Lessons from Career Missteps - Sara Malo, Taryn Stoddard, and Kali Ashford Speak Out

Okay, so recording. We are live. I say

we're live, not live. We're live in the

kind of the recording. So welcome to this particular episode

of Bad Decisions with Jim Banks. I have got a first today.

I've got more than one guest on today, so I

have no idea how this episode is going to go down. It could

go amazingly well, in which case I'll do more of them moving forward. It could

be the worst experience I've ever had in my life, but we'll just kind of

give it a go and see what we end up with. But I had the

opportunity a few weeks ago now to attend

an affiliate event in London called Afiverse, which was a new event.

We'll talk about that on the show. But

I had the opportunity to have a couple of drinks at the afterparty with

the three ladies that are on this show now. And I put the idea to

them about, why don't we record a podcast episode? It's called Bad

Decisions with Jim Banks. They all were sort of with me, so they were all

making bad decisions. So I just thought it'd be a really, really good episode to

kind of pull the three of them on. And I'm delighted to have Sara,

Taryn, and Cali as my guests today. So who wants to say

hello for posterity?

Come on, somebody. Oh, we're. Oh,

Little. Thank you, Jim, for having us sign. It was a pleasure to see

all three of you at Elevate in London, and I'm just

so happy to be here. I think this is going to be fun. Oh, that's

it. It was called Elevate, wasn't it? Not my bad. Elevate. Yeah,

well, it's Affiverse supported it and lead gen 1, so

it's cool. Sarah helped keep that on, so she should know the name.

You know, I just go up to things.

So. So, Karen, tell us kind of where you are. And

hello, by the way. Hi. Hi.

I'm Taryn Stodder, the owner of the Kaiju Group Agency.

I'm located in St. Augustine, Florida.

It looks like it's sunny there. It is

perfect weather today. What's it outside right now? Oh, it's 77

degrees and very little humidity. Absolutely gorgeous.

I cannot complain. Perhaps you. Hate you. I'm going to kick you off

this podcast episode right now.

I mean, we have another hurricane coming, if that makes anybody feel better. You

know, it's the positive and negatives of Florida.

I think there is another one that's going to hit south Florida sometime soon. This

is really late in the season to do so though. And

Cali. I'm Kaylee Ashford.

I am the owner and founder of Ad Media

Cards where we manage payments for companies that buy

ads on Google and Facebook. I've worked in the

payment industry for about 20 years now and been managing

Ad Media Cards for the last almost nine years.

Today I'm in Mocta at a conference and it's

warm ish weather. So.

Moved, haven't you. Didn't you move? Yes. So I

recently just moved to West Palm Beach. Is that to be

new Donald Trump

or should we just. Oh no, no election plaque. I just,

I don't that those are the only two options that we

had. That. That's my take on it.

Yeah. Other than that I got out. I left. I left

Florida on the 5th on election day and went to Canada.

That's how I'm going to politics. There we go.

Yeah, I'm not planning. I'm just talking at all about

politics on this particular episode because I just find

the whole thing so depressing really. But anyway, that's by the by.

So I butchered your name. Right. And are you

Sarah or Sarah? Because I never know

I was Sarah. Yeah, my name should be pretty

the. Yeah, it should be. And I didn't really say what I

do, but I laughed because. Because

Kaylee and we've been calling her Callie for however many

years. My gosh is at Sigma and fun

fact, during COVID I actually worked for them for a short

time and put on another affiliate event. I don't know if you guys remember

ags, but so I'd basically been involved in every

event in the industry for the most part. Yeah, we do know

that. Knows everything that's

going on. So yeah. So obviously that's, that's who's on the show

today again. I'm super, super excited to have

everyone on today. I guess maybe to kind

of sort of kick us off. I mean you all know each other

through the industry, right? But I think that the kind of

the, the thing that kind of binds you all together is Link Unite. Right.

So Sarah, you're one of the co founders of Link Unite and

perhaps you can kind of just talk to us a little bit about that and

kind of what the motivation for setting it up was. Right. Because I've been

in the industry a long time. We've all been in the industry a long time.

Right. I've never, I've never really thought about the kind of

the disparity between male and female

people in the industry. Right. To me it's always been a, an industry

where I've, I've surrounded myself with people

and I've never really considered the, the kind of, the color of their skin or

the gender that they are. Right. But as a sort of white man is

probably easy for me to kind of make that, that sort of

assumption. Right. Talk. To talk me a little bit about.

I put the shovel down. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's funny you say that,

because when all three of us ladies started, there was very, very few

women in this industry. And that's sort of how Link UNITE

began because we wanted to have some sort of support

for women, draw more women into this industry

and lift them up, you know, get more women on stages,

you know, support women starting their own businesses. And so that's really where

Link UNITE came from. We were actually, I'm located in Massachusetts, and we were

at Leeds Con in Boston, and we just started

making notes on a napkin. Of all the women that, you

know, we knew that Amanda Ferris and myself knew,

you know, who do you know, who did you meet? You know, is this, is

this woman, you know, she, could she be part of our group, this kind of

thing. And we didn't want, we didn't want to,

we wanted everybody essentially. You know, we started to where

we were drawing in director, leveling up women. And then we realized,

like, we want everybody to be part of Link unite. And

we have so many male partners and people like you, Jim, that support

us. And so it's growing rapidly. We have

a membership, we're doing a mentorship. We just. I had a call this morning with

a new event MAU that they're coming to us looking

for speakers for their event. And that's what we're here for. We just

want to elevate all the women in the industry and anybody that wants to

be part of this group. So we're lucky to have people like Taryn and

Krie a part of this. Yeah. Because I, I think I,

I, I probably make the mistake of I called it an

initiative and I don't really, I mean, it's, it's. So when you filled in your

bio, right. And your bios will obviously be on the kind of the

site when we finish the episode, like you call it a community

of executive leaders. Right.

Which again, I think, I think for me it's,

I think that there has been women in the industry, but I think women

in senior positions has been a little bit more challenging. And I just

wondered if you could explain because obviously Taryn and Katie you

both run your own businesses now, but you have worked with other

people previously, I presume. Yeah, so.

