well, she's also already negative without that because she's making sure, like, if something is a— I mean, the bootcamp was $47.

Yep.

The affiliate is getting $47, so Amy's eating the credit card processing. Yeah. And to make the payouts, right?

And the, and the team costs and the designer, the launch manager, all of these other things.

Exactly.

Okay, do you see these like entry-level products, you know, $47.99 um, dollar, those products do really well, or are people, you know, driving straight to the multi-thousand dollar, you know, courses and programs?

I think the entry level can do well. Something that we've done with a few other clients is actually like publicly something will be $47, for example, but then affiliates get this back door to say, hey, I'm, you know, normally it's $47, but I can get in this many people free. And that tends to work really well. That's not something that Amy does, but for some other clients that's worked. And it kind of depends on how much brand reputation you already have. You know, she's somebody that has a ton of brand reputation. So I wouldn't say that like she's the playbook that I would follow. And actually even speaking to your other question, like Amy, Marie, they're giving 50% commissions. I actually don't recommend that. To most of my clients because they're not doing multi-millions yet. Right? Oh, okay. So like when you're paying 50% commissions, you're making less than your affiliates are.

Yep.

Because you're, because of all the fees. So I love like a 30 to 40% for courses personally.

Okay, that makes sense. All right, well you have these two ideas that are very visual and so I want to jump up and map them out on the board.

Let's do it.

The two concepts that you have that I want to break down for the audience because I just think they're so valuable and they make great visuals. Are the profitable partnerships flywheel and then relationship rings. We're gonna get to that in a second, but what is the profitable partnerships flywheel?

Yeah, so the profitable partnerships flywheel is how you can make sure you're doing everything to really incentivize affiliates and really make sure that you are hitting your numbers. So the very first step in the flywheel is attract.

Okay.

And so attract is all about attracting in the right affiliate partners for you because just because you have an awesome offer doesn't mean that like Joe Schmo off the street is going to be the right fit affiliate partner for you.

Okay.

The second step is activate. And so activate is everything between when somebody says yes to promoting you and when they actually start promoting.

Okay.

'Cause I don't, have you ever signed up to be an affiliate for something?

It's been a while, but yes.

And not promoted?

Yes. Exactly.

Every time I ask that question, everybody's like, yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah, that too.

I'm like, yeah, me too. And so that is why we do activate.

Okay.

Is to get people ready and going. So track, activate, and then amplify.

Okay.

So this is actually during your launch. Excitement.

Yep.

Buzz. And then the last phase is appreciate.

Okay. Okay, so we have these 4 steps: attract, activate, amplify, appreciate. Let me just start that I appreciate the alliteration. I can tell you put some time into this.

There's a lot of alliteration happening here.

I love it. Okay, so talk about the appreciate step. What, what goes into that? Because I think that most people would say like, yeah, we want to attract, activate, and amplify. And that would be 3 steps of flywheel. It's great.

It's great.

And then you're like, no, there's actually another step that really matters.

Yeah, it really matters. And that's how you get the flywheel to actually come back around. Because just like the best customers can be return or are return customers, the best partners are return partners. Because just every single time they're more integrated into your brand. And their audience is more, you know, you get brand awareness with their audience. So appreciate is number one, making payouts on time. You'd be shocked how many times we've run into issues with making payouts. So making payouts on time, sending thank you notes, delivering the prizes. You know, we talked about contests and prizes and making sure people are actually getting those. And then if you can have some type of event like we did with Selena where you're timing it, where the appreciation event was right before we went back into inviting people to come back as affiliate partners.

Okay. So I'm noticing a few things in this step, right? So as we go from appreciate, we're at that event in person. It's 3 months before we, you know, are in this window, but 3 months, 4 months before the launch, right? So we're starting to attract more partners. I might be on the fringe. I noticed people promoting Selena's launch. I didn't promote it for one reason or another. But now I'm noticing people get appreciated for the launch because they're all like, oh, I'm traveling to Tulum. Oh, that's cool. Glad you're going on vacation. Wait, you're going on vacation with that person? And that person? And wait, what is this? How do I get in on this? Like, how do I get the invite next year? Oh, it's part of this bigger thing. And I'm DMing someone, I'm like, hey, how did you get to that? Like, can I come next year? And they're like, yeah, absolutely. Just sign up for the launch and the top 10 partners get invited out. I love the timing on that.

