290. Interview with Matt McWilliams – Bridge the Income Gap Between Passion and Profits with Affiliate Marketing

Susan Sly 00:02
This is Raw and Real Entrepreneurship, the show that brings the no nonsense truth of what is required to start, grow and scale your business. I am your host, Susan Sly.

Susan Sly 00:17
Well hey, what is up Raw and Real Entrepreneurs. Wherever you are in the world, I hope you're having an amazing day. And if you're new to the show, who is the show for? It's for you. It's for someone who's thinking of starting a business, maybe has a business. Maybe you've had some ups and downs and you're thinking, should I stay the course? Well, if that's the question you have, you are at the show for a reason. And my guest today is someone who I deeply admire because he is out there spreading the message of entrepreneurship for everyday people, not the person who goes to Silicon Valley like some of my friends and raises a couple you know, $20 million to start a biotech company or something. I mean, he's out there day in day out teaching people how to literally turn their Passions into Profits, which is his new book. And entrepreneurs and companies such as, get this, Tony Robbins, who you all know I've shared the stage with on a few occasions. Dean Graziosi, Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank, Stu McClaren, Adidas, Ryan Levesque, Brian Tracy, Lewis Howes, Shutterfly. I've spent a lot of money on Shutterfly friends, that's a whole other story. I should be an affiliate marketer for Shutterfly, dangit. Michael Hyatt, Jeff Walker, and so many others have trusted this gentleman to help run their affiliate teams. He is a four time affiliate Manager of the Year and he's helping online business owners and brands small and large, to leverage the power of partners to grow their businesses. And before I bring him out, here's what I want to say. It doesn't matter how successful you are, it doesn't matter what your sphere of influence is, whether it's in your mind, it might be small, or it could be large. There is always room for more. And I promise you, today's show is going to give you at least three really great ideas on how to do that. So my guest today, drumroll please is the one and only Matt McWilliams. Matt, thanks for being here on Raw and Real Entrepreneurship.

Matt McWilliams 02:24
Susan. Wow. You just want to like do that on everything. Just just intro introduce me everywhere. That'd be awesome. That was awesome. Wow. Golly, that was so cool. Thank you. Yeah, the that thing you were just talking about with like the entrepreneurs, you know, the ones who don't raise $20 million from Silicon Valley types of stuff. Those are my people, you know, I think we can learn from the Facebook's of the world, I think we can learn from those companies. I love listening to books about them. I love listening to books about the early days it PayPal and things like that. And in reading things about those companies, I think there's some lessons we can glean from those companies. But there's far too much of that. And not enough stuff out there for for my people. The people who did it like I did who had $5,000 and a dream. You know, and if it didn't work, they were going back to a cube on Monday. You know, that's, those are my people. So hopefully we can we can help those people today.

Susan Sly 03:18
Absolutely. And, and I love that because this this interesting time that we're in right now, you know, we're talking about the economy. And even today, the day we're doing the show, the the Wall Street Journal is like, well, I don't know, if we're in a recession, are we going to be in a recession, and no one wants to call it. Let's face it, what people know is their gas costs more, their goods cost more, the cost of living costs more statistically. And there are so many people who are looking for additional streams of income, because they just can't make it. And that's why I love affiliate marketing. But I want to back up and have our listeners get to know you. So one of the questions that comes up all the time on Raw and Real Entrepreneurship, are entrepreneurs born, or are they made? So my question for you is, what was your first business?

Matt McWilliams 04:10
My first business if you want to get literal, my very first business, I was seven years old. And I don't think I don't think they're born. And I don't think they're made. I think they decide, I think I mean, entrepreneurship is a decision. That's all it is. It's like anything, it's a choice. You know, it's an intentional choice, like, you know, is your I don't believe that. For instance, I don't even believe that my wife and I love her to death. And we've been married almost 15 years and we'll be married until the day one of us dies. I don't believe that she was necessarily the only one for me on the entire earth of like, how many people are on earth now? 7 billion trillion whatever.

Susan Sly 04:45
Seven billion.

Matt McWilliams 04:46
Yeah, it's insane amount of people.

Susan Sly 04:47
Maybe

Susan Sly 04:48
it's eight, I don't know.

