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In this interview, Janice Dru-Bennett speaks with Brian Basilico about the books he's written, his podcast, social media and affiliate programs, coaches and mentors, and systems to scale your business. To run a successful company, It's essential to effectively use media, metrics, and messaging to grow. At the end of the day, it's all about your relationships or B.A.C.O.N. Marketing with BB: Building Authentic Connections Online Networking!
Writing a Book, Hosting a Podcast, Coaching, Social Media, Marketing & Systems to Scale Your Business, Partnerships & Affiliate Programs
Brian Basilico - https://brianbasilico.com and https://notaboutu.com Brian’s Books:
Brian’s Links:
Coach: Cathy Demers - https://businesssuccess.com/cafe Other Recommended Books:
Software/Hardware:
Transcript:
Hi it’s Janice Dru-Bennett and today is Sunday, May 16, 2021, and I am thrilled to have with me today Brian Basilico who I met through Lunchclub. Today we’ll be talking about his expertise and knowledge and writing books having a successful podcast, having social media and affiliate programs, as well as coaches that he’s worked with and coaching himself. Finally, we’ll end with talking about systems that he’s used to scale his business and before we start with the interview, I’m going to share some links which I always post to YouTube, and on the blog as well. Starting with Brian’s website, so this is his website where he talks about speaking coaching and how you can reach him. He’s also got this site, notaboutu.com, which shares some of his books and I’ll also include links directly to his books on It’s Not About You, It’s About Bacon. He also has a Workbook and Guide. The latest book Toilet Paper Math and his Podcast, as I mentioned, we met on Lunchclub and so I’ll have that link to Lunchclub and some of his social media to connect on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. And then his Bacon System website, as well as his own company B2B Interactive Marketing. Finally, ending with this, How We Do It, which I think is always great to hear what his knowledge is around what systems and how he’s grown. So, Brian why don’t we start and I’m going to stop sharing the screen with you and talking a little bit about your history as an author and what brought you to where you are now. Brian Basilico: Well it’s a long history, obviously, but you know I started as an entrepreneur back in my teens and literally opened my first business at 17. And I’ve been running different businesses; I started this current one B2B which you showed back in 2000 after I left the corporate world. And in the process, there was so much technology change and there were so many kinds of misperceptions about what it was what it was doing why you should do it. The first book, I wrote was more about networking than it was about social media, because actually I started out writing a book about social media back in 2014 now that was about 10 years into when it happened. I was one of the first thousand people on LinkedIn back in 2004 and I’ve been using it for years. And kind of understood it, but you know it’s like most social media. It starts off in one direction that goes a completely different direction. You know, it’s like when Facebook first started, my kids were talking about it in college saying hey, this is cool, you know, get to know your kids and you know your buddies in College. And the next thing you know, they’re hitting you up saying make business pages and get 1,000 followers. Then the next thing you know, nobody sees what’s going on in Facebook, because they won’t show it to anybody unless you boost the post. They figured out how to monetize it. So the first book was really written kind of out of frustration; I wanted to teach people about social media, got three chapters in the book, and the book was completely obsolete. That kind of drove me nuts, but then I decided okay well I’m not going to stop here. I decided to write a book about networking and really it’s the difference between what is social media and what is social networking. They are two hand and glove kind of items, but they’re two completely separate as far as what they do. Social media gets you attention; social networking gets you to know people better and so both of those can work in concert, but a lot of people tend to focus more on the media side and less on the networking side. So that was journey of doing that then after I wrote that book going back to coaches when you’re talking about those. I hired a coach -- a book coach, you know somebody helped me promote the book, figure out what to do, and get it out there. That person said okay you’re getting on a plane and you’re going to Atlanta to a conference, so I went down to this conference and started learning about Internet marketing and affiliate marketing and email lists and you know building up tribes, and just everything you could possibly imagine. So I did that. I went back the second year, I was a speaker and actually got up on stage, and had to create programs and coaching sessions, and all that kind of stuff around the social media side of things, and then it kind of expanded from there, as I started teaching people I said, wait a minute, I’ve got a system. I’m going to write a book guess what, it’s going to be called the Bacon system right. And even at that second year’s conference, ended up