Yeah, oh yeah, it's awesome.

This might be, I'm realizing, this might be one of the only annual flywheels that like actually really works on that cadence. For the most part, when people were focused on flywheels, with that long of a time horizon, they just don't get enough feedback. It just doesn't work well. But this one actually makes sense on an annual cadence.

Yeah, especially with that in-person element. I mean, I think that you could do this maybe 2 times a year, but I do like, if you think about like the big affiliate launches, they're once a year.

Okay.

For those companies.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. When people look at this flywheel at the surface level, what are things that are like really important details that you wouldn't want them to miss?

I mean, I love that you like zoned in right immediately on appreciate because I do think people, people miss the importance of that and of how like when people come to me and they're like, I have nobody I can invite, I'm like, well, have you appreciated the humans in your life? Have you gone out and networked? Have you, you know, it's like start here actually rather than starting here.

Yeah, that's such an interesting thing that Everyone thinks the flywheel starts here, and actually the pre-work is here.

Yeah.

And then, because it's just the same way that people would ignore the appreciate step, I think they would ignore the activate step as well.

Totally. Yeah.

Right? And they're like, yeah, attract, amplify, attract, amplify. And then they're like, why does my flywheel have so much friction?

Yeah.

It's like, well, you're kind of trying to accomplish the whole thing in 2 steps when really it needs 4 to flow smoothly. Yeah. That's interesting. Okay, so talk more about the activate step.

So the activate step, so like I said, it's between when they've said yes and when they're actually promoting. And there's two things that are happening during activate. So the first thing is you are providing affiliates with the materials to make it super duper easy for them to share and share on brand, right? Like, I don't know a lot about your Flywheels course, And so right now, me going out and trying to promote it as an affiliate, I could be like, oh, this is for someone who's brand new to business.

Right.

Who just like wants to get started creating their course.

And then later I see that email after it's already gone out and I'm like, no, no, no.

Yeah, exactly. So like you wanna provide them with templated emails, templated social media posts, graphics, ideas on how to share. And so it's like creating content that your affiliates can have an easier time. And then the second thing that happens is we want to train our affiliates on actually how to sell.

Okay.

So I will literally host a training and I'll say, come learn. Or, you know, sometimes we've titled it like, win a trip to Tulum, for example. So you're tying it back in to appreciate. Or it could be, you know, here's how to make this much money in this quarter, or whatever it is. So you're tying it back into what you want them to do. And on there, you're talking about your program, you're teaching them how to sell, you're talking about your X factor. So giving them, giving them tips and tricks. And then also in activate, you're thinking about who are their audiences. And that's also related to what content you create because some of your best affiliates are not necessarily going to be the people with the biggest audiences.

Right.

They're gonna be people who care the most about your product and who are gonna go like virtually door to door to their friends.

Yeah, it's the casual mention. You might be like, hey, I just attracted this person. They've got 100,000 people in their list or their combined audience. I'm so, so excited. And they're gonna send an email about it.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I've seen this a bunch where that's great, happy for you. But then also here's this other affiliate who, has 1,000 or 2,000 people, but they're like really connected with the right people, or they're behind the scenes, or like they're just really well activated and they're willing to work hard. You know, they're putting in 5 times the work with a fraction of the audience. And it's not even like, oh, this audience is 10 or 50 times as big, and so 5 times of the work will only get to here. It's like, actually, 5 times the work will often get to equal results.

Yeah, we see those people on the leaderboard all the time.

What are some of those things that they do, or like, how do you activate those people, let them know that they can be on leaderboard? Is it like the stories that you're telling through this process?

Yeah, so I— so in one launch, we had an affiliate who had been an affiliate for probably 3 years at that point, and she had a very small audience, and, you know, she made like 1 or 2 sales every time, which It's like not nothing. It was exciting. She got a couple thousand dollars. And then she came to our training and we talked about how, well, we'll get to this later, but we talked about how because of the ring she was in, she had a really powerful story to share. And she was like, wait, I can do this. Right, it's all the mindset again. I was like, I can do this. I can be on the leaderboard. She hustled. She ended up at number 2 on the leaderboard.

