The Next Frontier of Affiliate Marketing Software with Drew Johnson

Dustin Howes: 0:27

Hey folks, welcome to Affiliate Nerd Out. I'm your Nerdirator, Dustin Howe Spread that good word about affiliate marketing. You're going to find me here every Tuesday and Thursday at 12.15 Pacific Time, so put it on the calendar and join me live with my guest. And my guest today is Drew Johnson, business Development Director over at Everflow. Welcome to the Nerditorium, drew.

Drew Johnson: 0:52

Howdy howdy Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dustin Howes: 0:56

That's Danny, and we're going to be doing some live Q&A, so if anybody wants to join in the chat, please drop a question for me and Drew. We are going to be happy to answer it. About anything, affiliate, partnerships, whatever you want to ask, don't be afraid, we do not fight. If you would like to be in Drew's seat, come be my guest. Go to DustinHousecom, slash nerd and toss out a topic that we can talk about. Our question of the day for all those brands out there are you looking to track all of your marketing efforts in one place, or just affiliate? What is the right answer? What is the right way to go about things? I want to know what brands are out there using or, ideally, what they would like to be using. That's the big question of the day. I'm going to throw in the chat and, without further ado, here Drew, who are you?

Drew Johnson: 1:52

Great question. I am Drew Johnson. I am a director of business development at Everflow. I have worked at Everflow for about five and a half years now, getting closer to six, because that's how numbers work. Before that I have worked in pretty much a little bit all over the space. I worked in an agency slash, I would say network where we were doing a lot when like mobile was getting big, as well as some like programmatic buys. Before that I worked in a lead gen network where I was bringing on pubs and brands both in paper call and non paper call.

Drew Johnson: 2:27

And then before that my very first job in the industry was I was like flighting penny campaigns before there was any sort of like security measures for arbitraging traffic.

Dustin Howes: 2:37

I want to give a little bit more into that in your career. That sounds really interesting. I want to hear a little bit more on that topic. But great intro on who you are. So I understand that you're BizDev over at Everflow, which is a product I really believe in and love and I've been utilizing over the last year for a lot of my clients and I know a little bit about whoever flow is. What is the name origin story to begin with? How did they get that name?

Drew Johnson: 3:09

Yeah for sure. I mean definitely has been great to have you over the past year, been great to show you kind of all the stuff we can do For name origin story. As we were talking before, I kind of scurried through our organization to see if anyone knew the story. They actually you don't really have one. We have been the same since day one. Everyone has been Everflow. We might have changed the logos and brought somebody in to make those fancier. We've always been Everflow.

Drew Johnson: 3:34

A funny story about that when I started me and another guy by the name of Ross where we were the first sales people on the team, we actually at one point were losing an SEO to a plumbing company.

Drew Johnson: 3:43

So for a while when we were running the beginning chat systems, I would get some people that would come in. They would ask if three quarter inch copper would do better than three quarter inch PVC, and obviously I would do the due diligence of looking up to give them a better answer. But it was never going to be Everflow that would do the plumbing. So that was kind of how we started. Now today we're either up the top or one of our competitors is bidding on us because we are at the top both physically or mentally. But besides that we've kind of started from being a small kind of bootstrap company. That came from the founders who started one of the first mobile agencies around back when mobile was big, and then after that they basically use the money from the buyout of that to start Everflow. The original founders and people are all there, and me and I would say the next wave of people that did sales are pretty much all there as well.

Drew Johnson: 4:37

So we've all been growing steadily and yeah, now we're at around, I would say 100 plus people.

Dustin Howes: 4:44

Oh nice, it's great to hear you have a fallback career in plumbing Now that you have all that knowledge. That just shows how extra mile you go to assist and yeah, we go the extra mile here.

Dustin Howes: 5:03

That is a hilarious story. I went through the same thing at Grovia. If you look up Grovia to this day, the diaper company came up first on SEO, so we had customer support asking about diaper and baby questions, which I thought was hilarious and it's hard to beat that out, but it looks like you guys pulled it out. So tell us a little bit more about Everflow. What do you guys do and who you're serving out there?

Drew Johnson: 5:32

Yeah, of course.

Drew Johnson: 5:33

So you know, at the end of the day, we are tracking an attribution platform.

Drew Johnson: 5:38

We serve our clients by giving them as much visibility into all of their data that we can.

