SPI 944: How to Attract and Land Brand Deals with Justin Moore

SPI 944: How to Attract and Land Brand Deals with Justin Moore

Justin Moore: If one of the ways in which you believe that you should be generating revenue as a creator or media company is partnerships, sponsorships, brand deals, you can’t just rely on these brands stumbling across your storefront. You have to be proactively reaching out to them and letting them know you exist. Start tagging them on social media. That’s one of the best ways to get on their radar, is organically professing your love for the tools and the services and the brands that you authentically use.

And a lot of creators tell me, like, “Okay, well, if I’m talking about them for free, why would they pay me?” You have to understand that, like, a lot of these brands and sponsors, when they run campaigns, they have very specific things that they want you to say, whether it’s sound bites that they want you to talk about that they can cut apart and repurpose for paid ads, or maybe there’s some sort of seasonal promotion like a back-to-school campaign or a holiday campaign or something like that, and there’s a coupon code, right? You’re not saying those things organically.

And so I think it’s just, like, an important reminder that, like, you having, the agency to start championing them, to reach out to them, proposing, you know, an engagement, could be the, uh, the foot in the door that you need.

Pat Flynn: Okay, if you’re trying to earn a revenue, you know there’s a million ways to do it. One of those ways might be just right under your nose, and you don’t even know about it yet. And we have an expert on today, Justin Moore, who is the author of Sponsor Magnet, and of course, I’m here with Liz as well.

Liz Wilcox: Hey, friends.

Pat Flynn: We’ve both had experience with sponsorships before, but we wanted to bring somebody in to really tell it like it is. What’s working now with sponsorships and brand deals. Justin, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here.

Justin Moore: Pat, Liz, I’m thrilled to be here. And I just, r- before we start, I need to give you your flowers.

Very important, because my book Sponsor Magnet would not exist without you, Pat. I think you may or may not know this, but you gave me some real tough love in the early days of writing this, writing a book, and you basically said, “You need to write the sponsorship book,” ’cause I was gonna write something completely different.

Pat Flynn: I remember that.

Justin Moore: And so this honestly probably wouldn’t exist without you, so I appreciate you, man.

Pat Flynn: Well, it is the book to read if you are getting into sponsorships and brand deals, which, you know, that kind of business model has been around for a very long time, but it, it has changed. It has transformed.

And I know your book, you, you talk about the principles of what works that will be timeless. But in addition to that, I do wanna talk about, like, well, what are the tactics that are working, like, right now for brands? And I know, Liz, you’ve worked with brands even back in your RV blogger days and, and things like that.

So Liz and I will both poke at you a little bit on kind of what, what is working. But principally, why would a brand wanna work with a creator? Like, what is it that is attractive to a brand?

Justin Moore: I think that a lot of people have a, a caricature in their mind of what a brand deal or what a sponsorship is. I’ve gotta have a huge following on a social media platform, right?

Mm-hmm. Whether it’s Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or whatever, and that the only reason that a brand would wanna work with me is if I were to talk about them on my platform. But a lot of what we help our clients with is understanding that there’s, like, a bunch of different ways in which you can serve a brand.

A natively, a native branded content, like a, a video, let’s say, that you create is just one version of that. And so the most important thing to realize is that there’s actually three goals that brands have when they wanna collaborate with a creator. I call it my ARC framework. A stands for awareness. The primary reason that they would w- You know, you ask them, “Hey, what would a win look like?”

Or, “Why, why are you interested in collaborating with me?” They say, “We are just trying to spread the word. We have a new product that’s launching. We have a new feature. We’ve added AI to our tool,” or something like that. Or maybe, “We only were available in the, in the UK. Now we’re coming to the US.” And so the primary reason that they wanna work with you is just to get a groundswell of energy and awareness, eyeballs on this, on this big new launch for them.

