#108: Justin Moore – How to get brand deals and why they are underrated

Justin Moore  00:00

You know, I call myself a sponsorship coach because I am here beating this drum, basically telling everyone that you need to, everyone needs to be like, like thinking about sponsorships as part of their business because it can represent a hugely lucrative income stream for them that most people don't even think about.

Jay Clouse  00:16

Hello, my friend, welcome back to another episode of Creative Elements. If you're listening to this episode in your favorite podcast player, which you probably are, I have big exciting news for you. And that is that this is the first ever episode of Creative Elements that is also recorded entirely in video, we're on YouTube, we made it and couldn't be more excited about it, I would love for you to check it out. The link to the YouTube version of the show is in the show notes, check it out, subscribe to the channel. This has been a long time coming and a big, big, big transition. Over the last few months, I've been working with an incredible editor named Connor Conaboy who's put this together, he's made this go from just an idea to a reality. And it's been challenging because when I get good feedback about the show, what I hear most often is that people are really impressed with the audio quality, the production quality of the show. And I knew that if I wanted to make a video show, I needed that show to be to the same standard of quality. And doing that high of quality of production in video is really, really hard. But all the credit in the world to Connor, who came in and said, hey, I think you have what could be a really compelling show on YouTube as well. And here's how we're going to do that. And it was a big decision. It's been a difficult process of reworking the entire process of editing and creating this show but this is it. This is the first episode that you can watch in video so check it out if you haven't already. If you are watching this on video, and you're like, yeah, I'm watching you right now. Hello, small wave to the YouTube audience that is growing. Seriously, check it out, subscribe to the show. I'm really excited about it. And I'm excited for a lot of reasons. One, I think when video is done well, it can be a big, big, big game changer and really add a new element onto the experience of watching the show. You and I will get closer, you'll get closer to the guests because you can see them moving in real time in their space. You can see their mannerisms, their body language, I think it adds a whole lot of upside to the show. And then for me as a producer, it can also be really good in terms of growth and discoverability. Because in podcasting, there just isn't really that much discoverability. But you put a video show on YouTube, which is the second biggest search engine in the world. And this may open the show up to new audiences who are looking for certain types of content, certain answers, certain people who are the guests that are on the show. So let me tell you, this is a big decision, it was a difficult one, but we're trying it out and I'd love to hear what you think about it. Speaking of YouTube, today, I'm talking with a good friend of mine. His name is Justin Moore. He is a member of the Creative Companion Club, he's a YouTuber and he is a sponsorship coach helping creators earn more with brand deals to stop leaving thousands on the table when they're working with brands through partnerships and sponsorships. And to get to the point of his life where he is a creator and working with creators wasn't exactly a straight line. But it makes a lot of sense because Justin has always been entrepreneurial.

Justin Moore  03:21

I'm the kid who went out to the main road of our town and like put out you know, we had like a garage sale sign and I like put a piece of paper over it and said like carwash, right, like five bucks or whatever. I would literally wash cars all day long. During the summer, I will get my friends from elementary school. We were young, we were like fifth grade, maybe fourth grade pretty young. This shows the entrepreneur that I was at that time Jay, like I charge differently for trucks. I was like this is larger, I'm going to charge $7 I gotta get a ladder to get to the hood to the top of it like I was my mind was thinking already that I even I went and rated my parents, like pantry had a snack bar. Like literally it was like the best there was zero cogs like literally was all profit. And I just sold sold food while they were waiting there. A captive audience was brilliant.

Jay Clouse  04:07

As you hear in the interview, Justin didn't go straight into entrepreneurship. He actually pursued music first, and then computer science. But in the early days of YouTube, Justin got hooked. And it didn't take long for his entrepreneurial mind to see an opportunity for his then girlfriend now wife, April.

Justin Moore  04:24

I had been watching YouTube videos like the early days of YouTube 2007 2008 timeframe and I was like telling she was my girlfriend at the time. April like you kind of this is so awesome. You got to like, check out youtube and she's like, it's not just cat videos. She had literally never watched a YouTube video in her entire life before she met me. And I was like no, there's like people who are doing all these cool things. And so sure enough, she started watching you know, the beauty gurus that was what they were called at the time beauty gurus on YouTube doing doing makeup doing cosmetics. She was always really interested in that but never had any friends in her real like real life, I guess, who was interested in that.

