He called me “unprofessional” and “childish” then left the training I was doing for a large client. You might think that would derail the whole thing, but it was actually one of the best things that could have happened. I’m sharing 3 powerful lessons from a hater in this episode…you don’t want to miss out!
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3 Lessons from a Hater
I was doing this training recently for Jeff Walker’s mastermind. And then I did one for his product launch formula owners. And we were doing this training.
It’s called serving your audience through promoting other launches. So the whole training is basically one that I do for clients where we, we invite all their owners, all their customers, or in the case of the first one, all of his mastermind members. And we invite them onto this training. We train them on how to do affiliate marketing, and we do it in the context of promoting their thing.
That’s coming up. You know, Jeff has a big launch coming up for Product Launch Formula. And we’ll talk more about that later, but it’s this big launch coming up. And we wanted them to invite all of his biggest fans to become affiliates. And so we invited them on to this training, as I said, called serving your audience through promoting other launches.
And one of the things that I share about, and they actually share three concepts, right? I share about the affiliate donut, which I’ve shared before. How, if you picture a donut, but if you picture this donut, that core, that middle, that hold, those are your core offers. Those are the things you’re going to be known for.
The things you’re going to be famous for and everything else. The sprinkles are all the things you can promote as an affiliate right there, the things your audience wants, but you’re not necessarily going to provide for them. Then I shared the example that I’ve shared in an episode before about, you know, the time I was speaking at a conference and I was like,
yeah, you know, affiliate marketing is amazing. And you guys are gonna, like, everybody wants here wants to do affiliate marketing. Right? Like in my mind, everybody in the audience, when I said, who here thinks they can’t do affiliate marketing, the no-hands were going to go up. Instead, half the hands in the room went up.
I was like, oh crap. And so I invited this lady up on stage and like, why do you think you can’t do affiliate marketing? She was like, well, I don’t think I can sell someone else’s product. And I took her through what I shared in that podcast episode where I said, okay, tell me about your favorite restaurant. And she did.
And she, she walked through this whole process of describing the neighborhood and the ambiance and the food and the service and people are like blown away. And I said to the audience, how many people here think or want to go to this restaurant? Every hand and the place went up and I said, you just did affiliate marketing. You sold me on someone else’s products, not your restaurant, that’s affiliate marketing. But one of the things that I shared was something that I’ve shared in a previous, the willingness to in the show notes, this is a while back. And the title of the episode was affiliate marketing as a butt-sniffing monkey. And I shared this example of how affiliate marketing is a butt-sniffing monkey. And I played this video.
It’s like a 15-second video though. This little monkey, you know, this is 1998, right? This monkey reaches behind scratches. His butt smells, his hand falls out of the tree. And the idea here is that when I first saw this video back in 1998, back in 1998, we didn’t have social media. So I couldn’t just be like, haha LOL, smiley face. We didn’t have emojis even back then. You know, literally, when you typed in colon parentheses, it still showed up as colon parentheses. And so we would go around and be like, oh my gosh, come here, you guys got to see this. You got to see this right. And I shared how that’s affiliate marketing.
Here’s this thing that had a positive impact on my life. In this case, it gave me joy. It made me laugh. It brought, it made me happier, right? It improved my life in some way. And I said you got to see this. You got to see this. I shared all about why you should do affiliate marketing the advantages.
You know, there’s no fulfillment, there’s no customer service, right? How it builds your confidence in selling how you learn, how you get noticed by others. I shared dozens of strategies, dozens of tips for three X-ing, you know, tripling your commissions five, you increasing your commissions by five times, even 10 exiting your affiliate commissions. This one guy wrote something to the effect of this guy is unprofessional.
