908: Affiliate Marketing: Turn Your Passion Into a Profitable Business With Matt McWilliams

Robert Plank 0:04 Hey, welcome back to the podcast. We are here with Matt McWilliams. He is the affiliate machine that affiliate mastery he is living proof that one can pursue one's passion in life, and do so while making a profit. Matt has worked with Kevin Harrington, Tony Robbins, Dean, grassy, OC, etc. And he is held here to help you on your quest to turn your passion and your message into a profitable and growing business. So Matt, how the heck do we do that?

Matt McWilliams 0:32 Oh, Robert, thanks for having me, buddy. I mean, it starts with, you know, step one, which is getting clear on your passion. You know, this, the entire premise of the book that I wrote, turn your passion into profit hinges on one belief, Robert, and that's the world needs your message. The world needs your message, but it's not going to wait for it. Right? We're going to, we need your message, but we're gonna move on without it, we're gonna find our solution from somebody else. So why not you? You know, why not? Me? Right? Why not be the one the world whoever it is, whoever my audience is, is going to get the solution from and, you know, the there are potentially millions of people out there right now who are desperately waiting for you to step up and share your message with them. But it starts with that clarity. You know, that clarity on? Okay, what is your passion? What is your actual passion? What is your unique ability? Who are the people you serve? You know, who are they? And so I walk through in the book, I walked through three steps to get clear on your passion. This process is where we've helped, you know, gosh, now up to over 10,000 people with who came to me with the same question like, dude, I'm kind of passionate about this and sort of passionate about this. And I think I might be really passionate about this. What do I do? What is like, what's the thing that's going to, you know, be able to build a profitable business, because the reason we want to go to the other side of this equation, and build the profitable business is that's what's going to allow us to keep doing it for the long term, that's what's going to sustain us so we don't burn out. Because we just have, instead of a business, we just have an expensive hobby that we love doing. So I walk people through three questions. And the first one is, you know, what is it that people are always asking you for help with, like, you're the guy that people they come to, they ask you for help with this thing. One of the examples in the book is my friend Jonathan Milligan, and he had a had a blog that was all about career, you know, stuff, like how to write resumes and how to do interviews and get hired for your dream job. And then he noticed, like people kept coming to him saying, Jonathan, you you built this blog, like, how do you do it? How do you do it? How do you do it? After getting asked that question 100 times he's like, maybe I can make a business out of that. And he found out that he really loved it. The second question is like, what do people always say is really interesting about you? I don't know if you're familiar. Robert, are you familiar with the podcast Hardcore History by chance? Now? Okay, Hardcore History. Just to give you some perspective, it's a History podcast. When he releases a new episode, Dan Carlin's, the host when he releases a new episode, it is the number one podcast on every platform for like three days. I mean, not like in its category, but on the entire internet. It isn't like he's beaten the prince and the princess. You know, whoever learned other names. I don't keep up with that crap. But, you know, he's beating everyone on on Apple podcasts and Google podcasts and Spotify. He's not a historian, though. But he hosts a History podcast. And the reason is because he would go to Thanksgiving dinner, he was that guy, that somehow something would come up. And he would next thing you know, he's talking about how World War One started in the real story behind the atomic bomb. And he's telling these fascinating historical accounts in our bodies like, fan that's really interesting that you should do something with that. And if you haven't figured out your passion by then there's a third question, which is what did you struggle with, but now you enjoy success at and we all have a friend like this, my friend, Alan Thomas, who I write about in the book, it's the longest story in there. It's almost four pages long, because it's such a powerful story of a guy who woke up at almost the age of 60, got on the scale, realized he was over 300 pounds. And he said, you know, man, I've been I've been obese, overweight my entire life. 50 plus years, I've been I've been the fat kid, you know. And then I was the fat teenager, and then I was the overweight adult. And he said, nine months after I stepped on that scale of three or four weighed 175. All he does today, because he has a passion for this. He runs a very profitable business, a very impactful business, helping people with exactly what he did, because they can relate to someone who struggled with the same thing they're struggling with. So that's the starting point, Robert,

