Affiliate Nerd Out

The Science in the Art & Science of Affiliate Marketing Partnerships with Lacie Thompson

Dustin Howes Season 1 Episode 65

Discover the insider secrets to thriving in the fast-paced world of digital marketing as Lacey Thompson, the visionary behind LT Partners, joins us for a revealing conversation about her journey from industry beginnings to establishing a successful agency. Lacey's deep dive into online jewelry sales at Blue Nile and Expedia provides a masterclass in data analysis and performance marketing, laying the groundwork for the founding of LT Partners. The dialogue further uncovers how solid coaching and a clear understanding of client capacity can supercharge a consultancy's growth.

We're peeling back the layers on what it takes to cultivate productive relationships with publishers, especially when robust data is hard to come by. By sharing stories from my own playbook, we dissect how using tools like Lyft's CRM system can revolutionize partner management through publisher scorecards and gap analysis. Meanwhile, we don't shy away from the necessity of blending data-driven tactics with creative flair to ignite expansion, and emphasize the importance of replicating success through robust training and processes.

Tap into the potential perks of collaborating with digital marketing agencies as we highlight the efficiency of multi-brand discussions and the importance of direct connections between client partners and publishers, as evidenced by our experiences at ASW. Furthermore, we tackle the evolving job market and the critical role agencies play in nurturing future affiliate managers while addressing the potential conflicts of interest when networks handle affiliate programs. Don't miss out on insights from our next episode with Erica from Truthfinder, where we'll dissect the makings of an effective affiliate manager.

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Dustin Howes:

Hey folks, dustin Owes here Spreading that good word about affiliate marketing. You're going to find me every Tuesday and Thursday right here on LinkedIn, live 12, 15 Pacific Times. So put it on the calendar and be here and heckle me and my guest, and my guest today, lacey Thompson over at LT Partners creator, founder, owner, whatever you want to call it. Lacey, thanks for being here and welcome to the Meritorium.

Lacie Thompson:

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome. We are pre-recording this today. So Lacey had some conflicts that we just didn't want to get into and we're recording this on a preset. You have questions about any of the topics that we have today. Lacey and I will be jumping in, hopefully during that hour and Tuesday, when this is still in live, so feel free to ask questions and we'll get back to you as soon as we can, but not further ado. Let's talk about Lacey. Lacey, who are you?

Lacie Thompson:

Well, that's a loaded question. I could go a lot of different ways without Dustin At least like, professionally, who I am. I've been in digital marketing now for, I think, a little over 15 years. I started in affiliate marketing on the brand side, so I was at Blue Nile running their affiliate program, oversaw international marketing for them, went to Expedia oversaw their affiliate program primarily in the US, but had some international work under my belt there as well and then I spent three years at another affiliate marketing agency that was based in Seattle called Streamline at the time before I started LT Partners in September of 2018. So that's who I am professionally.

Dustin Howes:

Beautiful. All right, there's a good hub of affiliate management coming out of Seattle, Like I remember. You know, the Robia team that I was on was up there, and then you know Max over at MediaRail's and there's some others out there. You've got a good network up there.

Lacie Thompson:

Yeah, it's grown a lot over the course of my career. In the beginning, when I was at Blue Nile, it was a pretty small community, to be honest, so now it seems to be like one of the prevailing spots for the industry.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, and like one of my first gigs as affiliate manager was managing the program at ICEcom. So you know, blue Nile was on my competitor list and like trying to follow what you guys are doing and doing things in that sense, and I actually started hanging out with Perresh because he managed the ICE program before I came in previous years. But that's a difficult niche, like it's very competitive, a lot of brands out there trying to sell their jewelry online, so that's a good place to be to like learn this industry pretty well, right.

Lacie Thompson:

It's such a small world, because ICE sold their company at one point probably definitely after your time, I'm assuming, yeah, and they were actually my second client when I started consulting. Yeah, but it is true that that industry and that category are really unique, because it takes people a very long time to decide to purchase a diamond or an engagement ring, and so we had really robust access to data and that's like the foundation of how I learned performance marketing was at a company that just had so much of it, and I had to force myself to learn, like SQL queries, in order to access everything that I needed, so it was a great place to start. That, I think, really shaped my perspective on partnerships and the value that they bring for the business and having data be at the forefront of that decision making process Awesome, and we will get into that here shortly.

Dustin Howes:

But to start this thing off, LT Partners, this is your company. I assumed you named it yourself. Tell us about that origin story and how this came about.

