Hey folks, welcome to Affiliate Nerd Out Real Talk Friday edition with me Nick, I'm Bogarting this meeting Marchese special guesting today. Welcome to the Nerdatorium again, young man. Yes, Thank you. I'm feeling very young these days. What have you got? couple things yeah, that's a. Weird, weird. But you know what? Hey, you do you. But man, thanks. So we got a puppy a few weeks ago and it has been very very interesting. It's been a long time since we've had a puppy in the house. And, especially when we had the puppy in the house who wasn't work from home. And the whole balance of, the requirements of what a puppy has versus, work and life. I tried to bring sad puppy who is absolutely adorable into a client meeting yesterday. And because the clients wanna meet her and she's awesome and they're awesome clients and I love working with ' em. So I had her on my lap and she was of course, jumping all over the place and doing the cute things that puppies do as I'm trying to conduct a semi-professional meeting, talking about performance and partner updates and tracking integrations and all that. And she started squirming wanting to get down. So I went to go stand up to get her off my lap. And this poor little 10 week old puppy had her paws in between my leg and the armrest. So when I went to go stand up. The poor girl had her paw just crushed and she just starts yelping and crying. And of course I feel like the biggest jerk in the world that I'm like, hurting my brand new puppy who is like already an integral part of the family. And it's interesting because, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, nothing like this could have ever happened. You don't work from home 15 years ago that, that's not even a real thing, or if it is, it's just. Like three people in the US now. It's like this dog is with me all the time. Yeah. And my clients were joking 'cause they're like, how do you get any work done? And I think that brings up a good thing to talk about today, which is work life balance. And how we are so lucky to be able, at least folks like you, I and Kristen and everyone who gets to work from home is very easy to take something like this for granted. Like we get to do the things that other folks don't get to. And while we have talked about in the past the stress of entrepreneurship and life and all that stuff, there's always this massive silver lining that underlines everything here, which is the fact that we get to be home with our family, with our brand new puppies. We get to do these things that so many other people in the world don't get to do. And it is like we're among, I think, the luckiest people in the world. For sure. If you go through the, you can complain all you want about the concept of not being in a social environment when you and I are social people, that's probably the biggest downside, but the upsides just catapult way above all the pros. I'm not spending anything on gas ever. Like how much savings is that? I've never even calculated. You're the numbers guy. So I would hardly say I'm a numbers guy. However, I would say you, you're probably depending on what your trip was. For me, I would. Take the train into when I was working at Sheriff's, I was taking the train downtown, and that was about 150 bucks a month. And all right, now if I spend$150 a year in yeah, work, transportation, I'd be blown away. Blown away. Like a year yeah. Yeah. I was joking with someone the other day too about how if they ever wanted to find me just joking, just Google my address and I'm usually within a one mile radius, 95% of the time. It's like within one mile because I never have to leave. And if I do, it's like a different event going on, but you can find me, I'm here. is your wife or roommates do they work from home as well? Yes. My wife does work from home 95% of the time. Okay. And how do you guys split that up? Are you guys in the same room? No. I talk way too much. And she would go absolutely insane if she had to deal with me talking in her ear all day long. She would just not do well with it. We sometimes rotate here in the office. We'll play musical office depending on what sort of meetings we have and or if the kids are home or if the puppy's being loud or whatever it may be. For the most part, I'm here in the office. Just because I'm set up, I've got my stuff all established and she is downstairs in our family room, which I'm jealous of, frankly. Would like to swap it around because there's just more open, it's bigger windows to look outside and more fresh. But yeah. How about you? Sarah's on the other side of the house and I don't hear her meeting. She doesn't hear mine. Yeah. That's nice. And then we rarely talk work anyway. Even though we're in the same industry, we just try to keep it family oriented stuff and yeah, we vent every once in a while about, clients or things going on at work, of course, and we get to listen to each other, but we never talk strategy like ever. I've got this client, I've gotta do this thing. She doesn't ask my opinion, I don't ask hers kind of thing. so wild because the two brilliant minds that are in that household within the affiliate space, like if you did work together the first off, I'm sure one of you guys would end up killing the other. However, during that time period though, before that actually happened, there'd probably be some magnificent things being built. Maybe one day we'll see the dream would be. My entrepreneurship take off and she can assist in some kind of way. But that's a long time wishlist dream. But anyway yeah, work from life. Love it. Can't complain enough. I'm gonna complain because it's human nature