Robert Plank 4:34 amazing. This is some profound stuff. We're talking about that just that there are these people out there that have this this passion, this hobby, these things that they do these things that either come naturally to them, or as you said, maybe they struggle with me and they've overcome things. And it's time to maybe refine and shape some of the raw material into a business and it's something that can make money and can grow and can reach and help more people. APL as this scalable business versus if it was just you one to one kind of chit chatting with the people that you happen to come across. So we need to be kind of expanding this idea. And time is of the essence, as you said at the beginning, because the world will not wait around for you to be nice. It will be nice to think that it was it's your your destiny. And it's meant to happen. But you also have to, you know, do your own side of that effort. And so what are people not doing enough as far as turning this passion into a business? Because there's always the talk about procrastination, or how it's easy to plan or be stuck in your bubble and not get out and network like you do here with the with the podcasting, like how, at this very moment, or how you do the affiliate program stuff. So what is the missing ingredient? Or what is just the thing that people skip over that they need to not be skipping over?

Matt McWilliams 5:57 You know, I think the great question, nobody's ever asked me that before. I think there's a piece. And it's one of those things that I'll share the story. It's one of those stories that I wish I had moved earlier in the book, because I didn't realize until after I had written it, how foundational this this story was to people getting in the right mindset. You know, step one, like I said, is all about getting clear in your passion. Step two is committing to leading, step three is capturing attention. Step four is converting visitors into subscribers. And then we want to build community and become a champion for their cause. But it starts with the belief that this, this thing that we are uniquely qualified to do actually matters, and that we're even qualified to do it. And I found that one of the biggest things to hold people back, Robert, is that, you know, that self doubt, and I know we can get like really woowoo with that. And, you know, wow, like, you know, what is self doubt, like, I really don't doubt myself, but we'd sometimes doubt our credentials and our qualifications to be a messenger. And so there's a lady I write about in the book, and you know, I finished the manuscript over a year ago, if you know anything about working with a major publisher, everything takes longer. And it's so frustrating, like, as an entrepreneur, I'm like one of those peoples, like, let's write the book, you know, print the book, ship, the book, market, the book, sell the book, and then, you know, do that, and let's do that all in four and a half weeks, you know, and they're like, Hey, how do you feel about January of next year? And I'm going, No, that's a year away. What is wrong with you people. But it's actually as a side note, it's been a benefit, because it's allowed us to move a little bit slower pace. But I finished a manuscript over a year ago. So there's more to the story that I don't get to share a book. And that foundational mindset is summed up in the story that I tell in the book, there's a lady that I talked to one day, she was she had interviewed for our mastermind, or she applied for our mastermind, and the final step, you know, we, they comb through the applications, you make it to the final step, and do about a 15 minute call with the person just to make sure like, they're not crazy, you know, they can communicate on a telephone and sound, you know, put together coherent sentences, and they're gonna fit in in the mastermind, because our mastermind is a reflection of me, we're lively, we debate, we help each other and I don't want a really boring person on there. And I'm talking to this lady and she's like, Man, I'm sold. I want to be in the mastermind. My only concern is that I don't know that I can be successful. This. I was like, What do you say that and she's like, well, I want to be in the autism space. I want to help parents with autistic children. I was like, that's awesome. What a cool mission. She said, Yeah, I have two autistic children like, Wow, that's pretty rare, isn't it? She's like, very rare. It's like, why don't you think you're qualified? She's like, well, I don't have the letters after my name. Matt. I didn't go to Harvard. I dropped out of community college. I don't know the studies like she's like, I only learn how to pronounce cerebellum last week. You know, I don't know the medicines that work and the psychological study and the double blind this or that? She's like, I don't know all that stuff. I was like, You're a parent of two autistic children, right? She's like, Yeah, it's like, but I'm not qualified that I was like, I don't know what made me ask this. Rob, I'll just be honest with you. Like, this is one of those questions. When it came out of my mouth. I went, Oh, crap. Did I really just ask that question? I said, let me ask you something. Have you ever felt like killing your children? That she went every day? And I don't mean she's like thinking of ways to drown her children. You know, she's nicer. Parents of just non autistic children. Like there are days where we just go draw li Why did I ever sign up for this? If you're being honest, you feel that way. Sometimes right? Here, she's got two autistic children. And she's like, every day, Matt, and I said, but you haven't. As a matter of fact, what you told me is you've raised two very successful autistic children 13 and 10 years old, who are who are making it in the world who are who aren't what we would consider to be the prototypical autistic child despite having all the same challenges as the prototypical autistic child. So you told me that you travel You also told me that a lot of autistic parents won't travel because they're scared. She's like, you're right. It's it's you don't tell me you're not qualified. Like you don't need letters behind your name. You have your experience, that experience of wanting to kill your children and not of raising these kids. I said, just talk about that. So this, this is the part that parts in the book, fast forward about a year later, she emails me she's got over 10,000 YouTube subscribers. She's doing it, she's building a successful business around this whole platform, she all she's doing is talking about her experience. That doesn't matter what the science behind it, it doesn't matter what the PhDs say. And, you know, the doctor, say, and MBAs or any of those other acronyms say doesn't matter any of that stuff. She has her experience, and she recorded a video a few months ago, about traveling with autistic children. thing that I didn't know is that that's a nightmare. For a lot of parents with autistic children, they're scared because they're taking their child out of their routine, they're waking them up early, or putting them to bed late, or putting them on a metal tube and flying them at 38,000 feet. Try explaining that to any five year old or not, let alone an autistic five year old how that works. And so they're afraid their kids are going to act up and then people are going to look at them in judgment, the flight attendants are going to ask them to please step off the plane. And all these things are going to happen. So that fear that stress manifests itself and comes through in their energy, and now their kids feel it. So it just becomes a vicious cycle. She did a video about how she's done it, they've traveled all over the world to autistic children. She had a comment on her blog that, you know, said to her said, You're not going to believe this, but I haven't left my hometown in four years. Because I've been afraid to go anywhere. Because of your video, I just booked a flight with my child to Hawaii. And so we can get past that feeling that imposter syndrome, it opens up the doors like that everything hinges on that, Robert, all the marketing tactics and all that don't matter if you can't get through that basic there.

