The Secret to Turning Brand Pitches Into Real $$$

Do you think you need a massive audience to land a big brand deal or that sponsorship that can change your life? Well, think again, because in today's episode, we're going to debunk one of the most common myths in the creator economy. In this episode, we're sitting down with my good friend Justin Moore. Now, Justin is the founder of Creator Wizard. He is a sponsorship coach, and he's also the bestselling author of his new book out today, Sponsor Magnet.

Well, if, if, if me integrating them isn't that compelling right now, you know what would be compelling? What about I do a comprehensive, uh, audit of this brand's social presence.

And what we're talking about in this episode is turning your expertise, your creativity, into real revenue for your business. You're going to learn how to attract your dream clients even with little to no audience to begin with. Justin will also teach you creative ways to stand out in brand pitches. There are just a couple of things that you can do that can make a major difference. Justin was also kind enough to share his Rope method for pitching brands. You're not gonna wanna miss this, so make sure you check out that section of the interview. Whenever I have a question about sponsorships or brand deals related to my YouTube channel or the Hey Creator Show, Justin is the first person that I get in contact with. Make sure you pick up a copy of Sponsor Magnet, join Justin's newsletter, and let's go ahead and dive into the episode. Justin, the way that most people think about sponsorships and brand deals is I have to have X number of followers, subscribers on YouTube, or wherever it might be before I can start getting brand deals. But one of the things that I really like about your content, one of the things that you talk about in Sponsor Magnet, and I actually heard you talk about this with our mutual friend Jay Clouse, is that you don't have to have really any audience at all in order to start getting brand deals. So tell us a little bit more about that, because I'm sure when people hear it, they're like, no, that's not true. But I like finding counterintuitive things that like have proven to be true. And you're like the guy for this.

Let's first start by acknowledging those people who are listening or watching and may have had that experience where they had reached out to a brand or a sponsor or a company early on in their journey. And that brand said, we only work with people who have, you know, 10,000 followers or there's a threshold, or, or maybe they tried to apply for an opportunity on one of the like brand deal platforms or something. And, you know, you enter your channel and it like literally doesn't even let you apply because you don't hit the criteria or whatever. So yeah, so, so I just wanna like, I wanna acknowledge those people because it is a real thing. Like there are brands who have those kind of arbitrary thresholds and it's super annoying. I think it's shortsighted, um, especially because you can buy 50,000 followers for $10. Literally, like, you know, you've probably seen these DMs that you can get from these, like, scam, you know, scam type.

Yeah.

So it's like, so literally, like, following is not a proxy for influence. Like, I wish that we could, you know, 2025, just forever put that to bed.

But on my arm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. But, but to your point, you have to, for those brands that don't quite get it yet, or maybe brands who haven't even really worked with creators a lot, worked with influencers. I think a lot of brands or a lot of creators think that, well, every brand, every company has done influencer marketing or they've worked with creators. And that could not be further from the truth, especially the smaller to medium-sized players. They may have literally never worked with, with partners before. In fact, I had one of my clients who went through my program and she said that the 3 brands that she reached out to in her fashion design niche, there's like these SaaS tools. They literally had never worked with creators before. So it's like this is a real thing. And so to your point, like, I think everyone immediately zooms to, hey, let me, let me reach out to a brand and I'm going to pitch them. Let me talk about you on my platforms, right? This is the holy grail. Let me make an integrated YouTube video. Let me do a TikTok on you, an Instagram reel. You know, you pay me, like, all is well, right? That's what, that's what everyone thinks is a sponsorship. But if we kind of go back to first principles here, I like to talk about something that I call the sponsorship continuum. And this is one of the, one of a framework in my book, Sponsor Magnet. And so when you're at the very beginning, the outset of your journey, and you don't have a lot of experience and you don't have a very large audience and you don't frankly have a lot of influence yet, if you were to reach out to a brand and say, hey, let me do a 90-second integration on my YouTube channel, they go to your YouTube channel and you're getting 50 views on average. Let's be real here. That's probably not gonna move the needle for them, unfortunately, right? It's gonna be this kind of thing. Hold on, I got some sound effects for that, right? It's not gonna be, it's not gonna be great, right? And so, you know, it would be more interesting. What's that? Oh yeah, I have to.

Yeah.

And like, it wouldn't be me if I didn't, if I didn't have it, man. And so, so, you know, let's, let's flip this on its head and think, okay, well, if, if, if me integrating them isn't that compelling right now, you know what would be compelling? What about I do a comprehensive audit of this brand's social presence? Let me look at their social media. Let me look at their blog. Let me look at Let me look at their LinkedIn, for God's sakes. Let me look at just kind of what are they posting out there on the internet? And does it suck? Are they only posting once a month on Instagram? Are they not posting Reels at all? Do they not even have a YouTube presence? You've probably seen this one where a brand will have a YouTube channel, but the only thing they post there is like their 30-second TV ads. It's like, they, it's like, no, that's not quite gonna work on YouTube. Yeah. Internal promotions. Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so that's not really gonna work. And so if you Yeah, exactly. And so, uh, let's say you, you did this and you reached out to the brand and you say, hey, I actually think you could be telling your brand story in a more compelling way. Uh, I did this audit. I identified these opportunities. You're not saying you suck. It's saying, hey, here's some opportunities and I would love to help you do that. I can create some content for you, brand, to use on autopilot. I'll send you 5, 10, 15 videos every month. Let's say, um, it's gonna be $7,500 a month. What do you think? And oh, by the way, go take a look at my platform because that serves as my portfolio. Right, right.

That's your concept. You're like, well, he may only get 50 views, but the quality of these videos are very high. We would like to have that level of quality, that level of storytelling on our channel as well. 100%.