So perhaps maybe you can kind of tell me a little bit about kind of

the challenges of kind of coming into the industry. I mean, what. What did you

do before the industry sort of existed for you, and how did you get

into it? Oh, gosh. I

mean, myself, I was an affiliate manager. And

so that was when affiliate marketing first was born. And my gosh,

I don't even want to say the year that that was, because then we're going

to be aging all of ourselves here. And I, you know, I just really

loved affiliate marketing. I was like, I knew nothing about this. You know, when I

was in college, I was taking business courses and I just was. I

had to learn more. I had to know more about search engine optimization, the

whole nine yards. And then I met

Missy Ward and Sean Collins. And so, you know, I

went to work for Affiliate Summit, part of that original team to grow that

event. But, you know, women just didn't have the same

opportunities in this industry. A few, you know, I would

say back 10 years ago, I don't know if that's fair

enough to say that time range or so, but, you know, there

was very few men that were in CEO roles,

COO roles. And so, you know, Link Unite was going

to just help elevate that, give women

those opportunities and, you know, just the courage to

step up and start their own businesses. You know, when

we started having calls about Link Unite and getting on the phone with these women,

we realized so many people needed so much support

that we didn't even realize how much support they needed. And so

it was. It's just been quite the ride and I love every minute

of it.

So, Taryn, what's the support do you get from

Lead? What kind of support do I get? Oh,

gosh, so much, you know, anything from

new client support, prospecting to just

management support, you know, of how to handle different folks.

I work with suggestions on just how to run my business

successfully, what to look out for, what to prepare for. You know, as

a single business owner, I. That has been. And just

in general, you know, the support and having confidence that

people think, you know, I can do this, I can run a business. You know,

it's. People are like, why aren't you doing this? You know, that kind of thing.

And then I just one day, basically, a friend of mine in the

industry, Sylvia Lee, she, she's like,

go get your LLC and I'll give you your first deal. Like, that kind of

thing. She's like, let's do this, girl. You got this. I've known you for 20

years. Like, come on now. And so that's how

that happened. You know, it's just sometimes we do doubt ourselves. I

don't know that I would say I had this kind of ideal of

like imposter syndrome or anything like that because I, you know, I'm a self

confident individual. But it's just that do I want to put all my eggs in

one basket and just bet on myself? And you know what?

When I started talking to folks about it, especially the ladies of Link unite, they're

like, oh, hell yeah, girl, come on now. Like it was, that was the

general consensus. And that support alone, you know, has allowed me

to create the Kaiju Group, which has been wonderful.

So I'm, I'm super excited about it and I, and I'm always happy to help

anybody in our organization as well.

You know, Jim, I just want to add another point too about the personal

support that we're also bringing to each other.

I mean, Taryn and Kaley are moms just

like me. And we're working, we're juggling

jobs, we're doing all these things plus raising children and just

be able to text each other and get ideas. Just

that alone has been huge for me personally.

Taryn affects you a lot. It's like we're raising

teenagers and it's tough.

So it's nice to be able to have other like minded women to bounce

ideas off of. Kaylee, how did you.

Yes, I mean I've been in this industry

probably almost as many years as Sarah. So,

you know, again, don't want to age us. But yeah, I

remember in the industry there weren't very many. Like I entered

the industry not as a C level executive, just in

an account management type role and going to the

shows and there weren't very many women and the women that were

in the industry, they weren't helping each other, they weren't in support of

each other. They weren't, they weren't anxious for other

women to succeed and do well because if it meant they

were doing well, then you're not doing well. And

it was very much a competition and I hated that

so much. I'm not a competitive person.

I love to see other people around me grow and do

well because the more they do well, the more I grow and do

well because it elevates them and then it elevates me as

well. You surround the people, you surround

yourself with people that are interested in Doing

well and doing more and being better and

you'll get there. And that's really what Link UNITE

provided. That's really where they

were like minded women that wanted to see

other women in the industry succeed. And Duval, and that's the

mentorship program comes in and it's so fantastic

to just being someone who's been in the industry to

tell someone new in the industry, it's like, it's okay. I, I've been there.

I get it. I know as women we know it's hard to be

taken seriously whether we're 20 years old or

40 years old. We're not taken any seriously at 40 than we

were at 20. And for men at 20 years old, it's a little

bit difficult to be taken seriously, but at 40 years old, there's

no problem. Yeah, it's funny kind of correlation to

how happy you are doing your job. Right. So I was miserable, absolutely

miserable. So I had the opportunity to kind of leave that and get involved in.

I put digital marketing inverted commas because I did. I don't really

think the industry existed at the time. There was certainly no YouTube.

There was no communities for any description.

Right. I mean, my most recent podcast episode was a guy called Brett

Tabke who was the founder of pubcon. Right. And I mean we talk about sort

of the origins of Pubcon back in sort of 2000, 2001. And

you know, and again, it was just a. I mean, we use the term

guys. I mean it was a bunch of guys meeting in the publisher, but it

was a bunch of guys. I think there was probably two women that

came along and the other 48 were men. Right. And I

think it's evolved, but it's still probably nowhere near where

it ought to be considering that, you know, women

are the kind of the dominant in terms of

numbers, gender in the world. Right. So I

think for me it's, you know, there's definitely work that still needs to be done

to try and do that, elevating the kind of the presence

of, you know, women. Because unlike a lot of other

industries, ours is not an industry where how strong you are

physically matters at all. I mean, I know Taryn, you probably like bench

press more than probably all of us. Right. But, but I think.

Oh, you're funny, Dar it it. But to add to that, you know,

and this is the thing, I. I am very fortunate and I

know that. I mean, I got my start when I used to live in California.

I got my start at I Village E Commerce division in San

Diego. Now the Main office was in New York, but San

Diego handled all the e commerce of ivillage.