Jay Clouse  05:03

And the rest is pretty much history. Justin and his wife April have now earned over $5 million as creators themselves on YouTube doing a daily vlog for several years, and he has personally made over $3 million. Working with brands and partnerships himself. He runs an influencer agency that helped those creators earn more than $2 million themselves. And today, Justin runs a cohort based course called brand deal wizard, where he helps people to land better sponsorships and stop leaving 1000s of dollars on the table. I'll also say that Justin has a growing and thriving Tech Talk that I'm taking a lot of notes from as we're launching my channel, and he has a personal goal of helping creators land 1 million sponsorships, not $1 million, but 1 million sponsorships by the year 2032. So in today's episode, we talk about his experience on YouTube. Why he thinks tick tock today is where YouTube was 10 years ago, how you can land your own brand partnerships, and why reliability is his secret sauce as a creator himself. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. As you listen, you can tweet at me @jayclouse or @creativeelements.fm on Instagram, tag me, let me know that you're watching I would love to hear your thoughts on this first ever video episode of Creative Elements. But now let's talk with Justin.

Justin Moore  06:35

You know, I was an engineer Computer Science from UCLA. So I very much got out thinking I was going to be a, you know, programmer, basically engineer, the first job I got was at a medical devices company. So honestly, it could have been at a different type of company. It was just like that was the first person who would pay me so that I could actually like pay my rent the following month. And so I was like, I'm gonna take this job. And so like it was not strategic whatsoever. But I you know, developed the first part of my career in medical devices grew to love it a lot went a lot got to travel around the world install medical devices in kawaii Hawaii, Japan got to actually do really cool stuff. But yeah, it was not what I thought I would be doing with myself. Straight out of school.

Jay Clouse  07:16

Are you allowed to say what kind of devices we're talking about here?

Justin Moore  07:19

Yeah, absolutely. So I was a product manager for actually laparoscopy and gynecology. So this is like minimally invasive surgery. So you know, if your need to get your gallbladder, you know, any sort of surgical procedure around that I've worked at a couple different companies, but like that was kind of my specialty was like laparoscopy.

Jay Clouse  07:36

So you're a product manager, you have this background in computer science. But we're talking here today, because we're talking about brand deals, sponsorship and YouTube, which seems like a far cry away from what I'm talking about right now. So talk about that transition, and what was going on in around 2009 when your wife April started the YouTube channel?

Justin Moore  07:55

From a very early age, I was like, I wanna make money, how can I make money and so they went from that to like tutoring. You know, I was tutoring kids throughout high school. And then when I went into college, this might surprise you, Jay, but from a very early age, like, doing all this stuff on at the same time, I was absolutely sure that I was going to become a professional musician. Actually, like, I was absolutely obsessed with music. I've written hundreds of songs throughout my life. Piano guitar, the whole thing. I was in a metal band Jay. It's been Yeah, yeah. It's been it's been a story. So I'm trained in opera, like classically trained in opera, like singing. And so like it very much. Yeah, it very much has been maybe by like, on the B side of this podcast, I'll sing some song.

Jay Clouse  08:39

Let's say if I'm making you sing. I won't do that to you.