Drew Johnson: 5:43

Whether it is influencer, media buyer, internal media buyer, third party media buyer, whatever you consider an affiliate, whether it's B2B partners, influencers, we're giving you a place to track all of that, and not just track all of that, but track it in real time.

Drew Johnson: 5:59

On top of that, we're giving you all the attribution you would need, both in the front end, from an impression to a click, to everything downstream, from the different events, from sales to purchases, installs, downloads, lead gen, you name it. We are serving, I would say, a ton of the lead gen finance insurance verticals because of the way that we produce or we display the data that they're running. We can give you a lot of the downstream event tracking that you need for a fraction of the price of the competitors. We do, of course, a ton with Ecom, nutra, health, wellness, all of those standard verticals where you have the option with us to set up multiple brands in one paid account, which is very different than some of our competitors, or the ability to set up one brand with one branding and then give many different options for them to run offers and traffic.

Dustin Howes: 6:47

That is awesome. The clients I've been working with in the last couple of years. I always like to give them options. I like to tell them where to go, as far as when they're launching an affiliate program and lead tracking solution to go with. I give them options and so many of them are coming your way and sticking with you, which is a testament to you guys' product and the price point. You guys are early to this game and giving a much more affordable price point, which is for a lot of the same bells and whistles, which I absolutely love. Love to hear you guys are growing, love the product and what you guys are doing there.

Drew Johnson: 7:29

We love to hear it and we love to hear the love.

Dustin Howes: 7:31

Awesome, awesome. Tell me more about this career. Beginning, you mentioned pennies. Is this like a Lincoln or is this loafers? What is this penny?

Drew Johnson: 7:40

Well, it'd be a fraction of the penny. Actually, pretty interesting enough, I worked originally in insurance. I hated the job. I stopped. I was like, okay, I can do sales. I started working at what I was they were. I think they were called digital something. Basically, we would buy arbitrage clicks and mostly monetize them on like brodude sites.

Drew Johnson: 7:59

That would be like hey, like see these hot chicks drink beer, here's 20 clicks, kind of thing. During that time it was my very first kind of foray into tech and I worked in a WeWork during the time of the whole WeWork craziness. So when all the time of them flying people out and free events and everything I was pretty much in the heat of WeWork lifestyle during that, in which I made friends from that lifestyle who were in this space told them I was looking for a new job, realized that my job wasn't really it, because all you really do is, you know you get somebody to give you $100 for a week. You flight penny, click traffic to hope to arbitrage more viewers. A lot of it is fake. As soon as I knew enough about the industry, I kind of was like, okay, let me figure this out. Made some friends that we work. They gave me a job as a beginning salesperson and then from there just worked in lead gen and onward and upward.

Dustin Howes: 8:52

Okay, awesome, that's an interesting beginning of my career. Feel like I cleaned up. I cleaned up, okay. Saw that in the same kind of vein. I worked in the fraud development department and I got to see a lot of the.

Drew Johnson: 9:05

But we were racing then. We were definitely racing to see who could stop me from making money and who I can make money. That's definitely what we were doing about 10 years ago.

Dustin Howes: 9:13

Maybe I took some money from you I'm not positive, like who knows and then I went on to the what I like to call the dark side and joined a coupon site that was doing trademark bidding and I saw that side of the thing and said I don't want to be part of the problem, I want to be part of the solution. And and then I got to the, the brand, and helping brands grow their program to what I do today. So always that is a unique story, though, like, getting that side Must help you out in your career today in the best development part, right.

Drew Johnson: 9:49

I think a lot with like the, the different roles helped me out is a lot with like vocab. I think what I've learned from like training our junior sales team here at Everflow is that the biggest issue for anyone you know junior, senior is like all the different vocab there is for all the different marketing spaces. So not just affiliate, but then you know affiliate influencer. You know what does affiliate mean to somebody who just has amazon store. What does affiliate mean to somebody in Turkey? What does affiliate mean to somebody in China? What is affiliate mean 10 years ago versus b2b? Now there's Learning that lingo across all those different boards and all those different levels from like a lead gen agency. Fighting campaign stuff definitely helps a lot like the learning curve as you pick up new things.

