376: Justin Moore — Becoming a Sponsor Magnet
Download MP3Hey, it's Arvid, and this is the Bootstrap founder. Today, I'm talking to my friend Justin Moore, who recently published a book sponsor magnet where he shares his many years of insights finding working with and growing with sponsors for content and media businesses from all kinds of industries. Now I was always super reluctant to ask companies to sponsor the show and my newsletter because I thought, I shouldn't. There's something wrong with this. And Justin helped me see why this was a self limiting belief.
Arvid:And today, he will share with you what mindset shift creators of all shapes and sizes can go for to start monetizing their work earnestly and honestly. Now here's Justin. Justin, welcome to the show. Just to put this on the map, over the last year, you've been instrumental in my securing of the biggest sponsorship for this very podcast yet. I really just wanna give you a big shout out for that.
Arvid:This is amazing. Not only did you help me with all the nitty gritty details along the way, which was most appreciated. I have had no idea what I was doing, but you also encouraged me to be confident along the way, and that is wonderful. It was really, really cool. Now you've written a book about this topic, and you're, I guess, aiming to help everybody out there who considers getting their work sponsored.
Arvid:Before this, you've been more, like, hands on, and now you've expanded it into a book. What made you choose that it's now time
Justin:to write? Dude, this is a really hard decision because there was a lot of fear wrapped up in this decision to actually distill everything that I know about brand partnerships into a book because, you know, the primary engine behind my business is education. Right? So I have a course and I have coaching. And so, the the fear was, well, if I put everything I know in a book, no one's gonna hire me.
Justin:Like, I have multiple full time employees. I have contractors. I have, like, a whole, you know, a lot of liabilities, basically. Right? And so this was a lot of where the fear was coming from, but I just felt so pulled by my aspirations of impact, which is really just to I feel this pull to educate the next generation of creators.
Justin:And so I've let that North Star guide so much over the last, you know, four or five years building this business. Every time I was ever doubtful of, like, should I do this thing? Well, it feels like it's the best fit to, like, educate people and really help people, so I should just do it, and I'll just, like, deal with the carnage, whatever happens. You know? And so my my thesis was like our mutual friend, Jay Klaus, likes to say, you know, information wants to be free.
Justin:And so what is the most accessible format for people to learn at the most accessible price point, it's really a book. And the other the other reason is that as I've been educating creators all around this process and business owners over the last number of years, I've realized that people really have different learning styles. Right? I started teaching people in a live, like, kind of over Zoom. I had a cohort based course, and then I had a blog.
Justin:I started you know, I have a YouTube channel, so video content, written content. I have a newsletter. And so it was these there's these last two buckets, which was like the book. A lot of people learn reading books, but also in person experiences. So I'm launching an in person event as well.
Justin:And so as I just start building out the creator wizard cinematic universe, you know, I I really felt as though a book needed to happen.
Arvid:That always blows my mind just how quickly everything just explodes in terms of all the different channels that you can and want to tap into. Right? Like you said, like, if YouTube, you have in person events planned, I think the book is a pretty solid anchor. And I I mean this almost in a in a sense of the word. Like, you give somebody a a physical token that they can kinda feel your expertise through.
Arvid:I think that's a great choice to make just as an educator is to give somebody something where they can see, okay, This person knows at least this much in terms of, you know, printed paper about this topic. And anything around that embellishes that too and gives it more value and gives it more meaning.
Justin:You know, there's a lot of weird things that have happened, you know, because the book just launched. And so there's been a lot of weird things that have happened since then. Probably the top of the list of weirdness has just been seeing people, friends that I've made on the Internet for years holding this physical manifestation and taking a selfie with it and just being like, this dude helped me so much rather than being like, go watch his YouTube channel or go subscribe to his newsletter. It's just like, no. This thing, this freaking physical thing that I'm holding up right here, get this.
Justin:Everything you need to know is contained in this thing. And so you're right. There is something special about, like, holding something. Also, it's just, like, it's way easier for people to recommend you. Yes.
Justin:Because, like, you know, it's one thing to, oh, yeah. Go binge this guy's YouTube channel, which feels like a lot. That feels like a lot of work. Like, I don't know if I wanna do that versus, like, oh, just go buy this guy's book. Like, that that feels like an easier recommendation to make.