R in the ARC framework stands for repurposing. So the primary reason that they would wanna hire you or Liz would be to get content that they could use in other ways, maybe put it on their social media, on their website, maybe use for paid advertising, right, to run ads. And then the C in the ARC framework is conversion.

And so this is where they say, “Hey, we actually wanna drive something like sales or clicks or leads or trial signups or something that’s very attributable and measurable. And I think a lot of creators and media operators think that conversions is all brands care about. Driving, generating sales, right?

Especially if you come from the, you know, email marketing or kind of the direct response world. Of course, conversions is all brands care about. But no, it’s actually not the case. And so this is the number one thing that you need to remember when it comes to, like, trying to get your m- mind wrapped around, like, why would a brand even wanna work with me, is they have a couple different goals, and your singular job is to understand what that is.

Pat Flynn: How do you know what that is?

Can you, can you just ask them?

Justin Moore: You straight up ask them. When- if they come inbound to you and they’re saying, “Hey, we wanna work with you. How much for a YouTube video?” Or, “How much for a, you know, newsletter integration or podcast integration?” One of your first questions sh- well, the first question should actually be, “Can we hop on a call?

I would love to hop on a call with you to learn, you know, more about this, learn about this campaign. This is exciting.” But yeah, question number one is what would success look like to you? What are you trying to accomplish? What’s your goal? What would a win look like? What would make l- you look like a hero internally?

You know, these types of questions so that then you can reorient your proposal to them. ‘Cause, you know, th- this is the big, the biggest myth is that they may come inbound, again, asking about a very specific scope of work or set of deliverables, like a YouTube video, you know, whatever, social media. And after you ask about their goal, you may have to have a hard conversation with them and say, “Hey, knowing that that’s your goal, I actually don’t think we should do a YouTube video.

We should do a podcast, you know, interview with your founder, or you should sponsor our in-person event.” You know, and so part of your job is kind of serving as almost like a triage, you know, nurse or something, uh, you know, in the, in the emergency room. Someone comes in with an ailment. This is the brand. I have these challenges.

And you say, “Okay, great. Here is the specific set of instructions that you should follow to accomplish that outcome.”

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, I wanna give an example. So I recently was approached by an email service provider, and they were asking me for a YouTube video. And I thought, “Oh, I’m gonna have to do a review,” or, you know.

And I said, “Oh, well, what do you have in mind? What’s your goal,” right? And they said, “Oh, we just want to be known better. We just wanna be known better. Can you do a roundup video?” And I said, “Oh, to be clear, you want me to talk about other service providers in this video?” And I was, I was genuinely surprised.

I was like, s- clearly, I’m reading this wrong, right? And they said, “Yes, you know, we want this to feel organic. You know, we know that you talk about a lot of email service providers, being that you’re an email marketer. We just want to be in the conversation.” And I said, “Oh, easy-peasy,” because now I- it’s a video about all these ESPs, not just one that feels kinda corny or whatever.

And so it’s, it’s so true to what Justin is saying about knowing, you know, do they want awareness, do they wanna repurpose your content, or are they looking for conversions? Mm.

Justin Moore: Can I, can I actually, uh, at the top of this episode, you specifically asked, like, “What’s working now?” And I, I wanna specifically mention why what you did was so, so great, Liz, because- The parlance du jour for many, many, uh, years was like SEO, right?

Like, how do you rank higher in the search engines? But, like, so many of these brands are thinking now about GEO, generative engine optimization, or AEO, right? How do you rank at the top of these LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude when people are searching for things and they have high purchase intent, how does your brand show at the top of those results?

And one of those ways a lot of brands has found is being included in a lot of metadata of other publishers, other creators, other media operators, not just the platforms that the brands own, but, like, if you– if that brand is being included in a roundup on your YouTube channel, that is a good signal for a lot of these LLMs for that brand to be higher up.

And so, again, that could be a goal. That could be a goal that maybe the brand does or does not know that that’s, like, an important thing. Maybe, in fact, that’s something you come to them with. You say, “Hey,” like, you know, “maybe in addition to this, you know, social media campaign we’re doing, did you know,” and you can link an article that talks about this.