That example was childish and unprofessional. I, Jeff, I can’t believe you had him on I’m leaving. He left. He missed out on everything from that point forward because this was like the third slide because he thought that one little part was unprofessional. And I saw his comment as I was presenting and I had to contain my laughter. Like I was took everything in me not to start laughing,
but I kind of felt bad for this guy because he took this one thing, this one little thing, it’s, it’s one example. It’s 30 seconds in what amounted to a two-hour training, an hour and 40 minutes of training, and 20 minutes of Q and a, and he missed out on it. Now, of course, hundreds of other people were like,
well, I’ll talk about that later. But you know, they’re like, seriously, dude, what is wrong with you have a sense of humor. Like, you know, pull the stick out of your butt, I think is what somebody said, but I felt bad for this guy. And there are three things I want to share with you today. Three kinds of lessons from this,
right? Number one as a content creator, you have to ignore these types of people. These aren’t your people, these aren’t your people. There’s a sticker on my laptop that it says, ignore the Ron’s just do you. And it’s actually from Jeff Walker, ironically, and it’s from a video. He did, I was like six ago where he comes on this video and it’s black and white.
Jeff’s sitting in a suit and tie for those of, you know, Jeff, you know, every one of his videos practically, he’s in a t-shirt, but he’s sitting in a suit and tie and he comes on and he says, I, I need to apologize. I need to say, I’m sorry to Ron. And I’m paraphrasing. I’m going to link to the video in the show notes because you got to watch him.
I don’t want to give it away though. That’s the thing. It’s hard to, hard to explain. I won’t give the whole video way, but basically, since I ain’t got to apologize to Ron, because I offended him because what Ron, the previous week had left a comment saying, it’s hard to take you seriously when you’re wearing a t-shirt Jeff Walker, the man who at that time had already launched like his own had probably done close to 50, $60 million in sales. And it helped others well into the billions. And then Ron is going to come along and say, he can’t take him seriously because he’s wearing a t-shirt like, really? It’s just ridiculous. But then he goes on and says, I’ve immediately implemented ridiculousness mitigation strategies for our company. And he talked about how he’s going to be more serious.
Now you got to go watch the video, please go watch the video. It’s hysterical, right? Here’s the message though. As someone who’s putting yourself out there, you have a unique style. You have a unique voice, you have a unique message. That’s the only way to stand out. The only way to stand out. You know, in my book,
that’s coming up. By the way. I don’t know if I if I think I mentioned this on podcasts, but we did just sign the contract with the publisher, by the way, not sure of what the title is going to be, but probably turning your passions into profit. We signed a contract with Benbella one of the biggest publishers in the world.
In fact, it will be distributed by penguin random house, which is the biggest publisher in the world. If you look at my bookshelf, both in my office and my other bookshelf, I would say, there’s no doubt about it. Ben, Bella has the most books. So this is really cool. Like the authors that I get to associate with now,
it’s like, oh my gosh, it’s so cool. And in this book I write, getting noticed today is easier than at any point in human history, but standing out is harder than ever. No matter what niche you’re in, it’s crowded and messy. If you’re going to capture your avatar’s attention in a noisy world, you need to stand out and I share,
you know, how do you stand out? Well, I’m not going to go deep into these, but number one, your style and personality. Number two, your experience. Number three, your background, number four, your method, right? This is about that first one. And your style and personality, your writing style, your speaking style, your physical periods,
your clothes, right? Your use of analogy, such as you know, but sniffing monkeys is a good example. You see, I don’t create content for my senior year English professor, Mrs. System. I don’t write for the grammar police. I don’t like it. My emails, my blog posts, social media posts, where I don’t write. I don’t write for those things.
I don’t care if Mrs. System would give me reading left and right. I write for conversions. I write to lead people to take action. I don’t care what Mrs.<inaudible> Mrs. Assistant. That’s hard to say what Mrs. Sisson says like Mississippi. I don’t know. So my writing style is a bit unique. I use improper punctuation frequently to make a point.