And I wanted to succeed in my

career and I moved back to San

Francisco. And I was so fortunate to have some

guys at agencies when I got specifically involved in affiliate marketing, who

were my advocates, who did educate me, who did, in a

word, protect me, because there were a lot of bad dudes out there. And if

I made it known, like, hey, look at. Listen to how this guy's talking to

me. Or, you know, presenting himself and they're like, beat that

guy. You know, they. They really were like, you don't have to put up with

that. We don't put up with. We're not going to put up with that. We're

not going to let you put up with that. So I've been very fortunate to

have an awesome group of men and advocates in this industry, you

know, of the male persuasion. So. Which allowed me to build my

confidence to help other women in our industry, too. Because

unfortunately, the women in our industry, we do talk and we do

know who the good guys and the bad guys are. You know, it all comes

down to references, you know, and a lot of the time, you know, there's different

groups, whether it's on Facebook or on, you know, in different chats that we have.

We're like, hey, do you know this guy? Or do you. Have you heard this

about this company or that? And we do give good and bad reviews,

you know, fair reviews. Not, you know, not, you know,

what's the word I'm looking for? You know, just like, trying to get back at

anybody, but like, just like, okay, yeah, no, that person has, you know, they're

legitimate, they pay on time, et cetera, because nobody wants to waste their

time. But like I said, we utilize each other as a

resource regularly when it comes to business. But you guys, you know,

it's funny because I have some clients who pitch offers to me, and

as an agency and network, you know, I will broker out offers. They. They're

like, hey, can you. Can you ask the lad if they'll run this? Will they.

Do the ladies like this offer?

And they're like, oh, if we can get in with that group, you know, we'll

have tons of traffic. So it is, you know, it's definitely a force to

be reckoned with. But like I said, I

appreciate all the help I've gotten in this industry, you know.

Yeah. So I always recall. So when I first started my very,

very first agency, So I had three jobs in 18 months. I

got laid off months, right? And I.

At the end of the third one, I thought to myself, fuck this. I

don't want to kind of do this again. I don't want to kind of get.

Keep getting laid off by other people who don't really have my interests

at heart, right? So I figured I backed myself. I said, I'll just set up

my own business. So I did. I set up my own business. I kind of

moved into an office. I hired a guy who, again, he was

probably the. The worst digital

market I've ever worked with in my life. But he was

honest, reliable, and trustworthy. And on that basis, it was like

he was the best guy I ever had working with me, right? Because, you know,

there's a lot of skills you can kind of instill in people, right? And

integrity, trust, honesty. They're not. They're the sort of things that

people either have that baked in or they don't, right? And I don't think your

gender matters. Your color, like, none of that matters, right? You

either are a trustworthy person, honest person, right?

Reliable. And people can say, yeah, I want to do

some business with that person, or you don't, right? So what was really

interesting is, again, I think back then, there wasn't

the kind of the resource pool that was available.

I think as an industry, we were tiny, right? So there was

no track record to say, well, this is the sort of person you want to

try and attract to kind of come in, right? So for me, it was almost

like a God. I need to kind of employ people. So one of the first

people I employed was my stepdaughter. And, you

know, she's a sort of very, very pretty blonde

girl. And I had another girl in the office, and, you know,

we hired these two girls, and I'm doing some training, and I'm sort of sitting

down and I'm doing some keyword research. And, you know, there

was a tool called Word, I think it was called Word Tracker, and they had

a tool, listed the top 100 keywords that

existed, right? And obviously, you know, on those would be things like sex

and stuff like that. But one of the words that was on there was milf,

right? I had no idea what the word was. So I'm trying.

I'm doing this. And what you do is you type this in,

typed it into a search engine, and all of a sudden, oh, my

God, right? I

discovered. And. And I think in that respect, it's like, you have to

be respectful of the situation.

So again, I've sold virtually everything you can Think of Under

the sun, right? So I've sold loads of sex toys, Viagra, stuff like that.

But the problem you have is that if you have people who are coming into

your business, you have to respect their religious beliefs and all that,

sort of. So you can't just go, look, we work on porn, so you just

need to kind of go and do this stuff. Because that's what we do. Right?

Because if people are uncomfortable with it, then that's not really

helpful. Have you ever had any sort of situations where you've been asked to do

something in the industry where you're going, I'm not comfortable doing

that? I mean, I've got.

Yes. Oh, yeah. I was like, where we start? Who's starting?

I think that it's important to

understand boundaries and understand what your boundaries

are and be open to listening to what other

people's boundaries are. I think that especially

for younger women, especially, it's harder

to know what's okay to have is set

boundaries. For people new in the industry, men

and women, it's hard for them to know what those boundaries should be.

Working the extra hours without getting paid, working

on content that you don't agree with, whether

it's political or adult or

gaming or whatever that industry may be.

B2B. Have to have the checkbox. Are

you okay with Mel? I've had the

opportunity for. My stepdaughter has been in industry ever since then. That was

probably like 2002 or 3. So she's been in the industry a long

time. Right. And I think because of that, I've had a

good sounding board of trying to understand the challenges that some

women face in terms of the industry. Right. Because it's not

always been sort of plain sailing. Right. And, you know, and

now she's obviously. She's married herself, she's got two small

children, so I'm kind of doing granddad duties, so. So I'm kind of

taking on some of the responsibilities to enable her to kind of carry on working.

I'm. I've got a bit more free time, so. Because I'm probably a little bit

older and kind of grayer, so, you know, I will sometimes pick

the kids, grandkids up from school and stuff like that and bring them home and

feed them and what have you. Right. Because I have the flexibility of running

my business to be able to kind of do that. Right. And kind of choose

what to do, when to do it, how to do it, who I want to

work with, who I don't want to work with. Right. So.

Well, I was going to add also to some of this. I think one of

the most uncomfortable conversations, I'll say one for me and then one for

a guy who used to work for me. So one of the things I remember

being back in San Francisco, I was told one time they're like, well, just use

your, your feminine ways to make it happen. And I'm like, so

I sat there with my smart assery and I'm like. What are my feminine ways

exactly? I'd like to know, you know, and it was, it was almost expected

of me at certain agencies to be flirty, to be

super sweet and taught this way to get what I needed. And I'm

like, first and foremost, if you know me, I'm like, I do

not talk like that. I'm a nice person very much. I'm all for compliments,

but mama is sassy. You know, that's just how it is.

