Todd Crawford 0:00
To me, getting you to sign a contract to license our software is, you know, a transaction. But the opportunity to work together as partners to help other companies grow their business. That to me is really what's rewarding and exciting about this company.
Matt O'Leary 0:18
I'm Matt O'Leary, and you're listening to the influence hacker podcast. Our purpose is to educate everyday consumers such as myself to be more critically minded and discerning, while equipping marketers to be more ethical and effective as they strive to influence consumers.
This episode is about a true marketing hero who helped to transform a stagnant, industry prone exploited of business practices. The hero, Todd Crawford, co founder of impact the industry affiliate marketing.
Todd will share his rise to prominence and public recognition, starting from the market opportunity at impacts infancy.
We'll also explore impacts legacy and the business logic, the values and motivations that led them to sustain success in this corner of the marketing world. But first, we'll also need to understand the dark side of the affiliate industry. Just what was it that Todd was up against? Today, affiliate marketing is rapidly becoming professionalized and earning legitimacy. But in its beginnings, there were those who are willing to exchange ethics for fat wallets. They congregated in this affiliate arena, which for very good reason earned it a very bad reputation impacts a digital marketing company that sells data driven marketing services of various types. They're also an saps or software as a service platform, meaning they host applications and make them web based for customers.
Todd Crawford 2:32
My name is Todd Crawford. I am Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and co founder at impact. We are a 500 person global company. We started in 2008 and launched the company in 2010. To help brands advertisers, enable partnerships globally at scale. And we're lucky to have brands like Target Uber, Lenovo, and Capital One as customers.
Matt O'Leary 3:02
Affiliate marketing is one of many types of partnerships. Partnership is the umbrella term describing the complementary relationship between two or more businesses. Affiliate marketing is a specific time tested business model involving two parties, the merchant selling the product or service and an affiliate who promotes that product. Revenue in the affiliate model comes from performance based deals like coupon and loyalty sites. So performance marketing, partnerships, these are broad. All affiliate marketing falls within that it's specific affiliate marketing historically has attracted some bad actors, the type who might justify their crockery with cliched rationalizations like eat or be eaten, or some my fault the customer doesn't read the fine print. Just go Google search the phrase and the first page gives you all you could ever dream. I mean, just a smattering of headlines here we got quick and easy money making guru strategies. One article really betrays the dodgy reputation corners of the affiliate industry, the ethical way to earn money online, as if that's a real novelty in the space.
John Lenker 4:18
When a market is new, and it hasn't figured itself out. It hasn't come up with all its rules. You know, people can come in and they can take advantage of, of the ignorance of the regulators and of the market and they can try to exploit you get while the getting's good until somebody turns the lights on.
Matt O'Leary 4:37
That was one of my partners in this project, John Lenker, who witnessed the fake countdown clocks and left field sales pitches and affiliate marketing's beginnings. As you may have heard in our first two episodes, my other partner in this podcast is former academic philosopher Kevin Miller plot, Kevin brilliantly lays out the two forces or possible causes of this problem in affiliate marketing.
Kevin deLaplante 4:59
I think We have a distribution of people and types of people who are more or less attracted to opportunities that could be exploitative. On the one hand, and on the other hand, you have a distribution of market opportunities that vary in the degree to which they're exploitable, or that they can be used to exploit people. And those two curves of distribution intersect in ways which are going to generate all the possible combinations. I do think that there are market opportunities that are by themselves that in their nature are more exploitable. In the sense that, for example, if you have a wild west environment for a new kind of technology, where you don't have oversight, there are opportunities that present that contempt people even who would or wouldn't otherwise be tempted, I mean, the old parable and Plato of the ring of guy, Geez, it's a ring of invisibility. So you have people who have a threshold where I would never exploit someone in this way. But use hard to predict what you would do. If you really had no constraints, if you are free to act with impunity. Because of the the the nature of regulation and lack of regulation, there are opportunities in the market where it's a bit like that you can act with relative impunity over at least a short period of time. And then it becomes like a big land rush. For certain kinds of people.
Matt O'Leary 6:23
Connecting with John and Kevin have said here, there are certain market opportunities that are more exploitable by nature. And affiliate marketing was certainly in that camp when it first began, as a new and undeveloped way to make money. You know, regulators and consumers were less aware of the sales techniques involved, and a little less savvy to detect suspicious activity and avoid scams. And think about it with less competition in the market comes in almost unavoidable stagnancy.