Lacie Thompson:

I mean, I don't have some like fluffy story to tell you, and I always like to be just like super open and transparent. When I started LT Partners, which was called Lacey Thompson Marketing, on day one I honestly didn't know if I wanted to create an agency versus just consult. And so my husband actually had a business at the time, and so for two people in a family to be entrepreneurs it's pretty risky, and I hadn't done it because of that risk up until the time that I decided to take the leap. And so I just went to my husband and I said if I can get three clients by the end of the first year, I can keep doing this. Like, let's agree on that. And so we shook hands and I started the company.

Lacie Thompson:

After we started working with our third brand, I had to figure out whether I wanted to just stay independent and work with the amount of brands that I could support on my own forever, or if I wanted to grow the company. And so I worked with a coach and sort of ran through the pros and cons and decided that I wanted to grow the company, so began hiring people about six months after I started the business, and then at some point. I was like this is silly, it's not just me, it's not Lacey Thompson Marketing. We need to go away from it being me. And a lot of people that I had spoken within the industry felt like, you know, my name had grown a bit and people kind of knew who I was, and so it didn't make sense to fully go away from Lacey Thompson, and so that's why we just moved it to LT partners oh, fantastic.

Dustin Howes:

I like it Really boring story to be honest, it's not that boring If you think about it. I love that you made a solid line in the ground like three clients is the max I can take on as a consultant, because taking on any more than that is irresponsible in my mind. I don't know how you think about that as well, but like full time consulting for three clients is like that's max before you need to start hiring either virtual assistants or people underneath you to help you assist on that. So I love that story. What about that coach you were talking about? Who do you hire in this situation? That gets you that next level.

Lacie Thompson:

I've worked with a lot of different coaches. I'm not working with one right now, but I'm working on working with one, so I'm trying to find the right one for me today. I think there's a lot of different styles that are out there and it's important for people to figure out what they need out of their coach before they just start working with one. Although I just started working with one, I was like I don't know what I need at this time, so I just brought somebody in to like be able to have conversations with and bounce off of. I do think there's some overlap with a coach and a therapist right. Like they're just working through like your personal challenges, how that relates to your work and how to help you arrive at the right, like destiny that you want to, and sussing things out For me right now. Like I want somebody that's a little bit more aggressive, hardcore holds me accountable, so I it's an evolution of how you work with a coach and what you need out of them and the type of person that you want to interact with.

Dustin Howes:

Gotcha, and that can be hard to find, and especially finding the right fit for your personality and what you're reading. But they're out there. Get yourself a coach, get yourself a mentor Always a good idea. So tell us more about LT partners, what you guys do and who you're serving out there.

Lacie Thompson:

Yeah, so we are an affiliate marketing agency. What I wanted to create when I started the company was a vision that I had devised. Because of the fact, I think, that I started brand side first, so I had worked with agencies in the past and then going to an agency and sort of seeing the power that agencies can bring to the table, I essentially wanted to create just more of a consultative approach to services really understanding, you know, brands, businesses at a deeper level and building more strategic solutions for them for how partnerships can help drive their business in a more meaningful way. And so we actually work with brands that have a lot of different business models. So we have a subset of clients that are in the FinTech space. We work in travel Definitely, retail is obviously like a big part of the work that we do but have some really like unique business models that we support.

Lacie Thompson:

Like one of our clients is Gold Belly, and they're just in a space of their own right. They're kind of at the forefront of creating something really unique, and so building strategies for brands that have unique applications or unique target audiences is really in our wheelhouse and I will say, like the one, a type of business that we don't really support in a meaningful way as B2B. I think there's definitely some great agencies out there that do some solid work in that space, but it's not a core focus for us.

Dustin Howes:

Gotcha, yeah, definitely not for everybody. It's me and a handful of other agencies that I know that are even focused or qualified to be B2B. I love that you stay in your lane, though like don't take on clients if you don't know what you're doing. In that kind of capacity it's nice to like. Maybe if there's an overlap of like your niche and vertical with something else you have in the past, yeah, take that on and start building that portfolio. But, like, b2b is not for everybody.

Lacie Thompson:

That's for sure, totally different beast, absolutely.

Dustin Howes:

All right, so you take on a client that's in the wheelhouse and I know how focused you are on the data side of things, but you're also a very personable and relationship partnership focused person as well. But let's talk about that data that you're using. You start off with some kind of audit of a client. What are you looking for in the data there?