And you know, I quite, I quite like it. And most people around me

do too. So no, I wasn't going to sit here and be

fake about who I was and how I was. And I was told I should

wear a dress more often. So I would soften the blow.

I'm like, the fuck? Like, it's just

like, oh, why? I mean, because, yes, this is, I mean I'm a very

casual individual. But yeah, I do like to get decked out every so often.

As some of y'all have seen, I can clean up nicely and when I feel

like it, I don't want to be told what to do. What's that?

You do scrub up well. Ah, thank you, thank you.

I do try sometimes, but you know, I, that was just, it was so

frustrating for me to just be face to face with that and have it be

blatantly told. Now the other side of thing is because, you know, we

are talking about women in this industry, but sometimes the poor guys.

I had a kid, I shouldn't say kid. He was a young man in his

20s, come work for me when I was out in San Francisco and

he interviewed for the media buying

team at one of the agencies I was working at. And

he was coming from Friend Finder. And as most of us

know, Friend finder was about

5% friend finding and 95%

adult friend finding. And so he was managing most of their

ad placement and whatnot. Is he goes. And the first day he came

in, I think it was the first day, let's just say it was. He goes,

taryn, thank you so much for hiring me. He goes, I got really tired of

Staring at naked people all day long. And I could never show my work to

my parents. It was so embarrassing.

Like, you're welcome.

You get tired of boobs all day long. I told you that one

of the jobs that I got laid off 83 times in 18 months. One,

the, one of the jobs that I had was working for this,

it was a telecoms company and they did basically premium rate dialers,

right? So there was two industries that that was really big, big on. One

was gambling, right? So they had like tips to lines where people could phone up

and get tips for the horse racing and stuff like that. And the one other

one was porn, right? So again, we were dealing

with like bonafide porn barons. And I used to kind of like

go and visit like people on site. So I used to go to warehouses where

you'd have sort of like the fetish room where people would be sort of

there with chains and width. And I always figured that, you know, if

you were sort of in this, the room that the, the

women that would be in the room or the men that would be in them,

because it wasn't just for women. It was like whoever was in the room would

be just dressed in normal sort of civilian clothes, but they were all dressed up

in the sort of the gear that they would expect to be on, right?

But what was really interesting, I kind of turned up for this job, right?

So, so the guy who was my, my boss, he sort of said, oh,

this is, this is Ivan. There's the toilets over there. This. We can go and

get yourself a drink. Ivan's going to show you some porn, right? And I basically

sort of, for, for probably the first couple of days, all

I did was just spend all this time looking at porn sites. And you

know, I think eventually you become immune to what it is, right? Becomes.

You just dial it out. It becomes. But I think, you know, had that been

a sort of a woman in that position, I think that would have been the

most uncomfortable sort of introduction kind of going really?

But. So, yeah, so,

but, but I think, I think when I, when I had the. I had an

affiliate network and one of the challenges was always like, you

know, your best affiliates, you would want to

try and sort of entertain them in the best way that

they wanted to be entertained, right? So, you know, it would always be, you turn

up to Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit, it'd be like, hey, we're going to go

out. We can do a club, we can get a table in the club, we

can go for a nice meal, right? And Then

we go. Or we can go to a strip club. And because the majority of

my affiliates were all young men, it was like, let's go to a strip

club. I would find myself. And again, like my sort of

stepdaughter, we'd find ourselves in the strip club. And it's uncomfortable to

be there. And again, I didn't really want to be there. I just would

much rather not be there at all. Right. And any of you know me now

in Terry, you know me all too well. I'm the mayor of the Chandelier Bar

at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, and I never leave that bar. Right. I

mean, I've kind of like, I'm just there, and people say, where will you

be? I'll be in the Chandelier Bar. Right? Because I just don't want to go

to strip clubs. I don't want to do clubs. I've done them all. I've done,

you know, I've done them to death. Yeah. So.

And I think in some respects, that was a.

You know, I know that that was part of the affiliate manager's role, was to

kind of put yourself into that position. I just wondered how you felt. Did you

ever get asked to kind of do that? Was that something that you kind of

got asked to do and how did you feel about it?

I think we probably all have. I mean, we definitely. And it

was acceptable, Jim, what, 15, 20 years

ago to do that, but now it's not.

You don't have to. You know, we all felt, back in the day we had

to do that. And, you know, I don't bench press as

much as Taryn, but, like, I'm from Boston. I have older brothers. We

were raised. I wouldn't mess with me, you know what I mean? And

so I always was like, I go to these

things. I'd go to the strip clubs with all the men, do. Do all the

parts I was supposed to play. But I was also like, don't

fuck with me. You know what I mean? And so that's kind of what we're

trying to teach now is that be careful of the situations you put

yourself in. Nothing good happens after midnight.

There's things that we kind of. We have this book that we. It's like the

secret book that us women have that we're sharing with, you know, some of these

new younger women coming into the industry. And there's things to

do, smart things to do and things not to do, you

know? And also recently, like, I've been

in a position where I was asked to

sponsor an event that was associated

with, or it wasn't associated with, but it was around

Affiliate World in Bangkok. Right.

And this event that this company wanted

me to sponsor was known for

having paid girls there. And

I'm just like, I cannot sponsor this event.

I absolutely will not. I cannot. I'm like,

I'll probably end up going to the event because it's still

networking and that's where all the guys that I want to talk to are going

to go. So I'm still going to go, but I couldn't

sponsor it. I couldn't request anybody on my

team, male or female, to go to this event because

I'm going to risk being sued. Yeah. If I don't, I

can't be. It's, oh, she made me go to this networking

event with strippers and hookers. And it's, no, I can't.

