Frank has a true heavy-hitter on his hands for this episode. Ms. Cherie Constance, Marketing Director and affiliate manager boss lady at Secured Investment Corp is here, and she gives Frank a run for his money…
Cherie and her JV efforts brought in over $2mm in revenue last year WITHOUT a sales team, and she’s here to dish how she did it, what trends she’s seen over the years in the affiliate space, and what are green lights and what are deal breakers when considering affiliate partnerships. In short? Don’t be rude. Or you’ll be toast.
Have questions/comments/concerns? Email us at support@theaffiliateincubator.com
- Meet Cherie: She is a POWERHOUSE. She is Marketing Director of Secured Investment Corp, which is a funding solution with multiple arms. Hear how they work with affiliates. 00:50
- The Circle Of Wealth: You can be a jack-of-all-trades… 3:26
- Make Your Ecosystem Cozy: How to entice people to stay with you because you add THAT much consistent value 4:27
- Basement Warriors: The recession was painful for everyone, but ONE affiliate partner rescued them from the end 5:50
- No Sales Floor Required: Cherie brought in $2MM last year, just through her JV partnerships 7:30
- Project Management vs. Biz Development: Don’t let “affiliate manager” fool you – it’s a sales gig 8:48
- Brokers Be Going Broke: Why affiliate brokers aren’t players anymore 9:41
- Affiliate Criteria: Cherie dishes on the criteria she looks at to partner with affiliates – don’t judge a book by it’s cover, don’t knock the geezers and trust your instincts 11:14
- Message To Market Match: Stop with the smoke and mirrors – know your affiliate avatars, and know what synergies work best 13:18
- Don’t Be Rude: Plus other deal-breakers for moving forward with a partnership 15:24
- Flash In The Pan: If you don’t have your sh*t together, your reputation will spiral. Take care of your customers or be gone 17:09
- Blame Game: It’s your job to get customers over the finish line, be their support system and fight buyer’s remorse 19:17
- Integrate Yourself: One-off promotions won’t keep you thriving. Strive for strategic partnerships 23:08
- How Can You Work With Cherie? There are opportunities on the table – reach out if any of these strike you 25:01
- Are You Like Us? Let us know how your industry compares – let’s learn from each other 27:54
Guest Bio
- Cherie Constance, Director Of Marketing, Secured Investment Corp
External Resources
- https://securedinvestmentcorp.com
- https://leearnoldsystem.com/lp
- Check Out Our Courses
- cherie@securedinvestmentcorps.com
Music Credits
Tangerine Dreams by Animal Behaviour
Check out Animal Behaviour on Spotify
Transcription
Welcome to the affiliate mastery podcast a show about making money online and mastering the affiliate game. Your host, Frank Chen.
Frank: Hey, what’s going on everybody Frank Chen here with The Affiliate Mastery Podcast, and welcome to another episode!
Today we’re gonna be talking about a really great industry, something that I’ve been a part of for the last 12 years, and I have a great guest with us today. This is someone that I’ve known for probably the last eight plus years, we’ve done a ton of business together. But what makes her super super special is that she’s actually has a lot more skill sets than me and I love that I got to learn more about this over the last two years.
She is the VP of Marketing for Secured investment Corp. They’re a funding solution for real estate investors, but they have multiple arms that kind of bleed into the real estate space. And I’m gonna have her kind of talk a little bit about how their business works, but more importantly, how they work with affiliates.
Now she is a rock star when it comes to copywriting. She’s a rock star when it comes to presentations. And she’s a rock star when it comes to making your life significantly easier when working with their company from an affiliate standpoint. And this is exactly why I’ve been able to work with her over the last eight years. I’ve sold software to their company because they’ve been in masterminds together with me, and really they just do great business. So it’s my great honor to have a friend on our show today. But also someone who is a master at her craft, Miss Cherie Constance, how are you today?
Cherie: I’m good. Thank you, Frank.