I end sentences with a preposition. Oh my gosh. Right? Sometimes I’ve failed in a sentence with punctuation at all. I just put an emoji. I use stories. Sometimes there seem unrelated to get attention, to put some humor in, or attack some eyeballs. Right? I mean, I remember like there was a store we’re going there tonight. As a matter of fact,
we haven’t been there for almost a year. Cause it’s only opened around Christmas time. Here opens like late October. It’s open for a couple of months and we’re going there tonight as a family. Cause we haven’t been, and we’re super excited when I was there like a year ago. I think it was a year ago. It might’ve been two years ago.
There was this guy. And I think I shared this on an episode before I started somewhere recently. But the subject line of, I send an email, I’ll tell you about the guy in the context. Cause I’m gonna pull up the email here real quick. The subject line was shorts plus boots equal winning combo and in the email, here’s what I wrote.
I wrote when I see an oddly dressed man in the store, I do what any normal person would do. I take a picture and this picture of this dude, I’m not joking. Okay. He’s wearing a yellow shirt. He’s pushing a cart with a baby in it. He looks kind of like Bob Ross, the painter on PBS, right? It’s cold outside.
It’s like 40 degrees outside, but he’s wearing a t-shirt. He had a coat on earlier, but he has this yellow t-shirt on. It’s a medium. When he needs a large, at least maybe it’s large when he needs a medium and he’s got on the shorty shorts. These shorts are like nine inches above his knees. Maybe not quite. Let’s see probably about seven,
eight inches above his knees, low, long. He’s got on some thermal socks and dress boots. This is the weirdest thing. Like you just, I don’t even, I can’t even describe it. It’s it’s baffling. And I said like, you got to admit this guy’s pretty much a baller. It takes a certain level of guts to rock the slightly too small yellow shirt with the definitely too short gym shorts.
Right. Especially when it’s, subfreezing outside throw in the loafer boots and thermal socks. And you’ve got a winning combination, right? One thing is for sure, this guy stands out, and don’t we all want that in our businesses. The good news is you don’t have to dress like this guy to stand out in your business. And I go on to talk about how do you stand out?
And I share some of the things that are actually in the book, right? That’s different. This stands out, right? It’s not normal. It’s not professional. Like Doug, that was the guy’s name. Doug said I was on PR, but people loved it. 99% of the people on the training loved it. Most of the comments were like,
this was amazing. Oh my gosh, this has changed. Like this is unbelievable. We signed up hundreds of people for Jeff’s launch. So it got Results. That was the call to action. Jeff’s teams thought it was hysterical. Like our text conversation after that was something else. Right? So number one, if you’re going to be a content creator,
you have to ignore these types of people. Remember to stick to your own style. You’re going to attract the type of people that you want to attract. When you stick to your style. Number two, don’t be like this guy, right? Don’t miss out on a message because you don’t like a single analogy. Don’t miss out on a message because you disagree with someone politically.
Don’t miss out on a message because maybe their messages are for women. And you’re a man. I learned a lot from people who market primarily to women. I learned a lot from people who market primarily to people younger than me and older than me. I remember a few years ago I read an article. I think it was in time magazine. Might’ve been Newsweek.
I’m not, I’m not sure I was waiting in a doctor’s office. And it was about the gay rights movement now. Right? They’re controversial, right? Some of you are on one side. Some of you were on the other, but there’s one part that stood out. This was the part. This is the marketing side, right? The people that the gay rights movement learned from and modeled their movement after taking guests,
it was the anti-gay rights movement. In other words, the gay rights movement of 2010 to 2020, took their cues from their opponents of 2000 to 2009. In other words, they didn’t agree with them. They were just gonna ignore all of them. We’re not going to follow any of their blogs or let no. They didn’t like the ads they were running,
but they learned from them. They learned and they copied the tactics and strategies. They found a model that worked in, they use D you should be able to learn from anywhere. You should be able to learn from anywhere. I’m reading a parenting book right now. I disagree with a solid 20% of it. There’s a fundamental message in there that I fundamentally disagree with.
