Top Networking Secrets From LinkUnite’s Exclusive Inner Circle

Jim Banks [00:00:00]:
So hello everyone, welcome to the latest episode of the Media Buying Podcast. I'm here today with Rob. Hello Rob, how are you?

Rob Adler [00:00:08]:
Good man, good. How about yourself?

Jim Banks [00:00:10]:
Not bad. And we are joined today by the two co-founders of LinkUnite, Amanda and Sarah. How lovely to see you both here.

Amanda Faris [00:00:20]:
Oh yes.

Sara Malo [00:00:20]:
Hello everyone. Thank you for having us.

Jim Banks [00:00:24]:
So I obviously I've got, I've got another podcast and I've had Sarah on that one before. And I happened to just go to Affiliate Summit. I met up with Rob in person, which was phenomenal, I've gotta say. And I also got to see Amanda as well, and she gave me the, the biggest hug I've had, like at the whole conference. Like I'm renowned for, for my hug giving, but I think I'm like getting the silver medal now for hugging after Amanda. It was so good to see you in person.

Amanda Faris [00:00:48]:
We're primed on the Olympic language, but I will take it all day. We can share the, we can share the huggers. I just, yeah, it's the way to introduce everybody.

Jim Banks [00:00:54]:
Have we discovered, so, so One of the questions I always had was like, like quite often I, I, I tend to see one or other of the ladies at events and I'm thinking maybe they're a bit like sort of Bruce Wayne and Batman. Maybe you'd never seen them at the same time together because they're the same person. But, but I think we, we in the green room, we were discussing where, where Sarah was for Affiliate Summit and she mentioned she was at, what, what was the conference you went to there?

Sara Malo [00:01:17]:
Lead Gen World in San Diego. Yeah.

Jim Banks [00:01:20]:
And how, how was Lead Gen World? Because obviously none of us— It was good.

Sara Malo [00:01:23]:
It, it was a good event. I mean, I love San Diego. San Diego's beautiful. The weather, I mean, talk about a place that has beautiful weather, beautiful venue. Yeah, it went well.

Jim Banks [00:01:33]:
And, and for, for, for Robyn and Amanda, what, what were your thoughts on the Affiliate Summit? What, how did you think like the show was?

Rob Adler [00:01:39]:
Oh, I'll, I'll let Amanda go first on that one.

Amanda Faris [00:01:42]:
'Cause you know me, I love this year. I actually told Sarah when I was there, I was like, this year's the, I loved this Affiliate Summit more than even the last few years and some of my first ones. The, positivity and the optimism that was just like radiating through the room. I feel like everyone could really— it was palpable, right? So seeing everybody just ready to gear up for 2026, it's like shedding of the last year. I absolutely loved it because everyone is on to like the new technologies and how they're really going to use AI this year. So the conversations are a little bit more deeper and just enjoying really just seeing everybody excited. You know what I mean? I don't know if Rob, that was the same experience, but I loved the energy this year. That was— it was a great show.

Rob Adler [00:02:21]:
Yeah. So ironically, that's pretty much what I was going to say, especially because I, well, let's just say didn't have a good overview of the one previously when I gave that. But yeah, basically with that one, it's, there was a lot more optimism to echo what she said, but also there was a lot more, let's say older school generation people there that I didn't expect to see. That was interesting. So a lot of the people I didn't see a year ago, 2 years ago, or even 4 years ago, but a lot of the people from 5 or 6 that kind of pivoted out are back now, which is great.

Sara Malo [00:02:48]:
They're back. Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:02:50]:
And that's awesome because we could use some good old guard that we can trust. But yeah, with, with the way that that was, it was good to see a lot of movement, a lot of people, obviously a lot of rollups and a lot of consolidation given the end of the year and a lot of the AI stuff. But so far optimism definitely is the right word. There was a lot of positivity at the show compared to the previous one. And let's just say a lot more pulling of the actual triggers instead of just talking about what we could do or there. So it was good to see that. Hopefully that continues because I know it's been steadily dropping a little bit over time, but Yeah, it was good to see. I, I hope it keeps going.

Jim Banks [00:03:23]:
So again, I'm, I'm guessing there was probably a lot of people that may have done both, that the kind of the one in San Diego and then come up to Vegas, but there's probably a lot of people that maybe went to one versus the other. How would you— how do you decide who goes to which show in terms of you're going to divide and conquer?

Sara Malo [00:03:41]:
Yeah, that was, that was tough. And honestly, the event organizers are working together so that doesn't happen because I think there was only 4 or 5 days between these two events. So next year Lead Gen World will be in February, so it won't be such a conflict because there were people in San Diego that went right from San Diego to Vegas. And then a lot of the, the companies had to divide and conquer like Amanda and I did. I guess it just depends. Lead Gen is a much smaller event, more focused on, on lead gen buyers and sellers versus Affiliate Summit is larger. But yeah, I think people just figured Who wants to go to Vegas? And I'm sure for San Diego, I gotta imagine more people raised their hands for San Diego. But yeah, there was a lot of divide and conquering, but it's not good for the industry.