Todd Crawford 6:54
If I'm selling leads, I'm trying to blend the crap with the, you know, the I say, the silver and gold with the straw in such a way that I give you as much straw as you can bear for the cost you're paying. And so I think the quintessential kind of fraudster really is around the CPA space, and that sometimes those leads are sold to more than one person more than one company. Or conversely, that I'm getting sold leads that are fake, that I follow up on they they're not interested, they didn't fill it out. It's not a real person, things like that. So I think the lead gen world has kind of always, unfortunately cast a dark shadow on the broader affiliate marketing world. As the industry grew, that I helped incubate, starting in 98, it kind of became very status quo, there wasn't a lot of change, there wasn't really anything forcing that change. There were some serious industry players in there, and they kind of owned the market. And they kept it where it was.
Matt O'Leary 8:02
Usually, we'd think that innovation equals reward, Steve Jobs, his late 70s breakthrough, the Apple two sold 6 million units at a time when well, less than 5% of households owned a personal computer. But what about when that American Dream that entrepreneurial spirits seems to lose the day.
Todd Crawford 8:22
There are kind of two types of people or companies, there are entrepreneurs or people who are very passionate about things and interested in disruption. And there are people who are more opportunists, people who want to participate in something that's already doing well.
Matt O'Leary 8:42
This distinction is something Todd brought up again and again, between the creative productive entrepreneur and the almost parasitic, opportunist,
Todd Crawford 8:52
You know, copy and paste is a very easy function. I can go to a website that that's very popular and does really well and I can copy their HTML. And I can paste it into my HTML editor, and put my brand in there and put that website on the internet, and have pretty much a rebranded copy of a much bigger website. They kind of you know, you have the original ShamWow, right, yeah, or the Snuggie versus the slanket. You know, being an entrepreneur I'm not, and working with other offers, we're not afraid to take an idea and make it better. It's when you take an idea, and you really don't know what the exact data and implementation of that idea is. So you kind of make it worse, but you copy it. And that's how you can easily tell is, is if you've created X, and someone says we do x two and it's really less than x, but they they packaged it up exactly as x that's where It's hard for the consumer. And that's where it's it's devaluing you, and your work. And that's what gets me the most frustrated. That's where I get really pissed off. We just care that if a really large customer is going to make a buying decision that they pick us over you, and we'll deal with it downstream over promise and under deliver somehow, someway, but at least we got them in a contract, I can never operate that way I cannot sleep well at night, I can't, I'm just not that kind of person. I'd rather do nothing.
Matt O'Leary 10:31
These clearly frustrated by the frequent co opting of this entrepreneur tag. And no doubt this self identification without qualification seems to be a hallmark of Twitter bio age. But copycat behavior is far from the extent of the unsavory practices in the early days of affiliate marketing, I think the best way to understand at least the type of affiliate fraud is to draw on an experience that Kevin had with some neighbors in graduate school, it's probably somewhat familiar to us all,
Kevin deLaplante 11:04
We probably knew them for five or six months, then we were invited over to dinner at their place. And nothing was really sad, except that he did, the husband did tease that he wanted to talk about what he called a business opportunity. And they had actually set up a circular arrangement of chairs, and sofas, and they actually pulled out a flip chart with markers. And it turns out, it's a pitch for jewelry, it was patterned on the Amway model somewhat, but basically, they want you to buy $1,000 worth of jewels, and you can sell them at a big markup.
Matt O'Leary 11:49
Like these multilevel marketing schemes, the worst affiliate fraud presents an uninvited and relevant pitch that often the affiliate doesn't even believe in or have a genuine connection with themselves. It operates under false pretenses violating social mores of trust and transparency, it has no problem offending 90%, in the process of finding 10%, who buy in, you know, based on ignorance, loneliness, confusion, even a lack of self respect,
John Lenker 12:18
If you're willing to take advantage of a person in the environment where they've let their guard down, you become a threat to the sanctity of that place where you're allowed to kind of unwind and replenish and rejuvenate all of the, the friendliness and, and the report that I thought was, I'm forming a relationship because of mutual, you know, interest. Turns out, it's just a ploy to lure me into a sale. That same kind of aversion that I have to that process of multilevel marketing is part of what is given affiliate marketing, such a bad reputation over time, the good side of affiliate marketing is that I mean, if you're someone who needs to work from home, or if you've got some kind of reason to publish information, and you want to find related products and services, that that you really believe in and think are strong. And that's part of how you make your living is that you're you're getting commissions from these things that can be great and wonderful. For example, if you're interested in, you know, whatever it is golf, right. And you know, that there's somebody who gives golf lessons. Now, if I go to that person, say, hey, you know, I, you know, my friend told me that you're a golf instructor, and I'm just thinking about getting into this, and I have no idea what clubs to buy. And I, you know, I wouldn't even know, that person is supposed to educate me in that moment. And it's understood that, you know, they may be offering to teach me something, and they may be recommending clubs, that, you know, they get a commission on if I buy them. And that's fine, because I had a genuine interest and they have built their living around that expertise.