Awesome. So when I knew I was gonna have a guest on, I thought “who would be one of my first people on to talk about affiliate management, making money?” You and I have conversations always offline. And I think we’ve talked like 30-60 minutes always. And it’s like 50% work 50% life. So I enjoy connecting with you on multiple, on those two fronts. But for our listeners out there, you know, this podcast is all about kind of opening the doors to other industries, getting insights of how they operate, but more importantly, how they play with affiliates and other spaces and how they kind of monetize these relationships. So kind of give us an idea, like what does a VP of Marketing do for a company like Secured investment Corp, and give us an idea of what Secured investment Corp does, and what honey pots their hands are in right now.
Cherie: Yes, so Secured investment Corp is kind of a multi – like I was saying – tentacle beast. We have several different companies that are offshoots from Secured Investment Corp – Secured Investment Corp is that actual lending part of the company, so that’s where we bring in all our one-off lenders. That’s where we have our high yield funds. So we have a fund that is for accredited investors, and we actually have a fund that is for anybody. So anyone can actually join into that fund and make a passive income off of it. So that’s, that’s Secured Investment Corp.
And then we have these offshoots, where there’s the Lee Arnold system of education. That’s where we actually teach people how to do real estate, that’s where all of our products sit. Then we have our COGO capital, which is actually where we bring in the loans. That’s where our loan analysts and our loan officers sit.
Basically what we’re trying to accomplish is full, you know, what we call the “circle of wealth” type of thing. So we have the education, we have the funding, we have the ability for them to get involved in the lending part. And then we kind of hope that they’ll actually continue on that journey and never take the off ramp off the circle of wealth. So that’s, that’s the idea of it.
Then what I do for the company is I help create those relationships so that we can spread the news, we can get deals out and and funding into the right pockets of individuals who have great deals, and then we can teach them how to find them and and how to actually manage the deal to fruition. So that’s kind of the core of what we want to accomplish in our business. We kind of want to just do everything for everybody….. so, which you’re not supposed to do that, you’re not supposed to be everything to everybody, but that’s what we’re trying to accomplish.
Frank: Yeah, what’s interesting about that is we’ve been we’ve been a few masterminds and events together and I feel like guys who are like serial entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurs in our space who own multiple companies – they seem to share the same thought process, which is: “well, we started this way but now we have all these third party companies, why don’t we just acquire a company to help do this specific function or feature in our business?” – whether it’s marketing, or an ads company or like a funding solution or like a loan origination company… they just buy them and now put it under the umbrella and keep it in their ecosystem, which is exactly what you guys did, right? The circle of wealth is keeping people within your ecosystem, right?
Cherie: Everything that’s under that ecosystem was created by us, we didn’t really buy anything except for the software that that we bought with you. But everything else was created. It was it was really by kind of by design and kind of by happenstance, so, you know, after the 2008 to 2011 crisis – I mean a lot of JV partners out there I understand that it was extremely painful. And it was extremely painful for Lee, he lost a lot of money and we were just hanging there.
There was a point where we were working out of his basement and all this crazy stuff happened, but what what came of that was the brokering program, and we’ve only built and refined that over time. It was doing a webinar – I don’t know if I can say names, can I say names?
Frank: That’s up to you. We want to get nitty gritty with people, or we could just…
Cherie: I was doing a webinar with Cameron Dunlap. He was instrumental to us surviving, actually, and I don’t even know if he knows that, he probably does Lee and he are quite close. Doing that webinar with him was instrumental to us being able to bring in capital and continue and build from basically the ground up at that point.
Frank: I’ve heard multiple stories, you guys are not alone in that space in terms of people who were over-leveraged or leverage heavily back in ’08-’09. They had online businesses that were surrounded around their investing business. For those who didn’t know, that’s when like, more or less the mortgage crisis of ’08-’09, where a lot of loans were over leveraged by underperforming real estate and the market started shifting, people lost a crap ton of equity. So people were scrambling, selling off all of their portfolios, and it was just a wild, wild, wild west situation.
What’s really cool here is by being able to lean in on an affiliate partner, their company was able to attract enough capital to really launch their next product, which really helped set up the next 10 plus years really, that’s, that’s pretty insane.
Just so you guys know, just last year, Cherie blew me out of the water in terms of like, one to one because she’s exclusive with the Secured Investment Corp – they did over $2 million, with affiliates. We talk about gross numbers, we very rarely use net numbers when we talk about gross sales. But they did over $2 million last year with their affiliates. So other three kind of offshoots you were talking about, where did that majority come from? Was it the education side, the loan side?
