Episode 684: Answered: How Can I Do What I Do Best & Outsource The Rest?

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Ralph Burns shares a special guest appearance he made on the Affiliated Podcast with hosts Tom and Kyle. While Lauren was away traveling, Ralph dove into his personal journey from affiliate marketer to agency owner, offering valuable insights on scaling a business through strategic delegation. He breaks down how to stop doing everything yourself and instead focus on what you do best—echoing themes from “Who Not How” and “10x Is Easier Than 2x.” Whether you’re a media buyer, business owner, or marketing exec, Ralph’s lessons on outsourcing, managing, and growing a digital business are must-hear takeaways from this cross-platform episode.

Chapters:

  • 00:00:00 – Kicking Things Off: Ralph’s Quick Update on the PT Universe
  • 00:01:04 – Surprise Drop: Ralph Guests on a Must-Hear Interview
  • 00:04:23 – Meet the Hosts: Welcome to the Affiliated Podcast
  • 00:07:35 – Ralph’s Origin Story: From Affiliate Hustler to Ad Empire Builder
  • 00:14:43 – Media Buying Chaos: Real-World Struggles & Smart Fixes
  • 00:17:42 – Don’t Do It All: The Power of Delegation & Team Growth
  • 00:22:22 – Crushing Doubt: Mindset Shifts That Change the Game
  • 00:31:18 – Efficiency Mode: Unlocking the CEO Mindset
  • 00:32:38 – Hire Smarter: Ralph’s Battle-Tested Hiring Framework
  • 00:34:48 – SOPs or Bust: Why Systems Matter More Than Talent
  • 00:40:39 – The Leap: How Ralph Evolved from Affiliate to Agency Leader
  • 00:47:05 – Growth Mode: Building a Scalable, Sellable Business
  • 00:51:18 – Ad Trends 2025: What’s Working Now in Paid Traffic
  • 01:01:35 – Wrap-Up: Final Gold Nuggets + Where to Listen Next

LINKS AND RESOURCES:

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Read the transcript below:

Answered: How Can I Do What I Do Best & Outsource The Rest?

Ralph: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns. I’m the founder and CEO of Tier 11, not alongside my amazing co-host, Lauren e Petrillo. And people have been asking me, what is the deal? Did you and Lauren have a podcast breakup? And I tell them the same answer I’m gonna tell you right now.

Ralph: Absolutely not. We are still happily. Podcast Lee married. Uh, she has just been traveling. I’ve been traveling. We’re both happily married by the way, so stop with the, you know, strange, uh, comments and, and uh, social media posts on that. But anyway, the point is is that, uh, we’ve both been traveling quite a bit.

Ralph: She’s been traveling. I’ve been traveling. It’s kind of a busy season for us, right after the first of the year, both she and I, especially with a lot of conferences and, um. A lot of just family travel as well, and we’ve just been missing each other. Although we did spend that time together back in Orlando where we recorded live with iron garlic, which was amazing.

Ralph: So we are gonna [00:01:00] get back to that very, very shortly when our travel schedules get a little bit less crazy. But today is a special treat for you all because this is an interview that I did, uh, a few months back with one of my favorite podcasts, especially if you’re in a. Affiliate. I know there’s a lot of affiliates that do listen to this show, but if you’re not an affiliate, there’s a lot of business lessons here because this is, uh, they talked about the, well, the big question they really wanted to answer is how do you scale?

Ralph: How do you do less of all of the things that you’re doing right now? And I know this is probably you, if you’re listening to this show. Yeah. You probably listen to. This show for traffic and for digital marketing and all these other sorts of things, but your day to day is doing a lot of tasks. How many of those tasks can you actually delegate to other people?

Ralph: When do you actually outsource? And this is the story of how I did it, and maybe you can get some. [00:02:00] Insights into how you can do it yourself, whether you’re the director of marketing, VP of marketing, you’re the guy and the gal who’s running the show as the CEO, or you’re buying media or you’re an agency.

Ralph: All of this, I think, is applicable to you, and it’s how I transitioned from being an affiliate over to now, a business owner owning multiple businesses and how I got my start there, but also how to outsource the tasks that I just didn’t want to do and that I wasn’t great at. We have talked about this on previous shows here, which I will leave links in the show notes.

Ralph: And this is perfectly in sync with the who not how concept. And the 10 x is easier than two X principles that we started off 2025 with. So this is perfectly in alignment with those concepts and what you’re gonna find in this show, it’s not what you do, it’s who you find to do the things that you’re not that great at.

Ralph: You answered this question, how do I do what I do best and [00:03:00] outsource the rest? Didn’t even realize that that was a pun, or a riddle or a rhyme, but we actually talk about that in today’s show with the help of, uh, the amazing dudes over at the affiliated podcast. Tom and Kyle. Kyle, I’ve known for years and years.

Ralph: Kyle was actually a customer of ours for many, many, many years, and a really great show. So we’ll leave links in the show notes. Make sure that you do subscribe over there to the affiliated podcast with Tom and Kyle. So we’re gonna get into my journey. Affiliate stuff, but also the keys to delegation and manage and scale your business.

Ralph: Take it away, Tom, Kyle, and yours truly.

I think one of the biggest challenges in 25 is gonna be data and data privacy. Anyone, whether you’re an affiliate, whether you’re an [00:04:00] agency, and I think the privacy side of the equation is gonna be a little more challenging. I mean, I think there’s cookie deprecation, there’s privacy laws. I mean, right now, 42% of the US is covered by some kind of.

Privacy law, and that’s gonna increase in 2025.

Welcome affiliated listeners to another exciting episode of Affiliated podcast. And today, guys, and not only are we gonna talk about some amazing subjects, we’re gonna talk about some amazing opportunities, but the big thing is we’re speaking with one of the, I think one of the best media biking agencies out there in the business.

Not only learning. Some, hopefully some great information about what’s going on in Facebook and paid media, but most importantly, I know there are so many affiliates out there that you have success. Maybe you’re doing some things well, but you just feel like you’re stuck in the hamster wheel of over and over and over again, and you feel like, how can I go to the next level?

What is the next level even look like? [00:05:00] Even if that’s from affiliate to super affiliate or super affiliate. That enjoys life versus the super affiliate that just seems to be working constantly and wondering why I started this all in the first place. So that being said, before I bring in our amazing guests, which is gonna give you the ability to understand how to make that transition.

’cause they did it themselves with great, great success and they understand what you’re going through. I used to bring in. Wonderful, the attractive and the newly slimed down co-host Thomas. Thomas. And man, how are you doing today? Dude? I’m doing great. After that series of compliments, this seems be a new leaf.

You’re turning over the new year, Kyle. Thank you. No, it’s just one, I wanted to give you one, and that way we could really bring you one day to start breaking you down. Get into the year. I’ll take, I’ll take mine and get it. Yeah. Right, and, and we are joined today by the tremendous, the intelligent and the also.

Quite attractive. Ralph Burns. Ralph, how are you doing today? Great shirt. Also love the shirt. Just says floral. Um, fantasticness, I guess. Floral fantasticness. Yeah. It’s the first day wearing the new shirt [00:06:00] and this is a Christmas gift from the wife, so she’s upgrading my wardrobe. Great to be on. Thanks for having me.