Matt McWilliams 04:49
We chose

Matt McWilliams 04:50
each other. Yeah, we had to be in the right place at the right time. And you can call it whatever you will. But the same is true with entrepreneurship. Were there opportunities? Sure. Did I have parents who were entrepreneurs? No. Did I have a dad that taught me entrepreneurship indirectly? And probably on accident? I sure did. Would I did I have a ton of exposure to entrepreneurs as a child? Not really. But I did indirectly and didn't really even know it until 10 years after becoming an entrepreneur. I chose to be an entrepreneur. I decided that was the path for me at a pretty young age. I was about 24. I mean, come to that, in a little bit. My dad fired me and I went, well, I guess this little side business I have is probably going to be the thing I do now, because I don't have a choice. My dad fired me, you know. So we, I just don't believe that they're, they're born or made. I think it's totally just a decision. But yeah, my first one was seven. I was seven years old. Did what a lot of people do when they're when they're seven years old. I bought. So I don't know if you've ever heard of the candy Now and Laters.

Susan Sly 05:48
I have never heard of that.

Matt McWilliams 05:50
Okay, well, I was addicted to Now and Laters when I was a child. Like they like it was like, yeah, I was I was basically a drug dealer for Now and Laters.

Susan Sly 05:58
I have to

Susan Sly 05:59
know, what is it like, what is that candy?

Matt McWilliams 06:02
I think of a starburst, you know, Starburst? So it's a little bit more flavorful and a little bit harder. It's just a little bit, it's kind of got a little bit of a hardness to it. And they're a little bit bigger. And so I would sell that, the Now and Laters came in the pack, like packages then had three packages inside of so you'd have three flavors of Now and Laters. Here's the thing, this is actually how I got into it. I hated the sour apple, and I hated the lemon. They were nasty to me. Now, here's the deal. Some kids loved the lemon and the sour apple. So what I would do, again, I was hooked on these things I would buy like these big boxes of Now and Laters. And I would go through and I would eat all the ones I liked. The cherry and the grape and the watermelon and the orange, oh my gosh, those are so good, right? I haven't eaten Now and Later in like 20 years, but they were so good back then. And then I would sell the sour apple and the lemon to the kids who did they felt the same way I did. They hated the cherry and the the grape and the orange and the watermelon and the strawberry and they loved maybe the lemon or the sour apple. And so I would sell these to them. And so roughly 1/3 of all the Now and Laters were those flavors. And I would buy this big box and I think came with I think it was 54 tubes of them basically that cost. So this cost maybe 30 bucks for the tube of 54. But then for an individual package, if you went to the convenience store or to the school candy shop would cost $1. So I'm already in the black on this almost, then I would take the two out of three that I liked. And I would sell the lemon and the sour apple for just like 40 cents. So then I was selling 1/3 of them for however much money I did. Basically it would cost me to get all that candy that I love that cost me like six bucks.

Matt McWilliams 07:53
And that was my first business.

Susan Sly 07:54
But that's, that's such a fun story. And we have had other guests who did resell candy. And we have a lot of kids who listen to the show with their parents in the car. We like being a mom, like, you know, I always want to have make sure we we keep the show PG,

Matt McWilliams 08:12
I love it.

Susan Sly 08:13
And we had someone resell watermelon and all these different things. And it goes one of the things the most consistent of the for this show, 300 episodes, is that there was some business started as a child. And that it was that I have a problem. I want to solve it. Here's a way I think I can solve it right? And so, and for you, I don't like this, sour apple. It is just nasty. So I'm going to creatively think about that. And when we think about entrepreneurship, it's creative problem solving for a profit, it really isn't really,