“Did you know that, like, you know, me doing these types of roundups or listicles or doing a review or whatever it is can be more favorable and get picked up in a lot of these LLM algorithms?” And so, again, like, educating yourself as a creator or media operator can allow you to propose these types of creative things to brands that can balloon the deal sizes.

Pat Flynn: That’s cool. I think a big lesson here is, is taking agency, right? Not just, like, waiting for things to fall in your lap and then kind of waiting for somebody else to propose something that you either say yes or no to. You can be in the driver’s seat. You can be and should be the one to maybe create these campaigns or at least share these ideas.

I think that is going to absolutely help you stand out from everybody else who is there kind of, like, fighting for their attention or wanting their money as well. One follow-up question I have, Justin, is, you know, we’re talking about sponsors that come to you at this point. They just are, are asking for something, and you might need to reposition that, but, but they’re coming to you.

What if you don’t have those advertisers and sponsors coming to you? Do you just wait, or how do you become proactive and go out and find them yourself?

Justin Moore: If you opened any other business, let’s say you op- open an ice cream shop, a brick-and-mortar location, do you think that you’re just gonna rely on people walking by, the foot traffic in the proximity surrounding your ice cream shop?

No, absolutely not. You have to advertise. You gotta advertise on bus benches and billboards. You have to do Facebook ads. You’ve gotta put your, a coupon in the PennySaver in your local Metro or something, right, to get customers in the door. And so if one of the ways in which you believe that you should be generating revenue as a creator or media company is partnerships, sponsorships, brand deals, you can’t just rely on these brands stumbling in, uh, you know, across your storefront.

You have to be proactively reaching out to them and letting them know you exist. Start tagging them on social media. That’s one of the best ways to get on their radar, is organically professing your love for the tools and the services and the brands that you authentically use. And a lot of creators tell me, like, “Okay, well, if I’m talking about them for free, why would they pay me?”

Right. You have to understand that, like, a lot of these brands and sponsors, when they run campaigns, they have very specific things that they want you to say, s- whether it’s sound bites that they want you to talk about that they can cut apart and repurpose for paid ads, or maybe there’s some sort of seasonal promotion like a back-to-school campaign or a holiday campaign or something like that, and there’s a coupon code, right?

You’re not saying those things organically. In fact, I was talking with an affiliate marketing manager at a software company recently, and they decided that they were gonna be running a campaign promoting a new launch of a feature, and the very first place that they turned to recruit people for this $10,000 budget was their affiliate pool.

It was really interesting because they decided that, like, these people are already bought in, right? They’re already talking about us. They’re already, you know, championing us. And so they had a flat pool of money, and they decided to go specifically to their, you know, to this pool of, of people that were already endorsing them.

And so I think it’s just, like, an important reminder that, like, you having, like you said, the agency to start championing them, to reach out to them, proposing, you know, an engagement, could be the, uh, the foot in the door that you need.

Pat Flynn: I love that. While we’re here, I wanna make sure people know that your book exists, ’cause it is definitely a great place to start.

We also have a course inside of the SPI Community, Sponsor Me, which references your book as well. So I feel like, and I think you mentioned this earlier, you have a way for people to get access to this book that is pretty exclusive to this show. What is that?

Justin Moore: I have a pretty sweet promo for y’all. So if you, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, “Well, I’ve never done sponsorships before,” or maybe, “I actually have a pretty robust sponsorship business, but I wanna go deeper,” I’ve got a $1 audiobook promo for y’all.

Seriously. You could, you could get my audiobook, you can binge it on 2X speed if you’re busy. Uh, you can go to sponsormagnet.com/spi and grab that audiobook, and I guarantee you it’ll be… You’ll make a lot more than $1 from it.

Pat Flynn: Yes. Thank you for that. sponsormagnet.com/spi.