Uh, we’ve known each other for years, Kyle, and bumped into each other and say, Hey, let’s do a podcast together. Yeah. So, uh, very excited to be on with you. It was great seeing at Smart Marker, uh, Ezra events in Denver and super excited you had to bump in and chat with you today. So, um, really good. And also kudos to the wives out there dressing their husbands.

I know. I love it. I remember when I let my wife start like saying, Hey, you should really help me figure out how to dress. I started gonna events and be like, Hey, what’s. Been going on, like you seem fashionable all of a sudden. It’s like I stopped dressing myself. It was the first best thing ever. Just don’t dress yourself.

Find somebody that knows how to do it much better. So it’s the key to success right there. It’s their first step. Yep. Yes. Outsource fashion. Mm-hmm. So, uh, well less on outsourcing fashion, but let’s talk more about. The journey and what we really wanna discuss today. And I think one of the big things that, that we, I was trying to tease at the beginning is the idea that there’s a lot of affiliates out there that have an amazing skill in [00:07:00] buying media, and they’ve seen success from that.

But sometimes that success could start to feel like a nightmare for a lot of different reasons, right? Whether you’re working way too much. Whether you’re, you know, you find that you’re a campaign’s doing really, really well and then it collapses, and now you’re desperately restarting the cycle of finding the next big offer all over again.

It feels like a heart attack waiting to happen. At least that’s, I would envision of being the affiliates of those timeframes. And what we want to talk about is how to go from that. To something that’s efficient, stable, and really building a business that you could rely on for years and potentially give yourself options and freedom for wherever comes next.

Um, so that’s what we wanna talk about today and specifically with you, Ralph, as we kinda wanna dial it back with the people. You’ve been in that shoes, you’ve been that person before and now you’ve kind of gone on the, the, the other end. So if you could give us kind of the, a bridge story of um, kinda how you got started in this business and how you got to being the CEO and founder of Tier 11.

One of the best media buying agencies out there. In the us. Oh, appreciate you saying that. Well, it was a long journey and [00:08:00] it involved lots of getting fired from the corporate world twice as a matter of fact. And, uh, the second time I was fired, I had just gotten about a year before that I. A lot of, a lot of internet marketers started this way, but, uh, my wife gave me for, I think it was our ninth wedding anniversary, she gave me the four hour work week, which I had never read.

It was a novel. It just come out. She had read it and I was like, what the hell is this? The four hour work week? Is it even possible? What is it all about? Well, was basically. Now everyone knows what it is, but at that point in time it was new and it was interesting. People were actually making money on this thing called the internet, and I couldn’t believe that that was actually the case.

So I read the book, got the audio book. I listened to it. I was working in the corporate world. I was the regional director of sales for a Fortune 500 company at that point in time. On the ninth winning anniversary, she gave me that and she said, you are absolutely miserable and you need to read this book to figure out what your next career step is.

So not only do wives help on the [00:09:00] fashion side, but in my case she helps on the professional development side. And it was the book that really changed my life in a lot of ways. ’cause it made me look at. Things vary very differently. So at that point in time, like I said, I was in the corporate world, had a high paying job, uh, you know, had the company car, all the trappings of success.

But I was absolutely miserable. And the problem was, is that I didn’t believe in what I was doing. I felt like I had no autonomy. I was working for. Can we say on this podcast? Yeah, I guess I just did. Of all feels we quack it out and it’s hilarious and charming. Don’t worry about it. That’s awesome. I, I’m good friends with our local sensor duck.

That’s good. That’s good. Duck the sensor. So anyway, I was working for a bunch of ducks so I would actually probably put F before that. Real mother Duckers. Yeah, real mother duckers. So, but anyway, so she gave me this book and so I read it and I started a blog at that point in time and I hired my first person.

I actually found. The Philippines was sort of a big area of, uh, outsourcing at that point. [00:10:00] You know, India had just sort of evolved to the Philippines. I got a va, I built a website and it was around, ’cause I was a sales manager at that point in time, I was a sales director. So I was like, well if I do a website or a blog on sales and sales management, if they ever find out, I’m sure I’ll be fine.

Well, they found out. And they, I got the talking to that said, we can’t tell you not to do this, but in essence. We really encourage you to stop doing what you’re doing. And I said, I basically said, duck you And I continued doing what I was doing. So anyway, about a year after that, they finally figured out a way to fire me, so I was fired.

That was the second time I was fired. And unfortunately that website didn’t really go. Much of anywhere, and I wasn’t really interested in the content, but I was interested in marketing. That was the most fun part of it. So I’m out of a job. I have a website that isn’t making any money, so I heard about this thing called affiliate marketing.

I. [00:11:00] That’s when I got into the affiliate marketing game and I just became an absolute expert in, believe it or not, Yahoo PPC. That’s how I started. That was like my claim to fame. I was the guy there that could leverage that platform. Also, did a lot on the Google side and built an affiliate business and it was basically eat what you kill.

I, I remember I was paying, you know, I was, I was spending well over six figures a month on my American Express bill for traffic, and then arbitraging that with a lot of different offers. Started to dabble a bit on the Facebook side when Facebook had like, remember those right hand rail? I. Ads. Like not even in the news feed.

Oh my gosh, yes. Yeah, yeah. You know, with the picture of the Facebook looked so different back then, I feel like I couldn’t even remember it. If somebody put it in front of me. I’m like, what is this? It’s unbelievable. I mean, when I think about it now, but what, what they did have at that point in time, getting into the affiliate stuff is that, you know, they had a lot of traffic.

I knew that, but they really, their [00:12:00] targeting wasn’t really dialed in quite yet. So it was where you live. You know, gender, you know, are you interested in men or women? And what’s your marital status? I think it was like either single married or it’s complicated and good old. They’re still stuck in the hot, not kinda hot or not, it was still kinda like old Zuckerberg from like the Harvard days.

Yeah. So, but anyway, so that was it. So. I was an affiliate for a number of different dating sites, and so I’m like, well, this would actually be pretty good for dating. And so I think I had like a Christian mingle like, you know, affiliate link. So I set up a landing page. I. Pumped it into Facebook and then went to bed, but then woke up an hour and a half later, I was like, did I put any stops in place?

And I, I opened up my laptop and I had spent $1,700 in literally like less than an hour. And because the traffic, there was so much traffic. I made zero [00:13:00] sales, by the way. You know, the pixel didn’t fire on the sale. But anyway, the point was is that I was like, holy crap. Like Facebook has incredible amounts of traffic if they ever dial in the targeting and maybe get the ads so that people will click on them, well, lo and behold, a few years later, they dialed in the targeting and then they put ads in the newsfeed and at that point in time.

That’s really where I transitioned mostly to social away from Google and then started this thing. Um, and we were sort of known as one of the first Facebook ad agencies on the planet way back in 20 15, 20 16 in that era. And, uh, have continued that way, but now we do pretty much everything as well. So that was sort of the start of the whole thing.

