Managers are for burger joints, not affiliate programs. Seriously, I can’t stand…no, scratch that…I HATE the term “Affiliate Manager.” In this episode, I’m sharing why it drives me crazy…and what we should be calling ourselves instead.Managers are for burger joints, not affiliate programs. Seriously, I can’t stand…no, scratch that…I HATE the term “Affiliate Manager.” In this episode, I’m sharing why it drives me crazy…and what we should be calling ourselves instead.
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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy
Oops! This Affiliate Program Totally Blew It (Here’s How to Avoid Their Mistake)
7 Things Every Affiliate Manager Needs to Know About the Holiday Season
7 Keys to Successful Affiliate Management During the Holidays
How to Help Your Affiliates Write Better Emails
7 Affiliate Management LIES That Will Kill Your Program
Should we Stop Using the Term “Affiliate Manager”?
Managers are for fast food restaurants, not affiliate programs. I’ve decided that I can’t stand, or better yet, I hate the term affiliate manager. And I share why in this episode. Let’s get started. So I said in the last episode that today’s episode would be featuring a special guest, Jamie Atkinson. And you’re not going to hear Jamie today in his amazing British accent. You’re going to hear just me ranting about why I hate the term affiliate managers.
Why is that not why do I hate affiliate managers? I’ll talk about that in a second. But why do we not have Jamie on? It’s because in today’s world, things are kind of crazy and we had stuff scheduled all well intentioned and then I had to go and get sick and then we just couldn’t get things scheduled. So you will hear from him soon. I think we’re going to reschedule that for sometime in September. And I apologize if you’re a Jamie Atkinson fan and you were looking forward to that, but we’re going to have that coming up soon. So. I am often called an affiliate manager, as you might imagine. I’ve called myself an affiliate manager.
I think my LinkedIn profile says I’m an affiliate manager. I say I’ve been an affiliate manager for guys like Kevin Harrington and Rich Sheffer and Michael Hyatt. You know, I’ve run the affiliate programs for, you know, all these companies like Adidas and Shutterfly. But I’ve always kind of had an uneasy term with it. I shouldn’t say always. I’ve had it for about the last seven or eight years. And then the other day I heard Seth Godin say something that really struck me, struck me to the core. I interviewed him recently and you’ll get to hear that episode coming up in November. Actually, we’re that far ahead, except for Jamie’s. We’re that far ahead with our content. It’s amazing.
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But I interviewed him the other day and I was relistening to something of his where I was listening to it. Anyway, I heard him say, you know, he was like, if you work in fast food, you might be a manager. If you work in fast food, you might be a manager. In a fast food restaurant. The manager is in charge, the manager has authority and then the manager can tell people what to do. And he pointed out, like in the fast food world, that’s necessary. If you’re not flipping burgers the way you’re supposed to flip burgers, you fire them. You fire them. And if they’re doing it well, then you reward them. And he said that management requires authority. And he talked about how, like, you know that authority that comes from the industrial hierarchy, right? It’s the authority to insist that people do what you tell them to do. And he talked about how if you’re in a job, in a good job, you don’t have a lot of authority usually, but what you have instead is a chance to lead, a chance to engage with others and show them a better future that they can choose to opt into. And that’s the thing is like, leadership is voluntary, management is a title.
Management is a position. And in our world, as thought leaders, as content creators, you can’t force someone to follow you. If you force them, then you’re a manager. Leadership involves involvement. It involves seeing other people and allowing, like helping them choose to raise their hand and follow you. And one thing I’ll never forget that he said was more authority doesn’t make you a better leader. More authority doesn’t make you a better leader. I mean, look at history. Some of the worst leaders in the world had tons of authority.
Wouldn’t call them leaders. Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini. I wouldn’t call them leaders. They weren’t leaders of their country. They just had a lot of authority. And so what I got from that, when I was listening, I was just like, golly, this term is troubling to me because I don’t want to be a manager, I want to be a leader. And as leaders, what we have to do is stand on a platform and we, we end up getting authority that’s not given to us, if that makes sense. Authority isn’t given in this particular case.
It’s. It’s earned. I don’t want to be a manager. And here’s the thing. Affiliates don’t want to be managed. Affiliates want a partner. Affiliates want someone who helps them. Affiliates want someone who guides them. Affiliates don’t want to be managed. They don’t want to be told what to do. So by definition, they don’t have a manager. You can’t manage an entrepreneur.
It’s impossible. But you can lead an entrepreneur, you can guide an entrepreneur, you can partner with an entrepreneur, you can help an entrepreneur, you can serve an entrepreneur. And so I don’t necessarily have a better title right now. I really don’t. But I believe that words are important. Words are super important. And I think there’s a connotation in the phrase affiliate manager. As ubiquitous as it is, as common as it is, and as is like almost. We don’t even think about the term necessarily.
I think there’s a message in that term alone that’s important to acknowledge and important to change. And so it might be like partner liaison, you know, I mean, but even then, that’s a term we’ve heard. It’s like, well, liaison kind of middleman, I think, is how I interpret liaison. I’m actually going to look that up. I’m kind of curious. What is the technical definition? Liaison. A liaison. A contact or communication. A liaison between parents and teachers. Okay, so it’s like, you know, one person is married. No, that’s definitely not it. Let’s see. Okay. Means of communication between units, different groups or units of an organization, especially in the armed forces. Yeah. An agent between parties, an intermediary.
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So kind of like. Yeah, like I thought it’s a. You know, it’s a middleman. That’s not what we want. Don’t want a middleman. So, I don’t know, I’d like to hear from you. What are some terms that maybe you think would be better? I don’t want to. I don’t want to be a director again. I want. I don’t want to manage somebody. I want to be a partner to them. I want to help them. I want to be a guide. Maybe that’s it. The affiliate guide, right? Is it G U Y? Postrophy? D? You know, you’ve been affiliate guide. What? I don’t know. So we’ll call all of our people who take our courses. They’ve been affiliate guide. No, that’s just. That’s just wrong, you know, Again, they don’t want to be told what to do. They want to be guided.
They want to be served. So I’m curious to hear from you. So hit me up on social media. Just go to mattmcwaims.com Facebook and hit our Facebook page. Hit me up there. Let me know what’s a term that you’re thinking would be better than affiliate manager? I want to hear from you because I’m looking for a better term and I don’t have it. Right now, so let me know. But I think no matter what, I’m pretty confident that the term affiliate manager needs to go out. It has negative connotations to the types of people that we’re working with.
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We’re working with entrepreneurs, working with people who don’t want to be managed. So with that, I’ll wrap up. And next Tuesday, I have another amazing episode coming up for you. I’m going to share with you how to create your ideal customer avatar and I’m going to walk you through how we created Pete. Pete is our avatar and I’m going to share with you exactly how we came up with him and how we ultimately were able to use that avatar. To really get clear on who I’m speaking to on this podcast, I’m speaking to one person right now.
Just happens to be you. I was speaking to one person and that’s Pete. And you know, yeah, maybe we should have chosen a gender neutral name. Well, we didn’t at the time. I mean, we chose Pete and they were not changing that because there’s a whole backstory to that that I’ll share in the podcast. But yeah, we’re going to share that how to create your ideal customer avatar. It’s going to be an amazing episode. So keep listening. Have an I don’t know when you’re listening to this, so have an amazing weekend or Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, whatever today the week is. Have an amazing holiday, if it’s a holiday, and I’ll see you in the next episode.
See you soon.