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MAKING BANK is now a weekly YouTube TV show and iTunes Podcast full of #Success and #Business with Josh.

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Summary

Affiliate launches, joint venture promotions, and networking events all have one big thing in common: relationships. As a super-connector and natural relationship marketer, today’s guest has built an incredibly successful career on his relationship and connection skills.

Whether you’re trying to recruit affiliates for your next launch or get someone to email their list for your latest product or program, you need to understand how to build strong relationships. This vital skill is something that is often overlooked but it is directly tied to success. 

Today on #MakingBank, host Josh Felber invites David Gonzalez to discuss how he grew a JV and affiliate management agency, stepped down as CEO, and focused on doing things that light him up. He shares some excellent advice on launches, working with affiliate partners, and running joint venture promotions.

David Gonzalez is the founder of Simply the Coolest which is an affiliate management agency and the founder of the Internet Marketing Party. He is a consummate super-connector, who loves helping people find what they need.

So, tune-in to hear Josh and David talk all-things launches and marketing, as well as…

• Why David decided to step down as CEO of his agency.
• The importance of the hedgehog principle.
• How to build a relationship with an influencer the right way.
• Why you should focus on the numbers of buyers instead of the number of subscribers.

And more…

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Building Great Relationships and Affiliate Mastery with Guest David Gonzalez: MakingBank S2E50

Josh Felber:                          Welcome to Making Bank. I am Josh Felber where we uncover the success strategies and the secrets of the top 1% so you can amplify your life and your business today. I’m really honored and super excited for today’s guest. I wanna welcome David Gonzales to Making Bank. Welcome man.

David Gonzalez:                 Thank you.

Josh Felber:                          So I know everybody knows who you are. You host some awesome internet marketing parties and do lots of super cool stuff, but there’s maybe a little percentage out there that don’t know you. So how would you say hey, this is who I am and this is what I do?

David Gonzalez:                 Well, 95% of the time when people introduce me, they either introduce me as the founder of the Internet Marketing Party or super-connector, one of the most connected guys in the internet marketing space. For the longest time I tried creating products. I tried different things on line and because my network was so saturated with people that were making millions and millions of dollars and they were good friends of mine, I never could quite put my finger on which thing to do. One day I started connecting people and making second tier deals. For those of you watching that don’t know what that means. It’s basically a referral agreement digitally. To where if I connect Josh with somebody who’s got a million subscribers and they promote his stuff, then they make money and I get a cut from that.

So I started making money that way-

Josh Felber:                          It’s awesome.

David Gonzalez:                 … and after a while I realized that I was digging a whole in too deep and a mile wide and wasn’t getting anywhere fast. So I created an agency, which has been the primary revenue driver for my household. Recently I stepped down as CEO from that company and let one of my team members, gave that to Tonya Williams on our team. Now I’m focusing on internet marketing party.

Josh Felber:                          Cool. What does your agency do? How is it different than other, ’cause I’ve-

David Gonzalez:                 Yeah, yeah. So, it’s a joint venture. JV and affiliate management agency. So we represent offer owners that have products that they want affiliates to promote. So we do recruitment, we do launch management, and we do … For example over here at this big giant event with 6000 attendees and you go to these parties and masterminds and people go, “Dude, let’s so something. My list would love your stuff. You list would love my stuff.” And then you get home and you’ve got 15 or 20 of these. But they all have their own little nuances like well this one wants to match clicks. This one wants to do a CPA. This one wants to do, well, can you promote my launch and I’ll promote whatever you want. They’re all, it’s not all just cookie cutter. Our agency makes sure that we represent you and we go, “Well, this one would work, this one’s not likely gonna work. Or this one will work but have them promote you. You shouldn’t promote them because they’ve got horrible customer service or they get a lot of refunds, or they’ve got kind of a shady …”

Josh Felber:                          So you guys kind of work out all those little details and then make sure everything matches up appropriately.