Robert Plank 11:59 That's amazing. And what you're reminding me of is, you know how like, guys like you and me, sometimes we'll do we'll do kind of like off to the side joint venture projects. And there was a time, maybe I don't know, six or seven years ago when there was there's one in particular where we were kind of teaming up and creating some information products, and he kind of fell off. And he goes to me a little bit. And then years later, we reconnected and he said that he had this kind of self doubt this imposter syndrome. And he said, there's so many other competitors talking about this thing. And there's so many blogs, YouTube videos, books, what about let alone me being an afterthought without everyone else has already blazed the trail. And I thought, I wish you'd been honest with me and told me about this. So I could kind of apply some of the matt McWilliams persuasion and kind of like, you know, talk you back from the edge. But that's really great that the the antidote to that impostor syndrome, self doubt that you're talking about is to have these desperate, but also relatable problems that someone else has. Because if it's just your own problem, that's not really quite the amount of motivation. But if you're, if you're in the situation where you're saying, there are other people who are like you, or who are what you used to be like, and they're frustrated, and they're hurt, and their lives are not great, if only they had your message, and sure there's, there's all these other YouTubes out there. But if those were working, if they were actually solving their problem, then they wouldn't still be stuck. So they're stuck without this problem that you are in your own unique way qualified to solve which does not have to mean their credentials. It's just your own unique perspective.