Wow.

And she like, yeah, she like bought herself this brand new, I'm not really into fashion, but it was this fashionable bag that she wanted. I don't know.

I don't know what that's about, but I'm so happy for you.

So happy for you. I know another affiliate like went out and bought like a Range Rover, like because she was excited. But anyway, so it's getting them, letting them know that they can do it and letting them know, which this is true, I've seen, you know, personal outreach can get between like 50 to 100% conversion rates from leads to sales. Whereas that person with 100,000 who's sending an email.

They're not getting a 1-to-1 anything.

No, they might get like a 1 to 2% conversion rate. Right.

Yep, that makes sense. I'm thinking about like habits that people have. I remember when ClickFunnels was really ramping up a lot of their affiliate promotions. I think what their contest was, was basically like, hit this level and we'll buy you a car. And there were some actual terms of it, like it was a lease and they were covering all the payments of it or, you know, whatever. They had scoped it down. So it wasn't like $100 grand out of pocket for them, but it was like, yeah, we'll buy you a Tesla or something else like that. And what stood out to me so much is I always think of these things where the perceived value is higher than the actual monetary value, often because it's not something you would buy yourself. So maybe the trip to Tulum, you're like, oh, I could do that, but if I pay for it out of my business, then what's the exact ROI? And that's like, that's $5,000. And oh, but if I won it, Right. Or maybe the handbag or the car or that other thing where you're like, I'm never going to justify the Range Rover purchase, but if you're buying it for me, you know, I will play this game that you create to achieve this prize. Whereas the cash value, you do that and I'm like, 401(k), like, or the college fund or, you know, paying off this debt or like any of those like very like rational purchases.

And I think you can do that with the prizes. We've even, you know, we've said the prize, I'll even give you an example with the prizes. So like we could have a leaderboard prize or a ladder prize that's like, you know, the top 10 books from, you know, from the creator, like Nathan's favorite business books. But then on the delivery side, we just give them an Amazon gift card. It's like they literally are just getting money, but it's because we've tied it into a specific thing.

Got it.

And the other way you could do that is on the training, I could ask, okay, like, if you make 10 sales, you're gonna make this much in commissions. Like, put something on your vision board of what you're gonna do with that money.

Yeah, as you're back down here at the activate step. Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

So you help them tie it in. The other cool prize that we've done is, okay, we're gonna send your family on a trip. Or your team members. Like, if you can work team members into the prizes, because then the team member is advocating, we need to do that again, we need to sign back up, right?

Instead of feeling like, oh, why are we doing this again? Okay, you have this big drawing here of relationship rings. We can start to jump back and forth. Yeah, but what is this? What step of the flywheel does this relate to? And yeah, let's dive in.

Yeah, so this It's related to attraction. Okay, it could also be related to appreciation, but no, it's related to attraction and attracting the right fit affiliate partners in. Um, because like I said, just, you know, we're not just going around inviting, uh, everybody. So this center of the circle here is your offer.

Okay, okay, so we have your offer at the center.

And so this exercise of walking through the relationship rings, I do this with every client, and I've had people who are like the biggest names in the industry that I'm like on Zoom with them and I'm like, okay, great, who are we inviting? They're like, I don't know anybody. Like you'd probably be like, who, who is an affiliate for this Flywheel course? Like, I don't know.

I just freeze.

Exactly. And I do the same thing. And so this exercise actually helps you break down. Yeah, in a way where you can see all the people that you already know and you can appreciate and love up on them. But then you can also figure out how you're going to invite the different rings. And then you can also use this to figure out how to network with more people.

Yep, that makes sense.

And have a bigger pool of people to invite from. So in the center is your offer. I like to think of this as like a tree trunk.

Nice.

Sliced. So your offer is right here. And then ring 1 is this very first ring. As you can see, it's the closest ring. Closest to your offer.

Okay. Customers?

Exactly.

Okay.