Lacie Thompson:

Yeah, I think and that's exactly how we position it to people is like we've built this platform called Lyft. We use this platform to do all of our audits when we look at programs. But you can't just look at the data all by itself. You have to understand the context of the partnerships, how they work, how they function, how you can optimize with them and combine it with the recommendations that come out from an audit. That being said, there's a few different aspects of a program that we look at to determine, sort of the level of health and where there's opportunities to continue to grow.

Lacie Thompson:

One of them is this tool that we call the publisher scorecard. So the way that Lyft works is it pulls in data from your affiliate tracking platform. It also connects with Google Analytics, or your source of truth, but almost 99% of the brands that we talk to use Google Analytics. So we connect GA and their affiliate platform and we can use different ratios of waiting, different KPIs to understand which partners are delivering to those KPIs. So it scores the partners against each other on a set of weighted KPIs and it allows us to just use the data to go to the partners that are doing really well at delivering to those KPIs and say this is what we're seeing you're doing really great. What can we do to like optimize more, to reach your audience in a bigger way?

Lacie Thompson:

And where the data isn't great, we can go to partners and say these are the reasons why we're not showing success today with this brand based on these KPIs that matter to them. What can we do to improve them? How can we get in front of the right audience that you have in order to improve new traffic or new customers, whatever their core KPIs are that matter to their business? And I mentioned those, too, because those are typically the top priorities for brands that we're working with right. So that's one piece of it. Do you have any questions on that one?

Dustin Howes:

I do, and this sounds like a cool tool, and you guys are using what you call Lyft as a tool internally that will automate this process when you bring on a new client and like go through this. I've had a friend of mine on here, tyler Ryan, who does this as an agency. Like that's all he focuses in. He comes in, evaluates lifetime value of each partner and, like gives you this nice neat report. Sounds like you're automating this when you're onboarding folks, though.

Lacie Thompson:

Yeah, and we do all of our audits without charging brands for that. In some cases, we'll just produce the audit and give it to them, like some brands that run their programs in-house. We've done that, for my goal is to help the industry as a whole, and if we can do that by having brands tap into this platform either once for us to do the work or they can license it themselves if they want to use it on an ongoing basis, I'm just all about like advocating for the industry to continue to innovate, and I think that's a really easy way to do that.

Dustin Howes:

Excellent and so when you do showcase this value to the client, when you do this free audit, the next step is for them, for you guys, to go out and execute and really hone in on those affiliates that are making a big difference in the program that they might not have been aware of, right.

Lacie Thompson:

Yeah, and I think that there's a real challenge for publishers in our industry to have access to really robust data, especially some of the like mid-long tail ones who don't necessarily have huge teams and access to, you know, development teams or analysts. So the more that we can help share what we have access to with them, I think, the the better it makes them and it's just a win-win approach across the board. A lot of publishers, you know, I think, have capabilities to do things that are out of the box and if you're not engaged in those conversations and they're just sort of on autopilot, you're not necessarily getting the most out of the relationship. So it just needs our team to do that.

Dustin Howes:

And in this makes sense. Retail is traditionally, I would say, like not paying attention to lifetime value number enough. Right, in SaaS and B2B, that number is hitting them in the face like hard, because you have a recurring revenue model. That is a number that they are consistently on top of. They don't need a lot of help. But in that retail space that doesn't come up until they reach like one million annual revenue, right, like it's just not on their radar. They're too busy doing other things. And that's where you guys are coming in and making a big impact. So, with those publishers that you're recognizing as bigger players and and you want to do more with them, what's your guys' strategy of reaching out to them and saying, hey, how can we do more here?

Lacie Thompson:

Yeah, so Lyft is actually a fully integrated CRM now.

Lacie Thompson:

So we do this publisher scorecard.

Lacie Thompson:

We also do a gap analysis where we can compare all of the partners that a brand is working with against a lot of other brands in the same category or with the same target audience.

Lacie Thompson:

So we can understand who's not in the program that we need to recruit, who's underperforming compared to how they're performing for all of these other brands. And essentially we take these two outputs and it gets automatically ported into a CRM system that's essentially a con bond board. So we understand, like, the partners that need to be recruited, the ones that we've reached out to, the ones that we sent a contract, the ones that are fully optimized, the ones that maybe we can't because they've given us pushback or they're not willing to work with the brand. So we sort of have this flow of an ongoing nurturing of the partnerships and our team can go in, assign out a relationship to anybody on our team and they can email that partner from within the CRM and it connects to all of our teams email communication so we know, like, who's still at the company, who's left the company. It gets updated across the entire team so that we're not spending our time reaching out to people that we're not gonna get a response to right. It's all about creating efficiency in the biggest way possible.