Justin:And so I was very intentional in terms of the positioning of the book, the title, the subtitle. I did a lot of work in the early days structuring it thinking, like, in what conversations are people having where my book would get recommended? So let's say you're talking to a friend and they're like, oh, I'm I don't know, man. I've been building this audience, but I just don't know how to make money from it. I'm just really struggling to, like, pay, you know, my my editor for the podcast.
Justin:Right? I just don't know how I'm gonna make this economically feasible. And so I was like, okay. How can I make my book be the natural next answer to that? I'm like, oh, you should read SmilesFragment.
Justin:And so I was pretty intentional from that standpoint.
Arvid:I like this, and I I've browsed the table of contents for that reason because I wanted to see, like, how do you structure even just approaching this topic? Because to some people, it is perfectly clear. I wanna build, like, an audience, and I will monetize it through sponsorships. Like, those people have understood it already, but those are not necessarily your audience. Right?
Arvid:Like, they partially are as well. But the people who are like, should I even is there value in this? Is this dangerous? Like, they have a lot of questions that you kinda catch right from the start. And I think that's where I wanna start this conversation because I come from this overlap of communities between being a creator, doing this clearly, like writing.
Arvid:I have books out as well. I I think I have understood the value of these kind of physical things, but also I come from the world of software development. I come from a world where there's really very little tangible and a lot of, like, intellectual stuff, a lot of thinking, a lot of logic, a lot of analysis, and not much personal connection, which a sponsorship often is. It's between people. Even though you might have this big brand or medium sized brand that sponsors your content, it's still an interaction between you and their marketing team or, you know, you and somebody on that team.
Arvid:It's this this human to human connection, which does not necessarily come easy to software entrepreneurs. Right? It may be a cliche, but it comes from somewhere. So if I'm more on the side of I wanna do my own thing. I'm an indie developer.
Arvid:I'm an indie hacker. Right? I'm independent. I don't want anybody else to muddle my voice. What can you tell me about the opportunities that lay in these kind of partnerships, sponsorships for people like this?
Justin:Alright. So let's go back to just kind of first principles here of really understanding where a lot of this comes from, a lot of this head junk, I think, because I call it head junk of, like, a this this obstacle, this unwillingness to to see, what other possibilities might be out there. I have this this framework that I talk about called the collaboration paradox, which is that whether you're a creator or you're an indie hacker, you're a bootstrap developer, software founder, whatever, there's a pretty natural tendency oftentimes to ask for feedback on our product. Whether it's our content, whether it's our videos, our podcast, this thumbnail for my YouTube channel, the onboarding process for the software program, whatever. We we ask people on Discord, on Reddit, on Twitter, you know, wherever, LinkedIn.
Justin:We we feel like it's a very normal thing to just, like, solicit feedback to make our product better. That seems like a normal thing. Right? Yeah. Because who who wouldn't do that.
Justin:Right? But somehow, when it comes to the prospect of making money, whether it's you're a creator and you're trying to get your work sponsored or make money from the content that you're creating or the influence that you've built, or you are a developer or you're founder or something like that, and you're really trying to figure out a way to monetize this thing, this feels like a distasteful subject to talk about. It's like, well, I guess I just gotta figure this part out alone. I can't ask anyone for help, or I can't forge a partnership with anyone because, I don't know, I'm just uncomfortable. I have imposter syndrome.
Justin:I'm sheepish about this. And so my whole philosophy and one of the reasons why I wrote the book is to help people understand the power of partnerships. And it's not just about the money. It's also about helping you bring your creative or product vision to life to be able to impact more people. And the byproduct of that is more money.
Justin:Right? Because you're able to to help people in a more profound way. And so this is my philosophy when it comes to collaborations is understanding how can you identify a partner out there where it's not like they're detracting from what you're trying to put out there. It's actually enhancing it and actually amplifying it, not even in a linear capacity, more like a exponential capacity. Because, you know, like one thing I talk about a lot is like people think about traditional sponsorships is like they pay me to do an ad read on my podcast.
Justin:Right? Like, that's a brand deal or a sponsorship. But what would it look like? Tons of my students and clients have done these really creative partnerships where they are doing a webinar in partnership with the brand. Because of, you know, Arvind, who you represent to the indie hacker community, that this brand comes to you and says, hey.
