Our founder, president, and COO, Matt Frary, recently spent an hour with a University of Kansas entrepreneurship student who wanted to know what it really takes to build a company. His answers came from building and selling businesses across every era of the internet. Most of them apply straight to your partner program.
Key takeaways
- Cash discipline beats a big top line. Affiliate pays on performance, but only a managed program stops cash from leaking.
- Build your program for the revenue channel it will become, not the size you are today.
- Recruiting is a weekly sales motion, not a one-time launch task.
- The edge goes to teams that adopt new tools first.
- Partners share the risk, and you pay them when they deliver.
- Brands that commit to affiliate are the ones that watch it compound.
1. Cash is king. Revenue is vanity.
“Cash is king and revenue is vanity.”
Matt Frary, Founder, President and COO
A big top line means nothing if the money doesn’t stick. Affiliate gets this right by design: partners are paid when performance happens, so spend follows results.
The catch is that it only works when someone is managing the program. An unmanaged program still leaks cash. It just does it quietly.
2. Build as though you’re already the category leader
Matt started ROI Rocket out of an apartment in 2005 and grew it to $40 million a year before selling it in 2010. The mindset he credits is “build as though”: build as though you’re already the leader in your category, and make every decision like that’s true.
Most partner programs get built for the size a brand is today. A few dozen affiliates, a spreadsheet, a check-in when someone remembers. Build the program as though it will be a top revenue channel, and you recruit, activate, and measure it differently.
3. Sell your way out of the jam
Early on, Matt funded growth by selling directly to customers, what he calls “selling your way out of the jam.” It builds discipline fast.
Partner programs reward the same instinct. Affiliate recruiting isn’t a one-time launch task. It’s a sales motion that runs every week, with a pitch, a follow-up, and a close.
4. Adopt early
We’ve built revenue engines through the early web, search, social, mobile, and now AI. The edge has always gone to the teams that adopt first.
That’s why our engagements run alongside Alfie, the XPFlow product that automates affiliate and influencer recruiting. Alfie automates the work. We elevate the strategy.
5. Don’t carry all the risk yourself
Looking back, Matt said he’d have brought in outside capital sooner to lower personal risk.
Partners work on a similar principle. The right publishers, creators, and newsletters bring audiences and trust you’d otherwise spend years and a lot of ad budget building on your own, and you pay them when they deliver.
6. Trust your judgment, then commit
His advice to the student: the people around you will often steer you toward safety. Listen, then make your own call.
Plenty of brands treat affiliate as a side project because it feels safer than committing to it. The ones that commit are the ones that watch it compound.
The takeaway: build your partner program like a company
Great companies and great partner programs are built on the same things: cash discipline, ambitious structure, a steady sales motion, early adoption, and conviction.
If your partner channel feels more like a list than a revenue engine, start with a program health audit.
[Button] Book a program health audit
Elevated by XPFlow.