seeing the speaker who was talking about podcasting. Now I knew about podcasting; I listened to podcasts, but I didn’t understand what’s the business case for why are you doing this, what’s the purpose, because you’re just listening to other people talk thinking okay this like a radio station, which it’s not. Back in 2015 I think was when I started the podcast, and now it’s been six years since I’ve been doing that, and so I had “It’s Not About You, It’s About Bacon,” and I’ll explain the bacon a little bit everybody always says. Because it’s not about meat, but it is about meet -- it’s M-E-E-T not M-E-A-T. So it’s that, then I had the Bacon System, and then I went into Toilet Paper Math which is my kind of taking the best practices from all of those books and putting it into a B2B focus. Because that’s really the niche in which I’ve grown my business. That’s kind of the big broad brush. In between the first book and this what I considered the second main book I did Bacon Bits. Now what did I do Bacon Bits for? When I started promoting my book, I created a website around the book and every single day for 365 days, I wrote a blog. It was only 50 words, it was just a simple networking tip. But I was able to hire a virtual assistant to go through that entire list and then pull out the top 101 of those and then categorize them into technology tips, networking tips, social media tips, that kind of stuff. And that was kind of my giveaway book it’s a little 6” x 6” sized book that basically something you could read in one sitting that has a bunch of tips. And when I was speaking or doing conferences, I would use that as a freemium to give away to everybody and turned it into a PDF and gave it away that way. Basically, I learned from that how to repurpose content and turn it into more and then from there, so I have the Bacon podcasts, I’ve got this Bacon System and doing the coaching. The Bacon Podcast ended up turning into something that I learned how to have it transcribed with Rev and then turn that into my blog every single week. So now what I’ve been doing for the past probably five years is doing a podcast on Monday, a blog on Tuesday, which is just the podcast transcribed, and then, an expert interview on Wednesday, Thursday doing email to say here’s all the stuff and then Friday doing social media, you know basically pulling all that together. So what I’ve done is I’ve created a system and that system is what I’ve been teaching people and what I’ve been using over the years to basically build the success of what I’ve been doing. So is that a good explanation for you? Janice Dru-Bennett: Yeah, and you talked a little bit about the difference between social media and social networking and how the first few chapters of your book became obsolete very quickly. So i’m curious if you can talk a little bit more about like what is current as it relates to social media and social networking. Are the concepts you’ve been teaching and the systems you’ve built evergreen systems? Do you see them changing over time, were they impacted by COVID/ I know there’s a bunch of questions. Brian Basilico: Oh yeah, and the thing about social media. Social media, like everything else has evolved. One of the things that I think that people get attached to is bright shiny object syndrome, and I’ve seen this for years. It’s like, you know, who talks about Snapchat anymore? Right, it’s all about TikTok and you know, everybody was on Facebook thinking that Facebook was the greatest business thing since buttered bread. But Facebook has turned into its own little micro network unto itself, it’s got certain pieces nuts and bolts within their, you know, you have groups now which you didn’t have when we first started out. You have business pages when we started doing them you’d have 1,000 visitors you post something maybe 20-30% of the people would see it, which is pretty average. I mean if you get a 25% open rate on an e-mail you’re doing pretty good, right? Now it’s evolving and changing in front of us, but there are some core principles that have never changed. And one of the things that I tell people is that back in 1979 when I started my first business, I was doing content marketing back then, and everybody says, well, how do you do content marketing in 1979 there’s no Internet there’s no email us like, how do you do this? And what I did was, I had a recording studio in my dad’s basement. I was writing stories on how to use microphones, what’s good technique, how to make a radio commercial better, how to mic an amp or whatever. But I knew who my audience was, and I was answering their questions, as they came in and asked them to me, and I figured, hey, if they’ve got questions, I could send this out to other people and promote, hey we know we’re doing, and we can help you do it better and that kind of stuff. So I typed all of that up on an Atari 400 computer, one of the first ones I ever had. A dot matrix printer, I printed it out and I cut the pieces of paper and put it on 11” by 17” sheet of paper, sent it to a printer and mailed it out. Right, so what I was doing is basically taking the questions my customers were asking typing it up and giving them the answers. Cutting it out and piecing it together and then sending it to them in a mail, you know, in a regular flat mail. The only difference between today and then is the methodologies, in which we deliver the content. So I