Dustin Howes: 10:34

So true, and every, every, every person that I meet at a conference that is in a different world. I always pick their brain because when you, even when you go to affiliate summit, there's a different type of affiliate out there world that I just not as familiar with. And, yeah, I like learning about that kind of thing just to be more knowledgeable in that space. It's Um, it's interesting to me at least.

Drew Johnson: 10:59

Yeah, I always think about how little my parents know about this space and think there's other people out there that are other people's parents of kids in tech, and so I just always assume no one knows what affiliate marketing means and just go at it from usually what do I think the least barrier of entry is and then explain more of my job and career as Like new vocab unlocks.

Dustin Howes: 11:19

Yeah, and I think, as as you progress in this career, that's sure the answer that gets, and the more Uh precise it is like Uh, what do you do? I'm in affiliate marketing. Some traffic, some sites have traffic, other sites want traffic and they pay commission to those people. Sending that traffic easy game at this point, like it's, it's simple, but you still have to explain it to mom and sisters. Uh, once a year, exactly. All right, so let's get into the, the main component of this episode, and that is network versus platform, and I want to talk about those main differences. Everflow Is not a network. You guys are a tracking attribution platform. Tell me what's your definition of a network and platform and maybe some of those main differences that you see out there.

Drew Johnson: 12:11

Sure, yeah, um, but definitely take kind of. I guess follow up on that you are correct. We don't, at the end of the day, call ourselves a network. We call ourselves the best in class for tracking and attribution Um, we definitely have a marketplace and network component for people to go through, but, at the end of the day, the way that we look at what a definition of a network is is somebody that is connecting Brands they don't own with traffic they don't own. Pretty much a facilitating stage for both to get connected and run Um. A lot of, I would say, network performance and network scalability is based to how big their marketplace or network is. It does network a have more affiliates than network b? Well then, that means we have to have more success with networka. Um. Where our difference is from coming at this angle is that we've always started and we're always going to identify as a tracking Attribution platform first, because that's what we focused on, that's what we excel at, that's what we've, I would say, not perfected, but that's what's made us the gold standard in the space for what it is now of tracking attribution.

Drew Johnson: 13:10

Unlike other networks, we run in real time and we don't have conversion drop off as you have downstream events, we don't charge you to set up other events. We don't charge you to set up things in general. You know, you get started with us, you get set up. You get a set up fee. There's monthly fees.

Drew Johnson: 13:24

Everything is pretty straightforward for what you need to get things going, you can track, not just tapping into a marketplace or a network, but you can control your own sauce. You can basically set up your own influencers, partners, on your own system, control that whole sign up and even make it as kind of dummy proof for them as possible, so they don't even need to log in. You can just give them a tracking link. You can send them out the reporting and make it as easy as possible for whatever level of intelligent partner you have or not even intelligent, but use to the industry you have.

Drew Johnson: 13:52

Like there doesn't need to be a self-serve. You can eliminate that aspect. So we try to focus on giving you all that data, running it all in real time, never having to look somewhere else for different reports because we should be spitting them all. Spitting them all out for you, but then giving you a place that you can be comfortable to know that's running in real time. Up time 99.9 percent sock to compliance, all this other stuff. So your data is safe, your data is running and it's always running, and we're there to support you If there's anything that looks fishy or something's not up, with lots of level support that you can use and tap into.

Dustin Howes: 14:24

Yeah, and I wouldn't call affiliates that are Into tracking Smarter necessarily. I don't know a lot of really dumb affiliates that are million there. I would say the word is sophisticated, right, like the more You're sophisticated and entrenched you get it in this industry, the the more Carey take with your data, and it's good to hear that you guys Are taking care of the publishers as well as the advertisers out there, of course, as well as we also a big thing with us is we were built with a very much API focus first, a lot of people that are easy wins.

Drew Johnson: 15:03

for us as a client is that if you have something internally built and internal CRM, a backend, anything that's a different setup that maybe you haven't used the Shopify's or the standard apps flyer out there which we can also integrate into we can integrate into anything via API, web hooks or post-backs, all of those other options and types of different verticals out there, like a crypto, where there's a lot of different things. We can give them the capability to set up anything they want with as many different touch points pretty easily, which is a big thing.