David Gonzalez:                 Yep. And then a lot of times, even individuals that have a lot of affiliate and JV relationships, those are really important to happen one-on-one. You’re usually talking about the whole digital marketing community with content creators and information and digital product owners. It’s created a species of people that are microcelebrities. They’re celebrities, like in the fitness space you have Mike Chang or Drew Canole. In the personal development space, you have Lisa Nichols, or the people from the secret. But you go and ask somebody on the street who they are, and nobody knows. But in their own little space, in their relatively little space, they’re a big deal in their own space. So they kind of get this diva thing and everybody wants to talk with the guy or the gal.

So in our agency because of my reputation and everybody knows me, that serves as a good conduit where, if, let’s say Drew Canole hired us and he wanted to do a deal with Mike Chang or Mike Geary or one of the other big fitness people. Then they would be okay talking to me. They wouldn’t feel like they were being disrespected if they talked to just a regular affiliate manager. So, that’s kind of the role we play. We help kind of manage all that.

Josh Felber:                          Awesome. And so, guys, just to really simplify. If you’re not familiar with affiliates and joint ventures and everything else. David’s the guy so he would connect you that has a great product for example and to a list of people, or somebody that can promote you out there. If you’re running Facebook traffic now or you’re using Google, there’s different avenues out there other than just several platforms that you’re doing paid ads on, that you can generate traffic. Maybe kind of dive into a little bit more about what it is, about an affiliate and how people can take that and make that work in their business.

David Gonzalez:                 I think you were going down a really good path about understanding that having a JV component of your business where there’s reciprocation where you mail for them, they mail for you and then having an affiliate component where you just have people mail for you and their reward is the payment.

Josh Felber:                          And those are two different areas, you guys might look at.

David Gonzalez:                 And even there, there’s two different types of affiliates. There’s affiliates that have endorsed traffic. So they hae a following, a fan base. They have a relationship with their email database or their blog readers or their YouTube channel, or their Facebook page. And people are familiar with them and they know they can trust them and the content they produce. Then there’s paid arbitrage affiliates. So affiliates that know how to buy traffic, whether that’s through email drops. You know just like paid email drop. They know people will large email lists and they go, “Hey, I’ll give a thousand, two, three thousand dollars for this many clicks.” Or people that know how to buy Google ads, or Facebook ads, or YouTube ads. Any sort of ability to drive traffic. They arbitrage it. They spend a dollar and make two as an affiliate.

So those are the three different categories. Knowing that, our agency primarily functions with the JV side of things. I think where you were going is something worth highlighting and that is, the JV side of things is one channel of a business. You’re not gonna get rich. There are some people that are making about a million dollars at the highest level just doing the JV game. But that’s not sustainable because after a while, everybody is promoting everybody else.

So you’ve gotta go out and either find sources of paid traffic or find sources of organic traffic. It’s one channel and it’s this tiny little niche that we figured out. I just fell into it. Does that answer your question?

Josh Felber:                          No definitely. That’s where I was going. So, for example, so my wife runs a skin care company. For the longest time it was all organic growth. It was just people seeing posts on Facebook and everything. Then, with all the changes through social media and Facebook and everything else, then we had to start doing paid traffic and paid promotions and things like that. Just recently we’ve started to expand into more affiliate type stuff. So, people that love her products but that have a big following. So they write an article or they talk about her and everything. So, that’s the tiny end of affiliate stuff I guess. Recently now we’ve started to go out and okay, cool. Who would love our product but then also their fan base would love our product? And then push it out in their email as you mentioned or do life streams and talk about it and then drive that traffic. They would then receive a percentage of that as well, of any sales that came through. That’s an easy way to try to explain it all.

David Gonzalez:                 And I think a lot of what our agency provides is the nuances of how to approach. There’s a way to do that. If you do it too transactionally, people feel like, hey you wanna come home and … as opposed to hey, how you doin’ man, great to meet you. Can I get you a drink. You know, you just kind of-

Josh Felber:                          Get to know them a little better, for sure.

David Gonzalez:                 You get to know them a little better and then, know what’s appropriate and how to do that. So, that’s a lot of what we do.

Josh Felber:                          Cool. And one of the things you mentioned, you were like, okay, I just kind of fell into this. What do you mean by that and really how did you get started? ‘Cause I know you said networking and everything else.