Justin:We'd love to back a dump truck full of money onto your driveway if you were to do a webinar with us. Or, hey, Arvind. Can we fly you out to this conference to speak on this panel, on our behalf or with our marketing person or something? And so a lot of times, it's like what you represent to your community, that is a really, really valuable thing.
Arvid:Yeah. I think that's the fear that I hear in a lot of, like, novel creators or people who go into becoming a creator or having a brand. It's like, oh, my brand would get diluted with their things instead of seeing it as a a growth for the brand. It's like something that invites more people to look at you through the lens of somebody else. I think that's just really, really hard to figure out because you don't know what it's gonna look like, particularly when you're starting out.
Arvid:Right? You only see all these ads that somebody else has on that newsletter or all these these ad reads that are on some YouTube channel, and you're like, this feels weird. Yet there is a good partner out there for you. It's probably just not the first one that comes knocking.
Justin:%. And and let me give you another creative example that'll stretch people's brains. So I am right now in the middle of a negotiation with one of the largest creator focused conferences in my industry. And I'm, like, 95% away along the lines of this is probably gonna happen, where basically they have agreed to include a copy of my book in every person's swag bag that's going to the conference, and they have thousands of attendees. And so think about it from both perspectives here.
Justin:Right? As a conference, they have an incentive to provide value to their attendees. They want people they paid hundreds, thousands of dollars to come to this conference. They want these people to feel like, wow. Like, this was a worthwhile investment.
Justin:I wanna come back for another year. This is a great thing. And so they have an incentive to just, like, in this swag bag, make people open this and be like, wow. This is awesome. Like, this is so super valuable that I'm getting this thing.
Justin:Right? And so the conference is getting a lot of value, and I'm getting a ton of value because I'm getting in front of a bunch of my ideal audience or customers. Right? And so designing a lot of people, again, don't think of that as a sponsorship, but it absolutely is regardless of whether, you know, exactly what the money changing hands looks like, because I'm absolutely negotiating a sponsorship as part of this. But, like, you know, a lot of people just have this very, very fixed view of what a partnership is like, and I think that you're missing the boat.
Arvid:How do you do this? Like, how as a single individual person do you negotiate with a massive player like a conference? Because to me, that's where the imposters end up fixing all the time. Like, this big brand, they have all these hundreds of people working for them, and here's little of me trying to put my book, like, please, sir, please. Would you like I'll get my book, please.
Arvid:How do you how do you get there, like, mentally?
Justin:I think for me, part of it is, like, first of all, I completely acknowledge and I wanna I wanna hear you and empathize with anyone who feels like you as well who's listening or watching because I was you. I was you, like, ten, fifteen years ago when we started on, you know, our presence on the Internet. And I sent ton I had so much imposter syndrome. I did a few pitches early on and got rejected, and then it was like the long dark night of the soul with the violin playing in the background, and I was feeling like crap. Like, I'm an idiot.
Justin:Be I I suck. People hate me. You know? And so I was very much there. But, basically, what happened, dude, is that I built this muscle.
Justin:I built this skin, this armor over many years of just sending out lots and lots of pitches and emails and realizing that when a brand says no to you or a company says no to a collaboration, it's not really no. It's not yet. It's just not the right time. They're not running a campaign that would be a good fit for you. They don't have the marketing budget.
Justin:So it's not that you suck. It's that it's just not the right timing. And so my perspective is, like, if the brand says no, I'm no worse off than I was five seconds ago. It's literally the same outcome. They just, you know, I wouldn't have gotten that.
Justin:But if they say yes, wow, there's a huge amount of upside there. And so I just get so excited about the prospect of a yes that I'm willing to withstand the rejection.
Arvid:Do you ever say no to brands?
Justin:Oh, all the time. Yeah. %. Because, you know, I talk about, you know, this framework in in my book sponsor magnet that is called basically, you have to engineer your sponsorships to be a win win win. There's three wins.
Justin:Most people think about the first two. It's like, I'm gonna win because I'm getting paid. Sweet. Right? The brand is gonna win, obviously, because they get to access your audience, your customer base, whatever it is.
Justin:But a lot of people don't think about that last win, which is your audience or your customers better be winning. If there's some sort of partnership that's occurring and there's not a discount code, a promo code, they're not being exposed to a brand or a product that they've never heard about. And so if you're negotiating a sponsorship or a partnership and there's no win present for those people, you have to engineer one. And if the brand is not or the company is not willing to do that, you have to walk away.