Dustin Howes: 15:33

Yeah, it's so interesting. The good affiliates out there that have the traffic volume and the capabilities, being monsters sometimes they don't want to go to outside sources, outside of the main networks. I think that is one of those main distinctions between networks and platform. The main ones, the CJ's, your impacts, your rack antenna, your share of sales, everything in that nature falls under this. Well, impact doesn't claim their network, but they're a big guy at this point. So, anyway, what they want? Main networks, the affiliates that are big. They want main networks that have the capability of the tracking attribution that they're looking for, the S2S and things of that nature. So I think that's one of the things.

Dustin Howes: 16:24

I've never heard anybody decline EverFlow, which is a good thing. If I'm running a program on EverFlow, I don't have fight back. If I'm running a program on post-affiliate pro, then we have a problem. Then it's a conversation like you're trying to get a big publication like a CNET to come on. They don't say yes to that. But I still have not had an issue with any program on EverFlow but I think that's a good thing.

Drew Johnson: 16:52

Yeah, definitely a lot of growth, definitely a lot of like, I think, to your point. There's the world of certain people that will only run on a certain network. We are definitely rushing to fill that gap up on a lot of if there are any of those out there. To your point. We can one-off set up everyone, so there is no reason to decline because you can run with us whether you're part of our marketplace or not, part of our network or not. We just try to make it easy. Where you don't even need to do a sign up, then they're pretty much off the races and able to run.

Dustin Howes: 17:22

Awesome. What would you say if I was having that issue as an affiliate manager? I'd run into the problem where, hey, you guys aren't on CJ or like I don't know why, affiliates love cake. Even though the technology might be a few steps behind AYs, affiliates still love that platform so much. If I'm getting flack from an affiliate trying to sign them up for my affiliate program on Everflow, what's a way I can combat them and say this is just as good, if not better tracking solution than any network out there?

Drew Johnson: 18:06

Yeah for sure. Well, definitely we need to get you more of those recent cake combos, because we haven't gotten that complaint in a month from any cake people, for sure, but we do a lot of efforts for especially specifically that example with a cake or somebody Back in the day. Email publishers wanted things a certain way. They want to get their creatives, everything done a certain way so they can make their lives easier. We were very flexible over the course of my time here to change and update to what those types of publishers wanted. If there's any specifics besides the fact that they're just a big pub and they're putting their heels in the ground to say, hey, we're just not doing an integration right now, there's never going to be something on us that we won't fix or make available to make a publisher be able to use us. On top of that, we also provide a system that can be a paid account for a publisher.

Drew Johnson: 18:55

So we do have some big pubs that look at us and run us on the paid account because they set up multiple brands within their one system that maybe aren't on in us or they're across multiple different networks and tracking solutions For anybody who's maybe a bit more like pushing sand and feet in the dirt, kind of not want to really work if they don't need an integration. They just need a link. You can very easily set somebody up manually, spit them out their tracking link, give them a coupon code, give them a QR code with us to make their life as easy as possible. So if there's whatever the amount of manual or personal work that the owner of the brand or a network or a pub can do to get another pub on, we can support all of that up to doing an integration directly for that pub. Where we don't have access to their system, everything else should be achieved and we can give them whatever metrics or tracking forms they're looking for.

Dustin Howes: 19:47

Excellent and one of those bigger deciding factors on the network and platforms. I would say one of the selling points the bigger networks have always said is like this is how many affiliates we have on our network, and I've always seen that as a vanity metric, Like those affiliates could be 20 years old and the sites don't even exist, but they're still on the platform and so you can say, technically you have millions of affiliates to choose from, but they're not going to be in your vertical and niche and maybe they're not active anymore. Like, do you see that as a vanity metric as well? Because I'm sure you get that conversation a lot.

Drew Johnson: 20:30

Yeah, great question, and definitely we actually. It's funny that's something that we dealt with a lot last year where we realized that somebody like an Impact Share Sale CJ was very much bringing to the table like, oh, we have 18,000 pubs, we have 16,000 publishers and we have a few hundred. So that was something that I think for somebody who's more in the beginning stages, that math makes sense. If you're just getting into affiliate, you understand the number 300. You understand the number 18,000. You go well, for what little I know this should be it.