I. That’s awesome. I just, I just love hearing love one, just thinking Christian mingle ads, like, and just going back and think about that. Like Jesus wants you to find somebody That’s right. And we have the place to do it right. So it’s just, that alone makes you laugh. But yeah. But such an amazing journey and that idea of, you know, opportunity takes hard [00:14:00] work, but also seeing the vision saying, Hey, we’re willing to be first and try this when it makes sense.

I always love that. So, yeah. Um. Obviously making your journey today. You know, you, you went from first to being, you know, one of, one of the top outfit, which is great. It’s amazing that you’re doing a great job still to this day. Um, but you know, we’d talked before. One of the things about that journey is there were times where even as you started seeing that success from the solo person, I.

That you reached a point where you were successful, but still kind of seeing some of that unhappiness or felt stuck in that position. So go back and in the way back machine, as we hear Mark Zuckerberg going back and looking more like that guy that’s trying to live to 150 verse the tech bro that, you know, has a lot of jiujitsu.

Yeah. And, um, MMA, I guess fan pages. Uh, but anyway, go back to that time. Walk us through that experience, kind of where you were and some of the challenges that you were feeling and facing at that time. Before you had to transition to where you are now? Yeah, I mean, I, I caught, uh, lightning in a bottle with a lot of different offers and I was always thinking to myself, how can I diversify so that I can, [00:15:00] I’m not dependent on one specific offer, so one of the best offers that I had back in, I.

This is 2009, 2010 into 2011, basically. So for about two years I did all affiliate work, and that’s really how I learned how to media buy. And so it was, like I said, it was Yahoo PPC. It was also Facebook when it sort of came into play, and then obviously transitioned in 2013 when the stuff went into the news feed.

But at that point in like that 2009 to 2011 era, I was really looking to diversify my offers. ’cause I knew, first off, I was in a lot of different affiliate programs and I knew a lot of them paid sort of differently. But I also knew that it was dependent on them to pay me. So I needed to diversify as much as I possibly could.

So I started with one offer, um, which, you know, the FTC didn’t really like all that much in 2011, uh, which was Asai e colon cleanse, and I was one of the largest affiliates for that, thankfully not in the top 10 because [00:16:00] those guys really got hosed. Um. If you go back and you actually look that sort of stuff up.

But the point was, is we were doing a ton in that space and I was making almost, I was making a thousand dollars net a day. I mean, it was great. And that was like my base. Mm-hmm. So I used that to leverage and then hire. Additional in this case, you know, people from the Philippines. ’cause that’s all I could really afford at that point in time, to start doing my creative, to start doing some of my, you know, my dev work, my landing page design work, all that sort of stuff.

So that was sort of the beginning of the agency. I started to, instead of going to Fiverr and just outsourcing it, I had actual people. That were regularly like giving me new creative for all of my work at home and penny auctions and e-cigarette campaigns, and pretty much everything that came on down the line I sold.

And at one point in time, I think it was the top affiliate for e-cigarettes and the whole country. [00:17:00] Wow. So it was like crazy, like we were doing crazy volumes. So I ended up building a So you’re the one to blame Ralph. I’m the one to blame. I’m the reason why the industry kind of got screwed back. Then’s, puff of vape.

Go outta someone’s Ralph’s. That’s the one. They were cool though, but not very like, yeah, Yahoo and Google eventually banned them. So I banned, got a lot of banned ad accounts, but um, that’s how it all started. So that sort of set me on that path to. How do I multiply my efforts through the efforts of other people?

And that’s where it really started. And now we do basically the same thing now, not those offers. Yeah. You know, in the agency space. What, so you seem like, so it sounds like your very first blog you hired someone, was that right away you hired someone to help you stand it up and kinda get it off the ground?

I did. Yeah. So when I was working in the corporate world, um, when I was. After I read the four hour work week, I did hire someone, I outsourced a webmaster [00:18:00] to basically build a blog and then I learned how to do it after that. He also built a membership site. Um, it was like, like one of the first WordPress membership sites at that point in time.

So yeah, a lot of it was just outsourcing. And then I realized, okay, I can learn how to do this on my own. Uh, it was very much of the mindset, I’m gonna learn how to do it. I gotta figure out what’s right, what’s wrong, how to do it well, and then outsource it. So, handcrafted it first, and then try to, you know, do my best to, to either outsource, hire somebody that’s better than me at it.

Quite honestly, like the webmaster that I found 15 years ago now is still actually with us at Tier 11. Oh, wow. Yeah, which is, which is crazy. So she still actually does all the web mastering on tier 11, the site. So, but that was it. Like learn how to do it a bit. So that you can at least manage it, but then find somebody to leverage that.

So it frees up your [00:19:00] time to think about other offers, other opportunities. Go to college. Yeah. When, when you’re in that affiliate mode and going, okay, I need to kinda start hiring out for some things, like what did you, how did you decide what to do yourself and kinda keep doing yourself, and what did you decide to start hiring and replacing for?

I think for me it was mostly copywriting. I always felt, I mean that’s different now, but it’s funny because we just did a podcast the other just the other day and I was like, this was my best affiliate headline. And it was like, I. Uh, you know, warning in parentheses, you know, do not use this X, Y, z. It was like that kind of stuff.

I really got heavy into Perry Belcher was a very early mentor. Um, you know, basically all the, all the copywriters, uh, at that point in time, I, I felt like copywriting was the thing that I could do and I enjoyed doing the most. I really enjoyed writing. So [00:20:00] I tried to figure out like, what do I do best, but then figure out.

How do I outsource the rest? Not to, you know, not to rhyme, but I guess that does rhyme. The point is that’s a really, actually, that’s a great phrase. Like, I want to know what I do best to outsource the rest. That should be something, I think it’s a theme I want us to hold onto. ’cause that’s really, really key is we talk about this idea of increased efficiencies, but continue.

So you want to outsource the rest. You liked the copy and you were looking to say, okay, how could I just do more of that? Yeah. I mean, for me it was about. Then, then it’s relationships with your affiliate manager. It’s relationships with, you know, the actual product that you’re selling. It was, I went to a lot of conferences and met a lot of people.

I bumped into, you know, just a couple of guys that were doing these crazy work at home offers, which I had never really done before. And they’re like, we don’t really have somebody to do PPC. I met them at a conference. So that was kind of my role. I was thinking maybe a few steps ahead, which is kind of what I do now as the CEO of two [00:21:00] 11 is build relationships, build partnerships, you know, keep in touch with people over time, and that was super important and I felt like.

When I first started, I loved the fact, ’cause I’m a bit of an introvert, really. Like I’m an introvert extrovert. I’m like the classic Gemini. I always say like, I’m a charismatic hermit, you know? So, but, so I felt like maybe I could build a business without really having to go out and talk to people, and I could just do my thing and that’s it.

Well. I could only get the business to a certain level until I actually went out and started meeting people face to face, going to summits, you know, I used to go to all the affiliate summits, and then I would go to different conferences and just meet people and you’d bump into people just randomly, and then I’m like, oh my God.