In good conscious, I couldn't do it just because

that's not what I want for this industry. As a woman, I'm like,

I thought we were past the strip club networking

events. Nope, they're still happening. Yeah,

people still want to have the entertainment, but again, I just

think that there are far better ways in which you can make that

happen. I remember going to Miami and basically putting a card

behind the bar to take a couple of affiliates to send them up to the

VIP room. And I'm like, what do I need to do to get a drink

around here? And the guy goes, give me 50 bucks. I'll go next door and

get a bottle of vodka. Right. So he and bought a vodka. And I sat

there. Yeah. Just minding my own business. I had no interest at

all in being there other than to make sure that, you know, the

affiliates that I was trying to court were satisfied

to this point that they would do business with me. And again, I look back

now and think, that was really quite seedy. But I look at it and go,

it was $1,000 of expenditure to get about half a million

dollars in revenue. I'm like, that's a fair return. Right. I think have

your own boundaries as to what you're prepared to do, what you're not prepared to

do. So, yeah, and I was going to. I was going to add, I

remember, you know, I know living out here in St. Augustine, Florida, is not as

exciting anymore, and I don't see as many clients.

But, you know, back in San Francisco, those would come into town, you know, there's

plenty to do. And I remember would take our clients or some

of our publishers to, like, the Gold Club. Everybody has probably been to the

Gold Club in San Francisco. And so, you know, things just start

to get uncomfortable, especially as a woman. Like, all of a sudden, the owner.

The owner of one of the. Well, I should say the owner of the. One

of my clients was, then offered me $10,000 to

give him a lap dance and do all this other stuff. And I looked at

him and I'm like, nah, bro. Like, I'm not going to do that. Okay. Like,

let's do business and whatever. He's like, damn, I can't believe you wouldn't

just take my money. And I'm like, no, I, you know,

I'm running a business here, and I, you know, I have other people working for

me here. And so that's going to be the example that I show them. Come

on now. And then, other times, like, you know, we'd bring

other publishers there, and then you'd be sitting there, and

then the strippers come up, the coked up strippers, right? And all they want to

do is talk to you and be your best friend. Now, for a woman, this

gets very, very annoying after a certain time. And then

she. They start saying completely inappropriate things like, oh, you

have sexual tension with your client and you guys should get together. And I'm

like, okay, all right. You know, after

the fifth or sixth time of this kind of behavior, you're just like,

okay, why am I subjecting myself to this? There's. I still, you know, add

value to this relationship if, even if I'm not at this strip club, hey, I'd

rather give you a great meal. Maybe I'm boring now. I'd

rather give you a great bottle of wine, a great meal, and, you know, talk

about things that really matter in our lives as opposed to, oh, hey, now

you've seen naked chicks, Give me some more money. You know, it's just after a

while, it just gets so fucking annoying.

But I feel like we stepped out, you know, Karen, Like, I remember clients would

be like, sarah, we're not going to sign a contract with you unless you come

up to the hotel. Like, come up to my hotel room. Just, you know, in

Vegas especially, just come up to my hotel room. You know, I'm in. I'm in

the suite, you know, in the Bellagio. Like I give a shit that you're in

the suite and Bellagio. But that's what they would do, sign a contract, come up

to that. And then when we just kept saying, no, I'm not going to do

that, I'll sign the contract right here in the Lobby. Then you kind of have

this. Then they're like, okay, we don't have to mess with

her anymore. Right? You know what I mean? This is. She set the ground rules,

so hopefully we can teach that to everybody, you

know, that they don't have to put themselves in. In that position that

we owned in. You know, you don't want to go up to the room and

see the balcony with the hot tub and watch the sunrise.

It's like, yeah, I know this podcast is, like, you

know, But I will. Not say that I am,

like, absolutely perfect. You know, I definitely have seen

sunrises in Vegas. I've watched many

clients do illegal substances.

For sure. I don't need to tell anybody about it. You know, that's their business.

I. You know, it's been. I've whooped it up in the club. Like, you

know, even in my 40s,

but. Amen. Yeah, right? We can still be

fun. But, you know, it's like you said, it's honoring all those boundaries and. And

whatnot. So I think that. I mean, I think

one of the funnest times I had was with Jimmy. Like, we ended up. He

made me go to New York Bills, Buffalo

Bills bar in Vegas to watch games. Like,

and I walk in, and I'm definitely not a Bills fan,

but, hey, we had a good old time where these people were, like, yelling and

whooping it up and we were drinking bad beer and we had to order pizza

from next door and, you know, equally as.

So true. How did we lose? Did we lose Jim? Did we

lose our host? I don't know what

happened. Maybe this is part of it. It's supposed to be

impromptu, and now we have to figure it out. We figure it out.

I mean, let's be real, ladies. I. I mean, I remember some fun whooping up

times at Link Unite events as well. There is a picture with me in a

statue, and I was like, whoa, that one should not get out.

I went my first Link Unite event. I was like, okay. Like, I

just come off of some other trade show events.

I was like, okay, this will give me a break from drinking, right? We're gonna

be around other women, not gonna drink as much. It'll be great.

I think I drank more there than I did at all the events

combined for the last two months.

The puss. And, you know, it's safe, fun. You know what I

mean? That's what I love about it. It's like, we can. We can be together.

We can. We can do business out by the pool or wherever we are.

Whatever venue we choose. And, and it, it's, it's

comfortable. It's comfortable. Nobody has to wear heels.

200 women pass. Right,

Right. Like, what's going on? Yeah,

certainly. Although I know sometimes it gets a little dangerous when we're

hiking in Arizona. I, I, I gotta hand it to the

ladies who made it to the top of the mountain because that was.

Oh, my gosh, I've never hiked in my life.

Well, you know what's funny about that, Karen, is we, Amanda and I came

in a couple days early in order to get everything planned, and

we hiked it. And I remember saying, like, this is not

for every, like, this is not an easy hike. Like, this is not

like the hikes that some of these women go on. Like, I hope they're

prepared. And I remember being worried about water and stuff like that. And

so. Oh, it's true. Definitely. Some, some women definitely turned

around on that particular height. The red rocks. Yeah.