Arvid:That's been my perspective too. Like, on the last couple brand sponsorships that I had for this podcast, I know who's listening. Right? I I know because these people talk to me on Twitter, and they talk to me through my newsletter and all of that. So I know what goals they have.
Arvid:So I really, really wanna make sure that whatever I put on this show as a sponsor, as somebody that I could stand behind is also gonna be beneficial to them. And that's been why I had such problems finding the right sponsor for the longest time for this show. Why it wasn't monetized for the longest time because I really, really wanted to find this alignment. And that is hard. Because before you start the sponsorship or before you start the run, actually producing the content, producing the the reads and all that, you don't really know how it's gonna feel like and what it's gonna look like.
Arvid:Do you have a tip for this, like, how you can feel this out?
Justin:So the very best way to feel it out is to not guess or make things up. It's to ask your audience, which is what the feel that you got interacting with people on x and over your newsletter and things like that. There's a lot of people out there who just guess. Actually, the the worst criteria that most people use is, like, well, I use this product, and therefore, this is a good fit. Because by extension, my audience should love it if I love it.
Justin:Right? And that's a bad criteria to use to evaluate prospective partners. And that because, first of all, of course, it's that is basically table stakes. Like, of course, you have to love it. Duh.
Justin:Right? You shouldn't promote anything that you don't love. But the more important question is, is this something that is going to help solve a problem for my audience or my customers? And so this basically, if you don't know the answer to that question, you have to ask them. You have to do what I call a psychographic survey.
Justin:It's very simple. It's basically like, hey. I am planning out my content strategy or my product roadmap or whatever for the next, you know, year, and I wanna learn more about you. I wanna learn more about what types of jobs do you have. Are you married?
Justin:Do you have kids? What types of problems do you have? What what's keeping you up at night? What brands and products and other tools are you using and loving right now? So you start getting this colorful texture of what's going on in the lives of the people who are following you or your customers.
Justin:And that gives you such a, a deeper perspective of not only what your feature road map or your product road map should look like, but the types of partners that you could potentially collaborate with. Because if you get this survey back and wow, I didn't realize that 35% of my customers are SMBs. They're small, medium sized businesses, or, or maybe I didn't realize that 35% of my customers have a brick and mortar location. I thought it was all internet entrepreneurs. Wow.
Justin:That's interesting. I should go out there and either build feature sets for them or in my software, or I should go out and, you know, partner with, I don't know, bookkeeping tool or something to help them with their inventory management, whatever. Right? And so I think this this whole idea about learning about them, asking them questions is scary, I know, but it can give you a lot more comfort to know that if I partner with this brand and I tell them about this product, it's not a scary thing anymore. It's like, I know that they have this problem, so it's gonna help them.
Arvid:That makes perfect sense because you also now have leverage. Right? You have negotiation material with the brand because you can say, hey. Out of all these thousands of people that are already in my audience and that I have just now shown I have a direct communication channel way through the survey, 25% of them use this tool that is just like yours. You might wanna just tell them about yours as well because there's a pretty high chance that that opens up a a data pool.
Arvid:Like, you have information that you didn't have before. I like this because I would never have thought about this. I just I I that's that's the thing. Like, surveys and stuff, they they always scare me as a receiver of them. I just don't wanna give up my personal information.
Arvid:So I I completely ignore the fact that other people are not like me in that regard, and they will gladly tell me about themselves because they know it it will benefit both of us, like, the the win win win you were talking about. That's great. That's a great idea. At what size audience do you think this starts working well? It's probably not the best for somebody who's just starting to build an audience.
Justin:A hundred percent false, dude. No. No, man. You can even have these conversations in real life in person. The sample size doesn't need to be massive for you to get valuable information from this.
Justin:Or maybe it's even something as simple as tweeting or putting on I don't know if you have an Instagram or your YouTube. You can put on your community tab or Instagram stories, just some polls or something like that. And, yes, the data the sample says it's not gonna be gigantic early on, but it may give you some you may be able to start connecting a few dots early on and being like, wow. I didn't realize people are following me for x y z. I'm gonna start thinking thinking about this.
Justin:Let me give you a quick example. When I started out creating content on the Internet, my YouTube channel banner said the business of being a creator. That was what I was gonna talk about. Like, not just sponsorship. I was gonna talk about affiliate marketing and digital products and merchandise and whatever.