Then something happens with that. It turns into a partnership, which then ends up making you money. You know, some of these relationships I still have to this day. So when I made that transition [00:22:00] from, I’m just gonna do it alone all by myself as a solopreneur to let me think about how I can build partnerships with other people, but also find people that are better than me in certain areas and in areas that I don’t really do that well.

That’s when things really started to take off. And I’ve used that same model in the agency space for sure. Yeah. What, what do you say to the media buyers, super affiliates out there who are hesitant to hire because they don’t feel like they can give up key parts of their business because they do it best or someone’s gonna screw it up or forget to put a cap on their ad spend or set a campaign wrong?

Like, I feel like a lot of them can’t get outta their own way because they’re feel like they have to control everything or it’s all gonna fall off the rails. Yeah, I mean, I think there’s, um, I. You have to let go of the perfection mindset, which was really hard for me to do. I mean, I think most of entrepreneurialism is, is actually is mindset as opposed to just [00:23:00] skill.

It’s the ones that, and I just spoke at an agency conference with 50 agency owners and I felt like this was the thing that all of them were stuck with. It’s like they’re the guy or the gal that’s in the middle of everything. Like you need to find a who to do the what, like eventually, like you need to like, but that’s gonna decrease my profit margins.

And like, yes, it probably will. And it’s frightening however, and it’s also frightening because you don’t have complete control over it. But in order to scale and grow into whatever your goal is. Gather more influence, make more money, have a broader impact on the world. Like whatever that thing is, you need to figure out what you do best.

And. Like, I guess like we said before, I guess we’re patenting a phrase and then outsource the rest. I wouldn’t even say outsource, but find a who that can do it better than you can and is complimentary. Not like compliment, [00:24:00] like sucking up to you, but complimentary to your skills. And most agency owners and most affiliates are good at a lot of stuff.

They’re good at copywriting, they’re good at design, they’re good at landing page, they’re good at optimization. They’re probably good at dev. Like it depends on kind of the person they’re good at all those things. Well find people that are great at all of those things. Maybe one by one, I found a webmaster first.

She would create, like, at that, that point in time we’re using, you know, fake news sites and flogs and all that sort of stuff. So we had sort of a, you know, there’s some sketchy stuff that we were doing. But anyway, the point was, is. She was doing all of that design, she was doing all the creative. She could pump it out 10 times faster than I could, so that made me more nimble to be able to do the media buying, which is the thing that I held onto.

And then I found media buyers to do the media buying, and then I was just doing the copywriting. What I do find is that when you’re scaling, a lot of people either [00:25:00] meddle too much or hold onto the rope. Too tightly. And what I did is I, when I started to hire media buyers, I would not give them control of like, Hey, just go create a campaign and set it live.

What I would do is I would say, all right, here’s an SOP. I would document all of the processes. I would say, set up the campaign and then tell me when it’s ready, and I’ll go QC it, and then I would QC it, and then I would tell them what’s wrong, but not where it’s wrong. And they would say, well, where is that wrong?

I was like, you gotta find it. It’s like, well, what do I do? There’s an SOP for that. So before you hire somebody, I think you do have to have a documentation of it, and that’s what I did do. So that’s sort of the first step. But then secondly, don’t necessarily, I. Allow them full access to everything, have some checks and balances in order.

And still to this day, like one of my early media buyers who is now my VP [00:26:00] of operations, like she’s like, I remember the day when you said I no longer need your qc. And I was like, that’s the day that I knew that I had really advanced. ’cause like I didn’t need to. She had learned so much. It probably took about a year.

’cause some of the campaigns back then were really, really complex. She’s still with me to this day, so I don’t think you have to let go all at once. But if you have people doing work and then you meddle, then that’s where you really, you get people that are pissed off and then they’re gonna leave. So allow them to make those mistakes.

But don’t do it with your money or your clients’ money. Make sure you have some sort of checks and balance in place. Kinda like, you know, a a, you know. A daily spend cap. Like the day that I spent all that money on Facebook, I didn’t do that. I screwed up. I spent $1,700. It’s like, whoops. You know? But I learned a lot.

I was like, holy crap. There’s a lot of traffic that’s on Facebook. Don’t do that. Have some checks and balances in place, but allow your people to make some mistakes, and it’s [00:27:00] going to take some time. But the benefit is you will be able to scale and grow that much more at the end of the day. Well, I’d imagine you could QC so many more campaigns and you could stand up yourself, right?

So that a hundred percent. Yeah. So then you can qc all these things that are coming to you, which is a much more efficient use of your time and the scalability of that, even though yes, you’re giving up some profit margin to a media buyer or to someone who’s doing that well, I, I hear hesitancy as well, and Kyle jump into wherever you need to here, but like from people who are like, oh, I can’t hire a media buyer ’cause I’m, they’re gonna learn what I do and then just go do it themselves and leave me.

And. Compete with me now, so it’s like I can’t teach someone what I’m doing right, or there’s gonna, I’m gonna breed my own competition. It sounds like you’ve been able to either retain people or I imagine you’ve had that happen to some degree too. Oh yeah. Like where’s your mindset up with that blocker? I think, you know, you, I hate to get too psychologically here, but I mean, you have to have No, that’s great.

You have to have, you have to have an abundance mindset that that is a [00:28:00] scarcity mindset. So we have a, we have a podcast. You guys have a podcast. Like our podcast has been around for eight years. It’s, it’s in the top 25 marketing, like in and out like all the time. Like it, it gets, it’s had 15 million downloads.

I tell everybody pretty much everything that we do, like I, I’ve been with the exception of like the client name, but I’ll give away as much as I possibly can because it’s like, hey, there’s more than enough for all of us. Is the, is my philosophy. Well, now there’s 433,000 agencies. I, I feel like a couple thousand of them probably listened to the podcast and then said, if Burns could do it, crap, I could do it.

But the point is, is, is that I think having that fear, like you’re going to have people that are gonna come work for you, that are going to leave, and that’s okay. They can’t beat you. You can teach them as much as you possibly can, but they’re gonna go out and do their own thing. And mostly when we have people that come [00:29:00] to tier 11 now, and then they leave and they go other places, we’re happy for them because hey, it’s like that’s the next stage of the journey.

I’ve got a list of dozens of media buyers, dozens of people that have been with us and have gone out on their own. Very few went to other companies, most of them went out on their own. And technically, I guess they’re my competition. There’s more than enough for all of us. So in the affiliate game, I find that there is, you know, a fair amount of secrecy and it’s like you don’t wanna let everybody know what you’re doing.

It’s like, you know, as soon as you do that, like you’re on in the next offer anyway. So I think it is a mindset shift. I think longer term a lot of those people will leave you for sure. I found that I would get people that are. They’re not necessarily skilled in media buying or skilled in design. I would have them come on and I would train them my way [00:30:00] and they would be with me for a longer period of time.

Uh, we don’t do that quite as much now, but I found that was a better way of doing things. If they had that hunger and that drive to succeed. I could train them and they’d stay with me for a very long period of time and eventually mm-hmm. You know, you’d talk to them about their career path and see sort of where they want to go and if they do wanna leave.