Sara Malo [00:04:29]:
It's not good for event organizers to have events that close. I don't know if you remember Jim Trafficking Conversion, which was also owned by Clarion at the time. I mean, they just shut their doors because they also did their event in January and it was was too much. The Clarion team was trying to do Traffic and Conversion and Affiliate Summit at the same time-ish, having them both in Vegas, and it just didn't work. So that's a good lesson learned for event organizers to talk to each other about the dates so that people don't have to divide and conquer because attendance was down on both events.

Jim Banks [00:05:05]:
Yeah, because I've always tried to look at events from the point of view of, again, I mean, because I'm based in the UK, getting to an event is more expensive for me typically because usually I have to throw an extra day on either side of the, the show for jet lag and everything else. I mean, and obviously flights cost a lot more, but that, that aside, I'm, I'm always, again, like I look at it and think, well, I, I'm probably at the point now where I don't really have to kind of worry too much about the cost implication of it and the ROI. I mean, people, I think a lot of people go because it's a good jolly fun, hang out with people, get drunk and and go partying and clubbing and everything else. But at some point in time, there's got to be an accountability of what do we actually get from that particular event? And is it worth going back in, in greater force and everything else? And I just, again, I'm, I'm, I'm always amazed at how many people don't probably do that calculation. They just go, they go, had a great time. Yeah, but what did you get out of it? 'Cause I think you can get both. You can kind of have great fun, meet, meet friends, hang out, have nice meals.

Sara Malo [00:06:03]:
But chandelier bar.

Jim Banks [00:06:06]:
Yeah, chandelier bar for sure. Quick, you know, again, all, all my best deals were done at the chandelier bar.

Sara Malo [00:06:11]:
Yeah.

Jim Banks [00:06:12]:
I mean, this year I had, I obviously had a great opportunity to spend a ton of quality time with Rob, right? Because he was the same mindset. We never left and we had different people come and talk to us and then leave and then we'd be still sat there. But again, I mean, I met up with some people, we went to one of the parties, we ended up going out for dinner. And again, for me, it's, it's great to be able to do those sorts of things. But I guess for me, like I said, my, my kind of my sick definition of success is, who did I see? What did we talk about?

Sara Malo [00:06:41]:
Mm-hmm.

Jim Banks [00:06:41]:
It's, it's never about how much business did I do because I think that my days of going to shows to, to pick up new customers are gone. But I think other people's, that's their ambition for going and, and sometimes that's their definition of what success looks like. And I just wondered what, what of success is like for definition you.

Sara Malo [00:06:58]:
There's been a big shift. It's, there's been a big shift. I mean, companies are not sending their entire sales team. They're not, they are actually looking at the ROI of events now and that's changed. Gosh, I mean, you look back a few years back, they were sending their entire company. That is not happening anymore, which is why attendance is down for event organizers across the board. People are not just— they're not just sending their team to go have those experiences. You call them party, get drunk.

Sara Malo [00:07:25]:
We call them experiences. It's just not happening anymore. They're not— if they're not coming back with solid leads that they can close, we've seen a big shift. Which I'm surprised, like you, Jim, that that's just now happening. You look back, why didn't this happen before? And there are, there are definitely some bigger companies that have always looked at the ROI, but yeah, it's changed. It's changed significantly. And so if you're coming to an event, you better be bringing some leads or some, some business back. Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:07:55]:
It's, it's also ironic because the, what she just said actually made me think of what she was saying before, which is 5, 6 years ago, it was different. There were different organizers doing different stuff. Back then I was like, why did it feel so different though? It didn't feel as rushed, but you still got more results. And I was like, of course it felt like that because I would throw my company party for my employees between the two things. So it wasn't a week with nothing in Vegas. It was, oh, well, between the two, we have something to do. And then other companies were doing stuff like that too. Some of them would group like 2 or 3 companies together, would be like, let's take everyone out.

Rob Adler [00:08:29]:
You work with us a lot. You guys do this. It's great. We stopped doing the, we have to spend this money, so let's spend it with people we do business with. And now it's, let's spend it with people we could do business with. And that's— I've seen that especially over the last 5 or 6 years be a lot more prominent to the point where now there's a lot less stress on loyalty and a lot more stress on, I don't care about you, I just want legitimate traffic. I just want the legitimacy of whatever deal we're doing. You can lie to me all day as long as the leads are good.

