“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” George S. Patton
I have a habit of showing up before the paint dries.
HasOffers. Optizmo. LashBack. Payoneer. Affluent. Impact, back in 2010, as one of their first agency partners. MediaRails, where I am pretty sure I was customer number one, and I am choosing to believe that until somebody shows me the contract.
None of them were finished when I signed. Most had a login page, a founder’s cell number, and a roadmap held together with optimism.
Every one of them turned out to be a seat worth having.
Last week I wrote about the spreadsheet in the middle, the gap between a partner saying yes and a partner going live. This week is about a gap that costs more: the one between when you could move and when you actually do.
Because the seats are being handed out again. Right now. This time inside the AI tools your team already has open all day.
What You’ll Get in This Issue
Why every platform shift in affiliate has the same seating chart, and why the people waiting for the finished version end up in the back row. What signing up early actually costs, and why late costs more. Three moves you can run this week with no budget and no new hire: become customer number one on purpose, ask every vendor one question about AI, and recruit the new kind of publisher before your competitor learns their names. Plus what we are building into Alfie right now, and why it is not finished on purpose.
Part One: The Seating Chart
Every shift in this industry has gone the same way.
A new tool or channel shows up. It is rough. The people who get in first find the bugs, get the founder on the phone, and shape what it becomes. By the time it is polished, they have a year of reps, the best partners, and a voice in what gets built next.
Everyone else shows up when it is safe. Safe is crowded.
Look at what those tools did. HasOffers put tracking in the hands of people who were not engineers. Optizmo and LashBack turned email compliance into something you managed instead of something you prayed about. Payoneer got publishers paid in places the old rails could not reach. Affluent pulled reporting out of a dozen network logins and into one screen. At the time, each one looked like a side project. Each one became how the work got done.
Nobody gets into this business dreaming about suppression lists. I was early to those too. That is the level of commitment we are talking about.
Early is not glamorous. You are the one who finds what breaks. You are on the call when it breaks. You are the one explaining to your team why the new thing is worth the hassle.
Late costs more. Late costs you the seat.
And here is what is different this time. Those shifts took years. You could watch one coming, complain about it at a conference, and still catch up. This one is moving in months.
The AI assistant is becoming the place where work starts. Your affiliate manager opens it before they open the network dashboard. So the real question is simple: when they ask it who to recruit next, whose answer shows up?
Whoever gets there first becomes the default. Defaults are hard to move. Ask anyone who has tried to talk a team off a spreadsheet.
Part Two: The Playbook
Three moves. None need budget. All of them need you to go before you feel ready.
Move 1: Be Customer Number One on Purpose.
Early users get things later users never see. The founder’s cell. A real say in the roadmap. Pricing that will not exist again. And the big one: a year of learning before your competitor logs in for the first time.
The trick is choosing on purpose, not joining every waitlist on the internet. Pick one tool this quarter that touches a real job in your program. Not a toy. Something that eats hours today. Get in, give hard feedback, and ask for a call with whoever built it. Founders of young tools take that call. Big tools send you a help article.
→ Pick one early tool this quarter and get in while the people who built it still answer the phone. (WE SUGGEST YOU SIGN UP AT ALFIE)
Move 2: Ask Every Vendor One Question.
The question: “Can I use you from inside my AI assistant?”
That is what an MCP is, in plain English. A connector that lets the AI tool your team already lives in reach into your other software and do the work there, instead of you copying and pasting between eleven tabs.
Some vendors will have a real answer. Some will tell you it is on the roadmap. Either way, you now know which of your tools are moving at the speed of the market and which are waiting to see how it turns out.
Then go use the ones that answered. This week. Even if the first version is rough. Especially if it is rough, because rough is when your feedback actually changes the product.
How we are doing it. We are building an MCP into Alfie and Alfie Chat right now. The idea is simple: an affiliate manager asks their AI assistant who to recruit, and gets Alfie’s answer, with the judgment already baked in, without leaving the conversation. It is not finished. It will not be finished next month either. We ship it, real customers use it, and it gets better every week. That is not a disclaimer. That is the strategy.
→ Ask every vendor if you can use them from inside your AI assistant. The answer tells you who is moving and who is waiting.
Move 3: Recruit the New Publishers Before Everyone Else Does.
Every shift creates a new kind of publisher. Coupon sites. Bloggers. YouTubers. Influencers. Newsletter operators. Each time, the programs that found them first got better terms, built the relationship before every brand was in their inbox, and kept them.
It is happening again. A new crop of publishers is building around how people shop with AI: comparison tools, AI shopping guides, creators teaching their audience to buy with an assistant. A lot of them are not on anybody’s recruit list yet.
Go find them. Search your category alongside “AI.” Look at who is writing the comparisons in channels that did not exist two years ago. Check who is already sending traffic to your competitors from those places. Then run the play that always works: better terms for a set window, and more attention than anyone else is paying them.
The obvious names are finite. Somebody is going to sign the good ones. It might as well be you.
→ List ten new kind publishers this week and reach out to three before Friday.
Your Weekly Chaos Challenge
Find one thing you are holding until it is perfect. A recruit email. A new commission tier. The tool you have been “evaluating” since spring.
Ship it before Friday.
→ Live and improving beats perfect and pending. Every time.
And in the comments: what is the earliest you ever got into a tool or channel that ended up mattering? Bonus points if the login page still had typos.
Want In Early?
If you would rather have this run for you, our agency side, Chief of Chaos, does exactly this for the programs we manage.
If you already have a team or an agency on it, point Alfie at your next recruit list now. You will find the obvious names faster, and it keeps going after the obvious names run out. When the MCP opens up, you will already be set up to use it from inside your assistant. Sign up and become one of the first, and then let me know that you did!
Final Thought
Every seat I am proud of, I took before it looked safe.
The market does not wait for the finished version. It hands the category to whoever showed up with something that worked, then lets them make it better.
Perfect is always late.
Show up early. Bring your bug reports.
Until next week.
Run toward the chaos.
Matt Frary
Chief of Chaos // President & COO, XPFlow
#AffiliateMarketing #PartnerMarketing #AI #MCP #ChaosToGrow