When that does happen, it shouldn’t be a surprise to you. Yeah. Well, and I think just to build off that too, I think one of the things, remember if you could create an employee that is trained and feels so successful, they’re doing so well for you in that role, there’s a confidence to say that I could go and do this myself.

It means you really have a fantastic employee. Like that should be the mindset if you’re a hundred percent, train your employees to feel that they could succeed. You know, um, and do the same thing that you do to step out like you have a great employee. The only thing is you don’t want them to think that they could succeed more in spite of you, right?

Like, because you’re holding them back. That might mean you have a problem in your business, but more often than not, it’s you’re [00:31:00] creating such good employees, such good individuals that you have a great system going, which in one of the key things about it, there shouldn’t be a fear or scarcity mindset of them leaving if you have the SOPs.

And things in place, knowing that you could bring somebody else in or hopefully already have that person in play and ready to go. Um, so you could keep things going. So I wanna dial things back just a little bit just to kind of cover what we, ’cause we covered a lot of really cool stuff here. And we talked about the beginning, a lot about this is, is kind of almost a mindset to get yourself to operational efficiency.

Um, so just kind of recap being, because kinda what you’re talking about, like when you’re doing it all on your own. It’s just really hard to get to the next level, to diversify, to do bigger things. ’cause you have to do every single piece perfectly. So it’s just so much time. Right. So obviously we go back to, again, this idea here is if you could start diversifying or lessening your time on things that not necessarily.

It doesn’t have to just be what you don’t want to do, but things you don’t do best that you already have SOPs for, or you gonna go build those SOPs and you could plug somebody in. Um, shifting that mindset just [00:32:00] expands your ability to do more of the same great things you’re doing, which means more offers, more success.

The one thing I’d say you said, Hey, it might be smaller percentages of margins, but a much bigger top line number so I know. 20% of 1 million sounds nice. Um, but 10% of 30 million sounds a lot better, right? So, like, remember those margins that a percentage of a big number might look smaller, but the, the end number is a lot larger.

So don’t lose sight of that longer term perspective in that bigger goal. So now. I wanna kinda understand. So we, we did some really good things. I think the SOP is huge and I want to come back to that in a second. But before that, when it comes to hiring and selecting people, I think there’s one people where, where people fail a lot.

So, um, it’s just in selecting the right person. I think SOPs are a big piece to make sure that it’s not necessarily the right person, it’s that you’re the problem and whoever you select, you need to have the basis there. Um, so we’ll circle back on that, but before then, um, walk me through kind of, ’cause I’m sure you’ve had some successful [00:33:00] hires and.

I’m sure you’ve had some hires, you’re like, wow, I don’t know what I saw in that person. And I really regret doing that in the first place. So through your experience, especially early on, what are some pieces of advice or things you would tell people when it comes to selecting the right person or selecting that person so they can end up more with like your webmaster that’s been with you?

All that timeframe versus somebody that, you know, sometimes, especially if the early on in your hiring could really slow down your business and make things more frustrating. Yeah, I think, um, the hiring part of things is, is I. Something that I had a lot of experience with. So like I said, I was a regional sales manager for a Fortune 500 company, so I had a bunch of sales managers that worked for me.

So I hired all those guys and then, you know, literally thousands of interviews ’cause they were expanding. And so sales, I have done thousands of interviews, so, and I know that, you know, on every resume now everyone calls it a cv, like a. You’re never gonna get the truth. So it, it has to be [00:34:00] the interviewing process like that was very much a huge part of my skillset is hiring the right types of people from a sales perspective.

So a lot of that experience I did bring with me over to the affiliate side and then ultimately to the agency side, are hiring. System right now. I mean, thankfully I have an HR guy. I don’t even do anything with it now. I just sort of pay the bills for some of the advertising. The point is, is like we have a very, very specific type of individual that we’re looking for, and there’s a very specific criteria, but I.

Take that aside. I think if you’re listening to this show and you’re like, well, I don’t really know how to hire people, you’re probably right. You don’t, I would, but I would do this though. I would hire slow fire fast, because I do think that. What a lot of people do is they hang on to people that just aren’t a good fit for them.

And it’s not [00:35:00] necessarily a training issue. Sometimes it’s more often than not, it’s a people issue. It’s just the wrong person is the person that you hired. And no matter how much you train them, they’re never going to be as good as you want them to be. Um. What happens though is that after you kiss a couple of frogs, you start to get better at it.

But you have to be able to let people go quickly and sort of let them know that that is the case. So for example, our hiring process is you fill out an application. Let’s say it’s a media buyer, like it’s a pretty stringent, it’s like a nine step process. It’s crazy if you really sort of think about it, but, uh, they fill out an application.

That tests their understanding of like Facebook ads, for example, or meta ads. And then after that, they go through, if they get a 80 or above, they go to the next step, which is a, a what we refer to as, uh, a simulator or a actually an account overview. So what they would do is a five minute video and show us something that they’ve done in an ad account [00:36:00] based upon.

Their knowledge of whatever platform. It’s Google Meta, TikTok, you name it. If they get through that step, then they, we do what’s called a simulator. The simulator is we give them five different scenarios. They go through all the different five scenarios and they explain what they would do. Alright? The click-through rate is this, your conversion rate is this.

This is your offer. This is your target, CPA. This is your nac. This is your A OV, this is your LTV, but here are all the problems with it. Five different scenarios, seven or eight or nine minute video. I forget what we do now. I think it’s a nine minute video. At this point in time. We’ve narrowed that funnel down to.

A half a dozen people maybe at most. At that point, we pick the one or two or three that are best, and then they’re interviewed by our HR guy and then their hiring manager, and ultimately, I’m the one who sort of is the last interview. Sometimes they hire without me and then I do it after the fact.

Depends on, you know, who it is that the hiring manager is to how much, how much experience. The point is, is like we’ve made mistakes all [00:37:00] the way through that, even with that nine step process. So if you understand that you’re not gonna get it right every single time. But I will say this is, don’t necessarily hire for skill, hire for will.

And that’s another one that’s, you know, that’s sort of a cliche, but it’s true. It’s like hire somebody that has drive like they really wanna succeed. They really wanna learn all their deficiencies and skill will be overcome by that drive to succeed and that drive or will. And that comes from the sales world because I look at affiliates.

They’re just online salespeople. Really? Mm-hmm. Like you want super hungry people that are just gonna get after it every single day and be so enthusiastic about what you’re doing. And you know, lo and behold, actually maybe make your business better. You might actually find somebody that’s better than you, and that’s the goal.

When you find that and they’re making you money and they’re making a ton of money. Why wouldn’t you keep that? [00:38:00] And then you, as soon as they start being successful and really, really a big part of your business, that’s where you really have to get to know them and understand like what their goals are because at that point in time, they might leave.

’cause it’s a cutthroat world in the affiliate world, right? It’s like, you know, you’re spending money and make money. And it’s sort of the same in agency, like we’re a performance based agency. Like clients can fire us with within 45 days, like every single month. We are on the chopping block, so we have to perform.

It’s very, very similar to affiliate marketing. So it’s the same kind of thing. So it’s a, it’s a zero sum game to a certain degree, but I think when you have people that are like all my media buyers, they’re better than I ever was. Like, that’s the way it should be. They’re more analytical. They’re better at analyzing data.