think that’s one of the major things that I’ve evolved into, it’s not about the methodologies of using or optimizing you know LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter, Instagram, all those things you know because again, there is no perfect storm when it comes to all of social media. Social media is a microcosm of whoever is on whatever platform. And one of the things that I say, I call them “bacon-isms,” is that you need to communicate with people the way they want to be communicated, to which means that if you’re in a local business, it’s much easier because you have a very targeted market. You can collect people’s names who purchase things, you can communicate with them with email, text all that kind of stuff. When it comes to B2B business, most people are going to be playing on business sandbox meaning LinkedIn but it doesn’t mean you can’t influence them on Instagram or TikTok. You may be able to get their attention on those things but you’re never going to get them to take action on Instagram, because there’s no links back to anything. Using social media for business to do what it is that you want your business to do is based 100% on who your audience is, where they’re playing, and what action can you get them to take -- whether it show up at your shop or whether it’s you know spend a million dollars on your business. The methodology is the same, but the way that you approach it is different. Makes sense? Janice Dru-Bennett: Yeah, absolutely, and I’m curious if you work with anyone to help you build your systems. I know you said you worked with a coach to help you with your book. I’m curious if you work with business coaches or podcast coaches, or what other types of coaches you’ve worked with. Brian Basilico: Yes, okay, so I did work with the original book coach, and she was a speaking coach as well. So she helped me with, you know, trying to get my speaking career going, which you know worked well. That was great until 2020. Actually had a bunch of speeches that were, you know, shut down. But yes, I’ve worked with a bundle of different coaches and each one of them had a different, they helped me solve a different problem. The current coach that I’m with now I’ve been with probably the longest for about four or five years and she is a business coach that really helped me the scaling, which is kind of the end of the, you know, it’s not the end of the story, but it’s the most recent part of the end of the story. So, in the in the process, I did meet a coach, who was a podcasting coach, as I said in that conference in Atlanta. I joined his mastermind group and basically he taught me all the kind of ins and outs of podcasting it’s like, how to do, he actually did the intro for my podcast, as a matter of fact, I called him up and redid it this year, and he redid it for me -- he’s just great. He taught me, you what are the platforms, how to get better listenership, how to how to format it, and do those kind of things, and really just kind of guided me down that line. Then the second coach I got was a sales coach who helped me overcome basically, a mindset challenge with money. I mean that’s always been my problem in business like, you know, money has always been to me one of those kind of things that was a roadblock because it always had a mental barrier to it’s like I can never make enough, I’m not good enough, not smart enough to the Stuart Smalley side of things and you know, so that was the next coach. And then I got another coach that worked on helping me systematize things and start to look at things from a coaching standpoint, like, how do you build things that you can guide people through creating programs that work. And so that was when I did the Bacon System that really helped me to facilitate creating courses and develop things in kind of a systematic way. Then I went through a rendition of Internet marketing coaches, affiliate coaches, just a whole bunch little nooks and cranny things. The last business coach really took it and said, okay, you know if you want to be successful, you have to pick a niche. That was always the hardest thing because, you know, being a coach is everybody’s client. If they’re breathing and they have a wallet, they’re a client. But this business coach, he really said, okay, you need to number one focus on B2B -- you need to figure out the problem. You need to help them scale, so that you can scale. And, since then, I went from being a one-man operation coaching you know 10 people at a time on how to do Internet marketing better for the business to now running what I consider to be a virtual agency where I’m kind of the strategist and I have 18 subcontractors that come in and fill in the gaps doing a lot of the basics. Everything from web design, customized writing. Somebody who writes web pages is different than somebody who writes email drips, is somebody different than writes blogs, and somebody different than writes e-books. So I’ve got all these different specialties that I can pull in, utilize, and then put back on the shelf depending on where we go. So that’s kind of been the evolution of everything. Janice Dru-Bennett: And have you worked with just one coach at a time? I’m curious if you remember your first coach, what made you decide to go with that coach and how you find your coaches as you’ve kind of progressed in your career in your business. Brian Basilico: The first coach I