Justin:All all these things because I love talking about all these things, and I thought that's what I was gonna do. And the growth for, you know, the first six months basically was really weak. It was lame. It was actually I got a sound effect for that one. It was like, oh, man.
Arvid:Like, it was
Justin:it was just it was it was not impressive at all. And so one a follower DM'd me six months, a year into the journey, something like that, and said, hey, Justin. Why are you talking about anything other than sponsorships? Like, that clearly seems to be your wheelhouse. You should, like, stop talking about all those other things.
Justin:And I was like, that's a good idea. And so it was like it it honestly, it was like this insight from my audience that changed everything for me.
Arvid:Yeah. Feedback is always great. Feedback from the people that you're doing this for is, like, the most valuable kind of commodity you can have as a as a brand, as a creator. There's also feedback from the other side, and I've I've been through this too, like, from the brand itself. Like, if you if you have a sponsorship with people and they come back at you with feedback, do you have an example of communication challenges there?
Arvid:Because I know that a lot of people fear interacting with brands because they think that might be too restrictive or they might not even know what they want. Like, how can we prevent that from happening? What what could potentially happen there?
Justin:So I think a lot of it is a mindset shift realizing instead of fearing that process where you either will get annoyed that they are dumb and they don't know what they're doing, or you get annoyed that you create something and then they give you feedback on it and they're like, hey, this sucks. You need to change it. I understand that fear, but you have to shift from an annoyance to, in my opinion, one of joy. It's that, you know what? Actually, educating brands or partners about best practices and about what works in my industry or in this ecosystem, this niche is a fun thing.
Justin:I actually really enjoy this because not only does it allow me to serve them in a way that is very value add, but it also allows you to continue to hone your own expertise. Because if it means that you have to go out there yourself and educate yourself around the best practices, what's working on the best platforms, what's working with the best onboarding, you know, processes, whatever. That allows you to further establish and entrench yourself as the expert in your space. And so this is the perspective that I have when it comes to education and and and collaboration is that there's lots and lots of time soon where I will do a lot to educate a prospective partner, and we're not able to ultimately forge a deal. But I don't get pissed about it.
Justin:I'm not like, oh, screw them. I just wasted two Zoom calls, and I sent them a bunch of looms. And I made a proposal, and they just it fell apart, and screw them. Now I'm a hater of them. You know?
Justin:This is what a lot of people this is what happens to a lot of people. And for me, it's just like, no. It always comes back around. Even though I did all this work, either they're gonna move to a different job in six months and remember that I was so generous with my time, and they're gonna hire me over there, or they're gonna tell a friend, hey. You should work with Justin because he's great.
Justin:He knows a lot about this stuff. And so I again, I I don't know whether you people listening or watching believe in karma, but I absolutely do. And so I do think that there's value in just, like, being really magnanimous about this stuff.
Arvid:I I believe in that too. It's the whole thing, like, even writing a book to me is is leaving traces. Right? Leaving traces of your ambition, leaving traces of your expertise, just with all the other people that may eventually come back to you, which is why writing is such a great way, like, producing a book, something tangible that people can just keep in their field of vision in their bookshelf. Right?
Arvid:And then that one moment, they have this idea and they see your book, they pull you out, they see your name, and then they they send you a message. That stuff can happen next week, can happen two years from now. You'd never know, but it can happen. And you make it possible for it to potentially happen by just being positive and optimistic about this. Same with these negotiations.
Arvid:I had the same thing. People come back to me with stuff. I was like, great. Now we both know more. And even if it doesn't work, you're right, they might jump ship or they might just remember you for the next campaign.
Arvid:That's all it is. Right? Like you said, it might not work today, but it will work in the future. I I really like this. Generally, this to me feels like the opportunity surface idea.
Arvid:You create this big surface where opportunities may land, and you just have to be there when they when they hit. And then you you have to take them. Right? It's this preparation meets, capacity and and capability kind of thing.
Justin:You know, Dharmesh, you know, CTO of HubSpot, talked about this this quote that Steve Jobs had, and he kinda has crystallized this frame of thinking, is just to be a dot connector. Right? Like, it's very rare that you can look into the future and think that, okay. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this.