Rob Adler [00:08:57]:
And I'm just like, We used to live on the exact opposite of that. Like, leads are always good because they're from a good person running good marketing with a good partner doing good things. Now they're just like, nah, just, it performs though. Do you want it? I'm just like, wow, it really has gotten down to that. It really is just that now.

Sara Malo [00:09:14]:
It's also changed. I mean, I was with the original Affiliate Summit team with Missy and Sean a gazillion years ago. And when we were holding the events, it was at like the Paris in Vegas. And so our idea was to keep everybody there, which we did a pretty a good job of. Now when you're having an event at the Forum and people are scattered, they're at the Venetian, they're at the Cosmo, it's almost impossible unless you're a very good networker to meet these people and to have actually keep your meetings that you set in advance. So that's also challenging. So that's changed a lot. And Vegas is tough obviously because there's so much to do there, so many different places for people to stay and so on.

Jim Banks [00:09:54]:
So yeah, I made a mistake with when it was when when the event was at the Paris, I made the mistake of making appointments to meet up with people and I just found that was a complete disaster. 'Cause you, we walk from one meeting to another, you get stopped by 6 or 7 people in the, in the hallway. Like you just never make the meeting. So I just, for me, I just didn't want to let people down. So, so now when people go, hey, let's meet up, I'm like, nope, let's not. I'll be in the chandelier bar. If you wanna come talk to me, come and talk to me. That's where I'll be.

Jim Banks [00:10:19]:
Come to me. And, and again, it might sound conceited and big-headed, but it's, that's where I'm gonna be. I mean, everyone knows it. And, and if it's that important for them to come meet me, they'll come and meet me.

Rob Adler [00:10:28]:
So, but, but also it's, it's easier now because 5 years ago it was, it was as easy to meet you at Chandelier or at Paris or here or there. Now it's even if I meet you at the event, security won't even let me in to to talk you. So it's like I take more people out of the event than I would have brought in now because of that. Because usually when I go to a meeting, there's always 5 people next to me going, oh, are you going there? I have a meeting there in 10 minutes. I'm like, want to share an Uber? Let's just grab one. So now I'm coming with 5, 6 people. Now 5, 6 people are all missing their meeting because security's— you can't get in without a pass. I'm like, okay, I'll just pull them out then.

Rob Adler [00:11:02]:
And now every person I did that to last time now didn't buy a booth, now didn't get an exhibit hall pass, now didn't do this.

Jim Banks [00:11:09]:
I mean, I didn't look at the exact price, but I looked at the cost of a meat market table. I mean, I think when I used to do it, it was maybe $1,000, $1,500. $2,500.

Sara Malo [00:11:20]:
At the most, Jim, when I was selling meat market tables. And now they're like $9 grand.

Jim Banks [00:11:26]:
And you think to yourself, if you're going to drop $8,000 to $10,000 on a meat market table that's got like a table with cloth and two chairs, I could, I could probably rent like a nice room, like a wrap terrace in the Chandelier for probably 3 or 4 days for that amount of money and get anyone that wants to meet up with me to come to the room and get somebody to kind of go over to the Walgreens and kind of get some booze and beers and whatever else. And, and you could probably get far better value out of that as an investment than having a table at the meat market. And again, I, I didn't go to the meat market, did walk the floor on I think the second or third day, and it was just literally every single person I saw and talked to was talking about telehealth, telehealth, telehealth, right? There's GLP-1. It was just mind-blowing how much that had become the, the kind of flavor of the month.

Sara Malo [00:12:13]:
Yeah. I mean, I'm an event organizer at heart. Obviously we do events with LinkedIn, right? So lobby conning can definitely hurt an event. You know what I mean? If you don't buy passes and you don't support the event, then they're gonna crash and burn just like we saw traffic and conversion. So it's tough because the prices have gone up significantly, even for attendee passes. I mean, you used to be able to get an attendee pass for what, Amanda? Like $300, $500.

Amanda Faris [00:12:38]:
Yeah.

Sara Malo [00:12:39]:
Now they're like $1,500, $2,000.

Jim Banks [00:12:42]:
Yeah.

Sara Malo [00:12:42]:
I mean, that's a significant jump. And if you're sending 6, 8, 10 members of your team, that gets costly. So it's a tough one.

Jim Banks [00:12:54]:
So let's, let's switch, let's switch gears and let's talk a little bit about Link Unite and events, because it's a fairly good segue. So you're, you're coming up on, is it Link Unite 6 coming up quite soon? Yes. So, so what is it that kind of stands out and makes Link Unite events different from kind of other events?