to find something to complain about. But Sarah down. It's, yeah. Sarah said the other day, she saw the electricians working outside. She's man, it must be nice working outside all day. And in the I'm like, are you outta your mind? Like how much they envy us, like sitting in our own comfortable all day. It's funny. The rest always. Yeah. That's funny. And I did spend, I spent six years working outside. And it is not it's not fun. As it turns out you get sunburn, you get especially if you're like in the Midwest or somewhere in a cold region, you're freezing outside. your fingers go numb because you can't it's definitely way better to be able to have a little. Portable space heater right here with an electric blanket plugged. Again. Warm. We're so soft. I go out with a shovel for half an hour and my arms are tired. I'm getting blisters. I'm like, oh no. That's what you just call someone to come do it for you. I'm sure there's gonna uber like shovel company, Uber shovel. Anyway another topic. Something happened to me this week and I want to talk about, and I don't take on clients when I get leads come in and they're like, Hey, I need this help. I point 'em to people that I trust in the, industry. if they want me to build a list, I can build a list. That's what I do. But outside of that, I'm sending to friends like you and other agencies that I know are qualified for this. And maybe four months ago, I sent it to a new friend that I thought could handle this client and that person came back to me and Hey this did not work out. They were totally unprofessional. they didn't do this. They didn't do that. And. Clients are gonna be weird. There's always two sides of a story, right? So I reach out to the guy I've been sending these referrals to, and I'm like, first of all, you didn't even tell me you got this client. Part of my income is based on referrals and you kicking me back. And then secondly, like. Why is this happening? what's your side of the story? How did you see it? And I think that's an important aspect of all of it, right? you can get a very bad reputation in this industry really quickly, and you can burn a lot of bridges if you're not doing things in a professional manner. And so that's really something to think about when you're a young consultant, especially on the referrals that you get. Yeah, I agree. There's no right answer to, 'cause your point, like there's two sides of that coin I wonder, and obviously I don't know who the person is and it doesn't, Really matter, for me whatsoever. But is there almost like a pre-vetting process that you can go through with these friends to figure out what their strategy is like? and I guess the other question too, was it non-professional or was it non-performance based? Unsatisfactory, I think it could be a little bit of both. I, hey, what's up Kristen? Good to see you. Good to not see you. Good to have you see us. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. It's perfect. I would say young. In your consulting career, you probably don't set expectations like you should with clients. Either you have this blind confidence that you're gonna do well with every client, or that you learn this process of Hey, it's not gonna work out with everything. I love your model of give me three months to prove the concept is working. Yeah. And you do really well with that. Can you explain like your strategy when you handle clients? Yeah, absolutely.. There's no right, there's no wrong way to do it. But my personal approach is I will prevet the client the best I can. I'll, go to whatever Publicly accessible information I can find as far as how many reviews there are, I take everything that they say with a bit of a grain of salt, no offense any of my clients, but I anticipate that some of those numbers you're me are probably your key numbers. And that we're somewhere probably in the middle from what a norm might be. But once I'm talking to them, my approach on this is I don't wanna get married with someone right out the gate. So I want to know that my approach is gonna work for them and that their approach is gonna work for me, I do not have any interest in locking right outta the gates into someone with a contract that's 12 months long before I'm even working with them. Because what if, while I can maybe get exposure and bring revenue, what if there's a conflict of personality? And I think that's a big part of it too because there's a lot to say about the relationship that you have with your clients. And Dustin, we've talked about how our superpowers are. Oftentimes reflected in our ability to build and maintain relationships. That's how I sell myself, not necessarily I don't ever promise guaranteed performance. In fact, I caution against guaranteed performance because I used to guarantee performance and then COVID hit There's no way to know exactly when the next virus is gonna take out Half the world's economy. And you don't know what's gonna happen with that. I've stopped forecasting. I've stopped giving guarantees and performance, and now my guarantee to clients is that I'm just gonna bust my ass. I'm gonna do my best for you knowing that your goal is growth, and that my goal is to keep you as a client by bringing you growth. So why don't we do this if it's a new program, for example, I'll launch the program and we'll set like a three month. Trial window, and that after that three month window trial, it renews. But the goal here being not necessarily on proven numbers at that point in time, but more so the term I use is proof of concept. Because especially if you're building out a program or if you're even taking over a new