Matt McWilliams 08:47
If you think about it, all that really has happened is so two things like I never thought about this until just now. Our wants. So we have more needs as an adult. You know, certainly like I need to pay for our heating and air and lights, right, those are needs now. As a child, my mom paid for those, you know. But our wants just become more sophisticated and more expensive as we get older. That's it. If you think about as a kid, all I wanted was four little packages of 60. I just wanted 24 Now and Laters- just like 1000 calories, pure sugar, right? You know, that's all I wanted as a child. And I didn't want the other ones. And I needed to do it on the cheap because, you know, I had a single mom. My mom never made more than $30,000 in a year when I was that age, you know, and actually ever until the day I did her taxes like five years ago. I know for a fact it's the most you've ever made it was under 40 grand, you know. So I had a single mom raising me by herself. And I wanted Now and Laters. Like you said they cost $1 at the you know the store or at the candy store at the school or at the convenience store. And I'm thinking okay, how am I supposed to buy this? And so at first I bought one and I sold the other for probably 40 cents. So I got a little bit of a discount basically on the two that I ate. And I did that until I had enough money to go buy the six pack of them. And then I did that enough times until I had enough money to go buy the 52 or 54 pack. You know, and my mom, because she where she worked, she had a membership to what was then like a predecessor to Costco and Sam's Club. And so we went and bought these big things. Before long, like I said, I mean, I would have, you know, hundreds that we she would go buy, like hundreds of dollars worth of these. And then I would eat the ones that I wanted. Sometimes I would resell those, even I would even resell like the cherry ones if the price was right. And then I would resell the sour apple and in the lemon, I was the only kid in school doing it. And I mean, yeah, there were days where I mean, think it's not like much money in the scheme of things. But I'd leave there with like 10 to $15, a day, you know, as a second grader. And but the principles are the same, we make a little bit, we bootstrap it, we do what we can just to barely scrape by and we celebrate when we make $1 in a day. You know, I mean, early on, I was celebrating a buck,50 cents. I made $1. I made 50 cents, wherever I was like woohoo. And the next thing you know, I was able to do a little bit more. And then we hire our first virtual assistant. And then we hire the next person, then we get the fancier we pay the for the tool that you know, takes our business to the next level that we couldn't afford the first year and a half. The same principles are true as when I was seven years old reselling candy.

Susan Sly 11:18
I love what you just said about celebrating. And it's so funny, you mentioned that Matt because I was yesterday I had gone to a hot yoga class. And I just afterward I was driving home in the morning. And what struck me. I was thinking about the year and I was thinking about the friends who had had an above and beyond 2022. And the ones that hadn't. And what it came down to was what they talked about the most. So were they talking about their problems or the economy and all of the you know, the the midterms here in the United States, were they talking about that stuff? Or were they talking about? Yeah, I just made you know, I just made 100 bucks more, I just did this or I sold my house and I took my money off the table like it's what they were talking about. Because what we focus on we find, and I want to get into affiliate marketing. So I've done affiliate marketing. I've also in the direct sales world, I built an award winning Channel Sales Team that generated I think, whatever, it's still going -$1.8 billion in sales for that company. So I get that industry. But we have a lot of people listening right now. And they're like affiliate what, what does that mean? I don't understand they're Googling Now and Laters. And they're like, can we still buy the candy now?

Matt McWilliams 12:39
Anyway, so I'll go buy go buy that I don't know how much they sell him for Costco now. But price has gone up a little bit in the last 36 years.

Susan Sly 12:51
So what is what for the person who doesn't know? What is affiliate marketing?