Cherie: Yeah, and I should mention that is just from what I do – so that is not even from what the [sales] floor brings in. Everything that I bring in has to be not touched by one of our sales representatives. That’s just from everything I brought in through my JV partnerships, and everything.
Frank: So what’s really interesting about what she just said there is – I’m that same way too, in terms of my clients, they always ask, “okay, so am I paying you on the things that we have already established? And then you’re coming over to take over? Or is it all a new business that you attract?” So it’s not uncommon for people to really set these criteria for us – I think what I’ve realized over the last month or so Cherie is like this role is predominantly business development. Would you agree?
Cherie: Definitely.
Frank: Right. Because affiliate management, joint venture manager… honestly, guys, this is a business development role. You’re having a ton of conversations with affiliates. The management side is more like project management. Cherie works with multiple teams: as she was kind of alluding to she has a sales team, she has a marketing team. Yes, she handles some marketing herself. But she doesn’t do sales, her sales team does. She also has an accounting team has to report to, a recording team to help coordinate the scheduler to work with Lee, (who is the face of Secured Investment Corp), right.
So she has to project manage all of these moving parts with multiple affiliates in a single week, a single month. So there’s a lot of that going on. A lot of people think like, “well, I’m just promoting your product. I’m just using a link. Now I’m your affiliate,” like, yes, you’re an affiliate, but you’re not an a manager of anything. So I wanted to be very clear with what this role entails.
Now, I’m not sure how this bleeds into other industries.
I know back in the day – do you still remember affiliate brokers? – so affiliate brokers were so popular about 8-10 years ago.. they basically created a relationship. They didn’t really do that much work, and they got paid a pretty generous percentage of sales from a promotion that they set up. Do you see that there are a lot less of those now? Or do you still work with brokers?
Cherie: I mean, it’s hard to even…I don’t even know if they’re called brokers now. I work with people who work with several different JV partners. But I know that in that space, they’re actually setting up emails, they’re making sure that everything set up in Infusionsoft correctly, they’re checking on each other’s webinars. I mean, they’re doing a lot more than just setting up a relationship and letting it fly. I don’t think anyone just does that anymore. They do the whole enchilada, when it comes to making sure that everything works, you know, seamlessly
Frank: I’m liking that we’re transitioning more into that model now. Because man, to get paid 5% of a promotion by just having someone shake hands…man that’s super generous. For someone on the other side of here, is doing a lot more work and making the same it’s kind of hard to, like, get past that.
So when you guys are typically looking for an affiliate to work with, obviously, you guys are a pretty big brand now, you guys have a great following. In my opinion, you guys have more pull, more more clout as they would say, than others. Therefore, you’re able to swing your weight around a little bit more and make a little bit more demand. What are some criteria that you guys typically look for before even saying yes to work with an affiliate?
Cherie: I think the affiliate managers are huge in the fact that once you’ve developed a relationship with each other, you’re a lot more apt to push some of the products that they’re representing. So that makes a big difference. There are a few people in the space that I know and trust, so if they come to me with an offer, I’ll put it in front of my database.
We just did a webinar with someone who’s older in the space. He’s been around for quite a while. I did it kind of as a favor, not knowing how it would do. The webinar’s super outdated, everything is old school. So it was more like an experiment, and it was a very good experiment we did, he crushed to our database. So I think it’s a testament to the database, but I also think it’s a testament to the fact that he knows what he’s doing. He’s been around the block a few times, and you can’t judge. We have these people who have software systems, and they’re super flashy, and everything’s smooth. And then you have something that’s books and tapes, you know. I have learned over the years that you don’t – you cannot judge a basically a book by the cover, you just have to trust your instincts, trust the JV manager on the other side, and, and hope for the best.
And I believe it. Sometimes we do stuff to our database that are crushing to other people’s databases, and it just bombs to our database. I think it’s the message you know, it’s the the message to market match. Sometimes we we tend to attract an older audience, and sometimes those flashy – not necessarily software – certain things just don’t for some reason work with my database.