Amanda Faris [00:13:13]:
To the point of what we're talking about right here, it's much more experiential. So as we're literally hammering the nail on the head here, when we're talking about building relationships and ROI with current business growth within current business, but new potential business. What we're trying to facilitate is actual conversation. So we all know how fly-by-night meet market, hey, how are you, grab a card, scan this, do that. And it's great. Like, I didn't leave the meat market floor from like 9 to 6, you know what I mean? Like, it's great. It's one type of networking, but then ours are much more focused around a smaller group of people, ensuring that every person can meet with with the, the every other individual and get to know them on a personal level so that there's not that barrier of I'm not just sending you a random Zoom link for Zoom Doom after a show. It's like an actual conversation that's occurring and looking at multiple facets of the business and then having the experiential piece.

Amanda Faris [00:14:00]:
So we actually do activities because through activities, I mean, we love games and stuff like that, but through that you build bonds and, and special networks through those types of things. So we really try to facilitate that type of format, which we will not deviate from, as well as limiting it. But we did take a bit of a step this year and took it from the one event to four events. 2026 to do one each quarter so that there's more of an opportunity for the ladies to come together one-on-one. Because everyone's got a million things going on with families and kids and sports and all the things, conferences. So this should make it a little bit more accessible this year.

Jim Banks [00:14:31]:
So, so, so you're— I guess your, your kind of goal is to try and get a certain percentage of the people to come to at least one, if not more of them. So not everyone, as you say, not everyone can go to all four of them, but at least if they have more choice, then They've got the ability to be able to pick, pick one that they feel is best suited for them.

Amanda Faris [00:14:48]:
And doing it in these strategic cities allows them to tack on days to do meetings. So like we picked Toronto, Fort Lauderdale, Austin, Kansas City, and those are hubs for finance in certain areas. Toronto's a huge tech capital and people are just, they're blocking off an entire week because they're like, I'm coming for the event and then I'm staying for 3 days just to see customers that I never get to see because we don't go to Toronto, those types of things. So We're just trying to create the business environment as well as making it a legitimate justification as a business expense for the ladies to come, but then adding on additional opportunity, hopefully this year for them in this format. Now, if they don't like it, we'll go back and do 2 next year. But this, we were trying to just be as accessible as possible this year because we just want to run like as fast as possible in 2026 with accessibility and growing the network.

Sara Malo [00:15:32]:
Yeah.

Jim Banks [00:15:33]:
And in terms of like, obviously the events are designed for members of Link Unite and predominantly women. But I, I know that the Optizmo people come along and they do a lot. Again, I love watching the videos, one because I think Tom is such a cool interviewer. He's such a great guy.

Sara Malo [00:15:48]:
Yes.

Jim Banks [00:15:50]:
But, but I think it's, again, for me it's sort of like, I think it's really interesting that, that as much as it's a, a women-led initiative, right, that there's a lot of men including me, Rob, and other people getting behind it to make sure that it is successful. And like I said, for me, I just, I just love the fact that, that it exists. I love the fact that it's as successful as it is, right? And trying to do whatever I can to help improve the, the kind of likelihood of it growing even further still. So.

Amanda Faris [00:16:17]:
And we appreciate it. We love our male and we call them our male ambassadors. And you guys help support— you're part of the heartbeat. Like we do have the all-female events because we create that space. But as you very well know, because we saw you in Vegas, the other half of our events are co-ed because why would we eliminate 95% of the industry from networking opportunities? Plus you guys are like family to us. We've known you and see you more than we see our own families for the most part. Part. So it's, it just makes sense to be collaborative in what we do.

Amanda Faris [00:16:42]:
And I think that's part of the success is Sarah and I are just accessible people who love working with you, them, and Rob, and like just having those, those conversations and just having hugs and having people there. It naturally will grow because good people know good people, and through that energy, we're going to build something bigger. And I feel that's the, the energy for 2026. Got our firehorse energy going.

Sara Malo [00:16:59]:
Yeah. And I mean, our, our model with our partners that we have, I mean, for example, Austin, we have Pushnami and Optizmo, two of our bigger our bigger sponsors. I mean, Emerson Smith and Chris Thayer, we've known these guys for what, I mean, 15+ years, and they're always up to partner with us and back our events. And so we couldn't do this without them, honestly.

Amanda Faris [00:17:20]:
Optima was our very first sponsor ever, partner ever, like first initial company. I mean, they're like the OG, just always had our backs, just like you guys have been there since day one. And I mean, we do not forget, and we always try to just continue to build the relationship. And to your point, like Tom just makes the best interviewer and watching him walk around the events is worth its weight in gold. I'm like, I will this every do time.

Jim Banks [00:17:43]:
Yeah.

Sara Malo [00:17:44]:
But yeah, those guys are, those guys are like our brothers. We're looking forward to going out to Austin and having dinner with them at the back end of our event. So we, Jim, I mean, when you've been here as long as all of us have, you just meet, meet people that, you know, are gonna be friends for life.