They’re better at like looking for trends. They’re better at like John Moran, who’s my chief of traffic strategy, like is the most unbelievable Google Media buyer I’ve ever seen in my entire life. He works for me. It’s like [00:39:00] he’s a hundred times better than I was when I was a Google Media buyer, but like, that’s what you want.

As a business owner, you wanna hire people that are better than you. You know, he might leave and go on his own. Probably not. But the point is, is like that’s the risk you run when you’re running a high performance company. Yeah. No, but it’s amazing ’cause it’s still, you’re, you’re facilitating so much opportunity and I do think loyalty matters and also people need to remember, not everybody wants to be a business owner.

Not everybody wants to run off and go be a solepreneur. And it doesn’t mean that they aren’t very, very skilled and very valuable. Um, they might be an entrepreneur, right? They wanna work within a company to that, that that’s maybe smaller. They have the impact of an entrepreneur without the risk. And you know, the, the scariness that comes along with that, right?

Because sometimes those are different people and different demographics. Now, I really love what you said there though. It’s, it’s, it’s amazing in that mindset of just, I think when, when you focus on the fact that it’s like, take some time, be patient, but don’t be afraid to cut the cord. If it’s not working right, you’re going to, [00:40:00] and I, it’s just like in affiliate marketing and, and marketing in general, failure is inevitable.

Just like hiring people. Failure’s inevitable, man. Some people. They, the will will be right? And you’re like, I love great will, but sometimes skill does matter. I remember hiring, I’ve hired many people too, in sales positions, and you see the will there, and then you get there and you’re like, we’re gonna try and teach you skill.

And you’re like, well, I guess you just can’t learn. I’m glad you, you’re trying real hard and that’s okay, right? Like that’s, that’s, that’s worth taking that at bat every single time because even if they don’t work out, you’re gonna find somebody else and they will, uh, as long as you have SOPs of the training to get them there.

So, yeah. No, I really, really love that Now. With that. I wanna kind of transition too, because, uh, you still wanna get an opportunity to talk a little bit. I think the other side is when you saw this and you hire and you increase those efficiencies, you know, you mentioned now it’s an agency, um, so it provides different opportunities, whether it’s being able to, you know, scale more offers, um, but also the idea of creating an agency.

So I’d love for, um, you just to take a moment, talk a little [00:41:00] about what made what. How do you go from that decision of, Hey, I’m an affiliate. Um, you know, getting Christians to be able to finally connect with the love of their life and getting paid in the process or slimming down illegally, uh, with, with an SIE belly blast or whatever it might be, or making really good money that route and you thought, hey.

Agency, like walk through that gap or, or that transition. Let’s talk a little bit about that because I think that we oftentimes see a lot of right now affiliates that are like, what is the next step? And they just immediately think agency. So I’m curious to know how that worked for you, because not every affiliate is able to successfully make that transition.

Yeah, I mean, for me it was, uh, it was just pure and simple. I, I tended to, I mean, there was a little bit more in the wild, wild West back when I was an affiliate. I mean, this is 2010 to 2012, 13 in that range, and I think the day that I. Decided that I should probably do something different is that I was, [00:42:00] was I in this office?

I think I was in this office actually a different desk. Um, and I was working on an affiliate offer and it was late at night. It’s like one o’clock in the morning and I’ve got on my monitor up like, you know, all these dating sites. Like, it was like plenty of fish, Christian Mingle. I forget what Jewish site.

I was like, I was creating like, I forget what it was. And my wife shout singles, my wife. Yeah, that was it. Yeah, that’s exactly, it. Was it really? I just made that up. That’s, uh, so anyway, so it was, geez, I’m trying to remember what it was. Anyway, but the point was, is my wife walked through that door and she looked at my screen.

She’s like, what the hell are you doing? And I’m like, well, I’m, I’m making money for the family. She’s like, but you’re on dating sites. I’m like, yeah, but these are the sites. These are the sites that actually make us money. She’s like, she turned around and slammed the door. And that was the time where I was like, you know what?

I kind of like, I had two [00:43:00] kids. I’m like. I have a wife, like I didn’t really feel like what I was doing was really the thing that I really wanted to do. I was making money, but I felt like there was something, there was some other calling for me. I. It wasn’t just, you know, matching Christians together or matching.

I’m trying to remember that Jewish site for the life of me, I can’t remember it. We wanna shop at singles. I like it. It works. Shop at singles. There you go. Perfect. It’s a great offer. And I just said, you know, I want to do this for other businesses and get out of the affiliate game. Um, I was putting a lot of money.

On the line, obviously I’m at, like I said, I was spending a fair amount on the American Express card. The points were nice, but in some cases I wasn’t getting paid. You know, sometimes it was late, sometimes my leads weren’t good, you know, the offers would convert and then all of a sudden they wouldn’t. And I just wanted something that was just a little bit more stable and I felt like I had [00:44:00] kind of, it’s, it had run its course for me and.

It was about two years at that point that I, that I had been doing it. And a friend of mine had actually offered me the opportunity to do like his digital market. He’s like, you’re doing it for all these other places. Like, can’t you do that for me? And literally it was like a friend of mine that, you know, we were just shooting the shit at like a cocktail party.

I was like, all right, I’ll do it for you, but I’m not gonna do it ’cause I’m your friend. I’m gonna charge you a hundred dollars a month. And so he had a, a fra uh, a, what was it? A painting reframing business. And people would actually send their, you know, old paintings that need to be restoration. It was like a, a painting restoration business.

That’s basically what it was. So you have an old painting, a very niche. Very, very niche. Yeah. And. I, you know, did Google Pay-per-click ads? I did Yahoo Pay-per-Click ads and it crushed, and I was charging this [00:45:00] guy a hundred bucks a month. And then, I don’t know what, I was spending five, six grand, he was making multiples of it.

He was getting like a 10 x on that with jobs that he was coming in. ’cause they, he could just like, they would send in like, it was such a niche. I just owned the space. There was nobody, literally, there was no competition. So it was kind of an easy way of doing things. I’m like, this is actually pretty cool.

He’s like, this is great. Like my business is now really running great. I’m adding staff. He was not too far from here. I was like, I was adding to the community, like people were being hired by his company. I was adding jobs. I could feel the benefit of it. I’m like, and that kind of gave me a rush. It wasn’t just making the money.

It was like, I am helping to grow a business that I didn’t even know this sort of thing existed, but this is giving. Happiness to a lot of people and employing more people in my community. And so I joined my local, uh, business networking international, like BNI, which a lot of people do, which [00:46:00] is, I don’t know if your, your listeners are familiar with that, but it’s basically, it’s a local networking group and I, you know, I had one client, but I had all this affiliate experience.

I picked up like a half a dozen to a dozen, uh, you know, local clients. And that’s really how I sort of started the agency space. I started the business that way because I was affecting like the local community. And then I said, all right, well then I’ll go bigger. I went regional, then I went national richly, sort of international and sort of went that way, but.