You know what? The other 80% is great. I’m learning strategies and techniques that are making me a better parent, even a better leader in my business, a better spouse, a better just person. What if I said, you know what that part says on the cover? And then on the back cover, I don’t agree with that. What if I said,
I’m not going to read this book. I w I would, my children would be worse off right now than they are because I missed out on that. I mean, how do you, how do you let that happen? Stop doing that. I don’t always agree with the marketing of some people out there, but I learned from them. I don’t personally like it when marketers use profanity,
but it works for some people. Okay. And not only, you know, could I learn from that, but I can learn from other parts of their message and strategy and the way they run their business. Instead of burying my head in the sand, building the law, and like, I’m not going to listen to you. Cause you said a curse word.
I don’t cuss in my stuff. I’ll admit every now and again, I let one slip out privately. Okay. Don’t judge me. It is what it is, but I don’t say it publicly. I don’t just miss out on that stuff. Right. And by missing out on their stuff that could potentially, maybe it would make me, I don’t know if it cost me money, cost me my health. What if my doctor what’s the best, whatever best heart doctor in the world I need, I need a heart surgery done. And the heart doctor cusses like a sailor. I don’t care. I don’t care. And if I want to not miss out on their good stuff, I put up with the bad stuff. You know,
we have upcoming Facebook live. It’s called why the F word is such an important part of my business. Now here’s a spoiler. The F word is formulas. Now two things. Number one, I don’t use the F word you were thinking of. And two, I hate formulas. I can’t follow a recipe, but there is one formula that works.
It’s Jeff Walker, spoiler alert here. Right? And following his product launch formula has dramatically improved my business mid-north millions to me. So just as a side note, I mentioned earlier, go get in. And he’s got a free product launch masterclass, depending upon when you’re listening to this, if you just go to Mattmcwilliams dot com forward slash PLF masterclass,
we’ll put that link in the show notes. And you can, you can sign up for that. Mattmcwilliams dot com forward slash P L F masterclass. Here’s the thing. If that turns you off, the fact that I say, why the F word, you know, it turns out its formulas. If you’re turned off by that, you’re going to miss out on a very valuable live lesson.
You’re going to miss out on some information that could change your business and don’t let that happen to you. Don’t be like this guy, Doug. He used an example. I’m not going to work anymore. And I’m going to miss out on news. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe Doug’s business is going to be fine. I hope so. I’m not rooting against him or anything.
I just know that he missed out on something powerful, based on what the other hundreds of people said and the sheer number. Just the volume of people who said, oh my gosh, this was transformative information. He missed out<inaudible> he showed a video for 15 check-ins you need food in me that I don’t have any other way to say it. That’s just dumb.
So don’t be dumb. Don’t be Doug. If your name is Doug, continue to be Doug. I’m going to say, you need to change your name, but my father-in-law’s name is Doug. You know, anyway, I’m just saying like, don’t be like that. Okay. I still listen. Number one, ignore the Ron’s ignore the haters. Number two,
you need to be able to learn from anywhere, including people that you disagree with, maybe whose style you don’t like. And lesson number three from this experience is that polarization works and humor goes a long way to capturing attention. Now I didn’t do it on purpose, but that butts snipping monkey were polarizing. I did it because I knew it would communicate what I wanted to.
And it’s funny. It gets people laughing and we’re two minutes into the presentation. And I got people rolling on video. I’ve never seen that before, but it was hysterical. Now only about one or 2% were offended, I guess, but a ton of other stuff I said, I thought that was great. They laugh. They understood. They defended me.
We had to, there was another person who said, I agree, Doug, or something like that. She stuck around. I bet. She’s glad she did. But like 50 times more people were like, what is wrong with you? They defended me. Which made it more likely they’d stick around. They’d already drawn a line in the sand. I said, no, I liked this guy. And when I think of this, I think about Donald Trump. Just being honest. I mean, again, if you can’t learn from me because I’m going to say something nice about Donald Trump, then, I mean, you’re basically doing the same thing as Doug. Here’s what I wrote. This was back in the summer of 2016,
I wrote an article about lessons. You can learn from his marketing. And I said, whether you love him, hate him, or can’t quite figure him out. You have to admit that Donald Trump’s campaign for president is something to Marvel at. I don’t think anybody would deny that if you, if you’re intellectually honest, by the way, if you’re intellectually honest,
what he did in 2016, with nothing short of amazing, okay, that’s just the reality. Most people forget. He’d run for president before he got like a half percent of the vote in the primary. And then he gets elected president in 2016. Like that’s just ridiculous what he did now. I said I will not get political with this post-translation.