David Gonzalez:                 First of all, I want to acknowledge that’s been my primary driver but about a month ago, I realized that my soul was dying. Because I felt like I was over-leveraging. I genuinely love people and I really like relationships. I felt like I was, just by design, it was shifting how I engaged with people to the point where every time I saw somebody it was like, oh, how big is their list and out of my client roster, who can I connect them with. And this was me as the CEO and the founder of the company. I found that it was heavy. It was weighing on me. Every time I interact with somebody. It was kind of like a battery, it was draining me down. So I did a journal every day and I did some meditation and I realized it’s time for me to … it’s a profitable company, it does well, but I don’t like it.

So I stepped down as CEO recently and so now it’s a company that I own but I’m not in the day to day operations of it. And, I still leverage my reputation but I just toss them over to the team.

Josh Felber:                          To the team to handle, for sure.

David Gonzalez:                 But your question, I just felt like it was important to say that, ’cause if people watching this think, like, oh you’re running … we don’t wanna have clients come on board if anyone would end up watching this and go, hey, this is the perfect fit for us and then be disappointed that they’re not talking to me. Yeah. It’s happened before.

Josh Felber:                          I’m disappointed now, so.

David Gonzalez:                 I mean, yeah, sorry.

Josh Felber:                          So, you meditate and everything else. This is interesting and it’s really cool because you took some action on you were self aware of the fact. Man, this is just not working well for myself. And started to make that change. You mentioned Internet Marketing Party and that’s kind of where your focus is going. How does that allow you to reconnect and be able to get that energy and that …

David Gonzalez:                 It’s actually really interesting. What it’s done, is it’s actually revitalized the agency. Because now I’m reaching out to people … I have the internet party for almost, it will be nine years in September. It’s just something I’ve done as a labor of love, a passion project and I’ve never given it any real attention other than just doing it every month. It’s become kind of autopilot. But when I decided to step down as CEO, I decided, actually Vinny was like, “You can’t take a salary anymore.”

Josh Felber:                          ‘Cause you’re not there.

David Gonzalez:                 Well, yeah. So I was like, oh.

Josh Felber:                          In you’re head, you’re like, okay I’ll just step down but still-

David Gonzalez:                 But I was like, well, it’s not like I couldn’t make money in other ways but I was like what’s a leveragable easy low-hanging fruit. And I was like, well, I’ve got the Internet Marketing Party list and I never nurture it or anything. So I should reach out to people that are already members and find out what do they like about it, what do they not like about it. And people that come to the parties that aren’t members. I said “Why aren’t you a member and what would it take?” And that process people are like, “Is this Dave?” And I’ll start talking to them and finding out about their business. And they’re like, “Oh my God, yeah, you do affiliate management right?” And I go, “Well, my other company does.” So, I’m starting to … but because I was trying to bring people. But engaging with people and being genuinely curious has created what I wanted. It was unintentional. Does that makes sense?

Josh Felber:                          That’s awesome. I think that’s pretty key. Because sometimes we get so, we’re so in our businesses that we kind of really lose touch with what we originally started it for. That’s what it sounds like, where you went with everything. And being able to step away from that and focus on what you truly love and being curious and learning about other people’s businesses.

David Gonzalez:                 You know what kind of, you asked me how I just fell into this. So, I live in Austin, Texas and it’s kind of one of the mecca’s for online entrepreneurs. I didn’t know, I had read four-hour work week and I didn’t know which approach to take. But I knew there were all these marketers in town. I went to Dallas to a meetup they were having there. A guy named Kevin Wilke’s house from Nitro Marketing. And he would put together these mixers once a month at his house. He had a really nice condo in downtown Dallas and I was like, oh, well that’s cool except I live in a suburb and my house isn’t as swanky as his. He was making millions, I wasn’t. So I was like, well, I should probably see a bar downtown and then it clicked. ‘Cause I was like, well, you go to conferences and marketing conventions and seminars and there’s almost always a big stage with a speaker and the ballroom and not at certain but at many of them, they’re pitching something and go buy at the back at the table and stuff.