Liz Wilcox: Thanks for that giveaway. I’d love for you to give away maybe some creative ways that we can pitch sponsors.

Or, you know, like we always think, and you mentioned at the top, you know, we think video, we think social media, right? So what are, what are some of the assets that we’re not thinking about that sponsors- or that you can get sponsored?

Justin Moore: Well, you know what I’m right in the middle of right now is getting my book sponsored.

Liz Wilcox: What?

Justin Moore: Can I, can I talk about something-

Liz Wilcox: Yes, please.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, that sounds interesting.

Liz Wilcox: I’m leaning in.

Justin Moore: Kind of a cool format here. All right. So I am just about to hit 10,000 copies sold of my book.

Pat Flynn: Congrats.

Justin Moore: Which I’m… Thank you very much. I’m, I’m pretty stoked about it, ’cause I self-published, or I hybrid published it.

And so there’s a lot of advantages, actually, to self-publishing for this specific reason, which is that every book is, uh, you know, my partner, I’ll give him a shout-out, is, is Lulu, and it’s print on demand. So every time someone orders a book, they print it and they fulfill it on my behalf. And so what that allows me is the ability to create custom versions of the book in as m- many or as little quantities as I want.

And so I am going out there and thinking, “Okay, what are the four or five category-exclusive sponsors that I could pitch to them to say, ‘Hey, how about the Kit custom edition of Sponsor Magnet?'” Where there’s a f- there’s a little badge with the Kit logo on the front of the cover art. Hmm. There’s a forward from Nathan Barry talking about why having an email list and having a newsletter is so powerful to be able to upsell your sponsors who are wanting to sponsor your podcast or your new, you know, your, your YouTube channel, and you can upsell a, you know, a newsletter blast on top of that sponsorship.

And guess what? They could print 500 copies of these to pass out at Craft and Commerce, their, their in-person event. They can put it in their s- you know, their swag bags when they sponsor other events, showing that they’re advocates for the community, and I get more distribution for the book, right? And so this is a sponsorable…

They’re paying me for the privilege to sponsor the book and do this custom version. But really I, I, I love to say like, “You’re only limited by your own creativity,” and you know, I just… Maybe this like unlocks something in, in- Yeah … in some folks’ brains.

Liz Wilcox: Listen, Justin Moore just turned into Jerry Jones. Do you guys know who that is?

He’s the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, and he is really credited with the NFL, you know, getting major sponsorships, right? Like I r- I remember watching a documentary on Netflix and he said, you know, “I was, it was one sponsor and one sponsor only,” and he, but he started sponsoring, you know, like every bleacher and the sidelines and this and that and, and I think he was sued by the NFL or something, but he ended up winning and now it’s, it’s standard.

So I don’t know. When Justin said sponsoring the book, I know you can’t see me, but my jaw dropped. I was like, “What? That’s so- That’s really smart … smart.” That’s so smart. I love that so much, dude.

Justin Moore: Let me, let me give you a, let me give you another kinda weird one. So I have an in-person event called Sponsor Games.

It’s a super fun event. It’s actually a competition. There’s a cash prize and everything, and you learn how to get, you know, better, become a better negotiator and all that. But my title sponsor, my, my presenting sponsor is Lulu, my publisher, and they sponsored year one. And when I was doing my debrief conversation with them of like how year one went, they gave me this really interesting piece of feedback.

So we, we hired this like super high-end like barista coffee cart, kinda cool hipstery thing that, you know, everyone could get their coffee at the event, and they, they brought this laser foam printer. Have you seen these where like you can literally like etch a logo onto the foam of the coffee? So like we basically ha- uh, the logo- Hmm

of Sponsor Games, and it goes z- z- z- z- like when the coffee was done and it, and like it was super like, you know, Instagrammable. People were taking pictures of it and everything. And the, the very first thing that our sponsor Lulu said when we were talking about a sponsorship for year two where there’s, they said, “How can we be the exclusive foam art sponsor?”