Matt O'Leary 14:15
So there's kind of insidious and kind of a predatory shade to both types of the detrimental affiliates. We've talked about both the copycat or the get-while-the-getting's-good opportunist, and MLM-esque affiliate, you know, the type who might set up a sales pitch like a jumpscare from a horror movie,
Kevin deLaplante 14:36
The class of bad actors who know they're bad actors, and do it anyway, is smaller than the broader class of bad actors. They're bad actors, but they don't know it. And they resist any kind of, you know, see no self analysis or listening to what other people are telling them in order to reflect and revise on what they're doing.
Matt O'Leary 14:57
Whether it be from ignorance or malice. At the dawn of the Internet age, affiliate marketing appeared to be a poison rut. I mean, we're talking astronomical rates of fraud and deception. There was a serious need for not only technological innovation, but also ethical leadership and moving away from standard practice. Todd Crawford answered the call, and started a company that would finally step up and say something, a company to contend with the major players, the big wigs turned has-beens.
John Lenker 15:32
Originally, you know, in the mid 90s, Todd was one of the founders of commission junction, nobody had really figured out a good mechanism for affiliates to get paid for their efforts to promote things that that were being advertised. Right. So that was the market opportunity, they solved it.
Todd Crawford 15:52
So I'll give you an example. There's a company called Barkbox. There's a lot of these, you know, kind of box subscription model companies and BarkBox is for pet owners. So what's great about their business model is people are more loyal to their pets than they are to themselves. So when people typically subscribe to an in the box service, they burn out after, you know, within a year, but people keep getting a box of treats and toys for their pets for much longer, maybe, maybe never ending because you know, it's fun for them. They think their pets love it, you know. So there's this kind of it's a great business model. And what the great idea that someone there had was, there are 10,000 pet shelters and pet rescues in North America. What if every one of the time someone adopted a an animal, they got a coupon to try Barkbox. I mean, that is that is their addressable market. And it's a partnership, right. So you call up a pet shelter, you can't talk to them about digital marketing or affiliate programs, they don't get it. But if you say, Look, we want to make a donation to your company. Every time somebody adopts a pet, you can print out a little postcard, or you can have a little flyer or a little stand on the counter, you can put it on your website that if they sign up with your coupon code that's exclusive to you, it will be a donation and they'll get some generous discount to their subscription service resonates very well can't hurt free money, I'll take it and they start doing it. And it's a really good fit.
Matt O'Leary 17:29
This is what John describes, is getting the right information to the right person at the right time so that they take the right actions. And for a millennial who might be more immune to traditional advertising. This partnership approach is leaps and bounds more natural than the typically disruptive methods impact just participates and what they call the partnership economy. They didn't create the partnership idea. Rather, their innovation comes in the way they've more efficiently facilitated these relationships. These big players, Todd refers to who were clogging the performance marketing space, failed to move the partnership idea forward.
Todd Crawford 18:10
You were going to pick one of them if you're going into this space, and there was very high margins that they were taking. And there was no tech innovation. So we realized that their own customers wanted tech innovation, and felt the pricing was high. But if there's nowhere else to go, right, that's the price. If no, no one vendor is going to lower their price. So we realized kind of three things. There was an appetite for tech innovation that actually the current incumbent players were disincentivized from building because it would actually deny them revenue based on their business model. There was a problem with the pricing model. They were the biggest 800 pound gorillas and they were getting top dollars that nobody in the right mind would pay. But they there was no alternative
Matt O'Leary 19:04
To be movers and shakers. I think Todd and his business partners were doing something John talks about a lot. That is the critical first step of market opportunity analysis, which is so often overlooked and rushed. Analyzing the opportunity in a given market involves first recognizing a legitimate and genuine need, not something manufactured, and then confirming that your solution is appropriate, that is viable.
