Affiliate Summit West 2015 Recap Part 3: The Parties

After the CAFFEINE Meetup I should have gone to my room and recharged for a little while.

Hanging out with large groups of people really drains me. I usually need 2 hours of rest time for every 1 hour of social time for me to feel good again.

But because I was at the show, I wasn’t able to do my normal recharge routine and I headed out right away.

Day 1, Jan 18th

Jan 19th 2015 1:00PM

Lunch was great. I met with an old friend and we talked shop and laughed about everything that has happened over the years. He was eating healthy food which was a big surprise. Because a few years ago he said he’d never be able to do it.

It seems like more and more people are starting to catch on and are joining me in my quest for control over the body.

After lunch we walked over to the Meet Market at the actual Conference.

30 Seconds of Affiliate Summit West

The crowd as huge – the lines were long. It was awful. After about 30 seconds of stnading in line I decided I’d had enough of the show, said goodbye to my friend and left.

I texted a few people to see what was going on and one guy got back to me and said that he and a bunch of people I knew were hanging out at the Marquee Dayclub. I’d never heard of it – but in my mind I imagined a swanky lounge with leather sofas and hot waitresses serving lattes.

Damn… was I wrong.

The Marquee Dayclub

3:00 PM

There are a lot of things I hate about going to clubs, but there are two things I hate the most. #1) Velvet ropes and #2) long lines. And the Marquee had both of them.

There were four or five big security guys there who were guarding the entrance and just generally treating everyone like shit. Everyone was forced to wait, they never looked at anyone.

I had to damn near tackle a guy to get him to hear what I had to say. Luckily the people I was there to meet spend a lot of money – so when I said the name – he got friendly and let me in right away.

It took 15 minutes to get to the Cabana and when I got there I saw that I was totally wrong about what Marquee Dayclub was. This was no swanky lounge… this was an all out EDM Rage-fest going on at the outdoor pool. No one seemed to notice that it was cold… or January… or 3:30 in the afternoon.

There were thousands of people out there in the cold. They were dancing, drinking, falling and screaming like it was 85 degrees outside.

Photo: Chaos at the Marquee Dayclub

My people were in Cabana 18. And I made my way through the chaos to get there. Someone had flown in 10–15 girls from all over the world and well… the party was on.

I did my best to stay for a while. But that is definitely not my scene these days and after a few hours I headed out to meet a friend for Sushi at Blue Ribbon to talk some biz.

StackThatMoney Party

6:30 PM

The guys from StackThatMoney.com had a party going on at 5pm that I wanted to hit, so after sushi we headed that way. It was over at the Palms, so we had to jump in a cab (no Uber due to a Nevada lawsuit) and drive across the strip to get there.

As we approached the party, the music and noise let me know one thing. This place was f#cking packed.

If you don’t know: StackThatMoney.com is the biggest premium affiliate marketing forum there is. They have an incredible group of major affiliates sharing all kinds of insider info inside. It costs $99/month to get in and it’s totally worth it. If you’re into, check it out here.

*Tip: StackThatMoney is where I learned how to do mobile campaigns, I wrote about it here.

The party was at the rooftop Ghostbar. It’s a huge bar / dance club with a giant patio that hangs over the side. It was packed. Every step I took I ran into someone I knew, or who knew me.

Hey, Aren’t You?…

I was amazed how many people knew who I was. Dudes I don’t know were patting me on the back and shaking my hand saying “Thanks for posting about XYZ on your site!”

Several people said my site had helped them have their first big days. Pretty cool.

Photo: Me with Kirill and Ondrej at the STM party. 

I ran into Charles Ngo in the center of the place. We don’t get to see each other that often – so as always we took a few minutes to catch up and swap a few stories.

But this time was obviously a bit different. These days we aren’t just two faceless guys in the club talking. His blog has blown up and mine is growing all the time, so within a few minutes we had affiliates all around us.

Photo: Charles, Malan and iAmAttila at the STM party. 

We talked a little more, took some photos with some people and went our seperate ways.

The Patio

As soon as I started walking around the patio I was spotted by some guys who knew who I was and we started talking. They turned out to be really cool.

One of them mentioned that the night before he’d jumped into a hotel swimming pool with all of his clothes on.