And I was like, “Uh, oh, I did not know that was something you would want.” And so sure enough, like when I pitched them on year two, they became the exclusive foam sponsor. And so now, like when everyone’s taking photos of the event, it’s the Lulu logo on the foam instead of, instead of… And we still have our little sticker on the cup, but like oftentimes you don’t know what is exciting and important to a sponsor until you have a conversation with them.

And so you can’t always assume that you know what they care about.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I know one thing that we have inside of SPI is our Community. It’s a private community. We pitch that to sponsors as well to bring a person in from the company to do a workshop or to just go a little bit deeper into that product, to even integrate into some of our courses, things like that.

That is of huge value because you know that we have paying members who might pay more for these other things, especially if we’re using them and we’re showing people how much time and money they could save. So yeah, I l- I love that. And, uh, the, the book idea is just, is just genius, especially with self-publishing, ’cause you definitely cannot do that if you do the traditional route.

So that’s, that’s really cool. You, you had mentioned, you know, you’ve been working with Lulu for a few years now, and I know that one of the most valuable sponsorships you could have is the, is the long-term one, the one that you have with a, with a company that, you know, you’ve been with for years, and you keep working together.

What are the things you can do to, after you start a relationship with a brand, keep those relationships going? Of course, yes, performance, but what else can you do to keep the vibes good and keep those sponsorships on?

Justin Moore: Man, like, I know you breezed over the performance thing, but, like, a, a huge aspect of having a long-term relationship is, number one, having, being very low ego and objective about the performance, right?

So if, if it actually does not go well, you’re the one proactively who comes to them and says, “Hey, this didn’t go well. Here’s what I th- a course correction that I think we should make for this next pulse of content-” Mm. “… because clearly people weren’t resonating with that.” So that’s number one. And then, and number two is, like, just being a nice person.

You’d be shocked at, like, you know, I ran an ad agency for seven years. You would be shocked at how miserable people would make my life, you know? And I’m, I’m literally trying to give them money. Yeah. You know? And they are just making me chase them for every single deliverable and every single update and, like, you know, if, if a brand is working with 20 people on, on a part, you know, on a campaign, like I c- I can s- say this with credibility that, like, on a average campaign with, like, 20 people, maybe, like, two would be just amazing, over-delivering, submitting stuff, uh, you know, at the deadlines that they were required to.

They gave me all their, like, tax paperwork and the invoices and, like, all the little small details when it comes to a partnership. Two out of 20 people, and that carries through across, you know, the hundreds of campaigns that I ran over the years. And so if you can be one of those two people, and especially if you can be the one person who submits a post-campaign report to them.

We can talk about that too- Mm … where they’re able to then take that to their superiors or take it to their colleagues at the end of that campaign and say, “Look at not just the quantitative performance of this, of this activation, but the qualitative stuff. Justin actually got a bunch of DMs, or he got a bunch of replies on the newsletter of people saying XYZ.

We, we didn’t see that as a brand ’cause it wasn’t a public-facing comment on a YouTube video or a social media post. We’re not seeing that data. And in fact, Justin shared with us some negative feedback that people- Mm … were saying about our tool And actually, in fact, 10 people said that they hate our tool for the following reason, or it’s too expensive, or it tastes bad, or, you know, whatever, some sort of objection.

Man, brands rarely get that level of deep market research that they can then use to head on address that object– Look, if you’re, if you’re listening to this and you’re, you know, you, you probably sell things directly to your, to your audience, and you know there’s this whole idea about objections, right?

Like clients and customers have objections when it comes to deciding whether they’re going to invest in your course or your community or your tool or whatever it is, your digital product. It’s the same with sponsors, right? They want to know the objections that prospective customers have. And so if you can serve as a mechanism or a conduit for you to deliver this feedback to them, that could be the focus of the next activation.