program and you're cleaning it up, the way I see this is it takes, for a new program, it takes a month to get up and running to get launched, right? So clearly performance at that point in time is going to be zero. If you are. Taking over an older account, you need to get more acclimated with the account. You need to do your audits. You need to almost re-interview the public, the partners who aren't the obvious ones. If it's the mass media publications that are driving scale and performance, leave them in, don't do anything. But for all the other folks, I wanna interview them. I wanna talk to 'em again. I wanna build that new relationship with them and let them know that I'm gonna be on their side to help them earn commissions, and I'm gonna help them earn as much as they can. If that means I have to brainstorm with them the content. ideas or make sure that they're compliant with any sort of FTC compliance or anything like that. I'm gonna do my best to do that. Yeah. So that's month one is like framework. Yeah. Month two is great. Now I've already started also reaching out and prospecting for partners or doing whatever I do, but. It's getting that to the next level and then the third month. By the end of that third month, we should start to see some activity, some performance, depending on the partner. Obviously, depending on the brand, everything's gonna be a little bit different. But, it's always based off of actual proof of concept of the, is the affiliate channel with me going to work out. And if we get to that third month and I don't see performance and they don't see performance and I don't see potential and they don't see potential, I am more than happy to end the contract and even make a referral to someone who might be a little bit more qualified or more able to handle whatever the disparity is that I'm having, Yeah. That proof of life I think is super important. And then giving that client the decision to like, yes, you're doing good work. No, we wanna discontinue that. That's I feel like that's a really good way to go about it. As long as you keep that communication open of Hey. I'm feeling a lot of these relationships starting to build out and I think this is gonna work really well pretty soon. One other caveat of this story here is the agency themselves. Was expecting, like expectations weren't there, right? He got paid up front or she and then three months down the line when it happened that they're gonna end this relationship. He kept this CRM. That he'd been building up with the relationships that he's been talking and people he is talking to. He kept it to himself until, and held it hostage until there's another payment that, and then the client thinks, no, there's no more payment. You already paid for three months. yeah. That work was done in that three months, right? Yeah. And so there was a conflict of vision in that contract of it wasn't set up right and I think that. Contract set up, it needs to be really clear and then voice to that client in the early first month like, this is what's going to happen, and then if this doesn't happen, this is what happens kind of thing. yeah, I don't like the hostage situation. That's never fun for anybody. Yeah, it's almost a bit bait and switch, right? I guess the way that I kind see this is that everything that, like if they paid, especially upfront, which I also not really a big fan of myself because again, like I, I don't know what if something happens and we all hate each other, then I wanna, I don't even wanna do the three months, then I don't want them to do the three months, yeah. But the pain up front, I don't love the hospice situation. I guess the way I see this is everything that took place during that three months, you are, you're a subcontractor for that brand. Like we are subcontractors for sub, so this is theirs. Everything is theirs. Like they own all of this. They're just using you to build that. Relationship and build that reputation for them. And granted, it becomes a lot easier for you as the agency or us for the agency because we've worked with these partners and we can say, Hey, here's our new client and they're used to working with us, and that facilitates everything. But that's the value of working with us. And there are a lot of agencies out there that will, for example, when they end a relationship with a client. They will use a term along the lines of burn it down. And they will take everything that they've done in the program. They will delete program descriptions, program agreements, they'll take all these things out of there. And to me, that is such a. I don't know if I wanna childish, unethical way, but that's three months that the, or however long it was that you had that client for. They paid for that. They bought, that's not a rent, it's not a lease. It is a purchase. They have paid for that service. They paid for that output. And if you delete it, to me that's a serious issue. Yeah. And you know who those people are, and maybe you've told that story before of who those people are as well, so it's never good. Never a good situation. Anyway. All right. Our time's up buddy. Thanks for talking through a little bit of this. Yeah, happy Friday man. You got any fun plans for the weekend? No, I'm just chewing, which is great. Oh. Is it, I love it. I gotta build a deck for the pool. Oh, okay. That actually sounds fun. It's not fun, but I love it. Yeah. I disagree. I think that sounds like an amazing time. I'll be there. I'll hop quick flight. Yeah, a quick flight and jump out. All right. We'll be good to go. All right folks. Thanks for turning in. We'll see you next time. Take care.