Todd Crawford 19:30
The services and the tech were combined. And I'll give you an example. If you got into paid search, you might want to spend some dollars at Google. And it would be maybe amazing if Google would manage your paid search campaign as a service on top of just putting dollars into their machine to bid for keywords because who should know better about paid search than Google? Now coincidentally, or fortunately, Google does not offer that service. And the reason is they see it as a con Conflict of Interest. And so we saw in our industry, this is a major conflict of interest that nobody was aware of nobody cognitively was aware or thought of it that way.
Matt O'Leary 20:11
They seized on what in retrospect seems like an obvious opportunity, updating tech changing pricing. But as Steve Jobs said, simple is harder than complex, someone had to conjure up these elements that became the new standard, and then take the risk inherent with any entrepreneurial pursuit, it's one thing to burst onto the market, bright eyed and bushy tailed with a good idea and a good heart behind it. But it's much more rare for a business to sustain that noble effort, especially as the operation grows and scope and influence moving management up the higher skyscraper stories.
Todd Crawford 20:56
There's five people who co founded impact. So we're all very different people, and we don't sit in a room and meditate together and, you know, go on retreats together, we're different enough to where, you know, we don't usually hang out socially outside of a work environment. You know, we're focused on doing our jobs, and we all bring different aspects and pieces to the table, we check each other, where you have one person solely as the founder, right, that's where they become king. And, and they, you know, they can get very insulated. I mean, you look at Facebook, you know, and Zuckerberg, you know, I mean, he certainly has other people around him now that are helping to temper that. But, I mean, it's still the Mark Zuckerberg show, and, you know, you assume he's responsible for most things that go on in that company.
John Lenker 21:48
It seems that there's a point that happens, especially when a company goes public, where the people who are responsible for the decisions are so many layers disconnected or disassociated from those their decisions impact, that when that happens, when there's not that human connection change where you you actually can feel the results of your decisions, you're not insulated from the impacts, unreal people, that when when you're at that stage in leadership, that the tendency is just to look at the numbers and to just look at, you know, we need our numbers to be here, this much growth this quarter, do whatever it takes to reform this business such that we get the performance we need. Because if we don't, the CEO is going to get fired, you know, I'm going to lose my job, and they'll get somebody else in here who make those numbers happen. Whereas the the private business is, is still connected with the values that created it.
Todd Crawford 22:56
Industry and businesses have proven over and over that they cannot self regulate. I've never seen a good long term example of an industry that self regulates that if it didn't, the damage that they could do, financially, environmentally, economically, socially, whatever, you know, it doesn't hold true.
John Lenker 23:19
What are the regulations that you think that the government should put on your industry?
Todd Crawford 23:24
Well, I think I think they're trying to struggle with that. I mean, that the hardest part about this is that you know, anybody that's going to impose regulations or create laws, usually they know about 10% of what they need to know, to make these decisions.
Matt O'Leary 23:40
This is something that we covered in depth on Episode Two with our guests, Robert Lustig, who made his case in favor of using government regulation and law to thwart powerful industry lobbies, Todd and John continue to discuss the relationship between business size and ethical business practice.
Todd Crawford 23:58
Investors care about one thing, growing their investment. Now, the bigger investors have more of a say. So when you're a private company, like impact, we have taken investment dollars from tier one companies. So there, they have numbers that they want you to hit as a SaaS company, whereas if I'm running a family owned, whatever brick and mortar or internet company, I can be very happy with the level of success I get that slightly plateaus or has nominal growth, you know, 5% 15% year over year revenue growth, whereas if you're a SaaS company, you need to see you know, there, there's like, it's like a formula, right? You need to be able to upsell, cross sell, have churned metrics, you know, growth metrics, you have your cost of goods sold, you know, all these things have to be factored in. People start their own business and they're happy to support a dozen or two dozen employees and offer health benefits and put a little away for them. sells to retire long term and have a great business and almost feel like it's an extended family. So, you know, it really just depends on your, your angle of attack,
John Lenker 25:11
It almost sounds like the dynamics of what you're painting would lead one to believe that if a business is ultimately successful, it eventually will need to cut its empathy out of the equation to be bottom line driven, when you bring in investors is sort of the step one on that road to perdition. And then, you know, I think about like Chipotle, right, very popular small business that that grew very quickly. And now it's owned by McDonald's. And that that that stage, it's, it's a different thing, I think also of Dollar Shave Club, you know, which is that's where I get my razors. But I think it's owned by Gillette. Now, you know that the thing that made it what it was, it wasn't Gillette was the thing. And then when when you know, these bigger companies realize these disruptive companies have come in and they're eating our lunch, you know, their business model is, you know, the subscription idea. And their brand is edgy and popular with people who like that kind of thing. Well, you know, we're this old fogy company, but we're going to buy that, that image, and we'll just kind of pretend it's still there. But in reality, it's not there anymore. So is what you're saying that, you know, unless you're happy and content and have a local level of success and providing the service or a product, that you can maintain those values and those aspirations but the minute that you seek investors, and you want to you want to become a true enterprise, a true entrepreneurial interest, that has a a, you know, a seven year to 10 year exit plan that that the hope is lost.