Justin Moore  08:42

You know, so it's just like, it was so interesting, because there was this inflection point where I was like, okay, I have to make a choice. I'm applying to colleges. Am I going to be a musician? Or am I going to be an engineer, that was like the choice and my dad, bless his heart. You know, he's an engineer by trade. And so he was he very much was like, did this grand bargain with me, which, which basically was like, I will pay for you to go to music school, if you first get an engineering degree. And I was like, and so I was like, that was that. So I got into the UC Santa Barbara School of Music. And I got into the UCLA engineering program. And so I was just like, faced with this, like, very, very challenging choice of what am I going to do with my life and I ultimately chose to go down the path of going to UCLA, my logic was like, I'll be in LA, I can still do music stuff while I'm going to engineering school, and I'll have like a backup plan. Basically, the craziest thing that happened, Jay was that I was so anxious to get out of college and just like start my life and do music, and you know, all this stuff that I still was thinking that that's what I was going to do. And so every single summer I took classes and I graduated in three years from with an engineering degree from and, and that was in 2007. So if you remember what happened in 2008, I was so lucky that I did that, that I graduated early because all of my friends who graduated in 2008, which is when I should have graduated, could not find jobs. It was just so weird the way everything worked out. It was like I, you know, I could not have planned it, obviously, honestly, it's very strange, like, my life has always worked out that way where it's just like through happy accidents, or just kind of putting myself in positions to succeed, and really just like working hard, and and I've always kind of avoided catastrophic things happening to me. It's a very weird way that I've never actually thought about that until just now. But like, there's actually been several of those moments where it's just like, wow, I'm glad that I graduated a year earlier. I was I've been screwed. So anyways, I honestly so that was what led me to that I was in medical devices graduated, were doing that for many years, met my wife, April while I was in school. She was a preschool teacher at the time. And so I was, you know, I was 20. She was 21. We were really young. By the way we met on Yahoo Personals, which doesn't exist anymore. I heard the story sex and it was yes, started getting really, you know, binge watching all those all those early YouTube creators and I kept telling her, I was like, You should do this. You have a great personality, you would have a lot of fun doing it. I can help you with the technical stuff like with the cameras and all that stuff. And for about a year I was like working on her prodding her Come on, you gotta do this. And so finally in Yeah, I think round 2009 was when she started her first channel. She made her first YouTube video it was on it was on our webcam, I think was probably like 140 P or two. I don't think it was terrible. So pixelated B's? Not Yeah. And we edited the first video on Windows moviemaker. And it was just terrible. But it was like letterboxed, you know, the early days of YouTube was not wide screens. And so like these, anyone who's listening who remembers those days, there was no there was no way to make money on YouTube. There was no partner program. It was very much a hobby, being an influencer. That word was not around. Yeah, influencer marketing, there was none of these things. None of us had any idea what we were doing. Truly, like, we were just, you know, having fun. You know, and it was I was very much kind of in the background for a long time just helping her with the technical stuff. And it really was when brands started reaching out, offering free products. That was the first thing it was like, hey, we'll give you this free thing. And she was like, yes. Chi Ching, right. Like this was like free beauty products free like hair, you know, curling iron, like all this stuff. stoked? You know, we were we were like young college students didn't have any money, or like, you know, recently graduated scraping by basically, and so like to get free stuff was just we were stoked out of our mind. Well, she was stoked, because the beauty channel obviously.

Jay Clouse  12:29

After a quick break, Justin, and I talk about his experience getting paid actual cash for the first time from a brand. And later we talk about what you should know that you can land your own brand deals. Right after this.

Jay Clouse  12:43

Welcome back to my conversation with Justin Moore. Before the break, Justin was just beginning to tell us about his experience with his wife, April, being offered cash for the first time for working with a brand.

Justin Moore  12:54

I distinctly remember this that they agreed to pay us $700 a month for three to six months, which even today is a lot of money. Yeah. And the deal was like, you know, certain amount of you know, post inclusions in the products and YouTube channel for every month and all that stuff. And Trenton you're linking back to their site and all this stuff. And so we were gobsmacked when I tell you we could not believe it, that this brand was going to be willing to pay us this much money. We just simply couldn't believe it. Yeah. And so like that was the one of the initial triggers for us was like, Are the catalysts to think like, this could be something that is a lot bigger than we think it is.

Jay Clouse  13:33

And how long were you guys uploading before that conversation happened?

Justin Moore  13:39

Probably a year and a half to two years, the paid conversation.

Jay Clouse  13:43

Yeah. And when you when you put up this first, probably several videos with Windows moviemaker that were really small, you know, even today, it's so common to like, get yourself through over this hill of like, No, I'm going to do it. I've been saying I want to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to make it I'm going to publish it. I published it, and then crickets, and then I'm not coming back. Back then there weren't even models to look at really if people who had done it well, so did you guys get an immediate positive response or what what was like the first couple of months like?

Justin Moore  14:14

My wife is a hustler. Like she in the early days, like, you know, this was the Wild West no one growth hacking strategies. None of that existed in terms of like how to grow a channel, you know, we kind of laughed thinking back on it, but it was like you would like spam comment sections of other people's videos? Or you would there used to be a messaging feature on YouTube for those people who remember that, that you could actually like, do you know people who would follow you could send them a message. Oh, thank you so much, or you could message other people, you know, and she would be up till two three. I remember this distinctly. One of the reasons that I still wear an eye mask to sleep. J is because my wife would be up until two three in the morning sitting up in bed with her with her laptop, messaging people on YouTube replying to every comment, and I actually had the light on and so I had to start working eyemask because I couldn't sleep. And so it's a funny reminder of like that time in our lives where we were so hungry, we were so hungry to like grow this cool thing that was was becoming a part of our lives. And so I just remember those days, it was very much just grit and sweat.