So yeah, your customers and clients are ring 1. So ring 1 is your customers. So these people are the closest to your offer. And so this is where I was saying that person who was an affiliate for a couple years, had a small audience, was kind of demotivated by it. We said, you are a customer of this course. You have the best stories to tell about it. Just go out and share your story because you're the closest to the offer, and that's what sells, right? Right. Not like, oh, I know this guy Nathan Barry, he's pretty cool. It's like, no, I've taken the flyers on here. Yeah, stories is great. It's very specific stories about the offer. So we get a little further out in ring 2. So these are people that would have stories about you as a person, but they haven't taken your offer. Okay, so these are your colleagues, these are your friends. What I recommend for people in the brainstorming phase is you go look on all your social networks and you start to just see, oh, I forgot about that person I'm friends with on Instagram. Yeah, here, so anybody you interviewed for a podcast, any podcast interviews you've been on, people you've met at events, So that's how you can start to just like brain dump. And this is probably going to be a very long list depending on how long you've been in business. But, and so the first round of going through this exercise, don't edit.

Okay.

Like it's good.

We're just putting names down. Exactly. Yeah.

You're not like, oh, that person would never.

Oh, she would never. Yeah. I said that one thing and then she was offended and yeah. Yeah.

Do I know them well enough? I don't know. You're not doing any of that. It's just getting it down. It's the difference between writing and editing. But these people know you. And so they wouldn't be like, who's Nathan Barry?

Yeah.

In my inbox. This third ring is made up of two different types of people.

Okay.

So they're your dream affiliates.

Okay.

Like if I said, if anybody would promote you, Nathan, like who would it be? But they might not know you personally or they don't know you.

Okay. So the first one is dream affiliates.

Dream affiliates. Yes.

Okay.

Okay, and then we'll move to ring 4. So ring 4 is obviously like the furthest out from you. So already these people don't know you yet.

Yep.

And then the ring 4 is not specific people, but these are categories of people that serve your audience in a complementary way. So they could be people who sell things that people buy before you. Could be at the same time, things that people need like while they're working with you, or it could be after.

Okay, that makes sense.

So once you've got your brainstorm list of all these folks, then I go back through and I look at, okay, are these people values aligned? Like, do I want to be associated with them in the market? That's important. And then I also think about like what else they have going on. Do I want to invite them? Like, do I actually not know them very well? And so kind of this person, I might not invite them for this time, but I actually want to go to their events, start posting, you know, start commenting on their social media, start interacting with them, see what events they're going to and meet up with them in person. Kind of move them down a little bit further from here to here. Because something that I am against is cold pitching for affiliates.

Okay. So you, I guess as we back up, I'm gonna have a spreadsheet that might have either different sheets within it or, you know, a certain column is like which ring they sit in.

Yes.

And then I'm gonna go through and add notes about each person, you know, why they'd be a good fit, why they might not be, et cetera. And then as I start to make pitches, I can track that. But what you're saying is any in these two categories, we're not cold pitching.

Correct.

Because the success rate is just, it's too low.

Way too low.

And it's not worth it.

Yeah.

And you might be burning, like, you could have a good opportunity to build, like, to get them as a dream affiliate or from a dream affiliate to an actual affiliate. And if you like come out and, you know, start way too strong, it's just, it could flop.

Exactly. Yeah, like you can always move people into the circle, but if you already pitch them on being an affiliate immediately, like we have sent— because we've tried it, right? Like we've sent 200 cold emails out, gotten 2 affiliates to sign up, like 2 responses, and then they don't actually promote because like, yeah, they don't really care.

They're like, oh, that sounds good as a money-making opportunity potentially, but Yeah.

But it's not, yeah, it's like people sign up for the money, but they don't really sign up for the money.

Right.

Like that's really what it comes down to.

And so you never actually activate them.

Exactly, they don't really get activated, or maybe they'll send one email or make one little post, and they don't really bring people in. But if you spend the time to really personally invite 20 people, you're probably gonna get 15 of them to at least reply to you, And maybe 10 will actually say yes and sign up.

Right.

Right, so like 220. It's much better results.

Yeah.