And there's so many— you may have the expertise, as you know, I work with so many like photographers or videographers and they do these amazing like content, but they don't have a super large social media following. But they could still parlay that skill set as they're growing their own creator business into, you know, significant revenue, but potentially serving brands in a different way. And a lot of people think this— that's not a sponsorship. And it absolutely is. You are serving brands in just a slightly different way, a way that maybe doesn't conform to what you think of as a standard brand deal. And so let's say you grow now, okay? We move along the continuum, right? You're getting, you know, now you're getting, let's say, thousands of views per video or, you know, you've now got thousands of people on your newsletter, etc. Now the pitch can be a combination. It could say, okay, hey, I can do some consulting for you. I can create some content for you to use, you know, the brand to use. And yeah, maybe posting natively on your platforms is starting to become meaningful, right? That's, that's something that they'll actually care about. And so now you can, now you can charge accordingly, right? And so now, now let's say we grow, you know, we achieve serious scale. We're doing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of views, let's say, per video, per post, etc. Yeah. Creating and posting natively on your platforms can be the entire thrust of your pitch. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I think that this, this continuum is really a really helpful framework. Yeah, if you're sitting here as a creator thinking like, who do I pitch and when?

Yeah, and make sure if you're listening to this, go to the YouTube channel because you're going to see this on, on the feed. You're going to see like this whole continuum laid out. The other point that I want to make about this is it may even be like, if you're focused and specific enough in the niche of type of video that you're creating, you may not ever need to get to tens of thousands of views, because you will be able to like, if you can focus on their particular niche and the customers that they want to acquire, or the eyeballs that they want to get in front of, then like 1,000, 2,000, like just a few thousand views to the right people are going to be more valuable than 10, 20, 30,000 views or more that are just more, more generalized. I mean, we're, we're We're conditioned to think about more numbers always are better, and you— I guess there's some truth to that, but especially if you have a really niche-focused audience, then you can connect that to the brand directly and say like, hey, these, these are the people that you want to get in front of, not like random big-name YouTuber here.

I'm so glad you brought that up, Matt, because in, in actuality, the majority of my students and my coaching clients are actually extremely niche creators. They do not have, you know, millions and millions of followers, but they are basically the leader in their, you know, specific vertical. Like, one example I can give is a good friend and client. His name is Paul Jameson. He has a podcast called The Green Industry Podcast, and he teaches lawn care professionals how to grow their business. And he is the guy. He is the guy, you know, the John Deeres of the world and the Lowe's of the world. And like, if they're trying to reach the contractor or the person who has their small business of, you know, with a, with 10, you know, employees and they're trying to sell mowers and tractors and all that stuff. I mean, he is the guy. And so to your point, he's not getting millions of views per video, but he is absolutely crushing it with brand partnerships because the pool of people that those types of companies can reach out to and partner with is much smaller than your average, like, lifestyle influencer.

Right. Yeah, I really, I really like that. Are there, are there any other examples you can think of?

Yeah, I have a, another client. Her name is Dr. Alex, and she runs a company called Digital Pathology Place. So she has a business where it's all around digital pathology and tooling and SaaS and, you know, all the different equipment and things like that. And she's basically the leader in that industry. And like, think about the pharmaceutical companies, the tooling companies that want to, you know, she's got a very, very engaged audience of Doctors, lab technicians, people who are listening to her podcasts all around this very, very specific subject. And again, she's killing it with, with brand partnerships. Who would think a doctor with a podcast would be killing it with brand partnerships? But again, if these brands are sitting here thinking, how do we market other than Meta ads or mailer, physical mailers to these labs? There's not a lot of places to go.

Yeah, I'm so glad you brought those two up specifically as well, because like those are like Sweaty startups. Uh, I, you know, I don't know if Dr. Alex would call it that way, but you know, they're not the traditional like education expertise. Yes, they have an expertise, but it's not like, hey, let me show you how to like be more productive or launch your newsletter. Or like, those are just like examples for me. Or like, here's how to build your community. These are people who are like, they have businesses and they're using, they're using brand deals, they're using podcasts, they're using YouTube channels. To amplify a business that they already have. And like, again, it can eventually get to be like, hey, now I'm just— now this, this is my whole— this is my whole brand, my whole podcast, my whole business. But I think it's really interesting that I'm glad you highlighted that. If you're watching this and you're thinking like, well, I don't have like a course business, then this is still something that is very applicable to you.

100%. 100%.

Yeah. And I think even like going back to what you were saying, what we were talking about at the beginning is like, because even Paul and Dr. Alex, you could look at it and say, for them, they, like, from the beginning, if they would have gone to these, like, they could have done the UGC route. They could have said, hey, I know all about, like, hey, John Deere, I have all the expertise that, you know, that you need. I know how to make content. Let me make some of these for you. And oh, by the way, I'm also building this podcast at the same time. So that's a perfect example of like the continuum that Paul or Dr. Alex or anyone could be on.

100%. And like, let's, let's stretch our imaginations even more. Because Paul just got back from the largest trade show in his industry, which is called the Equip Conference. And he spent the entire time podcasting in the John Deere booth as part of a giant partnership that he forged with them. Because, you know, John Deere, they, you know, he's a very prominent figure in this space. And so what better than to have the most prominent figure in the space hanging out in their booth for, you know, 3 days, basically, and there's just people rolling through and all the, all the people. And so like, there's all these, like, that's, that's That's not like a brand deal that most people think about, right? But it's like event sponsorships, webinars. There's all these really interesting opportunities that you can potentially pitch to sponsors that they may have never considered before, but can meaningfully move the needle for them.

Yeah, absolutely. So as we're going into the new year, so we're recording this a little before the beginning of 2025 and it's gonna release around the new year also. What are some strategies? What are some things that you're keeping an eye on when it comes to sponsorships and brand deals? What should people be on the lookout for, uh, going into 2025 that like could move the needle for them with their, with their business, with their brand?