Drew Johnson: 21:03

So where a lot of people, I think, as soon as they run in this industry for at least a year, you kind of learn that 90-10 rule or that 80-20 rule where it's like most of your revenue, most of your profit comes from that 10% of the affiliates you have on the top line and all the rest kind of trickles in from that side. What I would say is like or at least what we do to combat that is, we don't look at ourselves very much as a network, like I said. So we actually have the ability to connect and integrate with somebody like a click bank. So if you are like an e-com and neutral product, we're not looking at click bank as the competition. We're looking this as like a symbiotic relationship where we're working together, providing a lot of the tracking and attribution that maybe they don't focus on, but then you can then get the data from them and tap into their hundreds of thousands of publishers and track all of that on us alongside anyone you're running in us.

Dustin Howes: 21:56

Okay, cool. So in conjunction with other networks as well, that's a possibility on a solution. That's great. So things. What are brands looking for If they're either launching or thinking about migrating their program? What are some of those deciding factors that they need to be looking at?

Drew Johnson: 22:18

Well, definitely in this economy right now, pricing that's, I would say, the biggest thing that we get. One of our main competitive factors is our pricing and how we can be very flexible on that to accompany different types of products and industries and setups. I would say, from there, the next step is like, internally, what your program is. Are you a B2B affiliate program? Are you an influencer program? Do you run everything from your marketplace or have you turned your referral program into an ambassador program? That is something that you want to manage more and I think it's a lot of the brand's internal look and, as I've worked on it, more, a lot more of figuring out do you really need a platform right now or do you need an agency and then a platform? And I think the success that comes for like the deciding factor is where you are on your I would say, your business growth chart. If you are coming on and you're saying, hey, we don't have a dedicated person to run affiliate, we want to turn this on and make money. There are companies like Pepper Jam and A-Win that are an agency built in, that you can do that. You can then go to the next step of finding an agency that brings you success on the other places, like us, impact share sale as like a management. But it's really looking inward and looking at your account, I'd say, okay, we can do this, we have the bandwidth to do this, we want to do this.

Drew Johnson: 23:34

And then, finally, the expectations have you done any research at all again about your competitors and what they're charging?

Drew Johnson: 23:41

Or are you looking to come in and go, hey, what do we pay out?

Drew Johnson: 23:43

Tell us and we'll just do it, or we'll tell you now, if I think it's the combo of kind of two and three where you need to have an expectation, some people that I get from all the demos I do that are very like hey, can you just send us all the data that, like your top clients, like us, are running, tell us what they're paying out, and then we'll decide what we're going to do. And it's like no, we are a platform. You would use an agency or somebody that you're paying to specifically bring you success. You have to at least know at this point if you have a product that can work or any of that. So it's looking inward and understanding not just what your product is but then understanding what the competition in the landscape looks like, so that it's like you can then look and see who am I mad at or who do I need to look at for the success Me the agency platform. But once you have that info you can at least then make a better educated guess about that.

Dustin Howes: 24:34

That's such a fine line. You have to walk as a sales rep of a company like that, like no, we can't give away this information of other clients that are working in this and also setting false expectations of a program that is very developed two to three years beyond and saying, oh, this is how much they're making, this is how much you can do, yeah, this is what they spend daily.

Drew Johnson: 24:58

This is what they do Like all that stuff A besides not being able to share, it is just like you can't compare like numbers, the letters, kind of thing.

Dustin Howes: 25:05

Yeah, it's just irresponsible is what it is Like from a sales rep perspective and then your fulfillment team trying to help you get there. That's a recipe for churn. As I like to see it is sales reps overselling what the possibilities of that affiliate program could be. So good to hear that you're like setting those expectations and like helping them recognize what that flow looks like essentially. Yeah, exactly Awesome. So we got a quick comment. Nasser says hey guys, happy to be here, happy to have you, sir, thank you for being here and hanging out. Before we move on Any other big deciding factors that you have that we left off the flow. Maybe something ever flow is doing different than the rest of the public that you guys have been proved on because you guys are a new player in the last five years coming in hot.

Drew Johnson: 26:01

What are you guys doing? If you are looking to set up a network or like a network for your brand, aka and to break this down for some people who don't call it a network, if you are looking, if you have a brand, this is for, like, the agency people and you are setting up multiple brands, you don't run on one side and multiple publishers on the other side. You don't manage. That is pretty much a network. We set that up very easily and I would say where we blow out the water.