Jim Banks [00:17:58]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I always like jokingly say when, when Chris and, and Marianne kind of met up for the first time, I was at— I think we're at an event in New Orleans, and, and I, I think I got asked out for dinner, right, by Hit Path, right? They took me out for dinner and it took Chris out for dinner and Marianne was there. So I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, I feel like a complete spare part in this whole dynamic. I mean, the chemistry was just like lighting up the room, and I kept thinking to myself, I really should just not be here. I mean, I should just leave the two of them to it and get on with it or something. Literally, I was there the night that they met up, and, and the rest is history now. I say sure, but it's an ongoing story.

Jim Banks [00:18:38]:
And again, a phenomenal love affair. I love, I love kind of the relationship. And for me, again, meeting up with Marianne in Vegas was probably the highlight for me because I met her before through business, and then they got married, had kids and everything, and just stopped seeing her for a little while. So to see her again was phenomenal. Because I think, I think this industry goes beyond the, the relationships just that we have. It's also the partners. I mean, again, in, in London, I met your, your children, Sarah, and it was phenomenal to meet them, to hang out and, and meet them. And I just think that's what the industry is all about, right? As much as, yes, we all want to be successful, make money, and so on and so on, it's like none of that matters if you, if you're not enjoying what you're doing.

Jim Banks [00:19:16]:
And I think more, most important, 100%, right? Everyone that I know that is in LinkedIn, I love it because it's, it is such an uplifting, dynamic environment that they can all get something from. They're not all there like sliding cards into, I want your I want your money, money.

Sara Malo [00:19:31]:
Yeah.

Jim Banks [00:19:31]:
There's far more than that.

Sara Malo [00:19:34]:
Yeah. And I mean, Amanda, that's how Amanda and I met. I mean, we, we, she was a client of mine when I was at Affiliate Summit and we met and I was like, oh, she's gonna be a friend for life. And, and here we are running LinkUnite together and that's I mean, if that isn't an industry story, I don't know what is.

Amanda Faris [00:19:51]:
This meet cute story though just made dinner conversation for next week or week after next.

Sara Malo [00:19:56]:
Yeah. yeah. Oh.

Amanda Faris [00:19:56]:
I'm gonna need the full context of.

Sara Malo [00:19:58]:
This 'cause this is gonna be like.

Amanda Faris [00:20:00]:
A, a movie at some point. This is adorable. And you got first, just testament witness spot. I love it, Jim. It's awesome.

Sara Malo [00:20:06]:
And you know what, Jim, we've talked about having like a, an OG event where you invite, you have to be in the industry for 15+ years. I forget what we were talking about one time with the Optizmo crew about doing that one of these days, having some sort of a 2-day retreat and having all the OGs come together. And I feel like we need to do that. Wouldn't that be something?

Jim Banks [00:20:32]:
Yeah, that'd be great.

Rob Adler [00:20:33]:
I'll take that all day. Yeah.

Sara Malo [00:20:35]:
Yeah. That would be great.

Jim Banks [00:20:36]:
And I'm in WhatsApp groups with people and we have a great bit of banter. Right. And at some point in time, I'm pretty sure we're all going to go, you know what? Let's not bother going to an, I'll say affiliate summit. Let's not bother going to an affiliate summit. Let's just go and rent a big place in Mexico and we can get a chef and it'll be 10 rooms. We can just go down with our partners and what have you.

Rob Adler [00:20:55]:
It'll be cheaper.

Jim Banks [00:20:56]:
Have a great time. Have a great time.

Sara Malo [00:20:57]:
It'll be cheap. And honestly, we've been talking about it for now for 2 years and it's just a matter of time that we just, somebody pulls the trigger. Cause we even talked about getting a couple of Airbnbs next to each other and Everybody just stays. And I think it would be cool to just listen to everybody's stories, where they started, where are they now? Talk about how cool would that be?

Amanda Faris [00:21:23]:
You've seen the groups now where they're doing conspiracy. This one is a PowerPoint of your entire evolution through the digital world. Like, where did you start and where are we now? Oh, that would be epic.

Sara Malo [00:21:32]:
I feel like people would want to get on this list though.

Rob Adler [00:21:35]:
I mean, I was gonna say, you're gonna have all my friends going, okay, redacted slides 1 through 36, and then 37 is just thank you.

Sara Malo [00:21:47]:
I'm still here. I feel like at the end is just the last slide is I'm still here.

Jim Banks [00:21:51]:
Oh yeah, industry murder mystery weekend.

Sara Malo [00:21:57]:
Oh yeah, I love it.