Photo: The view from the Ghost Bar patio at the StackThatMoney party

After I left them I was recognized by another group, and these guys really blew my mind. They knew every post from the site, every video I’d posted on YouTube and they even talked about some of the 2–3 year old music that I posted on YouTube as well.

One guy knew every single thing I’d ever posted. I was amazed. I knew he was an avid reader/watcher because he mentioned little things… like the story about the loud women in the Hard Rock Hotel last year in San Diego. He knew it all.

I hung out with them for 1/2 an hour before things wound down. I ran into Charles again and we both decided it was time to get the hell out of there.

The guys I was talking to earlier walked with us and after we got off the elevator we had them take a photo for us.

Photo: Me and Charles Ngo, after the STM party.

And that was that.I was supposed to hit the Affplaybook party that night as well, but I was physically exhausted to the point where I felt dizzy.

On my way out of the Cosmo I got stopped 5–6 more times by people I knew, or that knew me. I think it took me 45 minutes to actually exit the building.

I was beat. So I took a cab back to my hotel and called it a night.

Day 2, Jan 19th

7:30AM

When I woke up the next day I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. I made up my mind to scale it way back for the second day of the conference. It was Monday, which for me is deadlift day at the gym and I wasn’t going to miss just because I was out of town.

I had some coffee, did some work and at about 10:00AM I hit the Westin hotel gym.

It wasn’t great. But it did have some dumbells and a bar I could do pull ups on. I deadlifted with 50 lbs dumbells in each hand. It was super-light so I did more reps in each set and I did them very slowly, which is a little trick I learned from a YouTube fitness channel.

*Tip: If you’re in a hotel gym with no weights. Go very slowly and do more reps. If you do that, you can still get a great workout.

After my workout I felt pretty good but stayed in the hotel the rest of the morning and late into the afternoon.

Adsimilis Happy Hour

5:00PM

Adsimilis is one of the top mobile affiliate networks in the game. I’ve been trying to get to one of their happy hour meetups for a long time and so I decided to make this one happen.

They’d rented out a huge suite at the Cosmo and it was packed as hell. Free food and drinks everywhere. Really good layout – hats off to the guys/gals at Adsimilis for putting on a great party.

What’s funny is I never got to actually meet my rep who I’ve been talking to for years. I heard she was there somewhere – it was just too packed and crazy to find anyone.

I ran into some old and new friends in the backyard and we all talked shop for hours.

A few newer’ish guys that read the blog popped up at the end and it was great talking to them (you) too. I like mixing it up with long time vets (because they’re knowledgeable as hell) and brand new people (because they’re full of new ideas).

These personal conversations can put you light years ahead. People say things in person that they’d never tell anyone on a forum or on an instant messenger. That’s the best thing about the conferences – you always pick up a nugget or two that can totally change the game for you.

But you have to be there to get them. No way in hell I’d share that kind of stuff here.

For me, the conference was over. So I decided to head out pretty early.

Liberace’s Car

8:00PM

On the way out of the Cosmo Hotel I came across this – one of Liberace‘s prized possessions.

An amazingly glitzed car he used to drive onstage.

Photo: Liberace’s car at the Cosmopolitan Hotel

Photo: Close up to show the insane detail of Liberace’s bling

Get Me Out Of Here

By 8:30 PM I was in a cab, heading back to the Westin for some dinner. I hadn’t eaten much that day – and I’m bulking so I had a lot of calories to get in.

I had three dinners. A big club sandwich, a plate of chicken and a big chicken salad. People were looking at me like I was an animal. It was a lot of food.

After dinner I thought about playing some cards – but I was beat and decided to call it a night.

Which is fine with me – because you can’t lose money at the tables while you’re asleep.

For me, that was the end of Affiliate Summit West 2015.

Here is my journal entry from that night.

Conclusion

ASW 2015 was damn awesome. I’m really glad I went. Even though it was exhausting – the trip was worth 25x the price and time I invested.

If you’re a person who works a lot and thinks that you can’t go to conferences and meetups because your time is better spent working – you are dead wrong.

Every time I go I learn something new and I’ve never regretted taking the time to do the trip.

See you in the future.