Drew Johnson: 26:28

So, whatever, whether it's an agency set up, a network set up, being able to set up multiple brands on one side, multiple publishers on the other, is something that the networks cannot do and that we beat everyone else out in. So, whether you are a publisher, media, buyer, agency network, if you are looking to set up multiple brands with multiple publishers and not just multiple publishers but multiple publisher types, we can do that for you very easily. And then two, if you are very specific with accounting or security, we are SOC2 compliant, which a lot of others are not, and we do not force you to use our billing section. So if you want to maybe pay out on crypto or you have a banking account or other of these that are very finicky with how your accounting team works. We are very flexible and we do not need to lock you into a certain type of payment or using our payment piece.

Dustin Howes: 27:15

Flexibility is that key word that I like to describe you guys as, like. You guys have so many features that I want in an affiliate program like. I want the second tier so that I can go and recruit for people and others can recruit for your program as well. I want vanity code tracking, I want S2S, I want the dynamic tracking attribution that you guys offer the affiliates, because that is what they are looking for. If they get into the real depths of some of those amazing affiliates, that can make a big difference. So flexibility is a big key word there that I like to see and what you guys are doing really well out there and in terms of, like the clientele that you are taking on, what are people most interested in? Is this growth marketing? This is affiliate, this is performance. What are the folks that are coming to you and your clientele like? What are they looking for?

Drew Johnson: 28:09

They are usually looking for at the top level, better data reporting, analytics. They want to be able to. At the end of the day, on the click level, we are giving you everything from Geo, device type and then any sub field data you want to pass back. So a lot of people, when they grow to a site and they get established, you know you get all of your affiliates they have been running for a while.

Drew Johnson: 28:30

Your next part, I would say, is how do I get the best use of this squeeze and get more of it with the squeeze I am currently doing, and that is where we really come in, where we are going to help you save money while getting better visibility in real time to everything you are running For. Like vertical, we do a lot with anything lead gen, so home improvement, insurance, finance, anything there, because they usually just have more data they want to see. But anything that is also like mobile ecom that is doing subscriptions, downstream events, post install events we are able to give all of that visibility. So, if you are, we get a lot of people in those verticals for the reason of them to want to have more of that and to see more of that. And then also too. I would say anybody that back to what.

Drew Johnson: 29:17

I said earlier, that is going to do like a custom setup or have like maybe multiple different offer types where they are going to pay out one sector completely different, with maybe like a percentage of revenue with a completely other sector, with maybe like a CPL, and that is, different types of affiliates.

Dustin Howes: 29:31

Good to go.

Drew Johnson: 29:32

All right.

Dustin Howes: 29:34

And that brings up the sponsor of the day. It is no surprise. This is EverFlow. If you like, supporting what I am doing here with my content creation habits, and please support the channel, this podcast. Go to DustinAozcom. Slash EverFlow and go check out OverFlow for yourself. They are not a paid sponsor, but I just believe in their product and I am affiliated with theirs. I love what they are doing out there. Now let's switch gears. Here you are working on your own. What's your day look like and how do you stay focused as a remote worker?

Drew Johnson: 30:12

Okay, that's, there's a there. That's a question for sure. I, I definitely wouldn't, wouldn't push out my full day from start to bottom for everyone. You know, I don't know who's listening to this, but For me personally, I usually get up, try to work out in the morning. Um, I used to be a little fatty and eat too many sweets in the morning, so now I try to lock it up and eat a less, less food of that nature. Then usually just morning calls. Recently, um, I usually have calls from like five or from like nine to six, usually. So Seeing where I can get out of those early to then send over whatever documents and kind of emails we have, um, of course I also go to different conferences whenever those would be. We attend a lot of the like affiliate summits, of course, traffic Incursions and speeds gone, but day to day it's really just kind of crushing coffee, um, and just kind of crushing emails, really waiting to see if anybody yells at me. If they yell at me, I go and put out that fire and then keep going.

Dustin Howes: 31:16

Smooth, smooth. Awesome, christin, big time evidence coming in. That's a question for sure. That's very quotable from you, drew. I guess I think you are correct. Um, yeah, I guess, like what I'm looking for more than anything is, personally I I can. I struggled early on in working from home and like staying motivated and Not going into office and not seeing people enough and like I have to supplement that with calls and FaceTime with people. But do you feel like, do you have any struggles in that asset of you? Know, working from home can be a struggle, right.