I’ve always been more of a networker, in the hallway, at the bar. One day I realized there’s a lot more money being made at the bar, then the ballroom. So I was like, well what would happen if we brought the speaker … and every once in a while the speaker would come off stage and they’d be like un-micing themselves and stuff. They’d grab a stiff drink and it was like, hey and then they would change and who they really are would show up. I always like to just be who I really am. A lot of people have told me that is one of my secret sauces. I don’t know any other way to be. When the mic and the camera off, you’re not gonna see a different me.

Josh Felber:                          You were the same before.

David Gonzalez:                 Yeah.

Josh Felber:                          We were talking before and stuff.

David Gonzalez:                 So I mean, we might not say certain things but that’s just because, well, you don’t want to offend anybody if you don’t have to.

Josh Felber:                          Focus on a topic.

David Gonzalez:                 Yeah. Either way I started doing these parties. I invited Perry Belcher to come speak, TED talk style in a bar, in Austin. It was a bar co-owned by Lance Armstrong. It’s called Six Lounge. I just blasted it out to a whole bunch of different communities. At that time there was the Warrior forum.

Josh Felber:                          The Warrior Forum, oh yeah right.

David Gonzalez:                 The old school Warrior forum. Eric Louviere was one of the big people in there. Eric posted it in there and I was like, oh shit, now I’ve gotta do it. So I did it and about 50 people showed up. It was really cool. We would pass the mic around. Like, “Hi I’m David and I run the blah, blah, blah company.” And that’s how they started. And then I’d invite another speaker and another speaker. It started turning into this like cult following where people would come and once a month we’d show up. It used to be free. And that’s how I built my network and that’s how I started doing the brokering thing and one thing led to another and I decided to focus on individual clients. That way I could build deeper relationships and focus on them and make a hole a mile deep. And that’s gone well.

Josh Felber:                          Awesome. I know the party you just did in San Diego, was there 800-1000 people.

David Gonzalez:                 There were 1087 was the final.

Josh Felber:                          So from 50 passing the mic around to over 1000.

David Gonzalez:                 Yeah, we didn’t pass the mic this time.

Josh Felber:                          Yeah. It was loud in there so there was no mic passing. And everybody, that’s kind of the whole, talked to, I noticed when you’re at the event of pre at the event and everybody’s like, okay. It’s on the agenda, this is what we’re doing.

David Gonzalez:                 Sometimes people get annoyed with it, because they come to network. Sometimes people will literally be meeting someone that they’ve made over a million dollars with, but they’ve never met in person. One guy will be from London and the other’s from LA and then met on a forum or they were part of a mastermind something and they just never met yet. And they were like, we should do this together and they’re meeting at the party. And then we get some speaker. Well what could that speaker possibly say that’s more important than, “Oh my God, let me get you a shot. Let’s have a drink. Shots all around.” It’s kind of an annoyance to them when they’re partying and I’m like, everybody, time for the speaker. So we opened it up. If you wanna network, go to the other side of the room.

Josh Felber:                          Right. I noticed that.

David Gonzalez:                 But I think there’s something that popped in my mind that I think is worth noting. When you talked about how I got started. One of the things I had heard a lot about was the hedgehog principle. You know the thing you could be the best in the world at, is one of a billion diagram event diagram. It’s one of the circles and then the other one is something that is monetized. Something you can actually make money at. And then something that you actually are passionate about. So it’s skill, passion and money.

The more that those three overlap, the more that you’re pretty much living a dream. A beautiful gorgeous dream that you never wanna wake up from. You wanna just be in forever. I realized everybody who knows Tim Ferris personally or knows people in his network, know that he works more than four hours a week. But one day I realized that the way I define it is, if you’re only doing four hours of stuff that feels like work. Like, work being the stuff that no one wants to do unless you’re a monk and you find it meditative to chop wood, carry water kind of … I’m talking about work is not, there’s a piece of everybody’s job that they don’t wanna do. Either because they’re not good at it, or ’cause it just weighs on them or whatever. If you’re doing a maximum of four hours of that and the rest of it, Warren Buffet likes to call it tap dancing to work, then that’s pretty epic.

I was adamant and I was very stubborn that I was going to find that. I didn’t want to just get rich. I didn’t want to just make a product that I wasn’t proud of. I didn’t wanna just do stuff to be busy again. I think that’s why it took me so long to figure out what to do. It wasn’t like I was dumb. I want to only do the shit I want to do.