Justin:I'm gonna do this, and it's gonna lead to the outcome that I want to. But it's oftentimes very easy to look backwards and say, oh, well, because I did this and because I had that failure and because I had that success, all of these experiences crystallized into me being successful or me getting the outcome that I wanted. And so I'm very much a fan. He calls it, like, be a dot connector or a dot collector because just get these experience sets. Like, even if this thing doesn't work out and you just collect all these things, and then ultimately, one day, you'll be able to look back on it fondly and realize that it was all meant to be.
Arvid:And often, particularly with brands that are already trusted in the space that that I'm in and that I see people be in, it doesn't feel like very risky to just go out on a limb and experiment a little bit. You're just gonna highlight somebody's product, an established product in an established market. It's that feels to me most sponsorships that work out look like this. So it's, I think, worth the risk. Like, that's the German in me.
Arvid:I'm always thinking about the potential massive downside of things because that's how I've been kinda culturally educated. And that makes it hard to be super optimistic and super open to these opportunities because you never know what might happen. Like, Germans are so focused on liability. Like, one of the questions that is in my mind right now is, like, do I need insurance for this? Like, that is literally what I'm thinking about.
Arvid:But let's maybe go there. Like, what is the the the potential risk, and how can you mitigate this? Because you are, again, a small player, particularly when you're starting out, fighting, right, negotiating for your own rights with these bigger, probably more legally capable more just, like, legally structured entities. How do you protect yourself?
Justin:Okay. So, first, I'm going to challenge you on one thing, and then I'm gonna answer your question. The first thing that I'm gonna challenge you on is this idea that a negotiation is like David and Goliath. It's like a confrontation that you have to, like, put on a suit of armor to go into the octagon to battle these brands. And in reality, a much better visual for what a negotiation should feel like is you're both in a conference room at an office building.
Justin:Okay? And instead of you sitting on opposite sides of the conference table like this, you know, looking staring at each other's eyes, you basically squeak your office your swivel chair around the side of the conference table. It's like squeak, squeak, squeak, and you're but now you're both on the same side, and you're both looking at a whiteboard. You're like, okay. The brand says, here's where I'm at, point a.
Justin:Here's where we're trying to get, point b. And you're both working on this problem, this challenge together to figure out how to accomplish that. That's what a negotiation and a partnership should feel like. And if you're doing it any other way, you're doing it wrong. Okay?
Justin:And so it it it's to strive to get to that, that type of relationship. To the first part of your question though, about how how do you protect yourself? It's a real thing for sure. So I I do have like professional liability insurance, for sure. That's something that I believe anyone who is, you know, working with partners in a meaningful way on an ongoing basis absolutely should protect yourself in that way.
Justin:And I do think it's, like, very important to, like, have contracts, have agreements that outline you know, they bring a heightened level of of accountability and expectation to the relationship when you collaborate with someone. So you spell out exactly what the terms are gonna be, what the the deliverables, what is the brand allowed to do and not allowed to do. And so a lot of it comes down to just educating yourself around what's fair and what's right. And, you know, honestly, when I started, I just, like, hired our family lawyer. Dude, this is so funny.
Justin:I hired our family lawyer, like, fifteen years ago to, like, make me a contract template. I was like, hey. We're, like, starting to do these, like, things. And and she was, like, used to doing, like, wills and estate stuff. And, like, she's like, what are you doing on the Internet?
Justin:This is so weird. And so what she did was basically, though, was, like, she made us this boilerplate template where it was, like, the first, like, eight pages were just, like, standard. Like, we never we didn't change anything. And the only thing that we changed was, like, the last page, which was, like, the statement of work. It was, like, this, this, this.
Justin:We're gonna do all these things. And so we felt protected, like, at least in the event that someone, you know, tried to come after us. But, again, dude, I've I've done over 550 sponsorships with my wife. We made over $5,000,000 doing it, and we've never had any sort of legal trouble at all over the last fifteen years. So I just think it's, like, blown up to a point where people are fearful for for no reasons.
Justin:But there there is one other aspect to this, which I think is important and is kind of a another aspect here is that, like, reputational risk is a real thing too, because you may have seen, you know, there have been massive companies that have blown up, whether it was FTX or other scandals where there were people who were promoting those brands who got embroiled in controversy as well because these were like finance YouTubers or something where all the people were like, how dare you promote this brand that was like a Ponzi scheme or scam or whatever. And I hear that that that's hard because, like, you you look if you're, like, a finance YouTuber, let's say, you look at, like, a company like FTX, and, like, they have Tom Brady investing and the top venture capital firms and all that who seem to have lended all their money and credibility to it. How is a little old YouTuber gonna, like, do the due diligence to, like, understand whether that this is, like, a legitimate company to, like, audit their books? No. It's not feasible.