It’s like, “Hey, I know last time I talked about this, ten of you said blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here’s why that’s not the case,” or, “Here’s why, you know, the brand has like changed their formulation six months ago and you, you didn’t know that,” right? And so just giving the brand that ability to actually have a true partnership with you is a huge opportunity.

Pat Flynn: Hmm. I really like that.

Liz Wilcox: I love that. That’s so true about the negative feedback and not being afraid to give that to them. Y’all, I have bills to pay, and so I’m just, you know, opening up opportunities, and a company paid me, I think, three or four hundred dollars yesterday to get on a call and live walk through their platform and give them feedback.

And they said, “Don’t be afraid, you know, to give negative feedback. We are not the owners of this company. Just tell us,” right? And, you know, I said, “Oh, this, this, this.” And at the end they said, “Oh, you know, thank you for being so candid. You know, we, we had never heard ABC,” you know, ’cause I went on a little rant about something, and they said, “We cannot wait to take this back to the team.

This is something that we can work with.” So I think that’s so super important. I l- I literally wrote it down. Y’all, I’m taking notes. I know you, you’re listening, you’re probably driving or something. If you want the notes, just email me. I wrote, “Post campaign report,” and I circled it really big because I don’t think that’s something that we’re doing at SPI.

We always do debriefs and things, but it’s, it’s less formal. It’s, you know, “Let’s hop on a call and talk about how it did,” but we’re not doing anything formal that I love what Justin said about, you know, they can take that back to whoever, right? So I, I love this. I’m super geeked out right now.

Justin Moore: Well, a- and the critical thing, the, the original question was like how do you turn them into long-term partners?

The critical thing is that in your post-campaign report is your pitch for the next campaign.

Liz Wilcox: Boom.

Justin Moore: So you’re saying, “Hey, I, I learned all of these new things, these new insights from doing this activation together, and so we’re gonna use those to, you know, now do a six-month partnership or the, the next v- set of videos.”

And so now they… W- whether or not they, like, are ready to move forward with it right away is irrelevant. It’s that you’re signaling interest to them that you want to continue the relationship. And when they’re now entering their budgetary planning meeting for the next campaign, they have a proposal ready to go from you that they could, “Oh, yeah, we’ll just, like, hire Liz again ’cause she already had this idea that we could do for the, for the holiday campaign.”

Pat Flynn: Wow. What are some other things that people who are just getting started with, what are some myths or stories they’re telling themselves that stop them from actually taking action here?

Justin Moore: That they’re annoying brands, or that if a brand doesn’t respond to them or says no to them, that that is some sort of commentary on them, that they’re not good enough, that they don’t have enough followers, like, that, that they need to…

There’s s- s- it’s like a, it’s a reflection on them rather than the brand. The, the reality of it is, is that brands are desperate for you to serve them and help them in this regard because they, they have their own KPIs, their own key performance indicators that they need to hit. New customers, new revenue, and they’re always trying to think of creative ways to either acquire or retain customers, right?

And so you actually coming to them with a pitch, an idea of, like, how you can help them, how you can make their life easier, it’s a great act of service. And if the brand isn’t down for it right there, l- I have this saying. Like, it’s not no, it’s just not yet. It’s not the right time. They don’t have the budget.

They, you know, they’re- they’ve never done something like that before. They have their own set of objections of why they, you know, they’re not ready to move forward. But, like, unless a brand tells you, “Never contact us again,” like d- you know, “Delete me from your pho- your, your, your email,” you should just, like, treat this as, like, okay, like, I’m gonna continue nurturing this relationship.

And so I, I really would implore you to, to, to understand… Like, there’s this, there’s this image that I, I wish I could, like, show on the screen or whatever of, like, this miner who’s underground, and he’s, like, chiseling away. There’s two miners, right? On the top, chisel, chisel, chisel, and then the top guy is, like, turned around, and he, like, gave up right at the last moment when there was, like, this tiny little sliver right…

And then there was this, like, big treasure, all these diamonds and gold on the other side. And the visual on the bottom is, like, this guy’s just, you know, this person is just chiseling away, chiseling away, knowing that, like, on the other end of, like, 25 nos, guaranteed is gonna be a yes. Guaranteed is gonna be a yes as long as you’re able to have that perseverance.