Josh Felber:                          And I think that’s important. A lot of people, at least that I’ve talked to, they’re searching. Okay, what is that next thing. Where am I supposed to be at? One of the interviews I did, we were talking about that. The way he best explained it, is it’s not searching for that one thing, it’s the little pieces along the way that are taking you there. Even though it may not look like it right away.

David Gonzalez:                 Right, right.

Josh Felber:                          Each of those steps that you’re moving along your journey, then you finally get to that point and like wow, I’m actually doing what I love. It’s creating opportunities for me. I felt, oh wow that’s amazing. If you’re always searching, you’re always going to be searching. And you’re not moving forward at all. You’re going to be in the same spot searching 10 years later.

David Gonzalez:                 There’s a cool concept. Are you a fan of Buckminster Fuller at all.

Josh Felber:                          A little bit, yeah.

David Gonzalez:                 He’s got this principle that he really is big on, called the Law of Procession. It’s based on the idea that almost every time in nature with living things, whenever they have a goal that their true purpose of doing that is at a 90 degree angle to what they think they’re doing. It kind of feels metaphysical and woo-woo ish. But he brings it down to like a honeybee. So when a honeybee is out sucking nectar from flowers, it’s sustaining itself so it can go back and make honey with it. But what it doesn’t realize it’s doing is keeping us humans and the planet oxygenated. Because every time it does that it’s touching the pollen that falls from the stamen to pollinate the flower. The honey bee’s not out, I’m gonna go pollinate today. I’m gonna go get me some nectar today. And it’s true purpose is at a 90 degree angle and it falls gravitationally.

I think that would be something for anybody that’s watching and trying to figure out, what’s my one thing. I think that’s worth looking. What’s something you can do today that would bring you joy and be valuable. There’s that hedgehog thing, right? It would bring you joy, it would bring value, it would bring money and you’re actually good at it. Even if it’s not the thing, start moving in that direction. The more you do that, you’ll be fulfilling a greater purpose. One day you’ll wake up and realize, I had 1000 people at my party and I can’t walk from one part of traffic and conversion summit to another without being accosted. It’s very, very gratifying. It’s just so good on the ego. I inadvertently built that skill part, because now people want to do business with me because they know Dave knows everybody and it’s what I like. But it didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t come easy. There were many sleepless nights. Horrible tolls on my self esteem. Shit like that. I don’t know if that …

Josh Felber:                          Awesome.

David Gonzalez:                 Are we heading down the right path?

Josh Felber:                          Great content. So what I want to do is kind of switch gears a little bit. You’ve got a lot of expertise in launches, in affiliate stuff and maybe get a little bit of tactical steps for people. What are maybe three biggest things that you have found that somebody that has an online business and they’re looking, maybe they’re growing from that six to seven figures. Or they can implement to find JV’s or either …

David Gonzalez:                 Well first I think it would be important to distinguish between a digital product and a physical product. And then there’s almost a secondary sort, which would be for what niche or vertical. We work largely with digital products. So when people do these Jeff Walker style launches like the seven figure launch thing where you have a culmination of two to three weeks of product launch content 1, 2, 3, where you show people videos and stuff, get them juicy and hungry for more. There’s affiliates that are promoting it, and there’s a contest and the leader board. First prize wins a Tesla, second prize wins $10,000 and a trip to the Grammy’s. So that kind of launch.

It’s very common for people to call us and say, we’re gonna launch. Can you work with us? And we wanna do a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 million dollar launch. And either I’ve not heard of them. Or I’ve heard of them but they’ve never done that before. And I’m like, well, when’s your launch, when are you launching? And they’re like, we wanna do it in April, and it’s March.

I always tell them, the people that you want to promote you that have 100,000 subscribers, a million subscribers and more that can easily drive you 15-20,000 clicks with a single mailing, they have their promotional calendars booked out for six, seven, eight, nine months. Sometimes upwards of a year. So if you wanna do a big launch, it’s not something you just do overnight. It doesn’t matter how well your product converts. Because that’s the primary thing, just timing and scheduling on promotional calendars.