I think that there's a couple different things. The first one is how critical it is, and this is right up your alley, is building a pitching habit. Um, because I think that, you know, the vast majority of creators stumble into sponsorships. Usually it's not intentional. It's like a brand reaches out to me, they, they email me from my, you know, about section or my bio or something. And they say, hey, we'd love to collaborate with you. And you're, first of all, you're like, oh, Well, actually, first of all, it starts like, hey, let me give you this thing for free. And you're like, validation, right? The free stuff, right? And that feels awesome to begin with. But then, you know, once you, once you grow a bit, you know, when the brand, first brands start actually offering you money, you think that this is just how it works, right? A brand reaches out, you say, hey, yes or no. And then if you say yes, you could basically move forward right away. But You know, it is so critical if you want to, you know, make sponsorships a predictable revenue stream for you, you always have to be supplementing your inbound deal flow with outbound prospecting. And this is, uh, you know, also sometimes called pitching. And I think a lot of people are very intimidated by this process, usually because they may have tried to pitch brands or companies in the past and either never heard back, they got ghosted, or they got rejected and then they convinced themselves that pitching doesn't work, which is totally false. It absolutely does work. Um, and usually the reason is that they're pitching something very uninteresting that is very much about them, them, them, and not about the brand, their brand, the brand at all. Um, and so we can get into that maybe a bit later. And so it's like building that pitching habit is so, so critical. And so you're allocating one day a week or one day every two weeks where, you know, you're, you're taking out time from your content creation, uh, activities and you are reaching out to brands for the first time, or you're nurturing brands, or you're following up with brand relationships of people you've worked with in the past. And so it just becomes part of this so that you're able to kind of fill up your pipeline of opportunities, um, so that there's never any lulls. Um, and this is just what happens a lot is like people will get opportunities and it's awesome. And they take, kind of take their foot off the gas of, of, uh, lead generation prospecting essentially. And then they're like, oh, man, I don't have any deals that are, you know, going to be landing, you know, the next like 3 to 6 months. And so, so that's the first thing is just like building that habit. I'm sure— I mean, this is right up your alley, I bet.

Yeah, it's something that we were talking about this pre-show, and I'm glad you brought this up because this is like, here's a, here's a sticky note that I have right above. Like, this is right about— there we go. I monitor that. My friend Terry Rice was talking to me about last week. Terry's great at biz dev and personal branding, and he's like, Matt, Biz dev before brand, do your outreach, do everything, like make sure that the money is coming in before you like focus, like just as much as you're focusing on the content. So like, don't ever like get off. I mean, you could call it like a good kind of hamster wheel or treadmill. Like don't get off the treadmill of biz dev, of pitching, of outreach. So that, as you were saying, the, like your, your lead flow, your lead gen doesn't. Doesn't dry up because you don't want to be in that situation like, oh no, I need $5,000 in the next few weeks and now I have to like more, you know, desperately kind of do outreach. Like those things can still work, but it's much better to just make it a habit like you're saying.

Let me give you a few actually concrete examples of like how you can actually build this into your, into your, into your life and your workflow. The first one is let me just give you a very simple framework of like what you can actually say when you reach out to a brand, because I think this is oftentimes the most intimidating part, which is like, I don't even know what to say at all. And so I have this thing that I talk about in my book, Sponsor Magnet, called the ROPE method. So R stands for your pitch has to be relevant to a campaign that the brand is either currently running or has run in the past. O stands for organic, so that you can tie your pitch back to organic work that you've already published that illustrates that your audience has an affinity for that brand. Not that you have an affinity. They don't care about that. That's table stakes. It's what it is. Does your audience have an affinity? P stands for proof, so you can show how you've helped other brands achieve results. And E stands for easy to execute. When they, when they say, hey, yeah, this sounds interesting, what did you have in mind? And so the, the, yeah, going back to what I said earlier is like the form that most people's pitches take is like, hi, my name is Matt. Uh, I've got this YouTube channel about productivity. It's got X thousand many followers. These are my channel demographics. This is how many views I'm getting per month. I love your brand. I've been using it for, you know, 3 years. Would love to, you know, talk about collaborations with you. What do you say? Right. Does this sound like a pitch you may or may not have sent in the past?

Yeah. No, you're not reading my email. I definitely haven't written it like that.

You know, you know, you know why I know that you've sent that email? Because I sent that email. I sent that email.

Yeah.

So many times. And every— we've all been there, man. No one, no one goes to school to learn negotiation or pitching or any of this, right? And so when a brand receives that email, what goes through their mind? Number one, wow, I do not care. I don't know who this person is. I don't care that they have this many followers or that this is their audience demographics. There's lots of people that reach out to us on a daily basis that claim similar types of vanity metrics. I'm really busy. I don't know how to collaborate with this person. They're asking, oh, would love to find a way to collaborate. I don't know. And so I just delete the email or don't respond. And so this is, this is what, and, and to top it all off, you sent it to the social media manager who has nothing to do with paid partnerships, probably. Right. And so, uh, it's, it's just as important and we can get to this later, but it's just as important to send, to send it to the right person as it is like what you're actually saying. It's these two things. Right. Um, and so let's, let's, for example, um, uh, decide that we're gonna change this whole strategy around and we're actually gonna do a little bit of research. Okay. So let's, let's make it a real working example. Example, Matt. Okay, so give me a brand, uh, and I'm gonna actually do this right now live. Um, give me a brand that you would, you would love to collaborate with in 2025.

Let's say, let's make it really easy, let's say Bullet Journal, who I have a lot of relevant content for on my, on my personal channel.

Have you ever collaborated with them before?

I've done some affiliate, uh, promotions or like reviews for them, so I'm one of their ambassadors, so I do have a connection. With them and they send, they send me notebooks. I have lots of notebooks over here, but, uh, nothing, not, not a paid brand deal.

Okay. So while you were talking, I pulled up Bullet Journal's Instagram. Okay. And this is one of my favorite tactics because pretty much every brand, every consumer brand has an Instagram, right? And so I don't care if you're on Instagram or not. Uh, Instagram is a research tool. Okay. And so what I want to do is let's say we're sitting here in January, and we want to pitch Bullet Journal. One big mistake that a lot of people make right away is, hey, let me pitch you New Year, New You, right? Everyone's trying to set their intentions, their New Year's resolutions. What better than to, you know, do that with a Bullet Journal? This is the mistake. And you know what the problem is, Matt, with that strategy is that Bullet Journal planned out their New Year's campaign 6 months ago, right? Or 3 months ago. Too late. We're way too late. They— if they're working with partners, they engage those partners in October or November. That content was being generated in December. All the approvals were happening so that January 10th or January 3rd or whatever, those posts are live, right? And so this is a big mistake that a lot of people make, is that if you want to pitch a brand, you have to be thinking 3 months out minimum. Okay? So if we're sitting here in January, what I want to do is I'm going to scroll back to last, let's say March or April, and I want to see what was bullet journal— what did they care about in March or April, right? After the new year, new year. So we're here at July. We're here in May. We're almost there. Okay. We've got, uh, let's see here. Okay. We're in May, uh, here April.