Todd Crawford 27:00
I don't think that I think people get satisfied with different levels of success, like sports, right? Some people become professional athletes, and some people are hack amateurs, maybe you just don't aspire, you don't have the drive or the talent to get you beyond being a ranked amateur, right? You're never going to be the professional but you're pretty happy. You know, you rank in your, your tennis club or your state or whatever, for your age group. That's great. There's nothing wrong with that.
John Lenker 27:31
I almost feel like you know, if I'm, you know, millennial listening to this, and taking what you're saying, seriously, what I'm thinking in my head is, man, I don't want to do any business with these big corporations at all, then, you know, I need to, I need to try to find every single thing that I can consume that I need to consume, find somebody with 25 employees, that that is still connected to the values that have driven their their entrepreneurial mission. And that pretty much the the class of corporations that are you know, fortune 500, fortune 100. Again, not exclusively, but by and large, are just soulless entities.
Todd Crawford 28:15
When you get when you get companies that big, what they're looking for is continued market share, and acquiring more revenue. How do you grow outside of your core product line? And that's, you know, if you look at Google, you know, Google, I forget the stats, but you know, they're they acquire, like, a company a day or something insane like that, right? And it does seem a lot colder. Because if I acquire another company, I don't need finance, I don't need HR, I probably don't need marketing. I probably don't need sales, right? I need somebody to keep supporting the customers I have, I need the tech people to keep making the product run and finished what they're doing. And then I need to figure out how to get that tech to kind of plug into what we're doing in a way that drives more value to our customers and helps paint and drive our vision forward.
Matt O'Leary 29:06
There's a reason we had Todd Crawford on the podcast. Todd and impact are an exception to this assumption that big business can't be well mannered business, and vice versa. The assumption that those guided by a clear and honest conscience can't make it in the cutthroat world of business. We've already touched on some of the innovations that brought impact on the scene, but how they maneuver through the manifold obstacles involved in rapid growth and longevity. How have they grown beyond that wholesome Mom and Pop company without becoming corrupt?
Todd Crawford 30:00
We let people invest in our company that, like what we're doing, and they want us to keep doing what we're doing, you know, they help us, they help us understand the numbers that they expect. And we we that was up front, you know, it's not like now that you have our money, let me tell you how you're going to run your company, where some companies go wrong is they get at more risk, because the ownership tilts to majority outside investors. And then the original owners can get pushed out or their voice isn't as strong, and it deadens kind of their vision in the entrepreneurial spirit. And then they don't execute as well. My advice is, you know, take the least amount of investment you can to get where you think you can go. And I think some people, like I said, don't really realize how far they can go. And it's more like stepping stone. So you take an investment, that investment and the help that comes with that gets you to the next level, and maybe in a year or two, you need to take another investment. And then you know, you're diluting more, but it counteract dilution with shareholder value, if my company's worth $100 to investors, and I give up 15%. So I take a $15 investment, that investment should make my company worth 130. Right. So almost offsets the dilution or 125 instead of 115. So, you know, you're looking to grow, be accretive to the shareholders.
John Lenker 31:35
So it sounds like what you're saying, is that part of the solution to staying in the place where things are good, and the empathy is still there. Is that to be values driven, in choosing your investment partners?
Todd Crawford 31:50
Yeah, I mean, you should be interviewing them as much as they're interviewing me. They're they're doing due diligence on the company on the people, the finance, the tech, right. But you should be doing your due diligence, you should be talking to companies they've invested in and you should be talking to their peers.
Matt O'Leary 32:08
The power of the partnership model is this mutual enhancement idea, and impact have modeled this Win Win approach through their careful consideration of investors, Red Bull energy drink sponsors, GoPro events, you know, why is that because both companies promote the intrepid adventures lifestyle, their partners, but in the same way, financial investors can either be ambassadors of a brand, or they can redirect the company and sacrifice the authenticity, the originality and the purity.
Kevin deLaplante 32:42
When you have a partnership, ideally, you want to have it so that it's not just you scratch my back, I scratch yours, but we have a set of shared goals and values that through our interaction, we can help to promote those, those shared goals.