The second thing has to do with playing the game from a place of courtesy and respect. I went to a conference a couple of years ago where people were saying, it was some women that were talking. They have got a huge social media followings and email lists. I think it was Emily Rosen from The Institute of Psychology for Eating. She was saying, so many people are coming up to me and they’re like, it’s no longer getting down on one knee and proposing, will you marry me, it’s will you mail for me? Anybody that you want to promote you, you have to know that if you really, if they’re your dream affiliate to promote your launch, you should expect a minimum of 7 to 10 times a week, someone else is asking them to do the exact same thing. So you have to show up with respect and honor and courtesy and stand out from just another … So that’s where you want to build relationship and give first. Do the whole cialdini reciprocation thing. Where you add value or stand out in a positive way. That’s where you can get creative and use your marketing line. It’s almost like you’re courting a really hot person of the opposite sex.

If in college there’s that girl you had a crush on. You knew she got out of class at that time. You were conveniently always there, taking notes-

Josh Felber:                          Waiting around.

David Gonzalez:                 … or studying right outside that hallway. So, increasing your chances of that person noticing you. Instead of you hunting and chasing. What things can you do to where you show up in their … and here’s one thing you can do. If you can drive a lot of traffic and you know that there’s someone … you wanna get to know their ecosystem of the world that they play in. You would want to know what are the launches that are going on? And if you can drive a lot of traffic, here’s a tactic that I’ve seen Justin Livingston use. Justin spent 100,000 dollars in paid traffic to get #1 on Jeff Walker’s launch about two or three years ago. Why did he do that? On the front end, you’re like, what the ? But it was really well leveraged.

Because what he did, is now all of a sudden, it was free advertising because here’s another key takeaway. There are two marketplaces in our industry. There’s the end user that will actually consume or at least purchase your product, wink wink, nudge, nudge. And there’s almost the primary marketplace, which is your peers that have large amounts of your audience inside of their database. So if you only focus on selling the end user, you will fail at this affiliate and JV game. You really need to focus on your primary user for you, which is your affiliates and your JV’s. Because if you’ve got your product taken care of, that’s just gonna handle itself. It’s like polishing a diamond so much that you get a blister. It’s polished, it’s shiny. Even if it’s got blemishes, it’s still valuable. But focus on the setting for your diamond, your affiliates and your JV. It’s probably the other way around in a way. I like to go on tangents. Bring me back.

Josh Felber:                          That was the second point that you kind of moved into, but you were going back to the first, why Justin Livingston spent 100 grand.

David Gonzalez:                 Yeah, he spent 100 grand because now he was advertising to his primary. See, Justin wasn’t, like Jeff Walker’s people that usually promote him is at the top of the leaderboard are gonna be like Brendon Burchard, Frank Kern, Eben Pagan, you know the names you’ve heard for years. The people you’ve bought their products, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years ago. All the students of Corey Ruddle. Then all of a sudden, Justin Livingston wasn’t in that community but he had good community in the personal development, coach/speaker/author space, he wanted to show up there. So he bought a ton of traffic, and by the way, first prize for Jeff Walker’s launch and that launch was 100,000 dollars.

So, third of all, Jeff Walker’s product converts. Let’s say, and I’m not suggesting you should do this, I’m suggesting it’s an example of how to-

Josh Felber:                          Position yourself.

David Gonzalez:                 … position yourself so that now people are calling, right after that happen, like who’s this Justin Livingston guy. How big is his list? Nobody knew he was buying traffic. They just assumed this dude can drive a shit ton of traffic. Because at the end of the day you don’t care where it comes from. You just know that it happens. So that’s an example of showing up so that people, changing the framing or positioning where people are following you or chasing you.

You want to have enough time. You want to respect and be courteous. And change the frame so that people want to come to you. The courteousness and the respect, that’s also the adding value first piece. Do those three pieces make sense?

Josh Felber:                          Definitely, yeah.

David Gonzalez:                 Sometimes I’m so close to it, I over jargonize or … yeah.

Josh Felber:                          No definitely. I think that’s great. I know you said there is some overlap, and we’ve only got a few minutes left. For like a physical product, how does that change up a little bit?