That was. Where

you had to, like, hold on to scale that one rock, pull yourselves,

like. Nope. Or the

helicopter that was flying around, you know, saving people that

couldn't. Yeah. Oh, my gosh,

that was so crazy dangerous.

Yeah. No, you're missing. Right. And I'm all

for pushing. Right. Push yourself to do things that you don't

normally do, but yeah, a lot of you comfortable.

Yeah. And I know I built some bonds

with folks. Oh, is Jim there? Is it moving?

He's just not on video. I saw some movement, but it builds

bonds, I think, you know, when you try to do stuff out of your comfort

zone, you know, in a safe environment, it

builds trust as well. And that's how you connect. That's what the

connection is. Yeah.

Experiences especially that get you out of your comfort zone.

I think right now, the coolest thing for me right now about Link Unite is

the fact that the three of us probably know this better than anybody

in this industry is walking into a happy hour and actually

knowing other females there. You know what I mean? Like, I remember going into

happy hours by myself. You know,

no women to be found at all. You know what I mean? And

so I think that's the best part. And we're, we're

searching out venues right now for linky night five for

2025. So we're looking forward to getting that planned

and sorted. Jimmy's back. Can you hear me?

Yeah, we can hear you. I tell you what I did. I kicked the cable

out of my, like, at the back of the computer. Like, bang. It all went

black. But obviously you guys were still on here. Well, that's good. Apologies for

that. That's the problems. Yeah, no worries. We thought this was part of the show.

Yeah, I was testing our podcast abilities.

Yeah, it's like we. We have this program called Big Brother. I don't know if

you have it over in the States, but basically they just get a bunch of

extroverted people into a house, they throw in a bunch of booze, and

then just walk away and leave them to it. So maybe I've done the same

thing with you ladies. Just left you in the room. Unfortunately, I didn't leave you

with cocktails, but I've left you in the room, left you your own devices. But,

yeah, I was able to hear what you were saying. Again, I love the fact

that you just pick things up and just kept going with. Without me

even being here. Maybe I should do that. Maybe I'll just have. I won't even

need to be on the show. I can just have you guys do the whole

thing for me. We thought

you were watching us, Jim. We thought maybe. Okay, let's see how

well these women can handle this without a man. Listen, I know you're well

enough to know that you would absolutely have no

issue at all whatsoever with

handling whatever gets thrown at you. So I guess

I have one burning question. So I mentioned I've got grandkids, so one of

my grandchildren is. She's seven, nearly eight.

So she. In probably maybe 10 or 11 years time,

she's going to be starting to think about leaving school, going to find

a job. What would you say? I mean, hopefully this

episode will be there for posterity forever. Right. So.

Well, I'm trying to kind of plant the seeds now to kind of

help pave the way for people like

my granddaughter to have a future. Because I love this industry. I mean,

I think it's been phenomenal for me. I've made so many great friends.

Right. I look at the kind of, the business side of it as a kind

of byproduct of the friendships that I've made. I mean, I've made some amazing friends,

including you three. And, you know, and I hope to kind

of continue to kind of evolve that relationship. But

what would you recommend for young people now who may

listen to this episode, whether it's, like, now or sometime in the future?

What would you recommend that they do to sort of set themselves up to get

on and do well in this industry?

I think it would be about finding an angle that they can

be passionate about. I think that I have two teenage

kids. They're 14 and 15amazing

kids. And as I know, Sarah and Taryn have amazing

kids as well. All of us have teenagers, and they're all in

that stage where they're, what am I going to do for the rest of my

life? So I think we're all starting to have those conversations with our

kids now. I think as far as kids, like, we.

You brought them to London. Yeah, yeah. We got to sing Happy Birthday. Yes, I

did. Yeah. I think that it's important that our kids

look at. I love this industry, too. It's why I've stayed in

it for 20 years. There are aspects of it that I don't

particularly like, but as a whole, I can't

imagine not working in payments.

Right. For my kids, I want

to best encourage them to find what inspires

them, what motivates them, what moves them.

And had my kids, they took an entrepreneur class when they

were like 8 years old. It was a kidpreneur

class. And it was like, okay, three things that you

love. And then the next step was to

come up with three problems for each of those three things that you

love, and now come up with a solution for each of those problems.

And that's your entrepreneur idea, because you're going to

solve that problem. It's not just you that has that

problem. It's going to be something you love. So you're going to be motivated

to get up every day and work for it and make it

work and scalable and how you can

best service a problem that and fix

that problem that exists. I think that's more

important than pushing my kids to follow in my

steps and work in payments. You know, like, my son

came up with an amazing idea for lego. I don't know how to make it

come to fruition, but he wanted a Lego 3D printer, because

if you lose a piece to a set, the entire set's useless.

Right. So if you had a LEGO license,

LEGO licensed plastic material, and you could just paid

$2 and have the LEGO printed right there in your home

without calling up lego, having them send you a piece, whatever.

Build a custom set, whatever. It's a brilliant idea.

Right? Because he loves legos, but he hates that if he loses a piece, he

can't build it anymore. Yeah, let's find something you love, find a

problem, come up with a solution.

They're the only people that have that problem. But most people experience, or a lot

of people experience the same problem. Yeah.

Yeah. You're not the only one with the problem.

So true. That's great.

Sarah. Did you want to go next or no? I was just going to say

talk to anybody. That's my advice that I tell my kids.

Now, you know, Molly's, she's on college hunt right

now. She's a senior in high school and my son's right behind her is a

junior. And I say talk to anybody because you're going to go into a room

and you know, you're kind of taught like who you should talk to and who

you shouldn't talk to kind of thing. But I'm throw that

out the window. Talk to everybody. I think I've made

some crazy connections over these years in this industry by just

walking up to these random people and having a conversation and getting to know

them. Especially in the urban industry, you know, just people working

at the venues that we've had events at. I mean they, they

shoot me texts to ask about my life and my kids. And you know, I

see them once a year, maybe once every years. You know what I mean?

