by: AskPat 758 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 758 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.
All right, now here's today's question from Jonathan.
Jonathan: Hey Pat, this is Jonathan Stewart with salespurpose.com. I'm launching a new podcast next week and I had a question about sponsors. When you get a new sponsor for a podcast, do you traditionally sign a contract with them or is it just a handshake deal? Not sure about how that process goes and I'm planning on, of course, being very successful with this podcast answering sales questions. I just want to make sure that when that question comes that I have the right answer and that I have everything in place. Do I need a contract that they sign or is it just something that's a handshake deal? Then also, is it traditionally, if you do sign a contract, is it like a one-year contract or is it something different? Thank you.
Pat Flynn: Hey Jonathan, thank you so much for the question. When I reach out to a potential sponsor or one comes to me and the relationship just make sense and we typically come to terms via email in terms of how many episodes, how much and so on and so forth. Then I do send the contract over. I had my attorney draft one up.
There are probably templates out there that you could get, but for your specific situation that this is something you do want to take seriously and you want to make sure all your angles and bases are covered, have an attorney draft one up for you. You can probably find one on Upwork.com if you don't have one readily available for you to draft one up and make sure everything is taken care of.
My contract is several pages long and a lot of it is legal stuff that I wouldn't have even considered. For example, what happens if that company were to go away or if your company were to go away. What happens after a year like you said. The length of the contract could be for whatever period you'd like. Some people have it so that the episodes are guaranteed to be there as long as the show is alive for up to a year after the show gets posted.
Some people say in their contract that they should have the ability to change the sponsor or take their episode sponsorship out at some point in the future if that's something that they want to do. Leaving that open which would obviously make sponsors a little bit weary, but that would give you more opportunities to have more ad spots later if you wanted to update those files and whatnot.
There's a lot of things to think about. There's no right or wrong answer here, but definitely get a contract signed, because I think it does a couple things. One, it just makes it legal, on paper and it makes it so that if this person doesn't pay you for example, you have a contract behind it that you can then use to actually collect that payment if they don't pay you.
Secondly, it just makes your approach more professional and it shows this potential sponsor that you're working with that they're working with somebody who knows what they're doing. That they're likely going to get their money's worth from working with you. The contract has a psychological role in that for me and for the companies that I work with too.
Of course, the template literally is just a template, so I had a person draft up, my attorney draft up a version for my specific situation, my specific brand actually. There's two contracts. One for AskPat and one for Smart Passive Income. They're generally the same. It's a template, so at certain parts I could change the name of the sponsor and other parts that have the terms I can change the number of episodes, the price points and whatnot so that we can all just agree on that.
That typically get sent over via email and then as a PDF and then it get signed and sent back to me. It's not that hard of a process to do, but yeah, I would recommend getting the contract for sure. Then finally, also the invoicing. I mentioned FreshBooks in many other episodes in the past. They would be the preferred method of choice for after you get the contract signed then you send over the invoice with the same things that were mentioned in the terms. In terms of number of episodes, price per episodes, any discounts that are involved.
That's one thing that I love to do when I signed sponsors who are interested in one episode. I'll typically say, “Hey, okay. Well, we can do one episode at $4,000 which is my at least current going rate for Smart Passive Income. If you wanted to do multiple episodes, I can give you a discount.”
For example, if they get three episodes, I can say to them $500 on each episode. It would be 1,050 I think for that. 10, five for three episodes as opposed to 12,000. It's pretty cool because people will take you up on that and to do do multiple episodes with you especially if there's a discount involved. Then you obviously have to deliver for them.
I also include in the contract for them that they'll get a link in the show notes. They'll get a link on the resource page temporarily up to a week after their latest episode goes live. Then that's that. Think about the sponsorship more than just a little ad spot on your show, but what else can you do for them. Is there going to be an email blast that goes out specifically for them as well in that episode? There's a lot of things you can include in their that's more than just the audio spot.
Yeah, Jonathan, hopefully that's helpful. I want to wish you all the best. Thank you so much for the question. I think a lot of people are going to really benefit from that. Yeah, I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. We'll send that to you in the next couple months or so. Jessica, my executive assistant will reach out to you and will collect your information so we can send that to you free of charge like we do for everybody who gets their question featured here in the show.
If you have a question, those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show too, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.
Thank you so much. I appreciate you all and here's a quote to finish off the day by Kyle Bragger. He says, “Get a mentor in the applicable field if you're at all unsure of what you're looking for.”
That's one of my favorite things to do. If I'm unsure about anything, if I know I'm not the best at something that I could be, I go and find somebody to help me. I get a mentor whether it's a person in real life who is helping me with something or a virtual mentor. Somebody who blogs or posts content somewhere that I can look up to and use as an example. It's so, so important. Thank you Kyle for that quote. Thank you everybody for listening. I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye