Founder & Chief Coach of PerformanceMarketingManager.com Dustin Howes joined me to chat on my podcast, This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins.

I wanted to learn more about the real Dustin, so I asked him a variety of questions I figured he had not been asked in previous interviews.

Topics included…

• Fighting Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
• Growing a mustache for Movember
• Tweeting at Hulu
• Rooting for the Seattle Sounders
• Tucker Max
• The origin of the squeeze play in baseball

Links from this episode

• Performance Marketing Manager
• Dustin on Quora
• Dustin on Facebook
• Dustin on Twitter

If you enjoyed this episode of This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins, please share it.

This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins is focused on the people behind the affiliate management/OPM companies, advertisers/merchants, affiliates/publishers, and affiliate networks.

On each episode, Shawn interviews a new guest related to the industry, so you can learn more about the people of affiliate marketing.

After all, affiliate marketing is about the people; not the companies.

Last week I was at a game for my son’s soccer team. One of his teammates, who is typically a ball hog, dribbled until he had a bad angle and took a shot that went nowhere near the goal.

A bunch of parents shouted about his good shot.

But it was selfish play and a bad shot. He should have crossed it.

I couldn’t blame the kid. He repeatedly takes lousy shots, and the sideline shouts out accolades and affirmations. It’s rare his shots are even on goal, and even less likely for them to go in.

That Wayne Gretzky Quote

One of the quotes I see most often in business presentations is that one from hockey legend Wayne Gretzky: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

That’s not the whole quote, though. It’s the end of a bigger thought.

“The day I stop giving is the day I stop receiving. The day I stop learning is the day I stop growing. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

And yes, the premise is true that you do miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. However, it gives the impression that The Great One was firing off shots at every opportunity. But he wasn’t.

Gretzky has the NHL record for most goals all-time with 894 in the regular season.

Another notable item in the record books for Wayne Gretzky is the most assists in the regular season at 1,963. His assist total is more than 700 higher than the number two guy, Ron Francis.

Pass It More Than You Shoot

Wayne Gretzky scored tons of goals. I don’t think another player ever eclipses his record. And even less likely that another hockey player gets more assists than him in the NHL.

Remember this fact – he had more than twice as many assists as goals. That brings it back to the first part of his quote, “The day I stop giving is the day I stop receiving.”

He didn’t play selfishly – he directly helped his teammates score way more goals than he scored personally.

While the quote about the shots is probably his most popular one, I prefer a comment he shared in an interview a couple of years ago in Entrepreneur Magazine.

When asked which of his 60 records he’d like people to remember him for most, he responded, “Records come and go. When people remember me, I want them to say, ‘That guy worked as hard as he could on every single shift.’”

What is your work style, your work ethic? Do you go for the individual glory with each opportunity, or do you make decisions that will benefit your team the most?

Don’t be confused by clowns telling you those bad shots are good. Pass it off when somebody else has a better angle on it.

Entrepreneur Zac Johnson joined me to chat on my podcast, This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins.

I wanted to learn more about the real Zac, so I asked him a variety of questions I figured he had not been asked in previous interviews.

Topics included…

• How he first started earning money
• Dealing with Hurricane Sandy
• His favorite comic book
• Star Wars vs. Lord of the Rings
• Having ulcerative colitis
• Meeting Shaq as a kid

Links from this episode

• Zac on LinkedIn
• Zac on Twitter
• ZacJohnson.com
• Blogging.org

If you enjoyed this episode of This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins, please share it.

This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins is focused on the people behind the affiliate management/OPM companies, advertisers/merchants, affiliates/publishers, and affiliate networks.

On each episode, Shawn interviews a new guest related to the industry, so you can learn more about the people of affiliate marketing.

After all, affiliate marketing is about the people; not the companies.

Declan Dunn, Chief Growth Generator at Simply Responsive, joined me to chat on my podcast, This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins.

I wanted to learn more about the real Declan, so I asked him a variety of questions I figured he had not been asked in previous interviews.

Topics included…

• Heading west from NJ to CO
• Disco Fries vs Poutine
• Raising pet wolves
• Working on remember.org
• Dangers of cell phones
• His book selling for nearly $1k on Amazon

Links from this episode

• Declan on Facebook
• Declan on LinkedIn
• Declan on Twitter
• remember.org

If you enjoyed this episode of This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins, please share it.

This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins is focused on the people behind the affiliate management/OPM companies, advertisers/merchants, affiliates/publishers, and affiliate networks.

On each episode, Shawn interviews a new guest related to the industry, so you can learn more about the people of affiliate marketing.