Dustin Howes:

That's so smart. I love the con bond concept, especially with your existing partners. It can be you can fall asleep on some of those, sometimes in a program, right, Just you take them for granted, expecting they're just gonna create new content to make more money. But if you're not actually putting your polls and like getting on phone calls and touching up on them, you're missing out on opportunity. Sounds like you guys have that nail down. So you get this publisher scorecard and how do you measure the impact of what the potentially could be as a partner? And like, at one point, do you trust your gut and your expertise from the years past and go with and like prioritize some publishers over others that might be ahead of them on a con bond board?

Lacie Thompson:

Yeah, I think all of it is about balance, and that's true for, like a lot of aspects of our business. Our goal is to continue to evolve the incremental value that's being brought to our clients' businesses, and in order to do that, you still have to continue to grow the base of what's been there and to be highly engaged with them. So that's just another example of where it's really important to keep the balance between the two. I think, when it comes to out of the box ideas and strategy and combining that with the data, it's a balance, right.

Lacie Thompson:

We want our team to be spending, you know, half of their time digging into the data and leveraging the insights to build the right strategies, and half of their time coming up with ideas based on their expertise and experience and what's worked well before, because what maybe in the data you know there could be information lacking in there, and so it's about I just had this conversation with somebody on our team today, too is they've gone through all of the lift options, they've understood and created everything that they can there, and what is there to do on top of that? Right? So it's something that is, I think, difficult to measure, but also something that we want our team to be sort of like going toward is how much are they thinking outside of the box, how much are they coming up with unique strategies and having those conversations and always testing? So what is the right test and learn framework for those concepts that you put forth and how do we share that internally to show where we're seeing success and we can replicate that across other brands that might have a similar audience or kind of across the whole portfolio of brands that we support, if that's the right thing to do.

Dustin Howes:

Sure, sure. And that brings up a good question about the employees that you have in your system, and how are you taking your extensive experience of 10 years, plus whatever you've been in with the affiliate world, and giving that to the employees that you have To be able to replicate this process in a quick fashion? You're talking about creating these systems in place. How are you training those folks that are underneath you at this point?

Lacie Thompson:

Yeah, when I started the company after I decided that I wanted to grow it, the most important thing for me was creating processes. I'm not naturally the type of person that gravitates towards processes, which I've only recently learned, so it explains why it was particularly painful for me when I did it. But it was very important to me, so I focused on that and worked with the people on my team to help build that structure where that was their strength as well. So we use Asana for everything that we do. Every single task that we execute on is in there. We have a slew of templates that we can pull from and then, as we create new strategies and execute new initiatives, we add that to our structure in there, so that any time we bring on a new brand, we essentially copy the entire system into that new instance, and one of the first tasks is for the person running that account to go through the whole thing and delete out what doesn't apply to that business. Based on the conversations that we've had, so just creating a lot of structure and process has been really helpful for scale.

Lacie Thompson:

The other thing that's been really helpful is we use Loom to do video trainings. So I'm addicted to Loom. I find that it creates efficiency for me to share information with the team and to make sure that the process that we're using and the ideas are broadly accessible. We have a whole library of training tutorials.

Lacie Thompson:

We also have somebody on our team that was very early on at LT Partners who really understands and has worked with me extensively, understands the approach and how it's differentiated, and she's responsible for onboarding everybody that comes to the company, and so she spends two weeks with them in the beginning just working through how we think about things differently than some other agencies and how we think about growing businesses in a really healthy way, and then it's beyond that. It's just that ongoing training and support, because there's always something new to learn in our industry. I think that's what I love about it the most is there's never a dull moment. There's you never get to just sit back and run your playbook and it all works out. You have to be constantly learning and creating new ideas and innovation.

Dustin Howes:

That's great, and the S&P thing it sounds like our minds think a little bit alike in this essence. I do Looms all day. Everything I do that I want to teach somebody or any kind of partner I reach out to. I use a Loom video two to three minutes showcasing what I think are great ways to optimize a brand. But my wife, she is an SOP guru. She does this for impact everything they have. She has this really long SOPs that she's written out and typed out, and that's not the way I learn. I want to learn from a video quickly, but there are people that learn on those both aspects. So what I've picked up is taking my Loom and creating an SOP, and AI is helping me do this. Take my video now. Make it an SOP so that both these minds can read this in the same kind of essence. Are you finding success with that as well?