Jay Clouse  15:10

And you talk with and work with a lot of creators now. I would love to hear Do you think that same mentality that same hunger, grit and sweat is still necessary to the same degree today?

Justin Moore  15:22

I think that you can work a lot smarter today than we did or in the early days, because we had nothing to go off of we, we would go down a rabbit hole thinking that this one thing that we were doing, like, Oh, we're going in replying on other people's videos, and trying to do it within the first like, five minutes it was uploaded to like, you know, get visibility at the top of their comments, you know, section or whatever, like this type of thing. The advantage now is there's such a tremendous wealth of information about what works well, and what doesn't, you know, like, if you wanted to grow your Twitter, you know, presence or something. Now, you could take any number of courses, go follow the thought leaders on Twitter, you know, just follow people who are doing it well, and you could like, reasonably discern what would be a good growth strategy for your own niche as a creator, I would say, right, but in the early days of being a creator, making content being on YouTube, again, there was no, there was no playbook.

Jay Clouse  16:14

Yeah, I agree. I think you still need a lot of that mentality. I think it just looks different today, you know, instead of the YouTube DMS, it's collaborations, other people are engaging in other people's videos, but like, I still see the comment and DM hustle for people who are making it now on Instagram, for example, you know, Twitter like, I feel like that attitude and mentality is still pretty necessary today. It just looks different.

Justin Moore  16:39

Well, let me give you a very specific example of this is that I have at the time of this recording, just past 6000 followers on my Tik Tok it, let's go 12 brand deal contract mistakes, part three, not spelling out the number of rounds of revisions. Okay, so 99% of the time, brands are going to ask to see a draft of the sponsored content for review before you post it, which is pretty reasonable. By the way, it's not reasonable, though, is them asking you to reshoot the entire thing for an arbitrary reason, like, Hey, Justin, I don't like that green shirt you're wearing. So can you just reshoot this whole thing? I believe that tick tock right now is where YouTube was 10 years ago, it was it's still very much early days, there's a lot of creators on there, who they just blew up overnight. They don't know what they're doing, they're starting to make some money. They don't know, you know, they're making all these every mistake in the book. And so I very much saw that as like, I need to be on here to like, help these folks out. Because, you know, they, they need guidance, right. And so that's one thing. But the second thing is that I very much view it as a way to like, raise my profile for my newsletter, right? So I will when ever someone follows me, who is obviously a creator, on tick tock, I will DM them. And I will say, Hey, thank you so much for following me, really appreciate it. Also, if you might be interested, I share paid sponsorship opportunities every week in my newsletter, click the link in my bio. Right. And I cannot tell you just from doing that I've grown my newsletter to almost 5000 creators. Very, very, I went from 2500, like three months ago to almost 5000. I attribute that tactic very much to that because people are hungry for this information. So a good example is that I found a tactic and I'm doubling down on it because it's clearly working.

Jay Clouse  18:21

Fast forward a little bit in your story I read on your about page, I created wizard.com that at one point 95% of you and April's income was YouTube income and 5% was brand deals. And you started to want to diversify. So talk to me about that, and how that shift happened and why you're even worried about because a lot of people might already be monetizing in some way that is 95% of their income, and aren't thinking about brand deals at all.

Justin Moore  18:48

The particular space on YouTube that we were in was the family space. And it's very much driven by life milestones, right? There was a tremendous amount of interest when April 1 got pregnant, following the pregnancy journey, raising our small kids and the parenthood journey and all that stuff. And then you know, buying a house and like you know, it was all these like tentpole moments that people get really excited about in this particular content vertical.

Jay Clouse  19:11

Can you give some context as to what those what numbers might have looked like for the channel at that time?

Justin Moore  19:16

Yeah, at the height we were making $25,000 a month on our YouTube AdSense. And this represents several million views probably on average, we were doing, you know, 100 250,000 views per video.