Matt McWilliams 13:40 Exactly. And sometimes we do have the credentials, you know, I mean, I'm sure a lot of times, like Yeah, if one affiliate manager the or four times in 17 years, that's a credential. But I didn't have it when I started. What did I have when I started nothing? Like I didn't even know what the heck I was doing. You know, but I somehow managed to figure it out. And so you go back to Alan Thomas, who I mentioned earlier, his his qualification is that he went from three or four to 175 and nine months, does he understand the neuroscience and all the nutrition? Could could he possibly have lost a little bit more weight if he'd known more about exactly what foods to eat? I'm sure he could have could have lost it that Sure. Could he have done it easier? Sure. He didn't need all that stuff though. So the thing that his audience sees when people come to him and he charges I'll just say a lot of money. You know, to coach people who need to lose weight, they come to him and go Alan, I weigh 387 pounds. I'm coming to you because you know what it's like to be me. All the other coaches out there, they've all been fit for 30 years. They've been fit since they were 15 years old. They can't relate to me and so it's a perceived disadvantage you know, we look at these things like we look at how do we stand out your your friend little me right? Well, I don't know what his situation is, but maybe as the messenger depends on the the, you know, Who has audiences and what he's trying to do. But if we look for that way where we can stand out, maybe all the competition is male and you're female, maybe all the competition is old and you're young, maybe all the competition is buttoned up wearing a tie, and you've got tattoos. I don't know what it is. But the reality is in almost every single niche, you know, there's room for more people that have a different style, a different look a different, you know, hair color, a different skin, color, a different gender, whatever the case may be. You know, if you think about, like, how people have stood out over time, a lot of times it was using those perceived disadvantages, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger comes to America. And, you know, not only sounds like somebody from Austria, because he's from Austria. But would anybody remember the line? I'll be back, if it had been me or you? Or even if it had been Tom Cruise, if Tom Cruise had said it, would anybody remember? No. One of the best actors in the world, nobody would remember that line. It's Remember, it's memorable. Because of the accent. Like he says, if it wasn't for his crazy accent, he'd still probably be in the Alps. yodeling right now, you know, we remember Adrian, we remember Sylvester Stallone, because he had paralysis, I think on the left side of his face. If I remember correctly, they reached him with like forceps and screwed his face up. You know what a cool story. You think, Wow. That's really unfortunate. And, you know, all the kids probably made fun of him when he was younger. He probably was self conscious about it. It's I believe, in many ways, it's what made his acting career, you know, Joaquin Phoenix with the cleft lip. You know, it gives them a unique look at Owen Wilson. There's something like his nose. I don't know if Owen Wilson would be famous if he had a regular nose. You know, so all of these things when you think about these are all like perceived disadvantages. But we can use them to stand out in the marketplace. You just have to think okay, what is it about me? What is it about my style? What is it about my, you know, what, like, if you got a southern accent, here's some advice. You got a little bit of a southern accent in the marketplace. Turn it up a little bit. Just throw a little bit more redneck in there. And that's one way to stand out. You know, it works. It absolutely works.

Robert Plank 17:11 Yeah, I mean, you're talking about the hero's journey, basically, right? Every superhero has the weakness, their kryptonite, when they take that disadvantage and turn it into an advantage. And with Arnold Schwarzenegger in particular, me personally, I have a theory that he puts that accent on, because he's been he lived in America since the 70s. There's no way he's still he's not purposefully doing that, which is, I get it. Yeah. Like it's sort of worn off by now. Right? So. But he's, he's applying exactly what you're saying. Yeah,

Matt McWilliams 17:43 I have a theory about that, too, that at some point, he would have learned how to offset you know how to have said California and not call it California. But yeah,

Robert Plank 17:50 it sticks with you. And just like Harley Davidson could make quiet motorcycles if they wanted to. But that would be the worst possible decision for them to make, right, they've tapped into something there is their uniqueness. Why not double down on it, instead of trying to have this inner battle and fight what you actually are and what you shouldn't be. And so this is all great motivational and like you have your kind of your media dialed in here, right? We kept it beginner friendly, but I'm hoping that in these last couple of minutes, we can maybe get into like the slightly more advanced stuff, but like, you know, you come here and you have your kind of stock questions, right? You have the the easy stuff that the the publisher said that, you know, take it slow and sell the books, but I want to know, in the last couple of minutes, you're an affiliate guy and you said that you won these like four competitions in a row. And so what is your secret with the affiliate because some people say their secret as like an affiliate manager is to apply the whole recipe and do like the the leaderboard and the contest. Some people say their secret is the database on the follow up. But what would you say without letting anyone else steal your your hot seat by

Matt McWilliams 19:03 privacy all day long.