So yeah, so once you've got your sheet, then you're looking at, okay, how do I invite the different people? So for these folks, again, you're not inviting, you are getting introductions, you are going to events, you are engaging with them. Becoming friends.

Is there a story of like something that's worked for you or one of your clients in closing some dream affiliates where they like moved beyond like just commenting or like casually building that relationship, but actually like really pursued either a group of people or, you know, one or two specific ones?

Yeah, I would say even the example that comes to mind right now is really for me. So a dream affiliate was Kate Northrup. And I actually too, this is a great tip as well. Like if you are going after a dream affiliate is to become their best client, right? Like take their program, but not just to take their program, like actually engage, actually participate. And if you don't have the funds to go become a client, go become a client again on their social content. 'Cause like why else are we posting if not to actually like engage with people, right? Like if someone commented on every post you made, you'd start to take notice.

This.

Yeah, like, who is that person, right?

Especially if it's a thoughtful— like, if it builds on it and adds value, ditto, great job.

Exactly. And yeah, so I would say all the time. And I mean, even for me, like, people trying to get me to become their affiliate, that's worked really well too, is like actually engaging, being thoughtful, making introductions for people is also a great way. Like, become the—

oh, like the connector, the hub.

Become— like, what's that word? Become the connector, and people start to take taking note of you as well. That's worked really well for me.

That sounds good.

And then for your friends and peers, the other mistake I see people making is they try to send what's essentially a cold pitch, like, to them.

You didn't have to do a cold pitch because it's a warm relationship. But you're like, ah, I know him super well, so copy paste. And you're like, yeah, I get that a lot. Actually, my team, as they manage my email and all of that, they're like, you know this person. I think, but you got this email from them that doesn't, it feels personal, but something's off about it. And so they'll flag it for me, kind of, but they're like, you can tell they're already questioning it. Or they're like, hey, you need to respond to this. And I'll look at it and be like, I don't. I can tell they sent this, some version of this.

To 200 people.

To 200 people. And so I just let it go. Exactly. The text or the like, hey Nathan, I saw that you were working on this. Here's the thing that I'm working on that's related to it. You know, do you have feedback? Do you, you know, any of those things? Not that I want more pitches asking for feedback, but like you can tell. But yeah, I can see that being a huge mistake.

Yeah.

Of the cold pitch to the warm relationship. Yeah.

And like it takes a ton of time. It really does. And it's time well spent. Because again, actually, so those 200 emails I was talking about with that example, we didn't send them to ring 3. We sent them to ring 2, people they already knew, and got like no responses because they're like, ah, this is a mass email, I'm just gonna delete it. So the only group that I would send an email sequence to using Kit is ring 1.

Okay.

Is your customers. And if you have any customers that you're like, but actually, they could really make this thing go, you're still going to want to reach out to them personally.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And say, I know you got this email invite, but like, I really think you should do it.

Right. And hitting it on a second channel, something like that. I really think that the, the email followed by the text or the social DM or vice versa matters so much.

Yeah, it's, it's so important. And I mean, is that how you Got your original affiliates, like your—

For Kit?

For Kit, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and like, something that was huge for me was going to conferences. Because the dream affiliates, like in-person events make such a huge difference. And so I would just look at, okay, who's going to be at this event? How can I make sure to connect with them? Because even if I knew that the, I wasn't gonna be able to build a relationship with them at the event, I knew that I could get my cold email Do something. And actually, something that I did, I did this with Social Media Marketing World, and Chris Brogan had given this amazing keynote and all of that, and he was very, very popular. And so after the event, he had a whole long line of people talking to him, and I knew that he was vaguely aware of who I was from like I think Pat was a customer, they were friends, you know, some of those things. And so I was like, okay, giant long line of fans. I could cut the line, but that's totally rude. I could wait in line and then I'm equal with them. And what I ended up doing is like, okay, I don't have time to talk to him or all of that. And so what I did is I walked up, cut the entire line, and said, hey Chris, That was really great. I loved it. You've got lots of people to talk to. I'll follow up with an email later, but maybe I'll see you at dinner later with Pat. And then like, he's like, thanks, you know. And it was one of those things. And it was interesting. I've done that a bunch of times since then where there's— it's some mix of status, a bunch of things going on there, and like what you want from them. Like if you're leaving the conversation, it's like, oh, I don't— I'm not trying to get anything from you.