Jay Clouse  19:29

Wow. Amazing. And subscriber number. Do you have a ballpark?

Justin Moore  19:33

Yeah, we were we were in the by that time probably 150 to 200k subscribers, something like that on the family channel. Yeah, I remember when we got an email one one time we were I'll never forget this. We were shopping in the mall. We were in forever 21. I don't know. I remember this. And we got the email for our statement of like, shortly after the birth of our first kid and I remember like opening the statement. Like previous previously to that point. I think our max was maybe like 10,000 wasn't 15,000 Something like that? For like just views AdSense, right? And I opened it. And I was like, does that say 25,000? I could not believe it. Like, I stopped April, I was like, Look at this, it says $25,000. This was by there's like, eight, seven years ago, right? So like, that was a lot of money like to make as a creator, like, especially given the fact that every time we told our family or friends that we were making money that we were YouTubers, they'd be like, so how do you make money doing that it was this very weird disconnect, because we were making crazy amounts of money. And yet people still didn't get it. People were constantly asking us in the comment section, so what do you do for your job? And we just wouldn't look, we are creators like this, like, people get it now. Like, you know, you see paid partnership with blah, blah, blah, and Instagram, people get it now. But in the early days, people didn't. So you know, at that point in our business, our our, I bring a somewhat of a as you can tell a business mindset to be a creator, I always have, because that's my background. And I was very certain that our ability to maintain a certain that that level of like, you know, viewership and influence and you know, Yatta, Yatta, yatta was low for five years, 10 years, right. And so I was like, What can we do now to start bringing in some other revenue streams that don't rely on April and Justin. That was that was what I that was the the thought experiment, right? We experimented with different things, a product line, we launched a product line called Saturday sunshine, we had mugs and tumblers and canvas bags and all the stuff trying to create a brand that lived apart from I trademarked it like what did the whole thing J. And yeah, actually just let that trademark expire, by the way, who knows the end of an era. But, but so like, that was an example, right? of like trying to diversify, diversify the business. And then by this time, you know, a lot, we were working with a lot of brands, doing partnerships, and so on. And I was like, we have all these friends, who are also great creators, why can't I just go to the brand that we just worked with or the agency and say, hey, it was awesome working with you. Did you know that I also, we also have this little black book, this roster of other creators that you can also partner with? And that was the idea. And so that basically, emailed 30 of our close family vlogger, essentially, family blogger friends on YouTube and said, Hey, will you let me pitch you and say that, you know, if I can get you some business? Is it okay? If I say that you're part of like trending family, it was completely non exclusive. I was not managing them exclusively. They could do other deals, but it was just like, give me your permission to just like, put you in a deck and say you're like on my roster. That's how we got that attraction in the early days. And it was that early credibility of saying, Hey, I'm Justin from April, Justin tv, we've got all these other creators, do you want to work with creators who are wholesome, who aren't swearing a lot in their content? Who are you know, not going to, you know, plunge your brand into disrepute? Right. So it was, it was a very easy pitch at that time, because brand safety was like the buzzword does, you're in the advertising industry, there was all these brand safety issues with YouTube and running ads against like, crazy, you know, content, you know, every other week, it seemed like, you know, advertisers were pulling out a YouTube if you recall. And so like this message, this wedge of we only work with family friendly influencers for this agency was very compelling. And so yeah, so fast forward, you know, seven years later, we paid out millions of dollars to other creators doing kind of the nuts and bolts campaign management for other brands and other agencies. And so that that has helped, that has helped essentially diversify our family income.

Jay Clouse  23:31

For folks who aren't super tied into YouTube. I think I remember this correctly, brand safety was coming up, because there was like, essentially, like propaganda and hate speech happening. And AdSense was just serving it on those videos, because YouTube didn't recognize it as different content. Is that Is that right?

Justin Moore  23:47

Yeah. 100% Like it's, it's, it's a very much kind of like a whack a mole game too. Because it's like, you know, our culture these days, like, you know, it is very subjective, like what people get upset about, right, so you could have ads running against and honestly, your question, going back to the question about like, why do you need to diversify, right 95% of your AdSense like you can, YouTube can just arbitrarily changed their mind and just deem that no longer, you're no longer advertiser friendly. And so they're going to limit your, you know, your monetizable inventory of your videos. And that and like, that could not maybe it wasn't true two years ago, but it's true now, from a pop culture perspective, or a cultural perspective. Right? And so like that is the existential risk as a creator on YouTube in particular, I think.