Rob Adler [00:21:58]:
We can call it Who Shaved Who. Yeah, no, it's, I was telling Jim a couple of weeks ago, but especially at Summit, like a lot of the friends that I've had for 20+ years now, at least half of them are from the industry because I started in the industry very young. So like with mine, I'm in like, so I have a Telegram group with basically my friend group. There's 35 people in there. 32 are from one forum 20 years ago that are all from affiliate. And like some of them, they grew up their companies. They had 2,000 employees, sold out. Other ones have done their own products, done their own stuff.

Rob Adler [00:22:27]:
Other ones were like, I don't want to do affiliate anymore, so I'm going to go work here. But it's— there's still good relationships. There's still good friendships. There's still like at my wedding, 4 out of 5 of my groomsmen was an affiliate. And it's not because I don't know non-affiliates, it's I've known them that long.

Sara Malo [00:22:43]:
That long.

Rob Adler [00:22:44]:
So it's— yeah.

Sara Malo [00:22:45]:
So normally I don't— you have friends obviously where you live and whatever, but your friends, your industry friends. I mean, I look at Amanda and Debbie Conrad and Tracy Laney. And like, we are, when I travel and I get to see them, that's where I feel the best. I feel happy being able to see them on the road. Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:23:06]:
Oh yeah. Yeah. The travel is very under, let's call it appreciated within this industry, specifically because this industry, in my opinion now, is remote by default. You are remote by default if you are in this industry by default.

Amanda Faris [00:23:21]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:23:21]:
But like, then you have a couple hubs here and the Leeds Pedia has like their group in their office and et cetera, et cetera. But like for the most part, you could talk to and be someone like, oh, how's it going? Well, it's all right. And I did this. It's like, oh, what are you doing tonight? More of this. And then more of this. And then tomorrow some more of this. And you're like, oh God. Yeah, I recognize that.

Jim Banks [00:23:40]:
Yeah, it must have been that. For me, that's, that's my, I'm trying to teach myself like AI and I'm using Claude heavily to do more stuff. Purely and simply to enable me to do the work that I need to do in the way I've always done it and free up more time for me to go and see people. That's what I'm ultimately aiming for. I don't want to kind of like just use it for anything other than to free up more time to enable me to go and spend more time either speaking at conferences or what have you.

Rob Adler [00:24:07]:
So yeah, I'm the same.

Amanda Faris [00:24:12]:
Within AI, I'm like, absolutely. If it's AI, like I'm diving into every new platform just for fun. I just want to break things. And I like to call the prompts with friends like, you plug it into yours, now you plug it into yours.

Sara Malo [00:24:23]:
And see what happens.

Amanda Faris [00:24:25]:
Yeah, that's— it's fun, right? It's— last year was all, all the new platforms. Now it's like, how do you make my life actually easier? Like, without me having to program the entirety of it?

Rob Adler [00:24:33]:
Isn't, isn't that kind of the underlying tone of the affiliate industry, though, is a whole bunch of people find a whole bunch of really fun stuff they think is really cool, and then someone has the gall to go, wait, we have to make money from this? How much and when and how? Yeah, it's like, if you understand, this just, this just did everything I would have taken 8 hours to do and it did it better than me. Great. How do you make money off of it? But no, yeah, breaking AI is a chore.

Amanda Faris [00:24:59]:
That's just a group of entrepreneurs. You put them in a room, extra entrepreneurs, they're going to figure out a way to make anything out of anything, which is also the fun of it is just watching their, everyone's brains just tinker off this year of like, here's all the new stuff I'm going to do. And I'm just demoing platforms. At this point for fun and beta testing stuff just to learn what everybody's up to. And it's fascinating, like some of the integrations. Oh yeah. And rollups. I don't know if they're necessarily technically rollups at this point, but I'm like, there's some very interesting plays and interlocking APIs right now, which I'm, I'm gonna be real curious to see what rolls out in Q2.

Sara Malo [00:25:28]:
So did you guys see Evan Weber just built an AI thing where you like stay, did you guys join that, that little?

Rob Adler [00:25:34]:
I didn't join yet, but I saw it.

Sara Malo [00:25:36]:
Yeah, I, I just joined yesterday, but he's, he's brilliant. I've known Evan back when he was keynoting affiliate summits, but always he's here. Check this out. That's what I love about him. Every morning I'll be like, go check this out. Go, what do you think about this? So I would definitely recommend looking at that.

Jim Banks [00:25:53]:
I mean, Rob and I would have conversations when, before we, when it was just the two of us doing the, the podcast, we would, we would sit and talk and, and he would be so stressed with all the stuff. Again, I'm sure he was breaking things at a much bigger scale than most of us would ever even dream of doing. But I, I can't get the impression that you're at a point now where you are Probably in decent, more decent shape now, Rob, is that a fair assessment?