Robert Plank 19:04 Okay, but then what's the secret?

Matt McWilliams 19:06 Yeah, just real quick, though. I just came up with a great t shirt from Harley Davidson. It's quiet motorcycles don't turn heads. You know? I mean, if you think about it, that's why we all know Harley's

Robert Plank 19:16 because they're loud. We did to them. See if they respond, right? Yeah,

Matt McWilliams 19:20 we got a t shirt idea. $1 million. Harley, come on. With it? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, there's no there's no one secret with growing an affiliate program. It is the combination of literally everything. So it starts me to get to start at the very basic. I work our way up. It starts with building an army of smaller affiliates that you develop relationships with stop chasing the whale. Number one, they're probably not going to work with you. Number two, if something goes wrong, you're going to burn some big bridges versus some small bridges. And number three, they have 1000 opportunity so even if they do choose you and they Say I'm going to promote you once, the odds of you getting them to promote a second or third time, in the next year, pretty slim. So we what we do is we build an army of 1000s 1000s and 1000s of affiliates, loyal affiliates who promote us, time after time, year after year, quarter after quarter, month after month, sometimes, sometimes they put them put us in their automation sequence, you know, so it's going out constantly in an evergreen basis, if we have that type of program. And we start there by building that army, then we foster those relationships. So we treat those tiny affiliates, and everybody else is like, why would I even work with you, you're going to make one sale, we treat them like gold, you know, relationships, right? We do the things that people typically reserved for their bigger affiliates, we get on strategy calls with them, we train them, we help them, suddenly they go from making one sale a year to 10 sales a year just from our help. Now what happens when you add that, to them five and 10 axing their list, they're making 50 to 100 sales, what happens with those 10%, that will hit it big over the next three years, because 10% of the affiliates, they're going to have a massive growth in their business, they're going to grow by 3040 50 times, but they're going to remember how you treated them. And so for us, that's been the key. That's what's worked for all of our clients. That's why we work with some of the biggest and the best. It's been that, you know, treating them amazing. Bringing them on, not not going well. They're too small to work with. It's not super profitable in the first six months, but I don't do anything thinking for six months. Like I'm trying to build a business for 1020 30 years. So for me, that's been the big secret. And then of course, yeah, it's all those things that you mentioned. It's, you know, the leaderboards. Yes, it's the competitions. It's the incentivization. I'll give you one example that this has been a game changer for us over the past seven or eight years. I started doing this about seven, eight years ago. So you've got you get your public leaderboard. And like, you know, top affiliate gets his top 10 gets us all that. So we all know that stuff. I don't have to teach that stuff. It's pretty basic. But what about on an individual basis? Here we are. We're recording this, toward the end of q4 2022. I'm not sure when it'll air but that's when we're recording it. About eight weeks ago, I had all of our affiliate managers go look at their affiliate programs that they're running. And I said, here's what I want you to do. We do this every year, I want you to identify the affiliates that are down 10 to 40%. Year over year from January through September. So through the first three quarters here, we're looking for those people that are down 10 to 40%. So they're trending towards finishing the year down, say 25%. So let's say they did 100,000 Last year, they're trending towards 75. This year, we reach out to him beginning of October and say Hey, Joe, last year, you did $100,000 Are you sorry, you did $25,000 in sales from October through December, if you beat that by even $1 We're gonna give you a $5,000 bonus. Now, the thing is, you have to remember, they're trending towards doing only 15,000 in December, you know, October through December. And so we're only going to pay them if they actually do $10,000 more sales than what they were trending toward. Now, here's the thing, very rarely does anybody land right on the number, they do one of two things 95% of time they either blow through it, we tell them to hit 25, they end up doing 32. So we actually got $17,000 in extra sales, or they fall short. But they do 22,000 We got an extra 7000 in sales for no additional cost of those those that made sense, you may have to go back and listen to that. But that's how we do it. And that's been one of the biggest ways that we've grown over the years is identifying those people who are down, and just getting them to get back up.