Jay Clouse  24:31

What's really interesting in doing some of the research for this interview and listening to some of your other conversations, it's becoming more and more clear to me that creators who really came up in the video ecosystems Youtube, Instagram, tik, Tok, AdSense and brand deals were like the monetization strategies. A lot of the people that I modeled after and what I came up in with writing and podcasting, it was very much like direct monetization selling products or services to your audience. And it's interesting that there seems to be a chasm here because you guys didn't get into I mean, you had the the physical product line you're just talking about, but doesn't sound like that was really on your radar to do courses or digital products or things. Am I reading that right?

Justin Moore  25:12

You want to know something hilarious Jay, we tried it about seven years ago, right? Actually right before we gave birth. So eight years ago now, my wife and I created a relationship commune membership. And this was something that people would would have to pay. And so basically, we were people were flocking to us for like advice about their relationships and all that they looked up to us in terms of the relationship that we had. Because we used to do these videos, it was almost like a q&a around our viewpoints around dating and love and marriage and all this stuff. And people just absolutely loved it, right. And so we thought twice, we actually got approached, this is what happened, we got approached by a company being like, Hey, we've seen these videos that you guys create, I think that there's a product here, I think there's a membership, there's a community of people who are also trying to make their relationships better, and all this stuff. And so on the surface, we were stoked. We were like, you know, really excited. And so we went into this hunkered down into this, like, filmed a bunch of videos, frameworks homework, we made a course basically, we launched it to absolute massive pushback. You're a sellout, how dare you this, you know, I can't believe you're trying to sell this and like, make money off of us all this stuff. There's a lot of things that we did wrong in the early days. But one of the like, in terms of like, not really letting our followers in on the behind the scenes, the fact that we were doing this they did, it was just kind of like surprised we did this right. And so it very much kind of felt like almost like a rug poll, or just kind of like, it was just not a great experience. And so I see we see that now. But there was a lot of lessons that we learned from that number one was that there was a much larger stigma associated with directly monetizing your influence eight years ago. And it's actually Patreon. That did a lot to destigmatize, that this idea of directly supporting and patronizing creators that you love so that they can continue to do this thing that you that you love consuming, because whereas that dynamic didn't really exist before. And so anyone back in the day, by the way, anytime anyone would do sponsorships back in the day, there would be tons of comments, sell out all that stuff, too, which basically doesn't exist anymore. Like now it's like, congratulations on this partnership, getting that back, you know, like, it's much more supportive now, right? There is so much that has changed culturally, in the last decade or so that has normalized this behavior. And so I view it, I think that if we if April, and I were to launch a product like that now, I think it would be wildly successful. But we're past that it's not something we want to do anymore anyway. But it was just like, sometimes it's just the timing is not right. You can't look at yourself, you that was a lesson learned, for sure. Because that has informed all these other decisions that we made in terms of the future products and offers that we've created.

Jay Clouse  27:56

I'm so glad you you shared some of that because I think there's a real survivorship bias in the stories that we hear from creators where we don't talk about the thing that failed for whatever reason why it failed. We see all the things that like went perfectly and then we're newbie solo creator, and we launched something that doesn't go well. And we're just like, well, I guess our story isn't the same. I guess I couldn't do it the way that you did it.

Justin Moore  28:17

And even more recent failure, or what I perceive to be a failure was less than 12 months ago, or about 12 months ago, when I launched the first beta of my course brand new wizard. It's finally here, brand deal wizard, my proven four week course to find and negotiate your dream sponsorships so that you never leave 1000s on the table again, I know what you're thinking. But Justin, you already put out so much awesome content for free on social media. What could you possibly teach me about brand deals that you haven't already a lot, my friend a lot, just take a seat. Let me explain. My very first beta, the course had three paying creators and I was devastated. I thought to myself like man, like this is not what I spent all this work for last six months studying sales, paid psychology, copywriting, all this stuff. And yet, those three creators who went through it had amazing transformations. Right? I said to myself, there is something here. Let me let me do this again, let me do another cohort that one had five, then the next one had seven then the next one had 16. And then the last cohort I had 42 creators. I think one of the big lessons that I've learned from seeing a lot of other creators do this type of thing, what you just what you just described was that they just give up too soon. They just before they have either product market fit course market fit, whatever it is, and really try to iterate on what is working about it. People are just not willing to like put in the work that it requires to actually help your you know, students or customers achieve the outcomes that they're looking for.