Lacie Thompson:

Yeah, I love just the automation that's been created, and the Loom videos give you the recap, and same with Gong and Zoom and all these video platforms. Just give you that output so that if you prefer to read it, you can. I think it again just any way that we can find to create efficiency and communicate with people the way that they want to be communicated with is hugely beneficial.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, I was devastated when Loom shut off their affiliate program like a couple of months ago, alassi, and bought them out and then they immediately shut their affiliate program. Now I was collecting a couple hundred dollars a month from just recurring value of the people that I brought in from the past, so that was a little bit frustrating. I was just putting that back.

Lacie Thompson:

I didn't know they had one. I would have been an advocate for them and probably brought a lot of revenue to them too. I tell everybody about it.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, loom, as well as SuperTools. There are others out there, but I'm just stuck. I have thousands of videos at this point on my Loom account that I just don't want to get rid of Interesting. All right, what about other tools you guys are using internally? You seem like you're a big fan of efficiency. Any other tools that you want to highlight that your agency is utilizing right now?

Lacie Thompson:

I think we try a lot of different things. We always want to be testing and evaluating whether something can bring more value to the team from an operational standpoint. We use some different email send tools, even things as simple as yams. We can use that to help do broader outreach. We also want to make sure everything we are sending out is customized and specific for the partner we are reaching out to. Being able to create the right tables that have the right custom fields that are integrating properly is imperative. Nobody wants to respond to a mass email blast. I don't like it when people send those to me and I don't think anybody else does. It's all about figuring out how to make sure the tools we are using are still authentic and allow us to communicate in a genuine way.

Lacie Thompson:

I think for the most part, it's a lot of lift Beyond the views that I mentioned that we use in our audit. We can compare Google analytics program data compared to the network. We can look at placements in a really automated fashion and understand whether they drove incremental volume and what that incremental row has looks like. We do lean heavily on that. I think those are probably the big ones. We are a Google workspace company, the company that acquired us in June, new Engine, is actually on Microsoft. It's been a little bit of a challenge to adopt those tools, but I'm getting there. They use Airtable as well. There are so many different options. I think there is a visual matrix of all of the solutions that are out there. I'm just a big advocate for always knowing what's out there and testing into it and adopting where you can see the benefit.

Dustin Howes:

That's great to hear because I want to talk about our sponsor of the day today. That is my tool, appystash. Go out affiliate recruitment super tool. Just as you would probably use some other Seattle-based affiliate recruitment tools, perhaps as Grovia and Media Rails in the past, I'm using all of my experience with my history with these kinds of tools and making AppyStash one of the best super tools out there. If you want to go try it out yourself, go to ASWappystashcom. Use code ASW. It's still live for another week. You want to give it a try? Get yourself a free trial and test it out. Keep it works for your workflow. Are you guys using anything right now?

Lacie Thompson:

Not other than what's in Lyft. We'll have to check it out. Actually, it's funny because one of your probably very early YouTube videos was the five top tools that you use. We've watched that very early on, when I started the company and definitely adopted some of those.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome. That's very big here. I'm all about those efficiency tools and utilizing them Outside of what we're doing in terms of tools. What are some of those other basics that agencies use? As you know, the partnership aspects and working as an agency may be difficult for some of those affiliates that you're reaching out to Like. It's hard to be a representative of a brand but you're not working at that brand. What are some of those ways that you guys warm up those partners or affiliates out there to working with you as an agency as a whole, rather than just the brand itself?

Lacie Thompson:

Yeah, I mean I think that there's a balance right.

Lacie Thompson:

I think there's benefits to working at the company and representing the brand and being a full-time employee there and having conversations with publishers.

Lacie Thompson:

There's also benefits to being at an agency and being able to talk to a partner about a multitude of brands so that their work is efficient.

Lacie Thompson:

So for the most part, I think partners are really interested in talking to agencies because we can share our full roster and go through you know, 20 brands in one conversation and they have a lot to action on, as opposed to if they have to have one call for every brand. It's not as scalable. When there are apprehensions about that because of our you know internal nature that we don't have, sometimes we bring our client partner to the conversation and so at ASW we had several clients that were there and set up meetings with them involved to have those conversations with the publishers, and I definitely think there's benefit to that. I saw that when I was on the brand side as well. So I think it's again just about like the right mix and understanding and asking questions and understanding which partners want to have that connection and which partners would prefer to like just have the efficiency of working with an agency instead of having to have individual conversations with all of the brands.