You still only charge a hundred bucks a month. That’s amazing. A hundred bucks a month. That’s amazing. That’s white screaming deal. Yeah. Head on over to tier 11 for a hundred dollars a month, uh, you know, agency fee. Um, but yeah, I mean, it’s, uh, that’s how you start. And he wrote me your testimonial, and then people from my BNI group started making a testimonial.

All of a sudden I was like, wow, I’m making 10, $20,000 a month in fees. Like this is a pretty good gig. And then that’s when I, you know, sort of kicked it into high gear after that. Well, [00:47:00] that’s so, um, oh, go ahead Thomas. You go ahead. I was curious, like, when you made that shift, like what was your team like?

Like did you have, were you kinda set up with somewhat of a team or did you have to kind of build quickly to kind of be able to accommodate? Um, I had ramped up for my affiliate stuff. I had a couple of media buyers, a des uh, two media buyers, a designer, and then I had, um. Our webmaster and I kind of like, as the affiliate business became a little bit less stable in those years, like around, I think it was the end of 2012, thereabouts.

I sort of let go of two of those people, but I kept my webmaster and as soon as I started getting these local businesses, that’s when I started hiring more people. So I asked my webmaster, I was like, Hey, do you know anybody locally? And then she referred me to somebody I. And then another person that, um, I ended up hiring.

Two new media buyers [00:48:00] from the Philippines, and then one of which is actually still with me to this day. So he’s now been with me for 10, 11 years at this point, actually going on 12 years. Okay. Um, so yeah, so I sort of ramped it up a little bit on the affiliate side, got back down, and then all of a sudden back in the agency space, I now realized these people are gonna be paying me on a regular basis.

I can now a little bit more than a hundred dollars a month. Started charging like a thousand, $2,000 a month. It’s like, I remember when I landed my first $2,800 a month deal, I was like, oh my God, I can pay the health insurance. Like that was a big deal. Um mm-hmm. And that’s when I started sort of ramping up on the agency side without really even knowing it.

Um, but it was just as I added more, uh, individual clients, I would add more media buyers or I would get those media buyers train them to handle multiple accounts. Yeah, but, but having the, the SOPs and the experience [00:49:00] beforehand, you’re able to kinda almost have that flexibility to make that transition in a very, very different way.

I think that’s even clearly avoided the agency trap, which is, in my opinion, the person that starts the agency can’t replace themselves with their skillset, and then you get lackluster employees or people without the skillset level serving clients. To a degree that they’re not happy with and just becomes this churn right.

Of employees and clients. That just was very hard to deal with for, for an agency, but Right. Everything we’ve talked about up to this point is clear indications of why you’ve been able to scale well past that agency trap and become, I. What you are today. So I think that’s that key part. If you do have those SOPs and the trainings and it can build and hire the right people, you can largely get out of that mindset where you have to be the dancing bear doing everything for every client.

It can start to just more be, I. The biz dev person that you are, the strategy person that you are and kinda helping guide the company versus doing everything in the company. Yeah. I mean, I don’t need dancing beer on your own. Yeah, absolutely. It’s a [00:50:00] pleasure. I mean, I’m still sort of the dancing bear to this day, but I mean, the, the point is, is that I think you don’t need to hire, I.

All at once. You can start to do it. You can do it one at a time and you know, you don’t have to eat the entire elephant. You do it one bite at a time. It’s like, how can you leverage the, the second person I think that I hired after the web designer was a media buyer, and that was just a. You know, and I would work with them five days a week for an hour a day and make sure that they got as much skill as possible.

And then I would have them write the SOPs based upon our training. And those SOPs lasted us for years and years. So that’s another key is once you hire people, have them actually create the SOPs from your initial training. You know, create videos, show them how to do things, show them on one-on-ones. Now it’s on a Zoom call.

Back then it used to be Skype, and then you record those calls and then you create SOPs from all those trainings, and then you sort of [00:51:00] organize them and that’s the way that they can then train other people. Once you hire those folks, we still do that to this very day. That’s great insight. Yeah, that’s a really, that’s a really easy and great, great advice.

So, well, real fast, Ralph, we’re get, I mean, this is such a good conversation. I’m like, holy crap, we’re already, you know, to the time that we wanna be. But I would just feel remiss if we did not take a moment with a traffic expert and talk a little about paid meeting today. So what I’d love if you gimme just two topics or trends that you’re seeing going on in your agency right now in media buying.

I’d say one that you’d say is really, really positive that people should focus on. Maybe something that people should either stop, like avoid change, or maybe something like, like I said, like a ick. Stay away from that. If you give us two of those things, that would be fantastic. And I know our audience would be yippy Skippy with joy and I will promise to never use that phrase ever again.

But it came out so yippy. I dunno where it came from. Yippy, Skippy. Yeah. I think one of the biggest challenges. [00:52:00] In 25 is gonna be data and data privacy and um. Restrictions on ad categories in a lot of the platforms. So one of the biggest challenges I think that we’ve had as an agency is, is determining what channel is doing what and how we allocate ad spend from all the different channels.

And that’s a super, it’s always been a problem for. Anyone, whether you’re an affiliate, whether you’re an agency, and I think the privacy side of the equation is gonna be a little more challenging. I mean, I think there’s cookie deprecation, there’s privacy laws. I mean, right now 42% of the US is covered by some kind of privacy law, and that’s gonna increase in 2025.

So having first party data set up, you know, using, um. Uh, you know, using third party attribution tools as much as you possibly can. There’s a couple of different tools [00:53:00] that we use now that help with that. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges that people are facing, uh, especially on the affiliate side.

So, um, but yeah, I mean, I think one of the biggest opportunities for us, we’re seeing this on the creative side, is. There’s, I think, been a, a flight to a lot of creator content, and what we’re actually seeing is micro influencer content and even nano influencer content as being some of the most popular stuff that we use.

And you can get it at a very low price and they have not burned out their lists. So we’re using a fair amount of that. Right now we have a stable of about a thousand influencers and we use about 70 or 80 of them on a lot of our different, um, offers. But some of those smaller influencers, anywhere from like 10 to a hundred K followers or even the ones that are under 10 K followers, those are the people that I think are really gonna be the ones that are gonna drive a lot of the creator content in 2025.

And still content is, is [00:54:00] so important and getting that messaging right and really dialing it in for your offers. But getting those types of influencers to, you know, there’s platforms now that you can use in order to connect with these folks, especially on the Instagram side. That’s a huge trend right now is going smaller as opposed to trying to go bigger because they’re sort of an underserved population and they’re hungry and they’re easy to work with and they’re affordable and they have haven’t burned out their lists.

And it’s a big trend that we’re seeing right now. And those are some of the things that are really working well for us. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I love hearing that. I think both of them, the data side and third party tools, um, that, that makes a ton of sense. We hear that often. Right, Thomas? Just the amount of where are my conversions?

Am I getting clear signals to even know is my targeting right? Is the performance right? Are my campaigns correct? Always feels like that’s such a big challenge. Um, and I love the opportunity you’re talking about on the influencer and creator side. ’cause I totally see that and feel that way. And we’re actually seeing, [00:55:00] I would say there’s, I, I’ve.