Sara Malo [00:26:16]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:26:17]:
So basically 80% of my grunt work is automated now. So like I haven't opened my email in a week. I haven't, as of tomorrow, I won't have to open my Telegram for a week. So it's, it's just, but it's small stuff. It's stuff you'd be like, you don't need AI for that. And I'm like, yeah, but it makes it better to use it that way. Give me a summary of an email and you're going off keywords. I can write you something with keywords that it'll say is bad, but then when you throw it through an LLM, it's no, he just said all the bad things are bad.

Rob Adler [00:26:42]:
It's really a good email. To like parsing email, doing stuff like that, prospecting, lead nurturing, dynamic email copy being sent out to users based on demographic profiles and engagement statistics, timing, news, all that kind of stuff. Like it's just, I find something, I let it roll and then I come back and see if it did anything. If it worked, cool, let's do more. If it didn't, I don't. Because here's the kicker, the, the scale of economics now is so low, like testing new copy now is 2 cents. It's, it used to be like $5, $10 for cheaper, okay content. Now I can write 1,000 custom emails around someone's demographic or psychographic profile with like really decent accuracy for less than 5 cents.

Amanda Faris [00:27:24]:
That's amazing.

Rob Adler [00:27:24]:
So it's like brilliant. So it's, it's, there's a lot of it. A lot of the people that are public right now are doing very good stuff. Like I do follow Evan's stuff. Like you mentioned, he, he's got his hands in some good stuff. But there's also a lot, there's a lot of people going like agency side and then affiliate side. I have a decent in with a lot of the affiliate side stuff. Those guys are crazy.

Rob Adler [00:27:45]:
Like I have some of them turning out 5,000 video ads a day to test and they kill 4,900 of them in an hour. And I'm just like, holy crap. But there are, there are people doing a lot of that. What I use it mainly for right now is unification. So I bring a lot of the different stuff into one, one thing, like a dashboard, like a lot of different data. Except now it's all data you can't normally get. So like, how many messages do I have on Telegram the last 24 hours? How many in Teams? How many on here? I got tagged in Teams. Should I look at it?

Jim Banks [00:28:17]:
I don't want to get any messages in Teams at all.

Rob Adler [00:28:19]:
This is why this was built, so I don't have to look at it.

Amanda Faris [00:28:22]:
There you go.

Sara Malo [00:28:22]:
I was to going say, does anybody— I mean, we miss Skype so much. And then everybody that went to Teams, I'm like, I am not opening that. I'm not. I'm not going into Teams. So if you don't have my cell When I get number— invited to a.

Jim Banks [00:28:34]:
Teams meeting, I'm like, Erin.

Amanda Faris [00:28:37]:
And I take it on our phones. We literally take it on our cell phones and our computers. I'm like, I refuse to get on. We'll not do it.

Rob Adler [00:28:43]:
All they had to do was leave Slack. That's all they had, or Skype. All they had to do was leave Skype and it would have worked fine. I, I still have people that tell me, they will message me on Telegram to tell me to check my Teams where I don't have a message that they sent 3 months ago. And I can literally, they can screenshot it, I'll screenshot it, we will screen share and literally I'll start typing and they'll be like, I see you typing. And I'm like, okay, I'll, and then they'll start typing. I go, I see you typing. they're And like, ready? Press enter.

Rob Adler [00:29:13]:
We both press enter. Neither of us see the message.

Sara Malo [00:29:16]:
Neither. So also Rob, that's so funny because that's been happening to me and somebody's, oh, well, and I go, I don't see that on my phone, but if I have, if I log in my Mac and PC.

Jim Banks [00:29:27]:
Yep.

Sara Malo [00:29:28]:
All 3 different areas, then I have to go search for the message. I go, no, we're just, if you don't text me, send me a message in Telegram. I mean, even Slack is better than, than Teams. So, oh God.

Rob Adler [00:29:41]:
You know how bad it is when people are saying message me on Facebook. That's when you know it's really bad. It's hey, this really serious business stuff that may hopefully never come up in court as evidence, message me on Facebook. Let's, let's have that open to subpoenas. Like, no, there's just so much bad stuff.

Amanda Faris [00:30:00]:
Let's not involve Meta. Thanks. Okay, moving on.

Jim Banks [00:30:02]:
Yeah, enough. Anywho, Link Unite 6 is coming up. When, when is, when are the dates for Link Unite 6, Amanda?

Sara Malo [00:30:10]:
You're gonna, yep, you're gonna ask the.

Amanda Faris [00:30:12]:
Dyslexic to say dates out loud. Yeah, no, we've got, we've got the next one coming up at about a week and a half, so it's February 23rd and 24th. And then we will be hopping to Kansas City in— I'm going to let Sarah say the dates in April.