Robert Plank 23:47 That's amazing. I mean, I've never heard of that technique before. And it's, it's so cool because you're you're like applying, maybe like the techniques that you would if you had like a call center or a sales team of like, you know, 10 or 20. But you're applying that on maybe like more of like a mass scale of like hundreds or 1000s of affiliates. And you and I both know, I mean, we've been at this for decades, you know that if you have an affiliate that makes like one sale there and like the top 5% of all your affiliates, you know what I mean? And there's there's the ones that what's that

Matt McWilliams 24:15 not the programs we run

Robert Plank 24:15 open up okay within the what what the rest of us are used to right it's It's like someone someone signs up, you're lucky if they log into the affiliate center, you're lucky if they grabbed and swipe, copy. But then of course, there's the like the nurturing and these things that you're talking about are like, you know, working your system and kind of just kind of pulling pulling them through and helping out their business. And just having the these combining the relationship building with the repetition and the hard work and I can tell that you're even just from all of our conversations even before the show and during the show, you're all about having the relationships and like just putting in time and making sure almost like a like a teacher right making sure like everyone is taken care of. And that's like that's such a cool idea. to have like these affiliates individually bettering their best, because you hear about like, oh, well, let's make this number of sales and we'll give you like an iPad. But that's even cooler, like, if you just better your best a little more than the last year, and that that just like it makes it so unique and so exciting and keeps those affiliates coming back, as you said year after year. So that way, you don't have to go on scramble or do the, kind of like the, the techniques that sound good in theory, but are sort of at a touch like, like we were kind of talking a little bit about kind of on the periphery, like they, they say, to go and look at the leaderboards of all the top other launchers and talk to them. It's like they want to talk to you, you don't have that much to offer. And you're only looking at the tip of the iceberg of like building out all the smaller affiliates. And that way the whole system works together. But so many people just look at one little piece and not have all kinds of the legwork that you're talking about here. And so there is definitely not enough time in the day to talk about all these fun subjects. And that's why people need to look into the affiliate guy podcast and your book behind you turn your passion into profits, and your your website and all that. So if someone was thoroughly impressed by all the tidbits you dropped today, man, I'm in that group. I'm one of the ones that's impressed by all we I mean, we talked about, like 50 different subjects today. So if they're impressed, and they want more of you, what's the next step? Where do they go? What do they do?

Matt McWilliams 26:23 I'm gonna violate every rule of marketing. All right, first of all, I'm not going to answer your question, because I gotta say one thing on what you just said, when you go to leaderboards, here's where you look, you don't look at the top 10 You don't even look at the top 20 Look at the list of the people they put this as and also making sales. Because those are the people who made 234 sales. Nobody reaches out to them. I'm going to I'm just going to tell you guys, and that thing I just suggested with going in and looking at their quarterly stuff and give here's I have shared that, Robert, with. I guarantee you more than 200,000 people have heard me say that between stages and podcasts in my own stuff, my courses, podcasts and all that stuff, right interviews. Nobody does it. Like this is the amazing thing. I'm telling you guys, it's made me millions of dollars, and nobody does it. And it's mind blowing. Why? Because it takes 40 to 50 hours to actually execute that on an average sized affiliate program. It's not easy, but it is totally worth if, if I could if I could think of anything else my business where I go, I'm going to spend 40 hours and it's going to return $300,000 I would do that thing every week, you do the math, I'd be a multi, I'd be a billionaire in like 20 years, you know? Alright, so to answer your question, I'm also gonna violate marketing Rule number two, which is don't give two calls to actions because we talked about two very distinct things today. If you're interested in starting an affiliate program, you want to kind of like what are those first steps Matt, I'm where you were 17 years ago, and I don't know what the heck I'm supposed to do. Go to Matt mcwilliams.com Ford slash first 100 FYRST 100 If you want to grab the book with love that it's going to help you guys on this path. The journey from again, I've got this idea I've got this passion I want to turn it into a profitable business. Maybe you know somebody who could use it, you can grab it in any any if they sell books, Amazon target Walmart, you name it, they sell books, you can grab my book, but the best place to get it is passions into profits book.com Ford slash plank because we have a bunch of extra bonuses there for you guys that you can't get anywhere else. So make sure you go to that passions into profits book.com Ford slash plank, see and get those bonuses and just a better place to do it because they don't give you a bunch of stuff for free.