There’s a, a client of ours recently shared this anecdote that she, it was her fourth follow-up with a brand.

Pat Flynn: Mm.

Justin Moore: Without hearing back. They were not responding to her. It was their fourth email, and then the brand finally responded, was like, “Oh, thank you so much. I’ve been so busy. I’ve been out of the office.

My kid was sick. I was on vacation.” I don’t remember what it was. It was something like that. But great timing. I’m so glad your email popped to the top of my inbox because we’ve got this campaign. Let’s move forward. And they moved forward with the deal. So, like, could you set that as a goal? Could you have a- the tenacity to email a brand three or four times without hearing back?

That’s the goal.

Pat Flynn: Mm. Yeah, and what, I mean, what have you got to lose, right? The worst they could say is no or not yet or not right now.

Justin Moore: Exactly.

Pat Flynn: And you never might not know who would be willing to work with you either. I, for Deep Pocket Monsters, my Pokémon brand, we were gonna film a video in Tampa Bay, Florida, because we were hosting an event there.

And we’re like, “Oh, we’re gonna go to Florida. We’re gonna film a little challenge video around the city, and we’re gonna, we’re actually gonna feature a lot of the city there. Like, I wonder if the Board of Tourism of Tampa would be interested in working with us. Like, what have we got to lose? We might as well ask.”

So we got on a call with them. They were interested, and they were like, “We’ve never done anything like this before. We’ve paid influencers to come and, like, stay at hotels But we’ve never had anybody, like, go around the city and create a story around it, let alone talk about Pokemon. But the guy was chill, and he’s like, “Let’s do it.”

So for a low five-figure amount, we filmed this video that I would’ve gone and done anyway. That’s the funny part about this. And he’s just like, “Okay, hit up this… Like, stay at this hotel. We’ll get you in for free. Go to this restaurant. We’ll get you a meal for free.” It’s like, oh, okay, now we know where to go specifically ’cause those are companies that work with the tourism board, and everybody wins.

And so that video did very, very well, so well that we invited this guy on stage when we eventually hosted the event and gave him some love at, at the event as well. And now he’s like, “When are you coming back? When are you coming back? We wanna work with you again.” But we, we always change locations, but it- we just took a shot.

We just took a shot, and, and that one worked out. We did the same thing with Seattle, and they were like, “No.” And we’re like, “Okay, that’s fine.” But now we have this one proven example that we can now when we go to different cities, we can be like, “Hey, we did this with Tampa. Here’s our post report with them.

Here’s how many millions of views have been seen on this one, and, and look at everybody in the comments saying, ‘I’m gonna go to that d- that restaurant.’ ‘Oh, I wanna visit that card shop now.’ Like, we can do this at your city too.” So it’s, it’s… It was pretty cool to, to have that happen. That was a, a shot in the dark, probably the most random one that we’ve done, that I’ve ever done, and, and it kinda worked out.

Justin Moore: I wanna bring it back to what you said at the top of the episode ’cause I have one more thing that I really wanna share about what’s working now. Please. You might be, you might be listening to these anecdotes of Pat all landing in these five-figure deals and be like, “Easy for you, Pat. You’ve got a million subscribers, and you’ve got all these followers, and, like, easy for you to, to, to land these types of deals.

But I’m over here. I’ve got 1,000 followers, or I’ve got… You know, I only get a couple hundred downloads per average on, you know, on my, on my podcast or whatever.” I’m here to tell you that especially if you have a deep subject matter expertise, you have a niche, something that is very specific, you can land extremely lucrative brand deals.

Let me tell you a quick story of one of my clients. Her name is Dr. Alex. She has a podcast called Digital Pathology Place, okay? Digital Pathology, okay? So she gets a couple hundred downloads on average on her podcast episodes, and when she does, you know, she does on LinkedIn and, and YouTube and, and so on.