I will probably say something to make someone post something nasty in the comments, but I will share seven things you can learn from Trump’s campaign to benefit your marketing and thing. Number two is about polarization, about polarization. And I wrote Trump is ridiculed for being such a polarizing figure. And I can’t argue with that, but his strategy Shire’s effective. Here’s what Trump has done.
So well. He’s identified as a core audience spoken directly to them in their language and ignored everyone else. Okay? That’s the key. By the way, he identified his audience, his avatar spoke directly to them in their language and then forgot about everyone else. And what I said earlier, if you don’t like the fact that I talk about butts, sniffing monkeys,
you’re not my people. If you don’t like the fact that I sometimes end a sentence with a smiley face and not a period, okay? You’re not my audience. Now I wrote whether that is best for the country is up for debate. But as a marketing strategy, it is worth copying. Trump has taken a stand and solidified his base. This base will follow him through hell or high water.
I mean, didn’t that turn out to be true. Even another truth here when it’s not in their own best interest isn’t that what marketers want from their followers, the lesson takes a stand for something and people will stand with you, identify your core audience and ignore everyone else. Stand for something. And people will stand with you. That’s the key stand for something.
And people will stand with you. You know, when you have a message that polarizing even controversial, right? It attracts attention. It attracts attention. Like it stands out. And we talked about earlier, it stands out. That’s what we want. Nobody goes to battle to claim the middle ground. You think about in politics or if things are so polarized now they’ve been that way since 1787
if you’ve studied history. Wow, man, that election of 2020 sure was. It was ridiculous. Really? Did you study the election of 1818 0 4, 18, 18 0 8? Wasn’t that bad. 1820 John Quincy Adams over, you know, Andrew Jackson and then the next one. Oh, that election of 1860. Well, that was just a real, that was that one really went well for the country.
I mean, literally, the country divided after that. And then even in 1864, the war Democrats, I mean, they’re things that they said about Abraham Lincoln. It’s mind-blowing. I mean, what was it that John Adams referred to Alexander Hamilton, you think about what they’re in the same party. And he referred to him as like the bastard son of a Scottish peddler.
If somebody set it down and then, of course, you know, Donald Trump comes along and kind of said, stuff like that. I was like, oh my gosh, this is offensive. It’s been around for 200 and some odd years, the election of 1964. I mean, LBJ basically said Barry Goldwater was going to cause the nuclear Holocaust. That’s a pretty big accusation.
Right? You know, the 19 80, 19 80, 19 84, wasn’t that bad. 19 92, 96, 2000. I mean, as it goes on and on and on these weren’t dirty, right? Why? Because nobody goes to battle to claim the middle. Like I am going to fight to the death for this guy. Who’s got pretty moderate views. No, nobody fights for note neutrality.
Neutrality is boring. The middle grounds, uninteresting it’s bland. The most boring people I know are the ones who are in the middle of an issue. I kind of agree with you and kind of agree with you. Well, then what’s the point of being here. You think about that, like change doesn’t come when you stay neutral, change comes from taking a stand.
So being polarizing, even controversial is what separates you. It’s what’s attracts those raving fans. You’re going to go to battle with you. They’re going to fight against these haters. They’re going to pay for your products and services. I love the Dan Kennedy quote. It’s one that I had quoted so many times like if you haven’t offended someone by noon each day,
you’re not marketing enough. So take a stand for something. People will stand with you, identify your core audience and ignore everyone else. Your TRIBEr is going to follow you. They’re going to follow you through hell or high water. Even when it’s not in their best interest. Like I said, extreme positions, make you memorable. They make you memorable.