After all, affiliate marketing is about the people; not the companies.

Brian LaFrance, Lead SEO Analyst for CBS Interactive, joined me to chat on my podcast, This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins.

I wanted to learn more about the real Brian, so I asked him a variety of questions I figured he had not been asked in previous interviews.

Topics included…

• Circuit of the Americas in Austin
• Angelo’s Burgers in Oceanside, CA
• Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax
• Cooking BBQ
• His favorite beers
• South Park

Links from this episode

• Brian on Twitter
• Brian on Facebook
• Brian on LinkedIn
• Brian on Instagram

If you enjoyed this episode of This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins, please share it.

This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins is focused on the people behind the affiliate management/OPM companies, advertisers/merchants, affiliates/publishers, and affiliate networks.

On each episode, Shawn interviews a new guest related to the industry, so you can learn more about the people of affiliate marketing.

After all, affiliate marketing is about the people; not the companies.

Anne Parris, Managing Partner at Midlife Boulevard, joined me to chat on my podcast, This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins.

I wanted to learn more about the real Anne, so I asked her a variety of questions I figured she had not been asked in previous interviews.

Topics included…

• The Disaster Artist and The Room
• Her ratings on Facebook
• Taking introvert breaks at conferences
• Shot at Life
• Craft beer
• The National Society of Newspaper Columnists

Links from this episode

• Midlife Boulevard
• Not a Supermom
• Shot at Life
• Anne on Twitter
• Anne on Facebook
• Anne on LinkedIn
• Anne on Instagram

If you enjoyed this episode of This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins, please share it.

This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins is focused on the people behind the affiliate management/OPM companies, advertisers/merchants, affiliates/publishers, and affiliate networks.

On each episode, Shawn interviews a new guest related to the industry, so you can learn more about the people of affiliate marketing.

After all, affiliate marketing is about the people; not the companies.

Darren Blatt, CEO of Affiliate Ball, joined me to chat on my podcast, This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins.

I wanted to learn more about the real Darren, so I asked him a variety of questions I figured he had not been asked in previous interviews.

We discussed…

Topics included…

• The last movie he watched
• How he got the nickname D-Money
• Perry Farrell
• His days at Ohio State
• When he was a Greek in college
• Why he moved from Ohio to Los Angeles
• Halal Guys – red or white sauce?

Links from this episode

• Darren on Facebook
• Darren on Instagram
• Darren on LinkedIn
• Affiliate Ball

If you enjoyed this episode of This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins, please share it.

This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins is focused on the people behind the affiliate management/OPM companies, advertisers/merchants, affiliates/publishers, and affiliate networks.

On each episode, Shawn interviews a new guest related to the industry, so you can learn more about the people of affiliate marketing.

After all, affiliate marketing is about the people; not the companies.

Back when we started Affiliate Summit in 2003, we didn’t have money or experience in running conferences. But we had an even more valuable asset, the desire to be better than the other options out there.

At the time, the standard for affiliate marketing conferences was an event called Affiliate Force. There were positives to it, but Missy Ward and I saw lots of areas for improvement, and we wanted to create something we would want to attend.

A lot of the early feedback was focused on what we were doing “wrong”. Well, the perception from some people that we were doing things wrong was because it was different from what they were used to.

We had no plans to emulate what we saw as a broken model. Sure, it was the most successful of the affiliate marketing events out there at the time, but that wasn’t saying much.

This was a passion project that we had to squeeze in on evenings and weekends while we paid the bills with our day jobs. There was no way we were going to sacrifice our time and opportunities to champion mediocrity and be another Affiliate Force.

No, we were going to be Affiliate Summit.

One important lesson we learned was that we didn’t know how to do it the “right way”, so we just did it the way we thought it should be done.

Based on our own experiences and tapping into our friends in affiliate marketing, we worked up a list of the problems with conferences and figured out solutions. That made more sense to us.

We employed a five-step process: listen, adapt, pivot, rinse, repeat.

Simply by asking people what they wanted and giving it to them (within reason) became our secret sauce. And people liked the taste from the start because it was literally what they wanted in a conference and tradeshow.

We still focus on feedback to evolve, and it’s genuinely odd to me that people are surprised that we ask for feedback and then follow-up with more questions to double down on the good stuff and fix the bad stuff.

Missy and I had frustrations with the tunnel vision of Affiliate Force, and that led to more of a crowdsourced approach for Affiliate Summit. Despite being admonished by people for doing things differently, we continued on our path. We didn’t want to be them, we wanted to beat them.

And it’s a good thing because by the time Affiliate Summit was a year old, Affiliate Force ceased to exist.