Matt McWilliams 12:57
Yeah, you know, it's important to back up a little bit. And to understand what affiliate marketing is, we have to understand the concept of like, you know, for instance, just use my book as an example. It's called Turn Your Passions into Profit. The entire first half of the book is what is my passion? And how do we then begin to build a business around that?, a platform around that and ultimately turn that into a profitable business? Because if we have just passion, we love what we're doing, we're helping people, we're having an impact or having an influence on the world, but no income, then eventually you'll burn out. And so there's this lie, you know, we I know, you've probably been, I wouldn't say, what's the word victimized by it, but you've been, you've seen this lie in the online marketing space, it just says that if you suddenly go from just giving away content, we've got all this great content, you're doing good for the world, then you start selling something that makes you a sell out. That makes you if you start thinking like a business owner, then that makes you some sort of, you know, evil person, right? Someone who's, who's not, you're not seeking to serve you're, you're suddenly you're just a greedy, money hungry mogul. Right? That's simply not true. It does not want you to write this down everybody. It does not serve your audience, not to monetize. If you aren't running a profitable business, it does not serve your audience. If you think about that, from a practical standpoint. The grocery store, we've all seen the grocery stores when a neighborhood, you know, begins to decline. And the grocery store closes, what it does to the acceleration of the downfall of that neighborhood. Why did the grocery store closed because they weren't making money? They were losing money. So how does it serve the community for them to shut down? The question is how does it serve the community for them to lose money. And we've seen that happen time and time again, you can go to neighborhoods all over the country all over the world, and you can see that exact same pattern. The same is true with your message. When you've got a message, and whether you have 200 followers or 2000 or 20,000 followers, if you're not making money, some number of people rely on you for their weekly inspiration or their weekly information. They are relying on you for something that needs to change in their life, whether it's to be a better parent, to learn how to grow organic, you know, vegetables in their backyard to be a better business person, to, to learn how to manage their finances. Whatever it is, they are coming to you wanting to know that information, you're their go to guy or gal. And when you don't monetize, when you're not making money, you eventually burn out. So you give up and then they lose you. They lose your message. And I write this in the book that like, the thing about the new economy that you mentioned, this new economy is the new economy is completely contingent upon messengers. We're all messengers, the world needs your message, the world absolutely needs your message. But we're going to move on without your message, we are not going to wait patiently, we're not going to wait passively for your message, we are going we need your message. But we're going to move on without it, we're going to find somebody else who can give us that message. We're going to turn to somebody else. So it does not serve your audience to not monetize. And so we're in a position that to get into the affiliate marketing side, Susan, that we basically have one of two options, most people think. Option one: early on in our ventures, we create a product. So we're building the platform, we decided I'm just going to make up a niche here, we decided we're going to, we're going to start a podcast or blog about productivity. And we jumped into this with all the passion in the world, because we've learned some things that have made us more productive. And we're passionate about helping people to get more out of life, be productive, work a little bit less, but still make a little bit more, and people to spend more time with their family and get all their work done and get promoted. And all these things. We're passionate about it. We think there's two options. Number one is create a product. What is your audience even want? Like you don't know? Is this something in time management? Is this something in the health and fitness area? Leadership? Entrepreneurship? What is productivity? Like? If you think about it, they want tools they want this? What products do they want? I don't know, you don't know? Nobody knows. Option two is we just give away content indefinitely. So we just keep giving away content, content, content, content, content. And the problem with this. You know, the problem with that, like that side of thing is when you start a platform, so many people teach you that you should just give give give content content content, without ever asking for a financial transaction. The problem is, that's what sets us up for burnout. Like I said, I know because I've been there since I've been there. I was ready to give up because I was waking up at 530 in the morning, I was making an impact. I was changing people's lives. They were telling me I was getting comments and emails every day saying, Matt, I love your stuff. You changed my life. You helped me do X, Y, and Z. Oh my gosh, you're amazing. And yeah, I wasn't making any money. And so the problem is that sets us up for burnout. And so what we face here, this the reason why I love affiliate marketing. The reason why I love affiliate marketing is affiliate marketing bridges the gap between having nothing to sell and selling nothing at all. So we can get into some of the advantages of that, and what that does for your business. But essentially, we're faced with those two options create something, we don't even know what they want. We don't know what price point we don't know, what do they want? How do I market it? How do I sell I don't even know how to sell. I'm passionate about productivity, not selling, I don't know marketing. So we learn these things from affiliate marketing. The flip side is just creating nothing. So then two years later, we finally realize, gosh, I've been blogging for two years and been podcasting for two years, I haven't made a dime. I did that. Funny thing, my kids soccer, they don't accept those, those emails. I can't forward the email to the youth soccer and say, hey, people love me, I'm changing their lives can can that apply towards my child's $1,500 Soccer fee? They don't take that. The mortgage company wasn't taking the comment, the blog comments, I get $100 off your mortgage every month. If I just get 20 good comments, I get a free mortgage. They don't take that. They take money. So you have to be able to make money not only to fund your lifestyle, but then just even to pay the bills in your business. So that's where affiliate marketing comes in. We can talk about some of the specifics of that, as well.