Okay.

Here we go. So we're almost there. Okay. So, um, I wanna see what they're, what types of things they're posting about, uh, here. Okay. So this is a, uh, we can root here as wise, like a, a journal. This is, um, the most minimalist habit trackers that we've seen. I want to see usually like, is there like a seasonal thing that, that might be interesting to us? Challenge opportunities here. What is this? Monthly BuJo inspo. March is in full bloom. And so here are the ideas waiting to come to life in these bullet journals. So, okay, swipe to get inspired. Okay. So it seems like one of the things that they have as a theme on their page is like monthly inspiration stuff.

Yep.

Um, and so, uh, this could potentially be, uh, a pitch that we give to them. We say, hey, um, I noticed that last year or, or throughout the year, you have this monthly BuJo inspo thing where you do these carousels and you have inspiration. I actually think this is a fantastic idea and something that you should— you could extend into other types of content formats. Um, potentially, let's say, long-form YouTube videos. What does it look like to do like a monthly inspiration to get recentered on your, on your, um, you know, your habits and all the things that you're trying to do, your intentions and all that. And then you say, that's the first sentence of the email. And then this, and then you transition. So that's the R in the ROPE method, right? The relevant. This is relevant to them. And by the way, the subject line of this email is probably monthly BuJo inspo, right? In 2025, question mark.

Yeah. Not, not, uh, hey, Brand deal collaboration.

Yeah, not $100K YouTuber collaboration or something, you know, not that it's, it's monthly BuJo inspiration. Better yet, they've got these hashtags, hashtag BuJo, I don't know, hashtag March BuJo or hashtag BuJo seems to be like a thing that they do. So maybe the brand has like a special hashtag that you could put in the subject line or something like that. And so again, the first sentence is about them. Here's the campaign you're running and guess what? They're probably going to run it again next year because brands, they just dust off the same old playbook and they run it again. Right? And then the second sentence of that email is, you know, I'm, I'm very frequently talking about how important it is to recenter yourself throughout the year to really hit your goals. And then you link, you hyperlink one of those, you know, words to a relevant piece of content where you actually talk about that. And by the way, if you don't have a piece of content that would be relevant to this pitch, you make the piece of content before you pitch them. Right. Okay. And so that's the O, the organic, right? That illustrates your audience has that affinity so that, you know, you post it, you get all the comments of people saying, oh, this is awesome. I want to see more of this, this type of thing. And then, and then you say, I would love to do the following to help you spread the word about this in 2025. I can do 3 integrated YouTube videos. I'll give you usage rights for 3 months. Um, I can shoot and edit the first video and, and provide a draft for the for you in 10 days. Also happy to share some, you know, results of how I worked with, you know, XYZ productivity tool as well. Are you free on Thursday at 10 AM to talk about this? So the P, the proof was, hey, here's how I worked with another brand. And then the E in the R.O.P.E. method, easy to execute, is you're actually saying, here's exactly what I'm going to do for you. This many posts, this usage rights, I'm going to do this, this, this. So, so they just, they don't have to think about it. So the point, and so, and someone Someone listening to this might think, okay, yeah, but what if they don't want to do this exact thing that Matt's pitching, you know, that I'm going to pitch this brand, and I'm going to basically virtually guarantee you that that's what's going to happen. They're not going to just be like, okay, yeah, sounds good. How much? They're going to say, well, love your initiative here. We're actually not really focused on that anymore, or we've never— we're not really going to do that. But this is interesting. I kind of like your approach here. This actually— this thing over here is the priority for us in 2025. Would you be interested in that? Instead. And so the point is that you gave them something tangible that they could react to.

Yeah, you've started a conversation instead of just like the first way that most people do it is you almost like send them a contract. You wouldn't like say it that way, like, hey, here's everything that you need to give me money. And I have a couple of ideas maybe. But this, I really like this method of, yeah, like if you've been listening to this show, if you follow online business creator economy at all, you know, the like charge that people give you, like the encouragement of like lead with value, lead with value, make it about the buyer, the student, the customer, the reader, the, the viewer. And we're doing the same thing here. Like start it with a subject line that is relevant, like put that relevancy in the subject line as well. And then make the first couple of sentences all about how you can help them. And something that I wanna point out is like, this doesn't matter no matter where you are. On the sponsorship continuum, this is still how you open the email. This is still how you start the email. Yeah. Even if you have like, hey, I've got— I mean, you started it this way and like, hey, I've got 100,000 YouTube subscribers. Yay for me. Here's, here's all my information. How would you like to collaborate? It's here's my idea. Here's how, here's how it's about you. Here's my idea. Here's, here's my idea. And you're starting the conversation because you're right, they usually won't just come back and be like, oh yeah, totally. That sounds great. Where do we send the check? People don't send checks. What's your PayPal or whatever? Whatever do we say? Send the invoice right away.

Right. You know, look, there's actually, let me, let me, I'm gonna, for everyone listening, if you're still doubting me, I'm gonna put that to rest and you're gonna finally believe me. You wanna know why? It's because when you reach out to a brand randomly with that me, me, me focused pitch, you have to understand that they do not have random piles of money laying around just to pay people that reach out to them. But you know what they do have? They have budgets for their own initiatives. So when you are leading with, here's how I can help you, and they're trying to spread the word about their newfangled AI feature that's coming out in Q1 or Q2 of 2025, they probably have a $250,000 marketing budget to spread the word, sponsor podcasts, sponsor newsletters, sponsor XYZ. And so when you position your pitch as like, hey, help, let me help you move the needle on this objective that I think you have, that I did research, it seems like you care about this, then it becomes, oh, let's, let's just allocate $50K of this $250K over to Justin because it seems like he can help us get us closer to our goals.

Yeah. Yeah. That's such a good point that I've never even, even brands that I've worked with that have a lot of money to spare, it's not in the like random pile of cash category. It's marketing budget. It's event budget. It's product, product marketing. There are like a bunch of different ways that businesses and brands will spend money. But you have to put it in, in a bucket that makes sense to them.