Sara Malo [00:30:24]:
I'm just pulling up. Yep. So 19th through the 21st in Kansas City of April. And then we're doing Toronto, which is super popular and going to be awesome in Canada, the 28th through the 30th in June. And then we're going to do Fort Lauderdale sometime in November, early December. We— Affiliate World is, I think, the 9th and 10th of December. So we have a lot of our Link Unite members that do all the affiliate world. So we, we're still kind of adjusting those dates.

Sara Malo [00:30:54]:
And again, we have a master event calendar and we don't wanna run into anything like we happened in January where people are trying to pick and choose. So yeah, that last event, the fourth Signature Series, the dates will be announced soon, sooner than later, I hope.

Jim Banks [00:31:10]:
So if if any, anyone wants to learn more about Link Unite, where can they go? To find out about it?

Sara Malo [00:31:15]:
LinkUnite.live.

Amanda Faris [00:31:16]:
And on there, yep, LinkUnite.live.

Sara Malo [00:31:20]:
Yeah.

Amanda Faris [00:31:21]:
But on, on there, all the Austin information agenda is up. Kansas City will be up by the end of the week as well. But the registration links are live on LinkedIn and within our Discord groups for members. But, you know, obviously any of the ladies in the marketing or digital world that are in those cities and locales are more than welcome to join. It's free to attend. And that's the point is, is to gather up as many new individuals as possible and continue to grow the network. So.

Jim Banks [00:31:44]:
And do you, do you have any sort of plans to bring the event like internationally, like going to Europe or anything like that? Is that kind of like on the— Yeah.

Sara Malo [00:31:52]:
I mean, we, when, when Jim, when I met, we did do a small Lincolnite event when you had, you said you had mentioned meeting my kids when we were with Leanne. I just got off the phone with Leanne Johnstone before I joined with you guys. But yes, that's absolutely a plan to grow this globally. I mean, we have women in different countries that really, really could use the membership and the learning and the networking. Yeah. But it's just Amanda and I right now, so we're trying to figure out out how to make all that work. Or maybe AI can clone us down the road here. We.

Jim Banks [00:32:20]:
Never.

Sara Malo [00:32:20]:
Don'T clone us. We clone the AI.

Amanda Faris [00:32:23]:
We just make multiple AIs. That's that how works.

Jim Banks [00:32:25]:
Exactly. Yeah. But we're definitely using your original DNA. Yeah.

Sara Malo [00:32:31]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda Faris [00:32:32]:
I won't I won't mention even, even it.

Sara Malo [00:32:32]:
Oh yeah. There's so many kind, I mean, we have, we have women, I mean, International Women's Day is coming up. So we were, Amanda and I were looking at our membership and where people are from. We've got people in India and Israel. And so it's, we definitely want to bring this, this more on a global basis, hopefully soon.

Jim Banks [00:32:49]:
Because you remember a little while ago you were hustling to get 4,000 followers on your LinkedIn. You must be kind of like significantly more than that now.

Amanda Faris [00:32:57]:
We are. We are. Yeah, we're growing, growing into different industries. It's, it's been nice. It's the evolution.

Jim Banks [00:33:03]:
But I will make sure that, that at the end of the, once we upload the episode, that all of the information about LinkedInite and you ladies and LinkedIn, everything will be available on the show notes. So if you are watching this episode on YouTube, great. Hopefully you've enjoyed it. If you're listening to it on a podcast platform like Apple or Spotify, then go to the website that's, it'll be linked in the show notes and, and be able to get information about what Link Unite is all about. Again, for me, I, I love the, I love the ladies. I love the, the kind of, the initiative, what it's all about. And again, I just wanted to thank both of you for being on the show today. It's been great.

Jim Banks [00:33:35]:
Love to have you on again at some point.

Amanda Faris [00:33:37]:
Thank you for having us.

Jim Banks [00:33:38]:
Fantastic.

Amanda Faris [00:33:38]:
We always love talking with you, of course.

Sara Malo [00:33:40]:
So yeah, I feel like we could, this could go on for hours if you'd let it.

Jim Banks [00:33:44]:
Oh yeah. Could go on for a while, but yeah, we'll leave it there. Unfortunately, thank you. I've got proper work to do, which.

Rob Adler [00:33:50]:
I hate, but that's all right, we can automate that.

Amanda Faris [00:33:54]:
I love Rob. Part B of this conversation is who are we going to clone first to make all of our coffee? Rob.

Sara Malo [00:34:01]:
Rob. We need more Robs.

Amanda Faris [00:34:03]:
Yes, all of the Robs. These are all the clones. I like this.

Jim Banks [00:34:07]:
Anyway, if you've been watching or listening, thank you for doing Your support for the, the podcast is great. Rob, great to see you as ever. Amanda, as always, lovely to catch up with you, and we'll talk to you on the next episode.

Sara Malo [00:34:20]:
Amazing. Thank you.