Susan Sly 19:05
And the the breakdown that I think is so important because there's this perception by some people, not everyone, about affiliate marketers. And as you said like this whole like sell it. Oh, you're starting to monetize. Well, the and I love the example you gave us, the grocery store. And we are seeing that as a sidebar. We are seeing that retail now where because of things like organized retail crime, you have large retailers, whether it's you know, CVS, Walmart, whomever, they're shutting down physical stores, because of what's happening and it's a loss to the community. And the and we are supposed to be abundant. And so one of the affiliate marketers that comes to mind is someone who show I listen to every single day in the morning and that's Dave Ramsey. So the Ramsey show.

Matt McWilliams 19:54
My wife used to work for Dave Yeah, yeah.

Susan Sly 19:57
So yeah, you have a if you're if you could see Matt now he's wearing a Franklin shirt. I'm assuming, Franklin,

Matt McWilliams 20:04
Franklin, Tennessee, I guess where I grew up. Yeah.

Susan Sly 20:07
So so that

Susan Sly 20:08
was what inspired that. And so you'll hear for Dave Ramsey, whether it's Zander insurance or Pods Moving and Storage forward slash Ramsey, and even all of the Ramsey personalities, John Delaney, everyone, and they are all affiliate marketers. And so when you you, it doesn't matter. And that's the big message, I want to drill home with everyone before they start to have their misperceptions of affiliate marketing, that when it doesn't matter. Dave Ramsey's got $600 million net worth or something, and he's still an affiliate marketer. And that it's not about your own network, it's about tapping into the networks of others. Because as you know, we've heard time and again, that your network determines your net worth. And it doesn't mean you affiliate market, everything, it has to be something you understand you are passionate about. And and that's and that's what it makes it a lot of fun. So I want to for the person who's listening, and they're like, this is really interesting, I try to you know, wrap their head around it. Can you just sort of walk through from the perspective of affiliate marketing? What is an easy way? So someone is, you know, everyone who's listening is going to go get your book. I mean, that's obvious. People who listen to my show, like to read books. But they're gonna go get your book, and then they're gonna say, well, I've got to think you know, what is my passion and so on. What I'd love for you to give is like some simple tips when someone says, I want to dip my toe in the water of affiliate marketing, because you and I know there are things like Clickbank and things like that. So what are some easy ways people could get started? So let's pretend they already ordered your book. And they're like, yes, I want to try something. But I don't want to create my own product. I don't want to create a course yet I want to go market something else, just to get started.

Matt McWilliams 22:02
Yeah, first of all, don't skip to step nine. Step nine is the monetize part its passions to profit. So you got to go through you got to clarify who you help, you have to commit to leading, you got to learn how to attract an audience and stand out in the marketplace, and build a community and built create raving fans and become the hero to your audience and and begin to condition your answers. Those are all the things that come first. Those are, those are the first 80% of the book. Naturally, as somebody who's spent the last 17 years in the affiliate marketing world, and I love teaching people how to monetize step nine is the longest chapter in the book. Don't skip to it. I can't even I've had so many people, Susan, who read the book early. These are people run in, you know, mid six figure low seven figure, even a couple of eight figure businesses said, Matt, I read chapter one thing, and there's no way that was going to do anything for me. Like I already know what I'm passionate about. I already know my ideal customer avatar, oh my gosh, it changed everything. You know, so if it worked for them, it'll definitely work for me starting out. So then we get to Step nine, which is to commit to monetize and the first thing you got to do if you're gonna dip your toe in you got to get the mindset right. We sort of touched on this before that mindset that like affiliate marketing is scammy it's salesy, promoting affiliate offers is going to burn out your tribe, it's gonna distract them from your own products. Like as though your people can't buy your thing and something else in the same calendar year. You know, newsflash, they buy other things. You're not the only person they buy from, oh, my gosh, I can't believe it, you know. And so, we call that burning your list. We think we're gonna burn your list. That's what the conventional wisdom tell you. I'm gonna tell you right now, the statistics do not back that up. Everything I teach is data driven. That data does not back up with the conventional wisdom is because it's based on subjective opinion, not actual research. They say, Oh, when you promote when we put affiliate offers people unsubscribe. People unsubscribe when I send them a podcast episode,. People unsubscribe, when I send my merry christmas email. People will unsubscribe. And the research shows that less than point, there's a less than point 1% increase in unsubscription rates from a affiliate sales email than there is from regular content. It is literally negligible. We're talking 20 people a year out of 10s of 1000s Extra that unsubscribe.