Jay Clouse  29:49

When we come back, Justin and I talked about how you can land partnerships regardless of the size of your audience. There are a lot of actionable tips here that you'll want to stick around for so stick around and I'll be right back.

Jay Clouse  30:02

Hey, welcome back. Over the last few months, Justin has really built a name for himself as a sponsorship coach. And I wanted to dig into why Justin is so passionate about sponsorships and partnerships from brands, and why that can have a big impact for creators.

Justin Moore  30:18

So many creators will just fight tooth and nail to get monetized on YouTube get to that point where they can actually start making some AdSense, right. And there was a creator on Twitter who recently shared that in the three year lifespan of their YouTube channel, they've made like $7,000 in AdSense, and they recently got one brand deal for $10,000, you can make so much more money through sponsorships, then virtually anything else, I mean, digital products aside where there's infinite scalability, there's so much money to be made working with the right brand partners, because there is so much value that you can provide as a creator. And so I that's as you know, I call myself a sponsorship coach, because I am here beating this drum, basically telling everyone that you need to everyone needs to be like, like thinking about sponsorships as part of their business, because it can represent a hugely lucrative income stream for them that most people don't even think about. Like I've worked with creators and you know, non traditional creators who have newsletters or whatever. And they're just they've never done sponsorships before. And they're just absolutely blown away with how much money you can get on a single newsletter sponsorship or something like that. And so it's just like, I know that there's this this weird feeling that some people have, there's like, I don't want to introduce any other, you know, person's opinion or like creative control into like, my thing, right? Because then it's like I'm, you know, beholden to them. And all of a sudden, I you're working with wrong brands then? Right? Because there are absolutely brand partners out there who, you know, respect the community that you've built, and are willing to give you almost 100% Creative latitude. Right? So that is a cop out, in my opinion, like, that's not a reason not to pursue sponsorships. It's more about finding the right brand partners who will who will respect you.

Jay Clouse  32:09

I think the the common limiting belief amongst creators when thinking about brand deals is I'm too small, my audience is too small. Is there any validity to that idea? And is there a threshold you encourage people to think about?

Justin Moore  32:23

It's very much platform specific, I would say like, if you are trying to go after brands who view let's say Instagram as their primary, you know, platform that they're there themselves posting on? They're working with a bunch of other creators on that platform who were all at a similar level, then, yeah, of course, like it's going to be very brand and platform specific based on that advertiser. But there are also lots of other ways that you can bring value to a brand regardless of how many followers you have. I actually have a video on my YouTube channel called How to Get some sponsorships with zero followers. You probably think this is clickbait, right? Is it really possible to get brand deals with zero followers? Of course it is, let me tell you five ways to do it. Number one, stop thinking that the only reason a brand would want to partner with you is because of how many followers you have. Sure there are some brands like that, who say, Oh, you know, you need a minimum of 10,000 followers to work with us fine. That's not the right brand for you. There are tons of brands out there were the whole point of the campaign is to use your content on their social media platforms there even entire site setup like title that facilitate these types of deals. So starting now stop obsessing over how many followers you have, and start obsessing over how your platform can serve as your portfolio, I wanted to illustrate that there's that your expertise, the things that are being around up in your brain around how to have a robust presence, or an effective presence on social media do not require you to have 100,000 subscribers, right. So for example, let's say that you have a dream brand, maybe you have a couple 1000 followers on Instagram or YouTube or, you know, whatever. And you have this dream brand that you are you just love their story and you look at their Instagram, you look at their Tik Tok, you look at their YouTube, and it sucks. They're not posting, they're frequently the quality of the content is not great. They're not doing a good job telling the brand story which you know, because you love the brand, right? I'm sure you can think of a couple of brands in your head Jay that like you think of that, right? It's just like, Man, I could be such a great advocate for their brand, if they would just let me right. And so the pitch that when you reach out to that brand is not, hey, I'm gonna talk about you know, your brand on at Jay Clouse, my Instagram or whatever. That's not my pitch. The pitch is, hey, let me tell your brand story for you. And you will utilize that content on your platforms or you will utilize it for paid advertising. Right. And so, you know, posting on your platforms or in your newsletter sponsorship, that can still be part of the proposal. But the whole point of it is not about leveraging your organic reach or distribution on your page. Right. It's a about how you can help them tell an effective brand story in a way that would be very difficult for them to them to do it themselves, or for them to hire a production company who is quite detached from their story, who better than to do it than you? And so like, that's just like a very simple example of like, how you can get paid a lot of money, by the way, because now you're saying, Hey, I'm gonna do this for you. Yeah, it's gonna be $5,000 a month, because it doesn't matter how many followers you have at that point, because that's not the thrust of your proposal.