Mm-hmm.

100%. Justin, this is all like super applicable and practical, which I love. You know, we're not kind of like just talking like, you know, big, big picture about this. It's like, hey, this is what you're gonna write in the email. This is what's gonna be in the second sentence of the email. Uh, one of the things that I know, like, even though I've gotten way better at biz dev over the last like 3 years. One of the things that continually is like a struggle for me is just like keeping track of everything. And like, I like sometimes I'll put labels on stuff in Gmail or like I might try out for a little bit. I did like the free HubSpot, but that was like total overkill. What do you, what do you use, if anything, to kind of keep track of sponsorships and like make sure that you're following up at the right times or like what stage people are in? Do you do anything like that?

Yeah, so I actually have a custom-built Notion template that I call my sponsorship wheel tracker that if you buy my book Sponsor Magnet, you get as a free bonus. So why wouldn't you?

Holy cow.

It's actually, it's actually, it's actually pretty dope because I have a ton of built-in formulas where it will remind you to do all these things. So, you know, pitch follow-up number 1, pitch follow-up number 2. And there's also, you know, kind of a Kanban, Trello ish board feature to it where you can track all of your opportunities. You have this 8-step sponsorship wheel. Yeah, yeah. Framework that I, you know, it's pitch, negotiate, contract, concept, produce, feedback, publish, and analyze. Those are the 8 steps of my, of my wheel. Um, and so those are the, so that is mirrored in this template. And so you kind of follow it through the process and then, uh, again, you, you re-pitch them when you get to the end. Um, and so yeah, you can go to sponsor magnet.com/podcast to grab it, uh, after January 21st, 2024. 5, which is when my book will be live. Um, and, uh, you can also preorder it if you want to too. That's totally fine.

Yeah.

Um, um, and, uh, but yeah, so, so the tracker, that helps a lot for sure in terms of just like, you know, staying on top of that stuff. Um, the one thing I did wanna like touch on, uh, to, to make sure that we didn't like leave, leave a cliffhanger for anyone is just like, who do we send it to? How do, how do we find the decision makers here?

Yeah. You said you don't necessarily send it to social media manager. It matters who you send it to. 100%.

So the first myth to dispel is like, okay, I'm just going to DM this brand on Instagram or something and be like, I love your brand. I've used it, you know, for 3 years is what. And then they just leave you on read or just never respond. You have to understand that like the vast, vast majority of brands, the people who are the person running the social media handle has absolutely nothing to do with paid creator activations. It's probably a community manager, a social media manager. This is the person who is giving a $5 coupon, uh, at Chipotle because someone got a lukewarm burrito. They're not like, you know, hiring you for like a $20,000 paid campaign. And so you're just kind of barking up, uh, it's just not a good use of your time to do that type of thing. And so, uh, what I'm a much bigger fan of is using tools like LinkedIn to, um, do some, uh, research and try to understand a bit more about the marketing hierarchy at that brand. Um, you know, understand, okay, do they have a you know, an influencer marketing manager, because a lot of consumer brands do now. It's so much easier than my wife and I— when my wife and I started back in like 2009 doing this, like most brands have one of the partnership manager, you know, influencer manager. And so it's, it's, it's a lot easier now. But even, you know, digital marketing manager and understanding the difference between a director and a manager and a coordinator and not emailing the CEO or the CMO, you know, like, like understanding that also, also The titles change, the titles that you should target change based on the scale of the organization. So yeah, if you are a hyper niche creator, or maybe let's say you're a hyper local newsletter operator, let's just do a random example. I have a lot of those, those clients in my, in my community.

I want to talk to you about that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. So, you know, when those, when those my clients who have this kind of hyperlocal presence, when they're reaching out and pitching you know, the coffee shop chain with 6 locations around their local community, uh, there's probably only 1 marketing person who works at that company and they're doing everything. So the director of marketing is probably the person, right? But if you're going out and trying to pitch a multinational conglomerate type company, um, now the director of marketing is not gonna be the person they, they have, you know, they're, they're overseeing maybe, you know, 20 people in their marketing organization. And so it's a much better approach to try to hone in on the exact person that you need to, that you need to talk to. Target. And so, so it's as much about like understanding the, um, the, you know, job titles, uh, if that's a thing. And, and by the way, I have a gigantic chart in my book that will help you triangulate like, okay, here's the type of brand, here's the number of employees based on what I'm looking at, and here's the types of titles I should target.

Okay. I love that. Yeah, that's super helpful. And it's something that is really easy to— I mean, it sounds judgmental to say like it's really easy to mess this up, But one of the things that you, I've seen you like be a big proponent of, and I think it's like super, super valuable. It's something that you talked about right there is like, hey, just do like 10 to 15 minutes worth of research and it's going to pay off. It's not— and you talked about it just now in the context of like, hey, let's find the right person to email because if you can spend 10 to 15 minutes, 30 minutes finding the right person to email, it's going to save you hours., on the backend, if you ever get in touch with the right person at all. The other way that, like, I've seen you talk about this a lot, you did it looking at Bullet Journal earlier, is like, hey, if I'm figuring out what to pitch, and this goes back to the rope, like, how do I find relevancy? Like, go look at what they've already done. Look at what they've done in the past. So it's like that 15 minutes of effort that you can like put towards a pitch. Or a brand that you want to work with, it's going to like, it increases your likelihood of conversion, of working with them. It makes you look like a professional and not someone who's just like, fire— like you can use like crappy, like a crappy type of AI tool to just like mass email people. So like put 10, 15 minutes into the right brand to find the right person and give them the right pitch. And it's going to like, in like your likelihood of like winning that, winning that deal is gonna go so much higher.