Justin:And so, of course, like my policy there is, like, just honesty. Like, you just have to, like, be honest. Like, you have to do your own due diligence as much as you can. Do research, read reviews, try it yourself, this type of thing. But at the end of the day, no business partnership, you know, is is without a % of risk.
Arvid:Yeah. It's hard to do this due diligence with, I I guess, the the smaller brands in particular because the big ones, I guess, there are even YouTube videos about these sponsorships at this point. Right? Like, Established Titles is one of these places and what was the recent thing, like, the the coupon honey? Right?
Arvid:Like, there are there are news about these big sponsors if there's anything scammy or sketchy about them, and you can find this. It's just it's harder with with products that are novel too. Like, I've I've had a a lot of new companies come to me with, like, hey. We're launching this product, and it's gonna revolutionize x. It always, starts the the alarm bells in in my, you know, my mental background process.
Arvid:But you sometimes they're great, and sometimes you dig a little and you see, oof, maybe not. Right? Due diligence is still something that I always do, and it's it's easier with the brands that I already have a preexisting relationship with. Like, obviously, that that is as due diligence kind of as a as a long term process. Right?
Arvid:You associate with brands that you like, and over time you learn, are they for real or are they not? And they most often are. But I think I think that's very important. And I I wanna give you another shout out because the whole contractual part of, sponsorships, you helped me a lot with with my own. And the one thing I really liked about what you what you presented to me, what you helped me with, because I had no idea what a contract like this was gonna look like, is how it is still comprehensible to me.
Arvid:Like, I still understand what I'm signing here. And I think that probably more than anything else made this sponsorship that I had recently approachable because I knew what I was going for, what the what the terms were, what the expectations were, and the sponsor knew that too. They had their own lawyers look into it and, you know, add a comma here and, you know, do these little things. But it it was so clear that there was barely anything to even think about. That, I think, made it less scary to me.
Arvid:So thank you for that. Really appreciate it.
Justin:Yeah. I'm glad to hear that, man. That's that is I mean, what it look. Whatever you need to do to feel as though this is an exciting opportunity, I'm all for. Like, you're right.
Justin:Everyone has different, you know, fears and sensitivities. And so the fact that you feel like, okay. I've got this contract. I'm protected. Even if things go south, like, I'll still be able to, like, maintain this relationship, and we're not gonna hate each other.
Justin:I think these are all really, really important things and and, build to hear that.
Arvid:It's funny because most of what we've been talking about, it all boils down to just mindset, to just embracing this as a as a good thing, not seeing it as something transactional, not seeing it as a threat, but embracing a sponsorship as, like, a mutually beneficial walk together. I love this visual that you have with the conference room. Like, it's always like you take the other party's hands and you have a little walk. Right? It's like you you go somewhere together, and you kinda amplify each other in this.
Arvid:I like this. It's a very, very inclusive, very embracing mindset.
Justin:Yeah. One other kind of framework I think will be really helpful for people to understand is just, like, I have this thing that I talk about called audience first offers. So I call it your PSA, your products, your sponsors, and your alliances. So when it comes to the psychographic research that we talked about at the beginning about learning about your audience, a lot of us are probably very comfortable with creating things, creating products that we sell directly to our customers or our audience. Right?
Justin:And that that feels like a good solution. However, when we do that survey and we learn about our audience or our customers, there's probably going to be some things that they say that we're never going to create a product for or we're never going to add that feature or just we're not going to help someone with that because that's not our specialty or it's just not something that we ever want to go down. And so what would it look like? Again, if we think our job is to, like, solve our customers or our audience's problems, what would it look like to go out there and pitch a sponsor to help them solve that aspect of their life that they're having issues with? Similarly, alliances.
Justin:Do you have a friend who's a coach or an educator or a consultant who could help them with that thing to solve solve this problem in their life? A lot of people fear that because they say, if well, if I send them to someone else, my friend's software, SaaS, or whatever, and they sign up for that person's stuff, they're not gonna have money to buy my SaaS, or they're not gonna have my money to buy my thing, my my digital product or course or whatever. And that's a scarcity mindset view. There I believe there's infinite money in this universe. And if you have this mindset of service and helping people, and now their life or their business is so much better now because they solved that one problem that you that you don't can't help them with, now they're gonna think more favorably of you.