Todd Crawford 33:00
To me, you know, launching any endeavor, I always look at it from two sides. I mean, one is, you know, can I change an industry for the better and grow it make it bigger, so that I'm not the only one getting rich, I mean that, you know, our company isn't the only one making money, I want to help other people make money as well, because then they're kind of aligned with your vision, right? If they're making more money because of something you're doing, they're going to advocate or be at least attracted to what you're doing. If you can do that, it makes it a lot easier to grow a business as opposed to being kind of the only person who thinks you're great, right?
Matt O'Leary 33:39
This is perhaps the point where we see the merging of marketplace motivations and moral considerations. Most clearly, partnerships, as facilitated by impact not only present a third channel for revenue growth, but they penetrate certain market segments more organically, they open opportunities for mutually beneficial relationships between businesses with social influencers, news publishers, charitable organizations, Todd and his partners seize upon fiscal opportunities for sure. But it wasn't just a coincidence that they also shared the fruits of their enterprise with others. Instead, it appears that their rising bottom line has come, at least in part as a result of their desire to grow the pie rather than just take a slice.
Todd Crawford 34:27
The exciting part about starting a company is that you get to employ other people, you know, you have all these affiliates that were making money promoting other advertisers, you know, they would, they would get links and they would write a review or put up a coupon and people would see that coupon or that review, and they'd click on it and earn a commission. And I started seeing in these message boards where those affiliates would talk about their jobs and their work and how he was going. Complain and praise. Start seeing people post like a picture of a car and saying, you know, 100% of this was paid From earnings from this company, or I put my kids, two kids through college solely from acting as an affiliate, that's when you start to realize how you're impacting other people's lives. And then you look at your own employees. And, you know, over the years, I've seen people that were maybe waiters or waitresses, or working at a local store, who ended up applying to work for us, entry level position are now executives, at really large companies, you know, and I think a lot of people say, Well, you know, we want to go out and get, you know, a plus talent, Harvard graduate MBAs and, and the best of the best, and I certainly agree that highly capable, highly skilled people can make a difference. But something I've seen, and this happens almost, you know, every week, even with everybody remote, is that if you create a work environment, where people like or love the company and the work they're doing, and they feel like they're being taken care of, and the amount of work that gets done, and the impact it has on the business and on the customers is unbelievable.
Matt O'Leary 36:44
In a short time, Todd, he just he spoke was such a lightness of spirit and just a disarming candor. I mean, he lives in California now. So maybe it's just a West Coast thing. But I came to believe that this ease was more about assurance, assurance in his value proposition assurance in the alignment of his personal values and those of his company. I mean, he talks about luck and timing. But Todd knows that impacts got the goods and he doesn't have to convince anyone. Beyond the the prudence and the wisdom that's gone into growing impact through investor money, increasing the reach and connections. It's really Todd and his partner shrewd adaptation to the evolving market opportunities in the affiliate industry that sustain them. After Commission Junction had helped to solve the problem of affiliates not being fairly compensated, there was a fresh nascent market without established rules or norms.
John Lenker 37:41
The market opportunity was to bring a level of professionalism and accountability into affiliate marketing that was unprecedented that hadn't existed anywhere, that could make things fair for the publisher for the advertiser. And for the affiliate, it's worth hundreds of millions of dollars now, after just you know, a decade. And why it's because they you know, Todd was part of a few people that formed this company that saw market opportunity, how can we do this better? How can we do in a way that's more professional? How can we solve some of these problems that are that are inherent to the system, as the landscape of this industry now stands? And today, one of the reasons that affiliate marketing has a much better reputation is because of largely to do with the work of Todd and not just through his business, but he's spoken internationally. So um, he's taken his his goodwill and his ideas and he's, he's turned that into something that's benefited all levels of the market.
Matt O'Leary 38:46
For any business remaining tethered to the original altruistic mission is a major challenge and requires continuous recalibration. But Todd Crawford and Impact exemplify this influence hacker mindset of a marketing hero who stayed more to the anchor, not only seeking Win Win opportunities, but delivering Win Win outcomes.
For a little deeper dive into some of the concepts we talked about here, you can read the first three companion journal articles now by following the influence hacker journal on medium and can help us get this off the ground with five star review and by sharing with coworkers friends and family. The influence hacker podcast is executive produced by John Lenker and Kevin deLaplante, our mixing and mastering engineer is Patrick Dobrenin. The producer of this podcast as well as the writer of the narrative and original music is yours truly, Matt O'Leary.