You know, another real tactical thing we're talking about using LinkedIn and things like that. Um, these brands are literally publicizing what they need help with in their job postings. Mm-hmm. So oftentimes you can research and they're looking for a marketing manager, they're looking for a content marketing manager. Maybe it was a job posting that was a year ago that's no longer open, but you still get to read the entire job entire job description of what they, what their objectives are for the next year. Right. And so you, you have this like this, these breadcrumbs that brands leave on social media that you can kind of infer, um, what, what is prob— what is probably important to them based on, uh, you know, their press releases, their job boards, like what are they posting on social media? Like what did their VP of marketing say at a fireside chat at South by Southwest about, you know, their outlook for blah, blah, blah. You know, it's like, again, the 10 to 15 minutes of research is going to really set you apart.

Yeah. And this, this goes out like even beyond brand deals as well. Like I was sending some invitation emails out for the next Hey Creator Summit next year, and I'm pitching a couple of people that I don't have, I don't have any kind of connection with. Like I've never met them. I don't have someone that can introduce me to them, but I really want them to come. They're like a little bit, a little bit bigger or just like not in my, my sphere of influence. And when I sent them like the, hey, I have this summit, it's like, I really like the podcast that you have. I've been listening for a while, and I really liked this episode where you talked about this thing. And you may not think it applies to the creator economy, but one of the things that you do— this is for like, um, a culture podcast that I want the two hosts to come on— I was like, I really like how you kind of like build a world inside of the podcast. Like, you have your own rituals, you have your own sayings, and I wonder, like, I bet that was really intentional. I don't think enough content creators think about the world that they're building for their readers, for their listeners, for their viewers. I did that this morning. I haven't heard back from them yet, but like, that took me— granted, I've been listening to their show for a little while, but just like, not just saying like, hey, Mal and Joe, I would love to have you on at my summit. It's— there's going to be a lot of people, it's going to be totally dope, you need to come. Like, no, I It's like doing that little bit of like, okay, how can I make this a little more special and specific to them to show like that I, that I care, that I give a crap.

Well, you know what, let's do some world building and set some intentions right now. Let's just, let's do some sound effects. Cause you're going to hear back. It's a guarantee. You're, it's going to happen. We're just, we're just, we're just, we're manifesting it.

We're speaking it into existence, bro. It'd be really great if they, they come back and be like, hey, so I talked about this like 3 hours later. And they're going to be like, well, now you're, I don't know. I don't know if we can do this. Um, you know, so we've talked a lot. We've been really tactical. We've been really specific. Um, this has been awesome and I do highly encourage everyone to go preorder and then like, if you listen to this afterward, order Sponsor Magnet, I'm excited. It's gonna be like, if you've liked this and we're not done, but if you've liked this, then like, it's just, you know, hundreds of thousands of words, like, you know, Everything that you need to know about, like, becoming a sponsor magnet is going to be in this book. So we'll talk about a little bit more in a minute. But what you do in terms of brand— the other thing I want to talk to you about is like what you do in terms of brand deals and sponsorships and all this. That's just like one part of your business. Can we talk a little bit about like your different revenue streams, how you've built your creator business? And because it's like, I think a temptation, like watching or knowing about you just on the surface, like, well, Justin just does brand deals and like maybe he does some coaching on brand deals also, but like it's, it's a lot more, it's a lot more than that.

Yeah, 100%, man. I mean, I, it's been a very windy and circuitous path to lead me to where I am today. I mean, the very quick story is that, you know, my wife and I started our first YouTube channel in 2009. Yeah. So we've been monetizing on the internet for a really long time. I ran, I also ran starting in 2015. I also ran an influencer marketing agency., for about 7 years. And so, you know, paid out millions of dollars to other creators. And so had this very kind of two sides of my personality. And, and so right around the pandemic when my agency got crushed, and that's a whole nother story, I decided to start creating YouTube videos all around this topic of sponsorships. And I never thought, oh, this is going to be my new business. It was just like kind of scratching a creative itch in the ashes of a tremendous professional failure. And because, you know, the most people like if you know, we came from kind of the influencer sphere and the goal of many influencer types is like get a manager, get a rep. That's going to be the person that's going to help take propel my career to the next level. Yeah, but we had such a sordid history with just terrible experiences with managers and networks and things like that over the last 10 to 15 years that I never wanted to do that. And the model there, the business model is is, hey, they're gonna take basically 20%, 20 to 15 to 25% of your, of your deals, right? If you're monetizing through sponsorships. And that's a lot of money if you're starting to get sizable deals, right? And so I knew from the outset that I never wanted to— I didn't want to manage, I didn't want to be a manager in that capacity. I didn't want to be an agent. But I still wanted to help people. And so the business model evolved very organically, which is just like, you know, I have a real— I have a passion for like teaching people how to do it, because I think I have a lot of— I've done thousands of deals, literally, I've done 500 deals personally and thousands through the agency. Um, and so I see all the mistakes that creators are making. Um, you know, I, you know, basically just, just wanted to educate the next generation. And so the model that kind of sprang out of that was, uh, what I call fee-only financial or fee-only negotiation advisory. So, um, I have, um, either basically a course called Brand Deal Wizard, which is an on-demand program where you can you know, go start to finish, learn, create a robust sponsorship strategy from, from ground zero. And then if you need ongoing support, I have something called Wizards Guild, which is an asynchronous coaching program. And so the model there is like, hey, you're— we're on speed dial for you. It's no longer just me. I have other coaches, sponsorship coaches on my team, and you pay us a flat amount every month and you keep 100% of your deals, right? And so that model has become very— it's been very— it surprised me how excited people have been about that model. Because again, you know, we have some creators who are doing six figures a month on sponsorships. And so they're paying us, you know, a very, very small fraction of that to get advice on pricing and positioning and proposals and things like that. But I just think it's, it's, it's, it's better. It's, it's the alignment is that it's better value aligned. And I'm pretty excited to see where this, where this model takes us.