Yeah.

That little interaction, then when I followed up with an email, it was like, oh yeah, I was the guy, you know, like he could connect to something. It wasn't a cold email, even though it was effectively a cold email.

Yeah.

And so going to those events made a huge difference.

Yeah. I think those types of things, and also you get to know somebody beyond the business, is just, you know, like I've, People have asked me about cold pitching all the time in other contexts, or like even going to an event. Like, nobody is like, oh, I really want to go to a networking event. Like, nobody likes networking, but people love making new friends, right? People love like talking about what they like to do outside or showing pictures of their kids, and, and they already feel like they know you.

Yes. The other thing I would say is at events, host the meal or host the meetup. Like at Craft in Commerce every year, right? There's some, you know, people hosting whitewater trips.

Like, that's me.

That's you. I did not even realize. I obviously haven't gone on it.

We were already talking about Raft in Commerce 2025.

Raft in Commerce.

Yes, exactly.

I did not realize that that was your trip. It's a pretty great event, right? Like, you love it. But it like puts you in the center of the conversation.

Yeah, yeah, I need to put myself in the center more apparently.

There you go, there you go. Okay, uh, maybe let's sit down and just think through, uh, some of the, the takeaways that we really want people to have as they implement this. I love any time that someone can take these, all these ideas, like broad principles, ephemeral ideas, and distill it down to concrete visuals. And so this brings me a ton of joy. I would say if anyone's listening to the audio, Go watch the YouTube video and definitely subscribe and all of that because, uh, the visuals add so much. But what are some of the things as you, you think of this in summary, right? Someone who is thinking, okay, I'm going to dip my toes in the water. Like I'm going to do an affiliate launch for this next, this next time I launched my product, I'm going to go all in on affiliates. What would you say to them after they've listened to this episode from here?

If you had your dream affiliate, who said to you, I will do anything that you tell me to do to promote your product. You just have to tell me exactly what to do and give me the resources to do it. Then go create that.

I like it. That sounds good. And giving people that map to become the dream affiliate, both so that, you know, you know how to attract them and activate them but then also so they know, you know, what to do to really amplify. And I think it just a takeaway for that I have is seeing the steps mapped out is so clear. And I know I, I can just even see my own tendencies. I would've, without having your level of expertise, I would've said like, yeah, we need to attract great affiliates and we need to amplify. And I would've gone to those two steps. And I see that all the time in flywheels where someone tries to make a 2, 3, or sometimes even a 4-step flywheel and it just doesn't work. Hmm. Because they're trying to accomplish accomplish way too much in a single step. And by breaking it out, then you get that smooth flow and the leverage actually works in that way. And so I think those activate and appreciate steps are just really, really important. And I also love this— I love a good loop closer in a flywheel, right? And so many people are like looking for a referral or whatever else, but appreciate, it's just a great loop closer. Because it not only makes that person that much more likely to come back as an affiliate, but then if you do it in the right way, you can even think, okay, what are the appreciation steps that are not showy, like overtly, but are visible beyond this one person? And like, that just goes so far.

Yeah, well, I think about even for a referral program, and it's always great, like if you're making a referral to somebody, when they come back and they say, oh, and we're working together, thank you so much for the referral, um, or maybe they're like, oh, here's $150 gift card. Like I used to send that, but imagine if you sent that gift card in a box that they could open on social media.

I like it. You made a comment of like, oh, maybe I should step into the spotlight a little more. Like, you know, as we were talking about meetups and that's what we're going to do in the next episode. You're going to come back on and we're going to dive into what it looks like to come from the behind the scenes mastermind of all of this. Out into the spotlight and share your expertise, which you've done so well here, but to take that further. So people should definitely tune in for that when it launches, but where should people go to follow you and learn from you in the meantime?

Yeah, so they can go to rootable, R-O-O-T-A-B-L.com, uh, and learn all about our affiliate tracking platform where we try to take care of as much of this as possible, obviously minus the relationships. Just add relationships and your plant will grow. That sounds good.

Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show, then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for listening.