Justin:They're gonna say, oh, now I'm gonna sign up for Arvid's thing, or now I'm gonna join his program or whatever, buy his book, because I feel like I'm finally in a place where I can do that.
Arvid:Yeah. Being a person to connect other people, like, that's a reputational gain for all three parties involved. Right? I always see this, like, when when I talk to creators, they're like, I I wanna, like, keep my audience to myself. Okay.
Arvid:Invite that expert, you know. Invite that other person that connect people with them, allow them to connect, and you will be forever in the middle of that relationship. That is an extremely valuable place to be in, right, to be the mediator. Hundred percent. One last question.
Arvid:Do I have to be as handsome as you to build a successful sponsorship business?
Justin:Well Just asking. You know, first of all, that's very kind of you to say and so unexpected. Like, that compliment just came out of came out of left field. Just for those listening, I joked with Arvin before we hit record. I was like, so in the intro, are you gonna talk about my awesome hair or anything about my appearance?
Justin:No. Absolutely not. You could be Quasimodo and get a sponsorship. You do not. It has nothing to do with the way you look.
Justin:Look. At the end of the day, dude, they don't care. The brands are partners. They don't care about you. They care about accessing a pool of prospective customers.
Justin:That's why they're hiring you. And so it has nothing to do with the way you look. It has nothing to do with really how many followers you have at all. It has to do with is the composition of your audience, your customers, an attractive pool of prospective customers for them.
Arvid:Yeah. I love that. And that's also one of the reasons I think, like, particularly in in trying to find sponsors for my for my content, I had a deeper look at my audience. Who am I actually talking to? Like, what are the metrics?
Arvid:Like, what are the engagement metrics? What's the demographics and that kind of stuff? It gives you this opportunity to understand the people that you're talking to better, even just in wanting to be able to report who you are talking to to somebody who has a budget for this. So that's that's really cool. Okay.
Arvid:That's good to know. Like, for a lot of people who rather hide out in our dungeon basements, I think the value that you bring is in the relationships that you have. Right? The potential for connection that you give to a potential sponsor. Okay.
Arvid:Potential for connection. Where do people go to connect with you, to find out more about you, to learn about you, and to follow you on your on your writing journey, on your book journey, on your consulting, on in the real life events that you're gonna do, man? Like, where do you want people to go?
Justin:Yeah. So sponsormagnet.com is where you can go to grab the book. And, you know, if you do pick it up, you'll get kind of entered into my universe. And now I am launching this in person event in San Antonio, Texas in March, and I'm really excited for it, man, because it's an anti conference, actually. There's no panels.
Justin:There's no keynotes. There's no workshops. Basically, I'm turning my eight step sponsorship wheel framework, which I talk about in the book, into eight games that attendees will play to actually master the concept. So it's gonna be a lot of fun. It's called sponsored games, and I'm pretty terrified because I'm putting out a lot of money to make this event happen, but I really want I really want it to exist.
Justin:I think it needs to.
Arvid:That sounds amazing. I I love this because that also is just it's an experiment. Right? It's like you're trying something, and and I think that that alone is worth going. That's really cool.
Arvid:Man, that's that's a that's a great idea. Okay. I highly recommend reading the book. I highly recommend just working with you. Like, that that is my my personal experience has been over the moon.
Arvid:I really, really thank you for inviting me into your universe today and for sharing what you know with, the listeners and and viewers of the show. Thank you so much, Justin. It's always just a a really fun time talking to you.
Justin:Dude, of course. And I just wanna say as a final bookend to this conversation, like, you've really inspired me in your journey, especially with writing over the last couple years, just, like, seeing the business that you've built. And and, I got so inspired by you know, I also read write useful books by Rob Fitzpatrick, and I'm in his community. And so I very much was inspired by your model of, like, writing a useful book, and that's that that was the playbook I use for this. And so thank you for kind of being a trailblazer, in this whole space, man.
Arvid:Really appreciate it. Thanks so much. And that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening to the Bootstra founder. You can find me on Twitter at Abedkahl, a r v a d k a h l.
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