Like if you want to get attention, you got to, you might only have to get a little crazy. Think about it. It was like, it was crazy. I, again, I think about history, Jesus challenged the religious authorities of his time when they weren’t even like, you know, they weren’t even that big at that time because of Roman rule,
that was pretty crazy Gandhi going up against the British empire in a non-violent way. That was crazy. History showed that that was going to fail. You know, it was crazy for Steve jobs to try like an iPod, an iPhone, but that mission inspired his followers to achieve extraordinary things. You know, whether it be just being controversial, creating a common enemy,
whatever the enemy ends up doing the selling for you. That comment from Doug made the people who defended me stick around longer. Rather than you having to pull people to a sale, the enemy pushes them toward it. That’s what you want. All you got to do is clear the way for them. You know, I did a webinar recently and I talked about kinda the lies in affiliate programs.
And I said something to the effect of like, you know, the gurus. They have reasons for wanting you to think this, if you actually knew the truth, you’d know the real secret of their success. And they don’t want you to know the real secret you’ve been lied to. You’ve been lied to and like that’s taken a stand controversial. I’m basically accusing some of the gurus of being liars because they are,
some of them are flat-out liars. They know the truth and they just ain’t telling you. So don’t be afraid to be polarizing. Don’t be afraid to be controversial if it serves your audience, the butts sniffing monkey video. It’s funny, right? The concept is out there. I’m tying a viral video from 1998 of a monkey scratching his butt, smelling it, and falling symmetry in-depth Philly market.
Like what the heck? Right? As I said, it’s polarizing, it’s controversial, but he captured attention. It made an impact. People are going to remember it for years. If I say butts, sniffing monkey and people remember in my company because they know exactly what I’m talking about. So again, ignore the critics, ignore the naysayers, ignore the haters,
ignore the Ron’s. Ignore the Doug’s of the world. Sorry. If your name is Ron or dog, I’m just that, that was their name. Second. Be willing to learn from anywhere. Anyone, even though you can’t stand, if you can’t learn something, regardless of your political views, if you can’t learn something from Joe Biden’s campaign or Donald Trump’s campaign about marketing,
I mean, I feel bad for you. I’m sorry I do. I’m just gonna ignore those because through moon agree with them, I’ve run political campaigns. And I learned this is, you know, 16, 17 years ago. I learned from everywhere. I stole it from everywhere. We stole fundraising letters from Democrats, Republicans, independents, all kinds of stuff.
So be willing to be controversial. Polarizing, even Outlanders to capture attention was number three. Now, before we go, make sure you subscribe. I’d tell you right now, you do not want to miss what I’ve got coming up. I’ve got an eight-part episode on holiday promotions, eight parts in honor of my Jewish friends with Hanukkah in the past,
we’ve done 12 parts for the 12 days of Christmas. This year I’ve got eight new strategies, eight new tips, eight, just new, some really cool stuff for promoting affiliate offers and running your affiliate program this holiday season. So make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss any of these episodes. They’re going to be awesome. Quick shout out also to Nick.<inaudible> make sure if you like Nick did leave a rating and review that helps us out a ton.
He said a big fan of your podcast. I’ve been listening for a couple of months. Please keep sharing all this great knowledge that is truly helpful for myself and others like me who are not sure where to start. I think Nicholas, think I said that right. Rear seat over Skeeto I don’t know. Hey Nick, hope you’re listening. So make sure you come back next episode. We’re going to start that series on holiday promotions. I’ll see you in part one. Thank you so much for listening today. Remember to check out all of our deep dives into affiliate marketing at theaffiliateguy.TV. And if you have a question, ask it, asktheaffiliateguy.com who knows maybe you even be featured on an upcoming episode. And lastly, if you haven’t yet make sure to leave a rating and review wherever you’re listening to this episode. See you soon.
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