David Gonzalez:                 Physical products are different in that, first of all, usually when you’ve got a physical product the people that are going to be best to JV with, are gonna be people that also have physical products. Physical product have much smaller margins. You’re not able to give 50%, pay out 60% payouts or even 40 or 30 like you do on, even the ones that have a coaching or a software element to them. So when you’re talking about supplements or other physical products, sometimes your margins … that’s why if you’re an Amazon affiliate, you get 1, 2, 3, 4%. You just kind of have to play the game differently and know that it’s going to be more of a volume game, like high volume, lower margins. That’s gonna be a lot more relationship building and your conversions need to be through the roof. Your product’s gotta be genuinely, genuinely unique for you to get a lot of other people to promote it. If you’ve got a protein supplement, it’s gonna be hard for another protein supplement product person to promote you. So you, it’s a more nuanced game.

Josh Felber:                          Probably too if your product is based would be more, for like our skin care it would be aligning people that are more health conscious, health focused instead of an exact another skin care company or something.

David Gonzalez:                 Aside from saying that it’s more nuanced, it’s more of a two or three-step approach. You’re not just mailing straight to it. You would do a strategy session and find out, what would be a good way to put you, who has this skin care line, in front of let’s say Wellness Mama so it doesn’t just come off as, hey, this skin care line. What’s an angle, a spin, or a hook that is secondary or tertiary to your skin care line but as you unveil the story, the skin care line is embedded perfectly right in there. It’s almost like product placement. So then you do an interview on Wellness, the fact that the skin is the largest organ of the body.

Josh Felber:                          That’s all my wife talks about.

David Gonzalez:                 Why you need to take care of the largest organ in your body and it’s not what you think. Try to be funny and stuff.

Josh Felber:                          Have a hook out there.

David Gonzalez:                 I don’t know, I’m just riffing here. But it would more a matter of creating a primary way to get in front of them to build a relationship and trust with the product owner that isn’t a blatant promotion of the product so that then they get endeared to that person, subscribe to their list, tag them to the original sender and then they’ll want to do it again. There’s gonna be an element of adding a juicy commission structure terms that would make it to where they get lifetime commissions That’s another way to do it, would be a matter of identifying who’s an influencer. If they promoted your physical product that a lot of other people in their network-

Josh Felber:                          Would want to.

David Gonzalez:                 … that could promote, would want to. So then you would create a real hyper favorable term with the influencer even if you ended up losing or breaking even. But then that would be almost like a foot in the door. You would probably only make those terms temporary. You wouldn’t make them for life.

Josh Felber:                          For sure. Awesome.

David Gonzalez:                 It was still be good over time or something. And that’s where you’ve gotta, it’s a deal maker thing.

Josh Felber:                          For sure.

David Gonzalez:                 Knowing your lifetime value would matter a lot more in a physical product. Sometimes if you’re gonna have somebody promote for you and they’ve got a lot of shady, you know a lot of refunders on their list. Even just knowing someone’s list isn’t enough. One of our past clients, Shaun Hadsall, in the fitness space, Get Lean and, yeah, so the Get Lean space, he’s one of Biotrusts biggest affiliates.

Josh Felber:                          Okay, sure.

David Gonzalez:                 He taught me early on because I was like, yeah, I just hooked us up with a person that’s 600,000 subscribers, or over a million subscribers. It’s Jesse Canone from Healthy Back Institute, he’s my boy. And he’s like, Dave, we need to talk. I don’t really get impressed by how many subscribers somebody has. Can you find out how many buyers he has on his list? I was like, oh. I got deflated.

Josh Felber:                          Take you down a little, yeah.

David Gonzalez:                 But then I was like, oh. But it was one of those distinctions. So there’s another key take away. Whenever you’re talking to people who want to do a JV, don’t ask how many subscribers on their list, ask how many buyers. And you should know how many buyers you have too, and start using that as a talking point with people. Because sometimes people, it’s almost a pattern interrupt.

Josh Felber:                          Right, because they always talk the list.