Robert Plank 28:37 Well, fantastic. You have really put the the affiliate mindset and everything you do from having the custom page set up to having the cool offers to having all the extra goodies. And to kind of you even like your your appearance, your you kind of have your your stock material plus the randomness on the fly. And I think we can all learn from what the heck you have going on. So it's time to go to those various web addresses that we mentioned. Don't want to repeat them. Because you know, with the podcasting, if you repeat what someone else said as a link, you always mess up the link. So just, you know, passion. Is there profits on that on that. Like, I think that Nick williams.com/first 100 And the rest, I don't even want to try to remember all those exact ones. But as we wrap up and join our conversation here, Matt, we always want to be memorable, right? We always want to end on a high note. They say all's well that ends well. So what do you have as far as something to really close our conversation on a high point something to really remember this conversation or advice to you had gotten 10 years ago that you wish you'd had back then what comes to mind as far as like something good and big just to close this down?

Matt McWilliams 29:45 Oh, man, I think you know, this is one of those weird ones has nothing to do with anything we've talked about. So we'll just add a third topic basically. Here's the advice I wish I had been given 12 years ago when When I left my first company that I started, and I was back out on my own, you know, and I was by myself, I was a prototypical solopreneur. And I thought every time something happened, you know, I had the website doesn't work, what I do, how do I fix it? Got to build the landing page, how do I build the landing page? How do we do this? How do we do this? How do I do that? I kept asking the wrong question. I kept asking how. And part of that is, you know, I grew up with a single mom, quite frankly, we were poor. You know? So I grew up with that DIY mindset. But the answer was always how. And then finally, I realized about 10 years ago that I was asking the wrong question, I should be asking who? I saw a post randomly on Facebook one day where somebody set posted and said, Who do I know that bla bla bla, I don't even know what the question was. But who do I know that knows the answer to the question I have? Completely estimating a Facebook post changed my life Said no one ever except for me. It changed my life because I realized, oh my gosh, I know people I know people. So with this book launch, I didn't I don't know anything about getting Amazon reviews. I've always been on the other side, right? Run the affiliate program, help them sell 30,000 books, don't worry about if the book rates well on Amazon don't know any of that stuff. And I was like, Well, how do I do that? And I went to Google and I typed in, and I was like, Wait, why am I doing this? So I went over to my text, I message and said, Hey, Chandler, how do you how do I get in? Reviews? Pick up the phone, call me Give me 15 minute lesson. He's the expert on it over and now I know. So I stopped. I would just say stop asking how and start asking who because you probably already know somebody who has the solution to your problem.

Robert Plank 31:34 And you know, that that? Who not how links back into your other other subtopics of your branding, right that the point of an affiliate program is there's all these traffic sources, all these lists, but instead of trying to figure out all that just figured out who when the problem that stops people is how to y, z how do I get my knowledge out there? Well, the question is not how it's who is stuck. And then the How comes from the who, if that, if that even makes sense. So amazing. Mind blowing, Matt, Nick williams.com and Matt McWilliams on social media turn your passions into profits. And the affiliate guy podcast super great to meet and talk with you, Matt. I feel like this was like five episodes in one. I appreciate you very much. Thanks, Robert. This is Robert plank from the marketer of the day podcast which you can find at marketer of the day.com for more episodes and df Why podcast.com forward slash free if you want to know more about running your own podcast or running a better or more fun or easier or less time intensive podcast, go to d f y podcast.com/free. To find out more right this instant