Susan Sly 24:23
Can I jump on the soapbox with you?

Matt McWilliams 24:25
For I know there's there's room for two.

Susan Sly 24:27
Your speaking my love language. So we just I just did a show like on direct mail, right, which is so cool, because that's making a big comeback. And, and I use direct mail for all sorts of things. But the the thing I want everyone to understand because for years when I was running agency eight, which I've turned over to my daughter now, people say Oh, I start to build my list and people start to unsubscribe. Here's what I have to say. Hallelujah, because guess what, if they're they need to go. You it's just like cleaning out your junk drawer like the people who are on the list who don't want to be there, get them out because they're not going to buy from you. And they're going to leave negative reviews. But the other thing is that when you things like over mailing as an example. So there's this one major affiliate marketer, who will literally if you're on that person's list, they will mail three to four times a day. I am a CEO of a tech company, I do not have time to read three to four emails from you. So there's a there's an art and that's why it's so important to learn. And you can't take it personally. That's the other thing. Because for every you know, one person that unsubscribes there are two to three out there who want to hear your message. Okay, I'm stepping off the soapbox. Now, Matt. So,

Matt McWilliams 25:45
so just from a practical perspective, when people are starting out, most of us start out alone, maybe with a part time, VA. So number one, we get to monetize immediately. Number two, there's no customer fulfillment, no customer service, when you're starting out, that's huge. We have 1000s of customers now, and I have a customer service team. And that's great. But when I was starting out, I needed to not have you know, 25 people email me saying my login doesn't work. I couldn't handle it by myself or with a part time VA. There's no hidden costs. There's no fulfillment, no risk all those things, right. But this is the big one, it teaches you how to sell. Right? You get to practice selling, I call it PTP - paid to practice. And you learn what works for your audience. And then the last one that I love is it trains your audience. So we learn, okay, go back to that productivity niche, right? In productivity. There's time management, there's tools, there's goal setting, there's health and fitness, leadership, stress relief, things like that all factor into productivity supplements, all these things, right? What's your audience actually going to pay for? What price points are they going to buy? We learn those things promoting affiliate offers. I'm not suggesting that all you ever do is affiliate marketing, just like you said, Dave Ramsey, he has tons of his own products. What you do is you begin to use affiliate marketing to test things. So we test how do I market? How many emails do I send? What kind of emails do I send? I have learned so much about selling from promoting affiliate offers, without the risk of ending up with a garage full of products that I couldn't sell. We all have that friend whose wife is still mad at him, because they can't park in the garage, because he's got boxes of stuff that he ordered and never sold. What if he tested the thing out with an affiliate campaign went, Oh, my audience isn't going to buy something that cost $300 and does this. Guess I should probably not go spend $25,000 ordering it. So you ask the question, how do we get started? How do we dip our toe, we've got an acronym flipped. I said don't flip there. But you can sort of flip there real quick. If you're really, really good thing go back. Okay. It's exactly on page 200 of the book. There's an acronym that I share called the start, this is what we've taught our clients for almost a decade. Now. The S is, you got to stop waiting, you actually need to take action. Again, the mindset realize like, I'm ready to stop waiting to monetize. I'm going to start making money from my platform today. Maybe tomorrow, but I'm going to start right now taking action. And I'm gonna do it I'm committed. It's okay to monetize. If you need permission, if like if you need somebody to say, so and so, it's okay to make money from your podcasts or to make money from your blog or to make money from your video channel. It's okay, you have my permission, go do it. The key is to think. I want you to take some time, think about what programs you could promote. What would your audience possibly buy? Here's the cool thing, you get to be wrong. You get to be wrong about this, because you're going to try 10 things, and five of them are going to bomb. Whether it be the price points too high or even too low. Or there'll be they're just not interested. Maybe they didn't want a physical solution to that they want a digital solution to that, I don't know. So if you think about it, look around your desktop, both your actual desktop and your computer desktop. What what things I have a planner here that I recommend, and I have my book and and I have a highly recommend this this mug. I don't know what it is polar