Frank: I’m right there with you. One of my clients – specifically leads, right – any type of offer regarding getting you new leads, off market leads, hidden sources of leads, all these other leads, just doesn’t work to one of my lists, but it crushes everything else. To any real estate business leads is literally the most important thing. So it blows my mind that something that’s so important to a business is not selling well.
That’s to the point is that – I talked about this on one of my short videos it was called “the affiliate avatar” -this one I’ve been really paying close attention to. Secured Investment Corp has a very specific affiliate avatar, so I know what products to bring to you guys. I know what synergies work best with your company. It would make no sense and waste all my time if I brought you stuff that just didn’t resonate. So to your point, like one of the conversations I would have with Cherie is what hasn’t been working well to her list, and she’ll tell me these three, four or five products, and then that’ll give me information on whether these will be working with my clients.
When you guys are out there, like really establishing relationships are about to figure out “am I going to work with them or not?” You got to really figure out what does work for them, because a lot of effort does go behind these promotions. Like Cherie writes the copy, she creates the sales page, make sure the sales team’s ready, blocks off the time on the calendar. I mean, that’s a revenue opportunity that she’s securing for somebody else that she knows she could probably do six figures with, but she’s like, yeah, “I’m gonna take a chance on this.”
So it’s really, really important guys, that you’re having the right conversations, and not just “hey, how do we make money together, you promote me, I promote you. Okay?” So really think about that more deeply.
Now, one of the things I also wanted to ask you is, what type of things would happen in affiliate relationship, where you guys would be like, “okay, we’re just not going to work with these people ever again,” What’s kind of like a non negotiable?
Cherie: So one of the things that I think over the years that has been my biggest pet peeve is just confusion and lack of follow up, and then people who are rude. There are people out there who are just rude. And so, I’ve learned how to speak with them, but I prefer to speak with people who are kind and they understand that we’re all in the same business together, that we’re all working together for the good of the client, number one, the good of our businesses, and the ability to actually bring these people into our fold.
I know that there are a lot of JV partners out there who really – that is their core value system, is their client and their client’s success. That is one of the biggest things that we want to partner with is people who have those values. Not people who are out there to make a quick, quick dime, and not just have transactional relationships with their clients. To be completely honest, I think a lot of the people who were like that are no longer in the space. I think that that just is because of the value system that they had. Eventually that will catch up to you.
Frank: It’s so funny, I was actually recording another video for my social channels and that was exactly what I was talking about: if you guys are in this business purely for the transaction, I think you’ll probably survive a year just to your capital, but your reputation will quickly- it’s like the inverse reaction, when you’re making this kind of money and thinking about money and not the customer or the experience, your business goes down this way. Trust me, that is the quickest way to have your to be out of this industry.
I’ve worked with affiliates who are like, “oh, I have a great product,” and they did – they were they were in the luxury b&b space, great guys, met him out of mastermind, they were so hopeful, but they came out with the wrong mentality, like “how do I sell, sell, sell, sell,” and didn’t even think about fulfillment, customer experience. I think they like 70% refunds – it was like almost like they were The Scarlet Letter. No one was willing to work with him anymore. Yeah, like it was literally like high refunds, and they weren’t paying people on time. And again, it was not like – I can’t blame them, because they were very new to the space and they didn’t have a good direction, or consultation, I should say. What’s interesting is a lot of people out there are like that. As Cherie said, we’ve been here for about a decade, and I would probably say maybe 30% of people are still here is that safe to say?
Cherie: Yeah. I know we have newbies coming in, and I welcome them, I’m excited to see what they can bring to the table. And we’d love to work with them. If they have the value system that we uphold, which is to take care of your customers.
In this space, you are always going to have angry customers just because there are people out there who buy the dream, but don’t put it into… they don’t implement it or put into action and they have that sour taste in their mouth from that experience. But what we’ve seen over the years, and this is with a lot of our JV partners and their products, is that once people actually implement and put them into motion, they do experience that success and it’s exciting to watch.
Yes. What are your thoughts when people or product owners say “well, it’s not my fault they don’t put it to use.”