Drew Johnson: 31:59

Oh yeah, I would say. I mean I live in New York City so I think a lot of it too is, like you know, summertime. The summer hits that like answering calls to like five on like a thursday or friday, that kind of like ability to say I could maybe move this or I could get this to someone else. That part's hard to kind of lock in. I would say it definitely from working here for five and a half years when we were lucky or ahead of the curve or everyone is call it. We were doing remote work even before covid, and so my kind of month of figuring out the day in and day out of it, like my first year was definitely hell, where I was like how do I concentrate? I got ADD, this is tough, I don't have people around me. What's like the lock in for it?

Drew Johnson: 32:42

And what I found for me is it's like having certain things that I mark is starting the day and stopping the day. So, hey, I don't have the issue where I think a lot of non salespeople that I was like I'm talking to different people I don't know every day, so that whole idea of not having that mixed communication doesn't really matter, but like the cutting off, you know, the having that this is now work done, or this is when work starts like having either like A workout, breakfast or a shower mark the beginning of the day, and then having like the end of the day mark when I sit on my couch, like past four, let's say, and then the end of the end of the day is when I'm like, and then the end of the end of the day is when that computer finally closes from being on the couch and just kind of trying to stick to those and staying very strict on like those little, I would say, signs so that I can mentally turn on or turn off where it is, so everything can align internally.

Dustin Howes: 33:29

Well, I like those tips. Um, everybody's got their own different workflow. It's always interesting hearing what that is, especially from this. I mean, I feel like this is a work from home Majority at this point of our industry all together. It's just it's turned that way At least that's what I've seen in my career here. So I, we've got some fans. Nasser's coming back, calls you guys a great platform. Appreciate that we have numerous partners utilizing ever flow. So we've seamlessly integrated into our offer wall ad network. Awesome different side of the affiliate world working with you guys. And then, uh, kristen, big time. Evans. Routine pieces are so helpful. Neurospecic brains that's great. Yeah, I haven't. Those key transactions helps for Transitions. I wish I could read All right, um, you mentioned affiliate summit. Any highlights there that you want to capture for the audience here?

Drew Johnson: 34:33

Oh, I thought this was a great show, this affiliate summit west that just took place. It seemed bigger than the ones past. I'm still trying to like understand post coveted, when which shows become more populated than the others, um, but this one seemed very busy. I had the most meetings I've ever had. Um, it seemed like a lot of good events from different partners were put on and a lot of like big like I would say like enterprise type clients and publishers were there.

Drew Johnson: 35:00

For me, it's always great to just get in front of like new publishers and new agencies to go through what we're doing Because at the end of the day, compared to some of the others, like an impact, we are the newer kids on the block and so going through new people, exposing them to us, figuring out how we can kind of make their lives easier and then, more so a lot with the agency's, like Letting them know what we can do so they can expand their capabilities.

Drew Johnson: 35:24

I think we have a lot of there's a lot of agencies out there that only do one vertical and strictly have just not done other Verticals because they didn't think they had the capabilities with the tools in their tech stack or in their tool belt For us. We do a lot of talking and these other clients out there, so that Agencies let them know the breadth of our capabilities, so that, whether it is crypto, lead gen, b2b, we can facilitate that client the same way any ecom or neuter or health client could. And so it's very interesting, I'd say, each year over year to get more eyes on us so that the conversation goes to oh, I know ever flow to. Yeah, of course I know ever flow to. Oh, yeah, we use ever flow. We love you guys. I told Johnny over there to use you and it's been good to see kind of that growth over at least my five and a half years here.

Dustin Howes: 36:07

Yeah, we're just spreading fast.

Drew Johnson: 36:11

Really, it's actually pay a lot of those people that put the the Asian menus within like your door. We pay a lot of those at affiliate summits. They just go around giving out ever flow menus. That's why.

Dustin Howes: 36:23

Get your plumbing over here at every four. Exactly that's how we started. Fabulous all right, it is time for you to defend your posts here, drew. I've got a little bit of a tidbit here. It's nothing super spicy, it's a tick tock integration is here. Are you buying media on tick tock? Ever flow as a Some kind of integration with tick tock is still still existing. It's two years old, but is this still working?

Drew Johnson: 36:52

Oh yeah, we didn't decide to make it not work, that's for sure.