actually met locally. She was speaking at a Chamber of Commerce event, and I saw her speak, and then we kind of hit it off, we have a coffee and when I was writing my book, I realized how little I knew about what a book was and how it worked. I was writing a book, but how do you publish it, how do you find somebody, I had no idea about those things. And she had written a bunch of them, so that was an easy pick and choose because she knew exactly where I was at, and what I was doing. I don’t think I’ve ever had two different coaches at the same time, but I always gone from one to one to one, because I think if you hire two coaches, you might get two completely different opposing mindsets. I think that would be hard. Now, one thing I have had consistently as mentors. Yeah, mentors are different than coaches. Coaches actually help you systematize things and get down and dirty on what you’re doing. Where mentors kind of give you more philosophical ways of looking at things, so I’ve always had those. I’ve always had a mentor and a coach. Another one of these “bacon-isms” so called is: every doctor needs a doctor, every mentor needs a mentor, every coach needs a coach. I would say that coaches have by far been the best expense in my business ever, because that’s what’s really helped me incrementally get to where I need to be faster. You know, take it take it back to 2014, I knew nothing about virtual assistants. I knew nothing about Internet marketing; I really didn’t know a lot about email marketing. I knew how to set it up, but I really didn’t understand the concepts. I didn’t, you know, I was a video producer, for years, but Internet video is different than producing a marketing piece. I can do TV commercials, but I really didn’t understand you know the short attention span theater that we live in, so every single piece of that helped me to kind of incrementally get better -- from a place that I had no concept of. because I was doing you know I’d been in the audio video, CD Rom development, website development, I’ve always been a techie since I was a little kid, so I understood the geek side of things, but I ended up needing to understand the business side of things, you know. It’s one thing to provide a service, it’s another thing to be able to solve other people’s problems. We think by taking our talents and putting them out that that we’re actually solving a problem, which we are, but the hard part is finding the niche that actually wants to pay for that. That’s one of the biggest challenges, I think that we all face. Would you agree? Janice Dru-Bennett: Yeah, absolutely. And you talked about one coach telling you focus on one niche what is that niche right now the B2B marketing or are you-- Brian Basilico: Yes. Janice Dru-Bennett: And are you also still coaching people or not so much? Brian Basilico: I take them on very, I’m not doing the group coaching from the independent business side of things, but I am taking on, if I meet somebody who I think that is a good fit, and I can actually help them, then I will take them on, but I limit that because the vast majority of what I’m doing is the bigger business. And it’s not a money thing, it’s more of can I actually make a difference with this person? One of the other things too is, you know, in the position that I’m in, I’m not looking to add 100 businesses to my business. I handle 4 to 6 at a time, and that’s it. That’s all I want, because I can basically manage all of that and keep all of that straight. I’m sure I could hire other people to come in, and if I wanted to scale it beyond anything else, but then when it starts to lose that organic difference that it’s making, so there is a limit to what I’m trying to accomplish. So if I bring somebody on as an independent coaching client, they’ve got to be a good fit for everything that I think that they need. They have to understand, they have to be in a place where they can make money from what it is that we’re doing. I’ll give you a real clear example, so I worked with somebody. You know, I always get hit up by a lot of people who say, hey I want to you know I want to do a podcast I want to do you know I’ve got a book, I want you to help me promote it you’re really good at it. What I say to them is I can’t do it, because there’s no way in for a podcast it’s not going to make you there’s no ROI on it, there is from a business standpoint but it’s, unless you get a million followers and get somebody to pay for sponsoring your podcast you’re not gonna make a lot of money on it. You may get some clients out of it, it’s a great awareness thing, but it’s not like a cause and effect of revenue-generating thing. The same thing with a book, you know, with a book I usually say is, you have to make a three to one ratio in order for it to make sense. To spend marketing dollars, marketing should always be something that derives sales, and there should always be in associated ROI with it. That’s one of the things about B2B. That is huge -- it’s data. You’ve got to be able to figure out the data that makes sense and a lot of times people spend too much time on vanity metrics meaning, you know hey we got more hits, we’re getting more likes, we’re getting more views, and none of that stuff equates to we’re making more money. So, if you take a book, it’s like if you’re going to make $3 for every dollar that you spend, you know, the average author, maybe makes $1 a