It’s easy to say that and I get it. I mean, it’s like, well, you bought it, you should just unwrap that thing and put it into motion. And for everybody out there, we all do it. We all go to the store, we buy the dress or whatever and think that we’re going to look like whatever right? So, we all have that dream and then there’s that reality that hits, that somewhat buyer’s remorse. It’s our job to help them take that dream to reality. But at the same time there are people out there who are constant buyers, they’re constantly bringing stuff in, setting it on their shelf and and never look at again. I don’t agree with just like, “well you bought it, it’s up to you to do something with it.” I think that we’re here as a support system to help. And that’s important to us as a company.
Frank: I’m glad you said that, because we emphasize a lot around community support. I mean, you’re hitting all the points, I’m glad we’re talking about this, because it is important for you guys to hear this – is how to sell more products. People are like “how do I that?” That will be another episode that we’re going to do, actually in Episode Two, you should check it out ee actually just completed this the other day.
On Episode Two we talked about how selling your product isn’t about making adjustments to your offer, or making adjustments to your money back guarantee. It’s about getting more people over the finish line, and then leaning in on those people because they’ll actually help you sell more product. So definitely check out that episode, it’s awesome and I even give you guys an action plan of how to implement this if you have products, and you aren’t leaning in on your buyers yet. This is gold. So watch that episode – you too Cherie, you’ll love it. It’s a good one.
So what are some things that you guys look for? For our listeners out there who are like maybe in the industry, maybe the lending industry, or maybe in the real estate side of things. What are some cool ways that they can maybe work with a company like yours? Like what do you look for for you to be like, “you know what? That’s a yes.”?
Cherie: So one of the things that we we look for – I mean, obviously people can add to our business, and we can add to theirs. Right now we’re working with a couple of JV partners to add our funding to their delivery systems. Part of their delivery would be the ability to apply for loans through COGO capital. The way we do that is we are able to compensate them for bringing us not the lead, but an actual good deal. How we do that is we actually pay the application fee to them, and then proof of funds and those types of things. So they get paid for bringing us the lead, and then we can take that deal. Once they’ve they’ve hit that application stage, then we can actually work it to a higher level. A lot of you know a lot of people come in and they have – they think they have deals but they don’t.
We we once they’ve put all that information in, we can help them massage the deal, but in some cases, you know, it’s one of those things like you just need more education and we can pump them back to the JV partner and say your this is your customer and they clearly need a little bit more education in this realms, there may be something that you can offer them.
Frank: So what I’m hearing here is something I’ve been preaching to all my clients: it’s not about webinars and vsl’s. I think those are still working well. But it’s really about the strategic partnerships. I was looking at my profit and loss sheets last year, where did all my revenue come from? Believe it or not, the majority of my money came from consulting, and setting up strategic partnerships and integrating myself into that process.
Like one of them was telling you guys, it wasn’t last year was like two years ago with selling you guys on software, it was the first time it opened up my eyes. And for those who don’t know or listening to the first time I helped broker a software deal with Cherie’s company. How I did this was I was in another networking group, I met this guy named Dan Schwartz out of Austin, Texas, he’s he’s in the tech space. He developed a really cool piece of software they were looking to sell, they needed more capital in order to pull into another software that we’re working on. I brought this up at a mastermind -this is all affiliate marketing, this is what affiliates do, right? you talk about other people’s products – I created that opportunity at a mastermind and thankfully, Lee and Cherie were there the same time, it was the first one Cherie went to and they’re like “we would like to know more can you connect us?” I made that connection, facilitated that deal, Of course Lee’s team did the majority of the work, but they included me on that.
Man that was a five figure payday for me. That was awesome. So it’s about looking for these right partnerships in your business, not how do I sell this one thing that I have because I made it into a product.
If you got into this business, and your core business is the actual thing that you’re doing (like real estate, I’m actually an investor, I just happened to have an online business). Get yourself out of the online side I started thinking “what do I need in my actual investing business?” and think about the partnerships within your industry, because a lot of people are selling Lee’s products more like likely can offer these other strategic partnerships now it’s really just thinking Outside the Box.
That kind of leads me to my next follow up question: Are there any specific strategic partnerships that you guys are discussing, that you’re maybe excited to pursue over the next six months, 12 months, and maybe one of our listeners, hopefully they fall in that category, maybe reach out to you guys, as well?