David Gonzalez:                 It’s the list is 300,000, blah, blah, blah. And you go, “Excuse me, can you tell me how many buyers you have on there?” And they’ll go, “Oh I’m not really sure.” And all of a sudden … you know at the end of the day we’re always selling or trying to one up. Especially in masterminds, everybody is wanting to be smarter and cooler.

Josh Felber:                          Gotta just let the ego down.

David Gonzalez:                 Not in a bad way. It’s a health competitiveness. It’s survival. It’s kind of a Darwinian type of thinking. It’s not bad is what I’m trying to say. But anyway, so there’s some tactical stuff I hope.

Josh Felber:                          Cool. Awesome man. It was an honor to have you on the show today just sharing your insights and some of your story and your background and kind of where you’ve come and how you’re positioning yourself now moving forward, finding that love again and everything. And definitely the tactical strategies. So I hope you guys were definitely taking notes. If you’re looking to do any kind of affiliate stuff, expand or grow your business and you haven’t even looked at that. That would be a whole nother area for you to take a look at. Have another channel other than just Google and Facebook or social media and everything. Start reaching out and finding people that you can connect with. That love what you’re doing and you love what they’re doing and start creating those relationships. Or just reach out to David ’cause he’s got a lot of them already handled.

So where can people find out about yeah?

David Gonzalez:                 InternetMarketingParty.com is where my main focus is going right now. And the agency is SimplyTheCoolest.com.

Josh Felber:                          Simply The Coolest. That’s awesome.

David Gonzalez:                 There’s a story behind that name, but.

Josh Felber:                          Cool. And last thing is, what’s one piece of technology that you can’t live without?

David Gonzalez:                 Aside from my I phone or my laptop? Do you mean like an app?

Josh Felber:                          Whatever you think that will help people.

David Gonzalez:                 I think an I phone or a laptop. If you don’t have one of those, you shouldn’t, how are you watching this. I know one for our agency if there’s any people that have a big team and it doesn’t have to be this one, but we use Front. I think there’s another. It’s a group email management system. It makes it to where I can see your emails, you can see my emails, everyone on everybody’s can see each other’s emails. So that if I’m gonna be gone for two weeks, someone else can manage my …

Josh Felber:                          That’s cool.

David Gonzalez:                 It was originally designed as a customer service email platform so you just have tickets.

Josh Felber:                          Through multiple reps, yeah.

David Gonzalez:                 I think the other one is called Get- but basically ’cause right now most people you have your email account. If somebody emails you and you get overwhelmed, you’re sick, you’re on vacation, you’re at a conference. It creates a bottleneck. So if you have an executive assistant or you have other support people on your team, they can filter through and leave only the ones that are critical for you only and then that filters down to the whole team. Even if you have an assistant and they are in an accident or they just can’t come to work or whatever, now their emails can be handled. And now you create more of a synergy in the team where everybody’s got each other’s back. ‘Cause let’s face it, emails these days is-

Josh Felber:                          Everybody’s getting tons.

David Gonzalez:                 Yeah. But it’s an integral part of the business. And I think a lot of people are handling email as still a silo thing. Like, “This is my email address and my account.” Almost the way your Slack or your Skype. If I sent you a link to something juicy, no one else could see it, right. But if I sent you that and you want someone else to see it, they can’t. Well, so what these email platforms allow you to do is have your whole team be able to …

Josh Felber:                          That’s awesome. That’s great.

David Gonzalez:                 Is that good?

Josh Felber:                          Yeah, I wasn’t familiar with that one, so that’s really cool. Phenomenal.

David Gonzalez:                 It’s a little tricky to set it up at the beginning but it’s worth it.

Josh Felber:                          But once, it’s ready to go.

David Gonzalez:                 Just get whoever is technical and does well with complexity and stuff.

Josh Felber:                          Might have to find the right person, right. Cool. Well, awesome. It was honor. Thank you for your time today and really appreciate you coming on Making Bank, man.

David Gonzalez:                 Yeah, thanks for having me. And shout out to Vinny Fisher who connected us twice trying to make it happen.

Josh Felber:                          Yep.

David Gonzalez:                 Love that guy, so much.

Josh Felber:                          Kept hooking us, so. Awesome. Well, I’m Josh Felber. You’re watching Making Bank. Get out and be extraordinary.