book. You know Amazon, you can make $5 a book so that means that if somebody comes in and spends $1,000 they have to sell 3,000 books in order to make that one to three ratio. For every thousand they spend, they’ve got to make 3,000. That’s hard, you know, I wrote my book, it cost me $5,000 to produce the first one. And I was making an average of $10 if I sold them live in person. That means I had to basically sell, you know, at $5 apiece I had to sell 1,000 books. You know, somewhere between 500 and 1000 books to break even -- that was hard, it was hard to do. I did it, but it took me a year, and so the key thing is that if somebody can make money off of what I do, I found somebody who was in the training space, who did training design, facilitation, instructional design, that kind of stuff who was struggling last year. Really, they were struggling because everybody shut down. But the key thing is that, if they would get their message out there to the right audiences and start to develop relationships with people who didn’t know about them, when things opened up, they could actually kick into high gear, which is exactly what happened. We’ve revamped her brand, we revamped her website, we taught her how to read analytics, how to create content; now she’s blogging, posting on LinkedIn, people are paying attention and calling her up and she’s making that money back, so you know that’s the key. Janice Dru-Bennett: Yeah, and as you’re talking a couple of “M” words are popping out to me. There’s “Money,” there’s “Mindset,” there’s “Motivation,” as you talk about making an impact, and then there’s “Marketing.” So as we kind of wrap up on talking about the systems you’ve built, can you just give us some insights on how you’ve broken through with your money mindset what really motivates you, and what are some of the key marketing systems that you’re using. Then, even show that little zoom remote that you have. Brian Basilico: I will show that, yeah. So the money mindset was actually was a great coach of mine, her name is Cathy Demers she’s a British Columbia, and she basically held up $1 bill and said what is this? And I said, well it’s $1 bill. She goes, no it’s not, it’s a certificate of appreciation. If you do a great job for people, they hand you these. And the more that you do for them, the more they hand you that. So don’t look at money as a way to pay off your mortgage, go on vacation, all these other things. Think of it as power, but also realize that it’s a certificate of how good you do for them. And so that money mindset was like, that totally changed the way I think about or thought about things. The motivation to do all this stuff is really based around the fact that one of the things that I discovered through coaching through mentoring and all those things is define what your superpowers are and work to your strengths and tire to weaknesses is huge. So the motivation was is what am I good at, and the two things I found out that I was good at was interviewing people and teaching. And so, those are kind of the key things that I can instruct and interview people so that’s what I built my entire business on, is I teach my clients what they’re doing, what they could be doing better, what does the data mean like, for example, how to read analytics, and understand the difference between having 5,000 visitors and having 300 people engage with your website for three minutes and what it means. And not paying attention to the vanity metrics but looking at the core and then tracking that back to sale, so that you can figure out how is this making me money. So the motivation was trying to utilize those and then filling in the gaps with people who could do things better than I could faster, cheaper, that I could focus more my attention on my superpowers, so that was the motivation behind it. The marketing systems were three, basically the Bacon System was built on the fact that what I learned in business that actually worked with social media was is that there are three core principles that you have to understand or for business to work. Number one, you have to have a killer website, you have to have a home base, where you control the message. And you got to drive people back to it one way, shape or form to collect their data to start conversations you know social media is great. But rarely do you get a lot of interaction on there, the goal is getting them back to the website. Then, the second piece is analytics. Can you measure the activities that you’re doing and do more of what’s working less and what’s not. So analytics, from a business standpoint, I don’t care whether it’s email analytics or Google analytics, helps you to quantify what it is that you’re doing so you can focus on things that are working. It’s not the vanity metrics is really you know down to dollars and cents and then, the third part is original content creation, which is a whole another show. You know, because that we can go through the whole mental mindset of what you do with that and the gymnastics. But the bottom line is, you need to create content that is customer focus that talks to you direct audience in an in an empathetic way. That gets them to want to click on it to read it more to get back to your website so you can measure it so you can have those conversations get their data. You know the things that you need to do so that marketing trifecta of killer website analytics