She was recently doing a live stream on LinkedIn, and she had Less than 100 viewers on this livestream. She sold a $250,000 piece of medical equipment on this livestream.

Pat Flynn: Wow.

Justin Moore: So think about the types of brands and customers that wanna work with Dr. Alex. It’s the medical device companies, right? It’s the biopharmaceutical companies.

It’s the– Who’s in her audience? It’s the s- the C-suite decision-makers, the people who are in positions of power to make these decisions. And so she’s getting the, the carpet, you know, the red carpet rolled out to her at these industry trade shows, and she gets to visit their facilities and, like, interview their head of R&D on her podcast and stuff.

But again, she has less than 10,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel because it’s very niche. And so if you’re someone listening or watching this, like, I just wanna give you that encouragement that, like, you absolutely can get sponsorships, especially if you have deep subject matter expertise.

Pat Flynn: Hmm. I’m so grateful that, that you mentioned that, and it reminds me of one of our students, Wojciech, who has a podcast called The Fire Science Show.

And I mean, probably in the entire world, there are probably 5,000 people who study the– what he’s talking. It’s like the science of fire. And he was able to land a deal, a sponsorship deal that made him more than his day job because he is the guy. It’s like if you’re gonna do anything fire science related, like, you have to be on that show, and you have to…

You know, and, and, and there’s, like, trade shows, very specific small niche trade shows in that space. And companies pay tens of thousands of dollars to set up shop at these trade shows for two days and then go home. But what if you had a spot on my podcast forever? Well, that’s how he did it. That’s, that’s how he positioned it.

Justin Moore: Or you go to the trade show and you podcast live from their booth, and you film them, you interview their people at the… One of our clients did this, man, had a s- get a six-figure sponsorship literally just camping out at the brand’s booth, billion-dollar brand, camping out at their booth at the trade show for four days, and interviewing all his friends and all the people from the marketing team.

Smart. And now he’s got all these videos and clips, and, like, literally it was a six-figure deal. So, like, going back to Liz, your question around, like, what are different types of creative things that you can do, it’s just, like, the sky’s the limit.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. I, my brain is going so crazy. So if you don’t know, I was on this show called Survivor.

It didn’t launch me into fame or anything, but it, it launched me into Applebee’s fame. So I’m, I’m sort of famous around the world for loving Applebee’s, and recently they paid me… I mean, I- they really missed the boat with a commercial, but anyway, they recently paid me to make an Instagram Reel, and now I’m thinking, ’cause people are like, “Oh, you need to keep that conversation going,” and I’m like, “Uh, I don’t, you know, I don’t really wanna talk about Survivor.”

Like, it’s kind of an embarrassing sort of scene, you know? Like, I’m, I’m kinda into this Smart Passive Income thing right now. But I’m thinking, I’m like, “Oh, well, you know, what about having Applebee’s in the background?” And literally in the last week I’ve met three of my students, three of my members, and we’ve met at Applebee’s every time because they know I love Applebee’s.

They’re, they’re suggesting it. Like, “Oh, Liz, there’s an Applebee’s near you. You know, can you drive there and meet me?” And of course, they’re, you know, taking pictures at Applebee. I’m like, “We need to get a sponsorship going.” Like, you know what? Maybe I can spin this and merge my two, you know, egos together.

So my, my brain is spinning. I love this. Thank you so much, Justin. This has been awesome. Tell us again about how we can get your book for a dollar.

Justin Moore: 100%. SponsorMagnet.com/spi. And, or honestly, we j- I think we just kinda s- barely scratched the surface of, of what I cover in the book, so if you’re someone who’s either sponsorship curious or, you know, sponsorships is a big part of your business, I would, uh, really encourage you to check it out.

Liz Wilcox: Awesome. Thanks so much, Justin.

Pat Flynn: Thank you, Justin.