Dustin Howes:

Well, that's well said. Like, everybody works a little bit differently in this space, and giving them that option is always a good tool to use. All right, as we wrap this up, lacey, I really appreciate your time and all the knowledge that you're dropping here today.

Dustin Howes:

I would say for me that lesson of the day is utilizing that data. We're just scraping the surface Sound like you guys have built out an incredible tool that you guys are using an LTV partners. You guys have your own workflow and it should be the way that most companies should strive to do business out there, especially those consultants that are just getting started in this space and hoping to be that big agency Like thinking. That mind frame that you have of building out tools to make you more efficient is always a great way to think about this industry.

Lacie Thompson:

Yeah, and I think just to sort of double down on that, I think having the right data to tap into on those tools is where you can really understand whether the strategies that you're putting in place are effective and you're moving in the right direction. That's the hardest part is having to manually get everything and all together to tell that story. So wherever you can find ways to automate that, highly recommend.

Dustin Howes:

Yeah, and I also see agencies as the new networks. These days, I say the job market for junior marketers out there digital marketers is trying to get their feet wet and getting a job. It used to be going to a network to get your first job. That's where I got it at CJ and then I moved on to impact and got that experience. Do you feel the same way like agencies are the new, like breeding ground for the future of affiliate managers out there?

Lacie Thompson:

I don't know. I think I definitely see the trend that you're seeing and I think that agencies are a great way to learn something really quick right.

Lacie Thompson:

Because you don't have one boss. You have however many clients you have. You have that many bosses and then you have your own boss, and so learning how to work with a lot of different people who have a lot of different goals and coming up with creative ideas to be successful it's done a lot quicker when you're on the agency side than when you're at a network. If you're running accounts, you kind of get that same experience. But yeah, I think agencies are a little bit different from networks because we're not tied to the tracking platform, right? I don't care how much money you spend on your affiliate tracking platform, there's no benefit for me for you to spend more money with them, whereas in a network situation it's the service teams and the tracking platform combined and so there is some sort of alignment to spending more money on that platform and they're not totally decoupled. So that's sort of where I think the benefit for brands is going. Like agency and tracking platform is you take that potential bias out of the innovation.

Dustin Howes:

Totally agree. I've always seen a conflict of interest of companies like CJ managing the program in-house because they have that revenue tied to the affiliates that they're bringing in. I've always hated that, loved how it impacts us, like stayed strong of not doing this in that kind of capacity. It's so smart and just that conflict of interest is so real. Awesome, lacey, how do we connect with you?

Lacie Thompson:

I'm on LinkedIn. Obviously my phone number is like in my signature. I'm an open book, Love engaging with people in our industry and helping any way I can. So if you have any questions or want my POV on things, I'm happy to share my thoughts.

Dustin Howes:

Great and affiliate summit. You were there. Did you have any highlights that you want to speak out about?

Lacie Thompson:

It was probably the best ASW I've ever been to as far as just like the people that were there and the quality of the content and the speakers. I thought the topics were really super cool and interesting and just a little bit untraditional for what I've seen at ASW in the past. So I'm excited for the future of that conference and I think it's just going in a great direction.

Lacie Thompson:

I don't love having it in the location that it is, but I also understand the value there, and it's nice not to have to like smell smoke while you're having conversations with partners all day. So there's pros and cons. Now everybody's sort of like figured it out and knows they're like walk tracks, and so it's. Overall, I was very pleased with it and thought it was a fantastic event.

Dustin Howes:

Awesome, I agree with you, and I think it's the best that I've ever been to in terms of organization and putting things together and the content. All happy about it. I'm glad to hear that. All right, join me on Thursday with my old buddy, erica. She is my counterpart over at Truthfinder back in the day and we're going to nerd out about affiliate manager and she has a very special skill set of not giving an F and owning it and I just love her so much. I can't wait to have her on on Thursday and for those of you who will see it, 12.15 on Thursday coming up, thanks for joining us and, lacey, appreciate your time today.

Lacie Thompson:

Thank you so much, Justin.

Dustin Howes:

It was great All right, folks, we'll see you out there. Bye.

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