Talked a bunch about it on other episodes. There’s a lot of indicators in the market of why that is so important and why content and content in that way is going to really, really scale in 2025 and be effective. And I think well beyond. So almost where you want to continue to, I. To focus in that realm, um, through content creators in that space and understanding what it could mean to your business and traffic.

Um, because it’s just gonna get bigger and bigger and more important. So, um, with that, a couple other things just before we go, ’cause I know we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re at time. I don’t wanna keep you more than we ask Ralph ’cause we really appreciate the amazing value brought. So first thing for all those. We gave a little snippet of what Ralph could talk about and value, but you just mentioned all, everything you need to know about what their business is doing is on his podcast.

So we’ll make sure to put that in the show notes, but definitely go download, give it a listen. Is it a weekly podcast, Ralph? Is it biweekly, weekly, right? Uh, it’s uh, twice a week. Twice a week. Okay. So twice a week, even more recent. So, yep. Tons of amazing data there. Eight years top 25 guys. Great, great [00:56:00] resources.

The other side of this, and I’m gonna do a little plug because I didn’t have an opportunity to work with Ralph way back in the day, um, is working with their team. So Ralph, I’ll give you an opportunity to talk about who those people are. I just wanna plug and say it was not only do I, I thought what they did on the media buying side was brilliant, but the part that really took me to the next level was the team you gotta work with.

Working with a lot of agencies, experienced people. Every single individual on that team felt. So I guess just successful, credible, easy to talk with, sharing great ideas and collaborating. You really knew you were working, not just with an agency. They extended on your team and it was a mutual goal of success.

That does mean sometimes that’s not the agency’s fault, it’s your fault. You gotta lean on the other side and get better, but knowing that they’re gonna be there to work with you and have that happen, it’s an amazing team. So if you wanna talk about who are the clients that you like to work with, what they should look like and how they could get ahold of you.

I’d love for listeners that are just on fire with saying, man, Ralph’s, my guy. Um, how they could get in contact and make Tier 11 a part of their team as well? Uh, yeah, I mean, I think, um, [00:57:00] I mean we tend to work with businesses that are, that are, you know, mid to high seven figures, upwards of a couple hundred million.

And so, um, but we have worked with folks that are a little bit smaller than that. Uh, I mean, there’s a couple of specialties which we’re, we’re particularly proud of, which is, um, I. We refer to it as high-end e-commerce, you know, uh, average order value of a hundred to $500, kind of harder to plus to, uh, to sell online o oftentimes.

And, uh, we’ve got a number of clients in that space. Not necessarily all on Shopify, but on a lot of different platforms. It’s a huge specialty for us. We also do. A lot with services, franchises in particular, and the PI lawyer space as well, which is a super hard one, uh, obviously a service there. And then, um, last but not least is, uh, is digital.

Digital products and, um, influencers and [00:58:00] coaching. And uh, so those three there sort of in order are the ones that we work with. But we, you know, we’re a generalist agency and we’ve worked in hundreds of different industries. So, but, um. You know, the one that we worked in, Kyle, was one that we’re particularly, uh, near and dear to our hearts, which is sort of the health and wellness space.

Still, you know, tons of supplement customers we have here, high average order values. Sometimes it’s harder to sell that stuff. You know, your a hundred, $200 is your A OV. Uh, it’s hard to sell and it’s one that we really excel in and really do a really good job with. We’ve got a, um, we’ve got a data solution that does sort of sift through a lot of.

The unknowns and unattributed and all that stuff that you don’t see. Uh, we use a triangulation system called the Tier 11 Data Suite, which sort of cleans the data and then comes out through Wicked Reports, which is our interface, and we use a. Data warehouse and an edge tag that cleans the data and makes [00:59:00] sure that, you know, all the attributed are actually attributed to the right platform.

So our media buyers can then make, uh, educated decisions and obviously we can figure out which creative and which ads work really well. So that works well in the e-com, uh, space in particular, as well as the other niches that I’ve mentioned. Fantastic. Oh, that’s amazing. And yes, again, like the, I I, we know we have a lot of, uh, I would say higher end supplement sellers out there and people have some really great products.

Really, I’d recommend if you’re thinking, Hey, how could we even internally bring and have, I would say, more of an in-house team versus just all affiliates. Boy, what a great team to work with. So Toms, you have any other questions before we let Ralph go and, and, um, continue? So many, but I won’t hold longer than.

Than we already have. But I just wanna say thank you, Ralph. Uh, this pain point we’ve been hitting on hard on this podcast is one that pops up a lot. We’ve noticed some very stressed media buyers out there that would love to build some stability in their business, but find it very hard to find the time to do it and find the really, really realize [01:00:00] the benefit of doing it.

Um, mm-hmm. And then too, just, I don’t think people realize how tilted the landscape is on ClickBank, where some of the biggest affiliates we have are agencies, right? Mm-hmm. And they’re either. Doing, uh, running almost like internal traffic, if you will, for a seller on ClickBank and pointing traffic that way, or they’re doing performance as just for their cash flow.

They’re going, Hey, we’ve got the media buyers to do it. So you can do both. If you’re thinking about being an agency or starting that as a media buyer, you don’t have to leave affiliate marketing completely behind, right? You can always leverage that skillset to turn on the cash flow when you need it or to keep it running, and it’s a great way to get clients too.

So I love the mix that agencies bring to ClickBank and working with people like yourself. So thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s, uh, I mean, there’s so much to, you know, I know a lot of agencies that do a ton in the affiliate space still to this day. I mean, it’s, it’s just a, it’s a great way of supplementing, especially if you’re coming from that space.

I didn’t do it that way. I should have transitioned a [01:01:00] bit. I just sort of went all in. But, you know, transitioning, having both things does give you a measure of stability and I think that’s a smart way. And then you can sort of figure out which direction do you want. And then plus, if you have an agency and you have a team there, they’re obviously gonna be able to help you on the affiliate side as well.

So it’s a, you know, it’s a benefit on, on both sides. So, um, yeah. But thanks for having me on guys. Yeah, it was awesome. Well, great shirt, great conversation. And what do we tell the people? Thomas? Until next time, happy scaling. Great guys. Have a good one. Thanks so much.

Ralph: All right. Hope you enjoyed this week’s show. Make sure that wherever you listen to podcasts, you leave a rating and a review. We really appreciate that. It helps us get a wider audience, helps spread the message of what we’re trying to do here at Perpetual Traffic, which is really focus on business metrics that matter, and growth that scales.

Ralph: And that is really what this show is all about. And hopefully, uh, you’ve derived some level of expertise and an understanding of. Maybe how to outsource some [01:02:00] of the things that you’re doing right now. How to scale, how to delegate, how to outsource, when to do it, and how to let go of that control with this week’s episode.

Ralph: So if you like today’s show, make sure that you do leave us a rating or review or comment, uh, on our YouTube channel. Of course, that’s over@perpetualtraffic.com slash YouTube or comment over on Spotify as well. We engage with the audience over there on top of that. So on behalf of my amazing co-host, Lauren e Pet.

Ralph: We’ll be back shortly until next show. See ya.

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