Cherie: We’re always looking for people… like I was talking to, I won’t say his name, but he was interested in doing some sort of event, like we do, like the old events where we’d have multiple speakers. We haven’t done that for a really long time. And so I was talking about it, “well, maybe now is the right time to do something like that.” So there was that, and then there was the idea of actually perhaps having him be a face for one of our certifications. But, you know, that’s, that’s something that we could do.
Frank: If it came from like a deal flow perspective: could ya’ll use more deals for your students?
Cherie: Absolutely.
Frank: Okay, so if you guys are listening, you guys are in the real estate space. Are you looking for wholesalers? Fix’n flippers? What type of lead source do you guys need?
Cherie: We would need the fix and flip because the wholesaler doesn’t need cash, for the most part. We would need the actual fix and flipper, people who are looking to get funding and rehab funding for their deals. That’s who we’re looking for. And then people who want to refinance deals to pour money into other deals, we can do that too.
Frank: Awesome. How can they get more information regarding Secured Investment Corp, if they wanted to reach out to you connect with you, and we talk about some potential affiliate opportunities? What’s the best way for people to get a hold of you?
Cherie: So they can email me, my email is Cherie C-H-E-R-I-E @ SecuredInvestmentCorp – and that’s S-E-C–U-R-E-D I-N-V-E-S-T-M-E-N-T C-O-R-P .com. It is like the longest email address…
Frank: I’ll put it in the show notes. I really wanted her to spell it out and see how that was gonna go. Good job!
This just just further indicates why college was useless to me, because I have trouble with basic spelling and grammar and yet you and I do copywriting. So this just proves to you guys, that experience can carry you much further than a four year education with something that’s completely unrelated to what I’m doing right now.
But, yes, reach out to Cherie guys, if you’re in the real estate space, or any other industry, what I want you guys to focus on today is… and feel free to leave us a comment, send us a message reach out to us on our social channels…is how similar is our conversation to your industry?
Are you guys struggling with finding good joint ventures, the protection of your list dealing with shady people, people who don’t pay on time? What are your struggles in your business? If they’re very similar to us, I would love to have a conversation with you guys as well. Maybe you can offer us some solutions that you guys have come up with, and vice versa.
That’s really what we’re here to do is create awareness in other industries and types of businesses that are… what would what can you say Secured Investment Corp did last year in total gross revenue? Are you able to share that? Random figure, well, not a random but a close enough figure, “oh $40 billion!”
Cherie: It was over $20 million.
Frank: So they’re definitely not a small fry. A lot of my clients are probably within the $1-5 million. A lot of them are striving for the first $10,000,000. One of the guys that we know, he does a very successful business. I think he just said he broke $10 million last year. So that’s kind of a metric in our space. You guys are doing exceptionally well, you guys are definitely at the higher echelon of affiliates, as well as products as well as service. I talk so highly about Secured Investment Corp.
But more importantly, your team Cherie, I think you’re the highlight of the business and love setting people your way. And it’s because you’re easy to work with. So I hope you guys can kind of learn from this conversation. I probably just net in my pocket have done well in the six figures just with Secured Investment Corp over the last eight years – like we made a lot of money. Yeah, we’ve made a lot of money together, and that’s because we care about this relationship. And we have similar values that are in alignment. If you’re getting into this business for the first time, I really want you guys to think about the core foundation of your business, and I promise you t’s gonna carry you through at least for a decade, at least for a decade.
So hopefully this was helpful. Thank you so much Cherie for being here today. Love the information we covered, you’re a rock star at what you do. Stay tuned guys I want to thank you guys so much for being here again today, if you guys want more information regarding affiliate management, consulting and training and really how to really level up your business, check out theaffiliateincubator.com, that’s my business. We’re here to take calls, answer your questions, see how we can add value where we can so with that, take care guys, stay tuned for the next episode.
Remember if you did enjoy this, remember to follow us on all our social channels. It is The Affiliate Incubator, and it’s all the social channels – YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, maybe do Tick Tock I don’t know how to do that yet. We’ll figure that out. But check us out like us on LinkedIn. I love to connect with more people and of course, reach out to Cherie and we’ll talk to you guys next time. Take care everybody. Thanks, bye!
