In this Ask Evan episode, Evan Carmichael answers a viewer’s question about launching a music festival and securing sponsorship. He explains that sponsors only invest when they see proven audience momentum, so the first step is to build a strong social‑media presence (Twitter, Facebook, newsletter, YouTube, flash‑mob‑style stunts) to generate buzz and a measurable following. Once an audience exists, he advises targeting in‑kind partnerships—securing products or services instead of cash—to demonstrate tangible value and to accumulate a dollar‑equivalent budget. Those early in‑kind deals and the audience data become proof points that can be leveraged to approach cash‑paying sponsors, making the pitch more compelling than a bare idea. Throughout, Evan stresses the importance of showing traction (followers, media attention, existing partners) to differentiate the pitch from countless others that companies receive. He ends with a call for viewers to like, comment, and ask further questions.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from Tamal, who's one of my newsletter readers, who wants to put on a music festival as his business and has had a hard time raising capital for it to get the sponsors to help him launch it and wanted my advice on how to, how to get that thing going. So, a couple things. If you are going after sponsorship, they want to see that you have something. It's really hard to go after businesses to say, "Hey, I'd like you to sponsor me and give me whatever it is, $500, $10,000, whatever it is that you need from them," when there's nothing for them to look at beyond just an idea. So you want to build up momentum. So what I would do with you, if you're starting up this movement around youth, especially with a music concert, is kick up a lot of noise on social media. So build a Twitter following, build a Facebook following, talk about what you want to do, get people excited about it, get people coming to your site and interacting. You want to build up as much momentum as you can as possible to get it going. Start a newsletter, create a YouTube channel if you need to, try to get people organized in some way. So if you have a flash mob or something to get on the media's attention as well, just to start building some momentum so you're not an unknown quantity. If you're not going to a business and say, "Hey, I have an idea," but it's just on paper and there's nothing to back you up, you have all this momentum. If you can say you have thousands of people following you on Facebook and Twitter and on your newsletter that you can access, you know, right away, that's an opportunity that businesses would jump on. So first, take that time to build up a following, build up an audience through social media, through your newsletter, etc. The next thing I would do is when you're going after your first sponsors, try to go for in-kind partnerships. And that's a lot easier to get in-kind donations instead of money up front. So just depending on what you need for your event, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of stuff that you'll need that you would use the money to go and buy. You might be able to get those guys to be able to give you that amount of dollars, but not in money, but in actual products or services. So think about all the products and services you need to spend to get this event going. Talk to those companies and see if they'd be willing to donate some of their time or some of their products or prizes to be able to promote themselves at the event. It's a lot easier for a company to give up some of their inventory, to give up some of their service time that they may have extra time anyway with their company, instead of giving you cash, right? And that can be your lead-in. Nobody needs to know that they're only giving you, you know, in-kind donations, but you can start raising a lot of, you know, dollar value items for the event. So you can say, you know, you've raised $50,000 or whatever it is because you have, you know, in-kind products or services. So that's kind of step 1. Then you can use that to go after other businesses. You can say, well, we've already partnered up with these companies and we've already got all this attention happening on social media and on our newsletter and some mini events that you've done. That starts building the momentum. So now when you go and you're talking to companies, you have a lot behind you and it feels like they're going to be missing out if they don't join on the boat. It's a lot better than just going in with a piece of paper and saying, hey, here's an idea we have, but we don't have any traction. So that's what I encourage you to do, and this applies for anything in business. You know, when companies pitched us about raising capital before. If they just came in with an idea, they usually got a no. But if they came in with some momentum, they came with, you know, a product and they had a few customers, people willing to buy, or they had a board of directors or board of advisors, you know, anything to show that this is something that is interesting. Because people get pitched all the time, right? The companies that you're going after, they're getting pitched all the time for donations in kind and also, you know, dollars. And it's hard to figure out who to go with or not. So if you're the one guy who comes in with a whole bunch of traction behind you, a whole bunch of media and online attention, and you already have some other partners, then it's a lot easier for somebody to say yes and pick you instead of everybody else who's pitching them as well. So I hope that helps. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. Makes me wanna make more of these videos for you. And I'd love to hear what you have to think. If you wanna leave a comment under the video, or if you have a question, you can leave it in the comments as well. And we'll see you on the next episode.