It's. Talk to anybody because you know what, we're all in this together. The way

I look at it, you know, and you might network and meet somebody

randomly that, you know, down the road they're going to be able to give you

some sort of an intro that, that's crucial, you know, so

be open to anybody. Yeah,

I do agree with that. I love that. I mean, and it's kind of, it's

funny because maybe it's like my place to say like what I'm

thinking now too. My, my boys are a little bit younger, so they're 11 and

13. But you know what you're saying, finding things that you're

passionate about. If anybody watches me on social media, they know my older son

loves heavy metal and rock and plays guitar and he's die hard into

all of that. Um, J, my younger one is, he's into baseball.

He's playing on two teams right now. And he's, you know, he's not the best,

he's not the worst. But you know what, he's super passionate and, and

improves every single day. And then, you

know, it's like, hey, you're trying to, if you can talk to this

person and this coach, you will learn this from that guy. And

then you talk to the other coach, you're learning other basic skills too. Just like

with Kai, he has two different guitar teachers as well. One at school and then

one that we personally pay for. Um, but

utilizing all of those, but then also your follow through

and just making sure that you do the

work now Whether it's practicing, you know, things you're passionate

about or just turning thing in, turning things into a client.

That's the difference between closing the deal is actually doing the work versus,

oh, saying the yada yadas, you know, so it's, you know,

being consistent with actually being

passionate, utilizing your resources and then doing the work on top

of which. And I said, so I think that if you can find all three,

you're going to be very successful regardless if it's this industry or

whatever industry you go into. That's what, that would be my advice.

I went to school and I did. I had a really good

education paid for me, but I just decided that I was far more

interested in sports, in women, smoking,

drinking, all those sorts of really bad things for you.

And consequently I left school with virtually no

educational qualifications. So my education has really been an

education of life. Right. And it's always difficult. I mean, you know, when you, when

you've had success in business that, you know,

came in spite of your education, not because of it. Right.

It's very difficult because like my, my, I've got two older grandchildren

who went to private school and they were like, why do I need to go

to private school, Granddad? You do. Well, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, don't,

don't kind of use me as the, kind of the template for what success

looks like, right? So it's not always going to be the same way. Some,

sometimes it will and that's fine, but sometimes it's really not, right.

I think sometimes it is. Against again, I've always maintained you've got

to be trustworthy, reliable, work incredibly hard.

I mean I've worked so hard since I started working and I really wish

if I could have applied myself at school the same way I did at work,

I'd probably been the smartest person in the world. But know, I just didn't,

could had no interest. And I think it's, I, I go back, I go to

school reunions and I, I see, I remember turning up to a school reunion In

I think 2002 or three or something like that and one of my teachers,

I, I turned up in a, an Audi convertible and, and one of my teachers

was looking and, and I, I always make a point, the first,

first time I, whenever I see teachers now, I always make a point of

apologizing for being such a dick at school, right? Because I really

was, I was complete and utter ass at school. Right.

My teachers hated me, I'm sure at the time, but

they've said it's. Honestly, it's fine. You, you kind of,

you've turned out okay. And that's all we look for

when it comes to it. Right. So I think,

you know, that's the only thing that kind of matters. So obviously, like

with, with Link Unite, it's a executive

leadership.

I want to call it. I can't. It's a bit like I always call

X Twitter and I'll always call Meta Facebook. Right. So it's like I'll

always call Link Unite, an initiative, so a community

of executive females. Right. So

if people, if people were kind of interested in getting involved

in it, what's the kind of, the best way for them to do that?

Give me it. Give me a call. Just call me. Reach out. I'm the most

accessible person in this industry. I feel like. Well, we all are. You know,

Skype, email, text, WhatsApp, whatever you want to use,

you know, that's what we do. We spend a lot of our time just having

phone calls with people, you know, and we're, we're helping the mentorship

husband are crucial with entry level people coming in,

producing issue or middle of the road, you know, replacing them with some

fabulous mentors in this industry and so that they can learn.

But yeah, definitely reach out to either Amanda or myself. We

will get on the phone with you and figure out what you

want to do and help you in any way we can. And bearing in mind

that there are probably hundreds of thousands of

men like me who are bumbling their way around trying to

see how they can support the women in the industry, what would

you say the best way men in the industry can support

the women in the industry? So right now

I think an awesome initiative is the corporate

membership package that we're offering. It's, you know, pretty well low

cost and it's, it's six individual memberships. And so what

companies are doing that don't have that many women working for

them, they're gifting them out. So we have a lot of male partners that are

joining up as our corporate members and then kind of giving out memberships

to their clients. I have a call tomorrow with a new woman that's just joining

and she was gifted a membership. She knew nothing about Link Unite, and

she's so excited to meet everybody and, you know, join the

tribe. So I would say that's definitely the best thing. You

know, support a woman, let her get in for the membership and reap the

benefits. Yeah, probably because I'm like an old fart.

But again, I was Brought up in a certain way to be very

chivalrous. And again, if we were in. If we were living in the times of.

Putting down your cape in front of a puddle to allow a woman to step

over it, that would be me, right? I'm that kind of guy. But I think

a lot of women don't like that. Right. I don't need you to put your

jacket down for me. I can quite happily walk through the puddle on my own.

Right. So again, how do you suggest men navigate

that? Well, I'm going to

say. Yeah, I was like, let Taryn talk on this.

Oh, that's okay. I was just gonna say, you know what? I

still am a person who believes that manners go

a long way. You know, as somebody who's highly

independent, you know, I come from a big city

and all that and can handle my way. But gosh darn

it, raising my boys to have manners

goes so far. You know, they're. I have people constantly

coming back to us and say, wow, you know what? They're, they say they're please

and thank yous. They're. They're pleasure to be around. I mean, they're, they're. I mean,

yeah, they're rowdy too, but you know what? They know they're the place to

do it. So what I was going to say is that, look, we are, you

know, many of us are individuals who are very independent and very intelligent in our

industry. The women are, the majority of which I've met are, you know,

highly intelligent. But allowing them, Allowing them to

speak and using your manners and doing. So stop speaking over people

constantly, you know, and trying to re. Explain what they're doing.