camel. You know, I recommend this lighting that I've got my microphone, here are the things I log into. If you're in the gardening niche, go look out in your gardening shed and just say okay, what tools do you have, and then start promoting those. The A is I want you to apply to one program. All right. To start with, I want you to apply and get accepted to one program in the book. I've got scripts that will help you like emails that you can send that will I've been an affiliate manager for 17 years. I'm telling you, they worked on me. These are emails that I copied from affiliates who sent them to me. I virtually guarantee that you will get accepted in any any program that you apply. There are exceptions, you'll get accepted 99% of the time. Alright, so then I want you to apply. Not to 10 programs. I said you just said I was going to do 10. Yes, we're going to start with one, you're going to apply to that one. You're going to promote that one. You're going to tweak that one, you're going to get good at it. And then you're going to add a second, third, fourth and 10th. All right. Then the R is I want you to just to recommend like you are to a friend. All right, that's all we're gonna do here. I was given a speech years ago, Susan, where I was, so I was up on stage. And I took them through this, this start acronym and I told them all the advantages. It was like a 45 minute speech, you know, hour long speech. Affiliate marketing, it's great. Everybody should do affiliate marketing. And when I practice this speech, I asked the question at the end. Who here thinks that they can do affiliate marketing? And I'm thinking, every hand is gonna go up there and be like, Oh, I can, they are gonna run up on stage and like, give me a big hug and say, You're amazing. It was like, 1000 people. There's my first big speech, like 10 years ago. Unfortunately, only like a third or half of hands went up. And I was like, Oh, crap. I had no plan for this. Like, I had no plan for what I was gonna do. And I picked this one lady. I was like, Why do you think you can't do affiliate marketing? She's like, I can't sell somebody else's stuff. I'm like, alright, well come up here. Tell me why. I've got 30 seconds to think about what the heck I'm going to do with this. What am I going to ask her? When she comes up here? How is this gonna go? I have no clue what I'm doing. And it hit me. And I was like, tell me about your favorite restaurant. She starts telling me about her favorite. And I was like, Okay, well, what's it like when you pull up? She tells me about the neighborhood. And I was like, okay, when you go in, what's it like? She's like, well, the ambiance is such and such. And she tells us about this restaurant. Great. What about the service? She tells me about the service. It's like her water is always full. That the waiters never there. He's not in the way. But you know, he's just super on top of things. Service is so good. Last week, my husband, I went on there, forget, she said, My husband and I went, we forgot our doggie bag, he practically got hit by a car going out to give us our doggie bags. I said that's good service. The whole audience is nodding. What about the food? Now, sidenote, don't ever say this at 1130 in the morning at a conference. Don't ever ask somebody to tell you about a restaurant because you will have an audience full of Pavlov's dogs just drooling all over the place. But I said tell us about the food. And the way that she described it. It was nothing short of a sensual experience, Susan, it was just like, I mean, we're all just sitting there. Hunger. And so she tells us about this place. And I looked at the audience and I said, Who here wants to eat at that restaurant? This time, every hand in the place finally went up. And I looked at her and I said you just did it. Like did what? You just did affiliate marketing, you sold the room of 1000 people on a place that they've never been, it's not even yours. That's what affiliate marketing is. So we recommend like a friend. And then the last letter in the Start acronym is Test test test. All right, I am not a good marketer. Because I'm smart. I'm a good marketer, because I test everything and I keep what works. That's the single biggest, biggest differentiator between good marketing and bad marketing is testing. So I want you to test different price points, different offers different email, copy, different landing pages, different marketing methods, do different video, subject lines, times of your email, number of emails in a day, number of emails in a week, what style they are length of test everything, see what works. And then the cool thing is over time, you can apply that to your own products. But to start off with, we're just gonna try different things. So that's the test test test.

Susan Sly 33:01
I love it. I love the acronym. And I love the example because that was a in my 30 plus years of teaching people how to sell. It's like, oh, I can't sell I'm not a salesperson. And that's not it's that reframing like, yes, you can. If you are married, you sold something.

Susan Sly 33:19
Right you

Matt McWilliams 33:20
Biggest sale I ever made right there.