and content marketing becomes the core of what we do, then from there, the periphery is the social media and the email marketing and the face-to-face marketing, speaking and podcasting, and all this other stuff. Those are the content or distribution channels, so if you create content core content write a book. Out of the book you take one of the chapters and you turn it into a blog and you turn it into a podcast and then you take that and you share that on social media. And you drive people back to the article or the podcast and from there you get them to sign up on your email list or you get them to take action and purchase the book, so they can do whatever they want, they can either buy the book, they can do nothing, they can hire us a coach, or you know come see you speak, or hire you as a speaker. It’s all based on depending on where they’re at and what they want getting them back to the website getting them to take action is kind of the core of everything so. Janice Dru-Bennett: I got some more “M’s” from that. Media, Metrics and Messaging, right? Brian Basilico: Exactly yes. This is gonna be like the red M&Ms and green M&Ms – There are so many M&Ms in this. Janice Dru-Bennett: We’re going to have to eat a bag of M&Ms. Brian Basilico: Yeah, it’s my rockstar only the green and red ones, please. Exactly, yeah, some bacon flavored ones would be wrong. Janice Dru-Bennett: What did you say “MEET” stands for. Brian Basilico: Again, okay, so Bacon. Actually I worked at AT&T for years. That was one of my first jobs as a video producer and shooter, an editor, and stuff like that, and everything there was an acronym and we never went to the bathroom you went to the little boy’s room or little girls room and you would you would say i’m going to the LBR. You know, because I worked at the NSC you know from AT&T, everything was an acronym so BACON is actually an acronym it stands for Building Authentic Connections Online Networking. And that’s what it stands for, so it is actually an acronym and that’s what the whole thing is about in meat is you know bacon is M-E-A-T, right, but networking is M-E-E-T. So that’s what it means and I’ve had one person, the history of the Bacon Podcast after 675 episodes come to me and say, I cannot be on your show, because I am a vegan I have nothing to do with meat. And I said, you do realize this is about M-E-E-T, not M-E-A-T, and there’s nothing to do with bacon there’s no meat, you know, this is just bacon as just a visual and a mind trick, and she goes, I still can’t associate myself with that. So that’s what the bacon and the meat’s about. Janice Dru-Bennett: And yes, and it does, you know, it’s memorable so when you think of acronyms and memorize. Brian Basilico: Well bacon is the other thing too is when I started writing the book. I actually was out networking and promoting the book and going to networking events and Chamber events, and all this other stuff. And I would constantly go to breakfast meetings and take a picture of bacon, and put it up on the Internet on Facebook and stuff like that, and I was eating oatmeal I was taking pictures of OTB which is “Other People’s Bacon” and my friends were coming back to me saying dude, you’re gonna have a heart attack, do you have a prepaid plan with your cardiologist? I go, you don’t get it, it’s not my bacon. But, at the time bacon and cat videos with the two most shared things on the Internet period amen. So every time I put that bacon up, I was getting huge amounts of engagement. Janice Dru-Bennett: Oh that’s interesting. Yeah, so let’s wrap up what if you can share that zoom remote. Brian Basilico: Sure sure. One of the things that I pride myself is on learning so we go back to what you were talking about. One of the things is Lunchclub was a great way for us to meet, because I get to meet people I never would know about and learn things I mean I learned so much from you about virtual meetings and in technology and things of that nature. And so you know paying attention to those kind of things, I listen to things like Blinkist to learn more about you know the brain communications marketing, I mean it’s beautiful thing about Blinkist is they’re complete audio books in 15 minutes or less, so I’ve gone through since January I think 184 books. In Blinkist, which is a huge amount of things and I’ve listened to books like you know the 4-Hour Workweek the E-myth Revisited, [also, The Go-Giver by Bob Burg] you know the books that you normally listen to or read that you know you just want to go back and say the concepts still make sense, right? So one of my friends posted this thing, which is a Aoom remote. So what it does, is it allows you to turn your camera on and off, so I can you know, there you go, you know, simple as that. Just hit that button and it will come back there goes oops, come back, come back, come on, it’s now of course it’s not working, the way it’s supposed to because we’re showing it live, but come on camera, they’re good. Okay, so the mute button too, so you can mute you can do screen sharing, and it really is so simple. It’s nothing but smart keys, I mean it’s just key combos in a bluetooth device that you probably could have on a cell phone but just having this physical device makes it so much easier to mute and do the things that you do all the time, and it was a whopping 50 bucks, so it’s cool. That’s all I’m gonna say yeah. Janice Dru-Bennett: It’s