Drew Johnson: 36:55

It's definitely still working. So the way that we work is people, whether it's like third party media buyers, aka like affiliate media buyers, or your internal team we have a direct API or conversion API integration with TikTok so you can pass back all of the data in the TikTok for those conversions. You'd still be doing the optimization in there to correct your media buying. We're also doing a lot actually on top of TikTok, which I'm glad you brought up. We're doing a lot with like in this year, I'd say, with an integration into TikTok and all of the movement they're doing into the store space where they're gonna kind of turn all their creators into affiliates.

Drew Johnson: 37:33

So that's very exciting stuff that should be on the rise and forever flow this year.

Dustin Howes: 37:37

Awesome. So the TikTok nuance of becoming into that affiliate world has been really nice to see this last year. It's easier for creators to earn commissions easier than ever, in my opinion, but good to hear you guys are making traction in that route. What makes a sales rep stand out in a good way when competing against other tracking platform sales reps?

Drew Johnson: 38:02

Great question Ross. That's a great question, ross. I work with him so I'll be sure to thank him for making me look good later. That's nice. So I would say on that is and this is what we learned is, like, I'd say, being honest. Like there, the amount of money that you make down the line from being honest is, I think, way, way more. It's way better and way larger if you help someone from the beginning.

Drew Johnson: 38:29

I do plenty of demos where I have someone and I tell them yep, we're not a fit or we're just not gonna take your business. I have all a slew of interactions, from people thinking I don't know what I'm talking about to getting mad at me to saying they have to use us. Those are obviously funny when I tell somebody not to and then they have to sign up. But kind of being honest in consulting them, we at Everflow take a very consulting sales approach where we have two senior guys that have done it before, where we go through and obviously train the rest of the team in that approach. But we go through and we figure out what it is you need.

Drew Johnson: 39:01

And there's to, like the earlier stuff, with so many different ways of calling affiliates. There's people that just want influencer, there's people that just want affiliate, there's people that already have those. There's a team million different ways someone can have can get set up. And so I think that being able to talk to someone and honestly be like, hey, like you can get this set up with us, but it's not a simple use case. You're gonna need tech to do it. Or, hey, this is not a box, three clicks we're gonna be able to do it, don't worry about it. Being able to give that level of kind of description or just say no, I think sticks in someone's mind where you didn't waste their time. So then, two years, three years from now, when they get another job, they're gonna almost always go back to you and go hey, we talked, you saved me some time, would love to discuss this further, and that's what I would recommend, I think, for everyone, because it makes the whole industry's life a lot easier and saves time.

Dustin Howes: 39:50

Outstanding answer and that brings me to the last lesson of the day is that honesty is always the best policy, and when I get sales reps that are blowing smoke up my butt, I don't care for it and I can sniff it out pretty easily and I will ask questions purposely to see if they are going to do it that way. You and I have had a great relationship over the last year where I was open and honest with you and you were always back and forth with me, and I really appreciate that. That's how we make lifelong connections in this industry.

Drew Johnson: 40:22

So appreciate it. We didn't say that everyone. This was not a dual, I guess trustworthy into that word of the day.

Dustin Howes: 40:30

So that's good, I invite people I like onto this. I have the network to do it. So how do we connect with you, drew?

Drew Johnson: 40:40

You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on email at dreweverflowio D-R-E-W. The rest there's a bunch of those spellings all across this LinkedIn. Feel free to also find me on Skype. I don't know what that is, but there's a bunch of Drew Johnson's Good luck.

Dustin Howes: 40:57

But LinkedIn and email definitely.

Drew Johnson: 41:00

I'm there and happy to give anyone a demo or just kind of break down any sort of ever flow dos and don'ts if you need anything.

Dustin Howes: 41:06

Awesome. All right, do not look him up on Skype, that would be ridiculous.

Drew Johnson: 41:12

There's a ton of Drew Johnson's.

Dustin Howes: 41:14

All right, as we wrap this up, my episode on Thursday is going to be with Sal Conk I don't miss that. It's going to be on YouTube optimization, and this is a skill set that every affiliate manager, not just affiliates need out there so you can help explain and make them more profitable with the influencers that you're working with. So stop by Thursday 12.15, right here on LinkedIn. Drew, really appreciate your time. Thanks for being here and we'll see you out there then.

Drew Johnson: 41:43

Thanks for having me, thanks for everyone listening.

Dustin Howes: 41:46

All right, Take care folks. Bye.