You know, just allow the woman to speak and say her piece. If you have

a question, just ask them the question just like you would a man. You know,

I want to confirm what you're saying here. Da, da, da, da. You know, please,

I'm. I mean, that's why I love hanging out with you, Jimmy Banks. You know,

Banksy, you do have the manners. You do introduce us to

everybody who's around. We. I absolutely adore being around you

because you, you know, you have that chivalrous way about you. And

I, I don't want that to change, man. And I love it when the other

men do the same thing.

I'm not doing it because for any other reason than I just

love the people I work in this industry with. Right? Just. Yeah, just

hands down, great people.

I think I would respect and show up, you know, show up and

support each other, you know, all three of you showed up to elevate a

brand new event that Leonard and Johnstone, you know, was doing. I mean,

that's so crucial, right? We were all there to support that new

event and showing up and having respect for each

other, whether you're a man, woman, whatever, you know what I mean? Just

have respect. We're all. Life is not easy, you

know, so, like, let's just be respectful for each other.

It's as simple as that. Yeah. And I think, I think

I know that you posted something on LinkedIn about her,

but like, we lost one of our industry colleagues,

Deborah Carney, who used to run the affiliate network

Loxley, you know, again, she was like a larger than life character

and will be sorely missed by the industry. But to me, it just like

highlights how important it is to live your life and do the best you can.

Because we're not around forever, right? We're all going to, at some point in time,

tap out and head off. You want to try and make sure that you leave

the world in a better place as a result of you being here than going,

do you remember that douchebag that we all hated? He's gone now and we're

apt to see the back of him. Right. You just don't want to be that

person. Right. And we all know in this industry there are people like that,

that people don't like the way they do business, they don't pay their bills and

all that sort of stuff. And that reputation will follow you around. Right. And

I don't think, again, that's not a gender thing. It's not a, you know,

just, it's just some people are just naturally not nice people.

Yeah. And I would also like to add, you know, to

be supportive and to, to talk some of your favorite

females up. You know, a lot of the times I still go to events and

I, I'm very quiet. Like, I know what I do. I know I can talk

to a wall if I need to, but I, you know, I just kind of

let my reputation precede me now because I've been doing

this a long time. But, you know, you still get

young bucks, if you will, in the industry. Like, oh, what do you do? What

do you know about this industry? And I love. And I'll use the

optismo guys as an example. Like, they're like, oh,

don't start with Taryn. Just,

they're like, you're barking up the wrong tree. You know, they're like, she's been doing

this a long time. And as soon as Like, I get this other

like, street cred from my male colleagues in the industry. You know, all of a

sudden, you know, the tone, the ego gets dropped and

then just business ensues. Yeah. I think what really kind of

highlighted. We opened an office in Hong Kong and one of the things

that I obviously flew over there, I took my stepdaughter with me, I took

my wife with me. And when you kind of go. Go into a meeting,

right. I mean, she was, she was like, she was like leading. She was the

point person in every meeting that we had. Right. So I was just kind of

there just in the background and. But you know, you

walk into a room and like, they automatically kind of gravitate to talk

to me and I'm like, no, I'm not leading this. You should talk to her.

Right. She's the one that's kind of in charge here. I'm not the one in

charge. And it's, it's so difficult when that's typically

the sort of the stereotype for that type of scenario.

Right. And I know it's

changing, but it's still think we've got such a long, long way to go. Right.

So for me, like to be able to have ladies like you on

to kind of talk to me today, educate me, hopefully educate my

audience about the community that you have with Link

Unite and obviously your participation in it

and getting some really good sort of life advice

for people that are either in the industry already looking to kind

of get onto the next level up or looking to kind of break into the

industry for the first time. Because that's my mission is, is to kind of try

and help educate and develop the next generation of,

in my case, media buyers. But you know, but it could be affiliate marketers or

whatever, people that work in digital marketing in one way, shape or form.

Right. That's what I kind of like live and breathe is just I'm there to

try and support the industry in whatever way I can because the better the industry

does, the better the world does, I think as a result of

it. You know, I think when you look at the amount of money that's being

spent online now in whatever way, obviously Cali, you

pay me process all the money, which is such an integral part of the

whole process. And yeah, I just think there's so much that kind of like

bonds it all together that I just think it's important that we collectively

work as a team to get the best results that we can.

Absolutely Love that. Yeah, indeed.

I was just going to add to that Jimmy, you know, like the. Let people

do what they do best, you know, and you don't have to be the smartest.

Everything I, I tell my kids that I go, I always ask somebody

smarter than me at this or this and this. I know what I know. But

if I don't know, don't be afraid to ask. And if somebody tries to make

you feel less than because you are asking, that's on

them. That's, you know, maybe that's not the right person you should be working with

or playing with or hanging out with, you know?

Yeah. You got to train people as the best.

You can give them the kind of the boundaries of parameters in which

they can operate. Right. Where their sort of limitations are. Because there

has to be some. Right. And then get the out the way and let them

get home with it. Right. Because if you try and micromanage them, I've seen so

many people try and micromanage the living daylights out of people. Right. It's not going

to be good for them and it's not going to be good for your company.

So. No, not at all. Not at all.

So, Kaylee, you're probably going to go and get cocktails now in Malta, which

I'm jealous of. Yes. I have a

white party, a dinner and party and

drinks and all that good stuff. We're so jealous. Yeah. You look good,

girl. I rock it. Hey, looking good.

But I love it. Honestly, this, this, I was, I was like

super nervous about putting this together. I'm so glad that we

persevered. It was actually getting you on was the easy with

the easiest I've had in terms of trying to get guests to coordinate.

So thank you for being so accommodating and obviously thank

you for taking over the kind of the conversation while I was having my technical

issues. It only remains to you guys. It

only remains to say that all of the ladies details will be available in

the show notes for the episode. It will be available on

YouTube, Apple, Spotify, wherever else you consume your

podcast information. Make sure you tell your friends about bad

decisions with Jim Banks and I look forward to seeing you on the

next episode. Katie's got turn. Lights out.

Thank you. Thanks, nuts. Thank you.