I think hardware and software. These days, technology and having your phone and doing all the fun things with your phone. And then the software, we can use. That was actually one last question I wanted to ask you, was what can you share a little bit more about what affiliate marketing system you use or what tool you recommend as a as a software marketer? Brian Basilico: Well, I mean there’s the biggest it depends on how you do it see my affiliate marketing is obviously, I’m using pretty links as much as I possibly can, and that is, you know URL shorteners, which have a beautiful way of allowing you to have one thing so, for example, if you want to set up zoom with me you got a Baconcoach.com / forward slash I’m not going to tell you so I don’t want to get a bunch of Zoom meetings. But if you want to book time with me, I have you know things set up with that Baconcoach.com/ forward slash whatever it is, so I can also do affiliate marketing. That way, too, is, I can, you know, if you want to buy Notaboutu or Bacon Bits or something I can do Baconcoach.com/forward slash Bacon Bits and that will take you to Amazon, which means I make affiliate money on it. So one of the things I’ve learned through this concept is, running a business, no matter what business you’re in, having multiple streams of income is very important, you know, because you can’t count on every one thing staying exactly the way it did. If 2020, tada, something that was it, is the fact that January was perfect. I was having the best year of my life. March hit, and then everything, the cliff fell off, and everybody said stop what you’re doing. And luckily, I had enough affiliate marketing things that could keep me going that at least covered the basis of what I needed so affiliate marketing comes in so many different ways, I mean. You know, affiliate marketing, there are tools that you could use with your websites to drive affiliate traffic, where you do something let’s say I do a webinar, and I do these all the time. Brian Basilico: I do a webinar on a concept, let’s say it’s reading Google Analytics, and so, then I have one of my friends, who is a huge list promote it. And what I do is he gets 50% of the sales and I get 50% of the sales that’s true affiliate you know that’s the, you know, the digital marketer online methodology of doing things where you’re sharing sales to get in front of somebody list. There’s other affiliate marketing things where their products that I use like blankets, like Acuity scheduling, like Planable, things that some people don’t know, that I’ve created affiliate links to that you know I signed up for so I try to keep that all compartmentalized in one website called Brian loves dot info forward slash (Brianloves.info/) whatever you know it so brianloves.info/planable, brianloves.info/acuity, you know, so what I what I have is a way to be able to you know, promote the things that I actually use and love. To basically create another stream of income, so affiliate marketing has got multiple pieces to it. There’s the, you know, use somebody else’s list side of things, there’s promote products and make a little bit of money that heck, you can even make money on your own books by promoting the Amazon link, as you know. Janice Dru-Bennett: Teah I love I love representing companies and software that I, you know, also appreciate using, myself, so I think affiliate marketing is great, and the 50/50 sharing is a partnership with a joint venture, exactly how to grow through partnerships. So I really appreciated this conversation and would love to explore further how we can partner and how we can work together in the future. Brian Basilico: Absolutely, no, I’m so looking forward to it and I, you know I really want to get to know you and the platform that you provide but also you know what how else we can utilize I think. I think the best partnership, and this is kind of the cornerstone, going back to the original book. Business, you know, bottom line is relationships of the currency of business. And it’s not that you are ever going to purchase from me or I’m ever going to purchase from you, you never know, that but it’s the people that we know that we can connect each other with. You know, can I get you on another show to be a guest, can you get me on another show to be a guest it’s meeting. People within our golden rolodex helps us to really expand our businesses so that I think is probably one of the biggest methods and messages I wanted to get across. More “M” words. You know that your biggest asset that you have in life is relationships with the people that you know, so use those and that’s essentially what you know I try to teach. Businesses, B2B businesses, that’s how the businesses I’ve worked with last year, able to stay alive and make money, is utilizing current relationships over trying to prospect. Janice Dru-Bennett: Absolutely, I think, building relationships that’s the key takeaway, how do you really use BACON to meet people. Brian Basilico: Exactly, yes, all you gotta do is take a picture and put it on Facebook you’ll meet a ton of people a guarantee. Janice Dru-Bennett: Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Brian. I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend and we’ll stay in touch. Brian Basilico: Thank you so much, I love the opportunity this was a lot of fun thanks.
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