Yeah, and I like the, the term of alignment because it seems very clear to me and that it's mutually beneficial. Like, you, you get to know, like, maybe, maybe some of your upside is capped of not taking a percentage, but then like you're also limited in terms of, like, limited in a good way in how much you, like, either how much advice you can give or like your, your downside is, your downside is capped in terms of Like if you like say you're going on a percentage and you have somebody that is doing 6 figures a month and they're giving you 10%, well, that's, that's awesome. But then like what happens when that person decides they don't want to do that with you anymore? And you're like, oh, I need, I need that $10,000. And you're also going to give like a lot more focus. It's like just being in the agency game again. Like, well, this person that gives me $10,000 a month, sorry, they do get more attention than the $1,000 a month. But if you can distribute it, I know this is something I remember Jason Fried talking about this when when he decided to make, when he and DHH decided to make Basecamp like a flat fee or like cap it at a relatively low number of like, hey, if you're paying for more than 5 seats, you don't have to pay any more past that. Where like, you know, ClickUp or Asana, and I'm like, if I'm like misremembering like different pricing strategies, that's fine. But, you know, forgive me, don't come after me, ClickUp, but like, it's like, hey, You're paying for 20 seats. I know Notion's like this. Like if you're doing Notion business, like every seat is $8 per month per person. And I remember Jason saying about, about this, hey, well, you know, that way if we have 10,000 customers or whatever and they're all paying this, then, you know, a couple leave. Oh, well, like that's a shame. Instead of like, you got to know that all of those other companies have like enterprise-level agreements, they're like, oh man, if this company left, we would, we would be in for some hard, some hard times.

You know, it's a great point, because these types of structural decisions about the, the economic engine of your business have such profound implications on like how you run the business, because, you know, there's so many toxic specific, like, things that happen when you are taking a percentage of the deals. Because, you know, basically, one primary one that I saw a lot was that, you know, if a manager has a roster of 10 or 15 people, they don't care where their 20% comes from. They just don't, they, whether it's from this talent or this talent. And so what happens is that a lot of the people on their roster start getting really upset because they think that they're not getting, oh, how come that person's getting so many deals and I'm not, right? And so what will happen is that if there's a opportunity for, like, like, this is one specific example, and so gross, but like, we would email, we would reach out to a creator who had their manager's email address in their bio for an opportunity, right? And we would say, hey, we're really interested in working with this person. And then the manager would say, hey, yeah, she'll, she's probably interested. But are you also looking to work with other creators? Because I've got this roster of like 10 or 15 other people. And so before they even locked in the deal with that talent that we reached out about, they're trying to make the deal bigger for the, for themselves and for their talent. And so what do you think happens in those scenarios? Some brands will be like, oh, well, actually, we like those two other people better that are on your roster and not the person we reached out about. Right. And so it's just these really toxic dynamics happen.

Feels better. They're like, oh, we could get those two people for 5 instead of like the person we, the more popular person that we initially reached out to. We thought we were gonna have to spend 10.

Okay, let's try that instead.

100%.

And so, you know, the, the, the thing that I love about this model is that, you know, we're able to say to someone, hey, don't take that deal, it's crappy. Like, that's a bad deal, you should not do that. Because we don't care, we're not— we don't have a dog in this race, we just want you to be protected. And so yeah, dude, it's been— but, but I will say though, that like, you know, since this is kind of a meta creator show, probably people will probably appreciate the fact that like my business has evolved significantly over the last last 4 years because this is, you know, the, the, the, the way I started was not this. It was, I was doing one-on-one coaching and then I ran a, a cohort-based course for 11 cohorts. So almost 3 years. Um, and so it, it definitely took a while to get to this setup through trial and error kind of, and mainly just from kind of building the plane as I flew it.

Yeah. And there's a lot, there's a lot of that and certainly happens with creator businesses. I know I was talking to Tim, producer I also co-host him about this, that like this next year will be year 5 for me working for myself, doing, doing the creator business owner thing. And there have been changes, maybe not every year, but like you just have to be flexible and open, like, and open to like different ways that you can make money, different ways you can monetize, how things might shift with, with your business, with your products, with your offers and what the market's responding to. Something that I think, like, that I don't want people to get confused about, though, that I admire about what, what you do is like you've stayed very focused on like, who you're serving and what like the point of the business is. It's not like you're going off on some like, completely different, like, tangent, you know, of like, well, it's kind of, it's kind of related, but not really, like, you're still serving creators through sponsorships, through brand deals. And it's just taken some different iterations on like, what what the different products and services look like, but the, the, the ideal customer is still the same.

I'll share a quick anecdote, which is that, you know, probably 8 years ago, 8 or 9 years ago, 97% of our income for our creator business was YouTube AdSense. And now it's like 1%. Okay. So, so that is a massive stratospheric shift in not that long of a time. You know, and so, I mean, if you're, if you're like, you know, feel as though you want to have a long-term, you know, career in this industry, just kind of strap in. It's, it's definitely, definitely a roller coaster. You know, I think another example I can share specifically about this business was that, you know, I very much kind of stuck my head in the sand when it came to short-form content. You know, I saw during the pandemic TikTok blowing up and then Instagram Reels and all that. And I just kind of, cross my arms like a curmudgeon and I'm not doing that. I mean, I gotta lower myself, this type of thing. Yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna do that. Um, and, um, I ultimately regretted that decision. I ultimately changed, uh, my opinion on it mainly for two reasons, which was number one, I saw that like the people that I, um, who were coming to me for advice were learning more from short form. They weren't just sitting down to watch a 15-minute YouTube video. They wanted bite-sized stuff in 60 seconds or something. But also brands were starting to shift a lot of their sponsorship dollars to short form. And so that like kind of two-part litmus test made me realize like, you know, I got to take this, I got to take this stuff seriously. And I think that that can be applied to a lot of different things in business, which is like you always kind of have to have your, your sense on like where the puck is going, not where it's at. And if you stick your head in the sand it always leads to a swift kick in the rear.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's so true. I think I'm— I still kind of got my head partially in the sand about, about short form. But another thing, like, even related, um, is just stay— staying consistent. One of the things that I admire about, like, say, even like on, on your YouTube channel, like, the number of— are you still doing the weekly, the weekly live stream, or how long, how long did you do those weekly?

Okay. Do it. No, I'm doing it, man. I'm doing it.