Susan Sly 33:22
Yeah, exactly. So

Susan Sly 33:23
there's were if this was my other one as a mom, do you have kids? Yes. So did they ever not want to eat something that's healthy for them? Yes. So how did you get them to do it? Right? It's so that broccoli, if you eat your broccoli, could have a brownie, you know, we've all done it. Anyway, Matt? I The book is

Matt McWilliams 33:44
Can I say something? There's a section in Step nine. It's about selling, you know, like, but people think like I suck at selling, I don't know how I'm doing it. And we talk about why people buy what to do if you suck at selling, copywriting and all that. I'm going to tell you right now, the section on selling, at least the first half of the we get into some like more technical business stuff. The first half of the section on selling is one of the best parenting. Like, you could take that and apply it to parenting. And I'm gonna tell you right now, it might be one of the best parenting books there is on the planet. And it sounds weird for me to say that because like, I'm somebody who's read a bunch of parenting books. I went back and read that section, I was going, oh my gosh, I'm not following my own advice. Why do people buy right? Why do people buy? Why? Why would my kids do what I want them to do? You know, if you look at the third reason to address fears, I'm not addressing their fears. There's no There's no FOMO if they don't listen to me, right? They feel pleasure to avoid pain, you know, all those things like that, because they don't really care about saving time or money because as far as they know, they're going to live forever. And they we have like $8 billion in the bank, you know, so those don't apply to kids under the age of like 15. But if you think about it, that's selling, it's selling and if you apply those principles, I can tell you right now you're gonna be a better parent. And I never I never made the connection between those two until I had to review my manuscript, I'm going. This is parenting advice. Holy crap.

Susan Sly 35:04
Right and relationship advice. Yeah. Right. That's a yeah, that's a whole other topic but the book Turn Your Passions Into Profits and the the. I I highly recommend it and I don't say that lightly after decades in this industry. So, Matt, there is a link that and there are some gifts as well I believe.

Matt McWilliams 35:27
So yeah, you can get it anywhere like and go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble Target, Walmart. Theodore's bookshop and some place in New York, you know, we got to thing from them. They ordered it the other day. If they sell books, they're going to have my book but if you go to passionsintoprofitsbook.com/sly s l y. So I know Susan, you'll put that in the show notes for people. If you go there we got some extra special goodies for you. If you if you go to the other places and buy it thank you. I know you'll get a lot out of it. But like you want to get this extra special stuff. That's for your listeners, Susan. So go there we've got a training on Avatar, we got an email marketing masterclass, a live event with me, like four other things I can't even remember if it was like five or six things total, almost $1,000 worth of extra stuff. So make sure you go to that URL passionsintoprofitsbook.com/sly and and get all the the amazing stuff we've got there for your listeners, Susan.

Susan Sly 36:23
Well, and the the gifts alone are worth they're like you said it's has close to $1,000 value. But if if you put it into practice, oh my gosh, the value is significantly exponentially more. And that's the thing we know that I'll just say this, Matt, that we all must be lifelong learners. And the reality is, is that if someone is stuck, then they haven't taken the time to say what can I learn today? What's something new that I can experience and that that's why I love the work you're doing. And there are a lot of people who apply to come on the show and I reject 90% of all applicants but Matt did not get rejected. Why? Because he's the real deal. And he's been doing this for a very long time. So Matt, thank you so much for being here and I hope if our younger listeners start selling candy then we're gonna blame it on you.

Matt McWilliams 37:21
I love it yeah, you can do whatever candy,can be fruit, you know. You might have a harder time,I mean I'm just saying like you know go where the market is right but

Susan Sly 37:33
Don't try to market brussel sprouts.

Matt McWilliams 37:34
My

Matt McWilliams 37:34
market was

Matt McWilliams 37:35
I mix them up enough bacon brussel sprouts aren't bad but in my market was candy.

Susan Sly 37:42
Well, thanks so much Matt for being here. And again, Passionsintoprofitsbook.com/sly to get the amazing gifts and go read Matt's book. You definitely deserve it. So with that, Matt McWilliams thank you for being on Raw and Real Entrepreneurship. And to everyone listening God Bless. Go rock your day and I will see you in the next episode.

Susan Sly 38:12
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