It's been 3 years, 3 years every week. That's awesome. Because like, one of the things that, one of the things that I regret is like, taking the break on YouTube that I did. And now, you know, lots of, lots of good reasons, like, looking back to do that, like there were, there was client work that was paying well, and it's like, okay, well, this is where the money is right now. I'm just going to focus on that. But now that, now that I'm going to getting back into YouTube, it's interesting to kind of get like, not just restarting some of the like views and metrics around like, okay, hi algorithm, hi subscribers, I'm back. But also like, just the feeling of recording videos has like, I've like kind of fallen off that a little bit. Like, I'm, you know, I'm getting back into like, I can prime the muscle pretty good. But it was interesting to be like, alright, I'm gonna do the whole like Casey Neistat walk into the door, start to talk things like, okay, we come in, you put your keys here, and it still has to look cool. And like, don't— yeah, I'm come in and just start— just little things like that are like, all right, I'm out in public and I'm going to film myself doing a thing. And I haven't done that in like a year. And that feels like— that feels odd. But also, like, I know that those are things that like, when, when the videos are doing well, those are things that people respond to. People like to be, be around other people, even like in a YouTube like short-form sense?

Let me share an example, uh, or story that I think will resonate, which is that, um, so we hired, uh, you know, famed, uh, YouTube strategist, uh, Paddy Galloway, uh, to do a, a consultation for, for my wife and I. And, um, you know, he, you know, let him into the backend of our, you know, of our YouTube channel. And, uh, one of the, um, primary, uh, pieces of feedback that he gave to us was, um, it still seems like you're making content that worked 5 years ago or 6 years ago or something. And that was like a dagger to the heart, man. Um, because it was totally true, you know, like YouTube in particular has changed so significantly in terms of what, uh, you know, the, the, the platform values in terms of, uh, you know, watch time and click-through rate and things like that. Um, before, you know, essentially if you subscribe to a channel, the main place that people got updates on you were like their subscription feed. But as time has gone on, the home feed essentially, you just like open up YouTube and like all the videos that are there, you know, YouTube has a pretty good idea of what you watch. And so the user behavior is just fundamentally different than what it once was. And this whole idea about like needing— finding the energy to learn how the platform is changing can be— there can be a lot of friction there, right? Because it's like you said, it's like sitting down and getting back in the habit and like filming again and like all that. And like, oh, you— the game's changed, the algorithms change and all that. And so what I always go back to is like, you know, because I'm, I'm still grinding it out on YouTube. I mean, you go to my channel, it's like I'm getting hundreds of views on average. It's not, you know, my wife and I were getting hundreds of thousands of views on average, like in our heyday. And like, I'm getting hundreds of views. And so it's a bit— it's a big big, you know, serving of humble pie. But you know why I keep doing it? And you know why I keep playing the game and learning and going through courses and trying to get better? It's because I'm so passionate about helping people about this topic. And I know that, like, it's about impact. It's about if I know that I could do better with the videos, that I could reach more people. And like, so at the end of the day, it's not just about getting views for views' sake. For me, it's about if I could like go from 500 views on average to 5,000 views, like, that would I would be so thrilled about that because I could reach more people with this message around sponsorships. And so I think it's just important to understand what that North Star is for you and your business because it'll help you really push through.

Matt, it's so funny you say that. I had a similar conversation with Patty like 2 years ago where he was like, hey, this was all like, I'm sure is really great for you in 2019. I'm like, yeah, it was super awesome, man. Come on. He's like, if you want— like, the thing that he hammered me the most on was title and thumbnail. And I still think I haven't like learned learned that lesson as much as I like could or should have. But like, I actually like, I've talked to Tim about this. I'm talking to a YouTube strategist tomorrow because like, if I want to make YouTube a really high priority, and I do in 2025, I've like come to the like conclusion is like, it's great that I had, you know, very, very humble braggy of me to be like, oh, you know, it's nice to have 100,000 subscribers. But if I want to get, I've realized like, if I want to get to 200,000, if I want to get to 300,000, if I want to get to a million subscribers on YouTube in the next 3, 4, or 5 years, I can't keep doing it the way that I've been doing. If I keep doing it the way I've been doing, then in 3 years I'm going to have 150,000 subscribers and that's going to be nice. But if I'm going to put the time into it, I got to do it like well enough that it could like reach hundreds of thousands of more people. So like just having that like willingness to learn and adjust and like hustle is, is awesome. And like, you're great. You're a great example of that. This has been super helpful, like very practical, very applicable. I know So like people are going to make money as a result of like listening and watching this episode. So thanks for being here. And like, tell people a little bit more about Sponsor Magnet. There we go. There we go. Had to do it. Tell people a little bit more about Sponsor Magnet. I said it comes out on January 21st.

Is that right? It does. Yeah. So sponsormagnet.com/podcast. Um, it is, uh, in its purest form, a complete distillation of everything I know around brand partnership strategy. Uh, the subtitle is how to attract, price, and execute your dream brand Dream Brand Partnerships. So if that sounds like something, uh, that's up your alley, um, would absolutely love to, to serve you. Honestly, I, I, um, it's really hard to, uh, like if you are a, a creator who— here's the reason I wrote it. I think this will be interesting for people listening, which is that, um, people were saying, Justin, you're a YouTuber, why did you write a book? And, um, here's the issue is that the types of people that have come into my orbit in my business are all people who are actively having issues with sponsorships. Like they have a deal, they need to price it, they don't know what to do. It's a challenging situation. Help me, Justin. And, you know, kind of I shoot those, that fish in a barrel to some degree, right? But the vast, vast, vast majority of creators are not sitting here thinking I'm having issues with sponsorships. They're thinking I want to make better content. I want to reach more people. And they're not thinking about sponsorships. Sponsorships is a means to an end for them. And so I had no content format, no asset in my business where I could speak to that curious creator who is like, I'm maybe I'm interested in sponsorships. I don't know if it's for me, but like, I'm, I want to like learn about it. Right. And so I, those people are not watching my YouTube videos. They're not reading my newsletter. And so it's like, I had to sit and think, what are, what's a way to reach those people? And so yeah, it was the hardest creative act I ever had to do. And I'm very, very proud of it. I think it will absolutely no doubt in my mind, make you money if you pick it up.

And I would be so honored. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for being on here. Thanks for— I like to speak personally, like, thank you for being my friend and for helping me with a bunch of this stuff too. It's been awesome to get to know you over the last few years and excited to see what the book's going to do next year.

Thank you, dude.

That means a lot. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Thanks, Justin.