Jay Clouse  35:26

I love that. And I want to double click on it, because I think that's a really important distinction that people don't understand. Like, there's a spectrum of brand deals. And I'm saying that mirroring what you're saying, because I think I have a very limited view of what a brand deal encompasses, to me it's a, here's some money creator, post about us on your story. In your post, you have to make this many posts. And that is what this looks like. But it sounds like you're talking about a much broader spectrum of possible collaboration types designs for creators, can you elaborate on what some of those other types of brand deals could look like?

Justin Moore  36:05

Let's say for example, I'm in your creative companion club, just give you a little plug there. And here's a pitch that you can make to circle. You say, hey, circle, I don't know if they have a tick tock, by the way. But you can you can say, hey, tick tock circle, I noticed you don't have a tick tock presence. Let me make a series of TiC TOCs. For you talking about how I'm using circle for my community. And this is not going to live on at Jay Clouse this is gonna live on at circle so or whatever on your Tiktok. And so here you are you basically doing a takeover? You're helping them grow their thing, it's a real customer of theirs. And what like how freaking cool is that? To me? That's, that's a sponsorship, that's a brand deal? And like, how thrilled will they get about it? Because now basically, what you're telling to them, is you're you're saying to them that I'm going to rely me Jay Clouse I'm going to rely on my expertise in growing community, in creating compelling content, I'm going to help you tackle this new platform that I think is going to be important for the growth of your business. But you're not doing anything about it. Right now. I'm going to help you I'm bait, you're basically a consultant. At that point, you're, I have to say, like, you're not just a creator, you're a consultant, because you're going into their business, you're identifying gaps in how you think they, you know, gaps in their marketing strategy, and you're pitching them on something, you should do that pitch. By the way, Jay, like if you if you haven't already, like or anyone listening, I'm sure there's like an infinite variation of that idea.

Jay Clouse  37:22

Yeah, I love that. Because you're expanding beyond, I'm creating content about the sponsor for my channel, too. I'm creating content for the sponsor for their channel. And I actually had a conversation with a brand last week who I probably shouldn't name on the air, but they're a big brand. And they wanted a name. They, they wanted to license some of my course content. And they wanted to bring me in to talk with their users. And I was just like, whoa, and then she was telling me about how in the past, they've custom built courses by hiring a four person agency to come in and produce the course. And the dollar signs just ringing in my head of like, that sounds incredibly expensive, so much more expensive than licensing my content and paying to bring me in. And these brands are doing this type of thing all the time. They're hiring people to create this content agencies who are paying an entire staff, so their rates are a lot higher, and just never crossed my mind that that is an opportunity for creators to work with brands.

Justin Moore  38:24

There's this this idea called your BATNA, which is your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Okay, basically, it's like if this brand who's just like you said, who's reaching out to you weren't gonna hire, you weren't gonna license your course content, content? What are their alternatives? Right, they've got to go out there and hire this agency or hire a production company hire actors or actresses to star in that content, right? They have to, then by the way, when they pay the editor to make the content, then they have to go pay Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, to serve the ad. Right? So it's just like, there's so much money that goes into that process. And I'm not saying that that's what you should lead with in your proposal. Like, I'm so much cheaper than these other alternatives. That's not what I'm saying is that this is where if you put yourself in their shoes and be like, okay, if I'm the brand, if they don't work with me, where they're gonna go, yeah, maybe other creators, or yeah, maybe they're gonna go hire an agency. But it's just like, in your situation, that thing you just mentioned, Jay, is that you're not just the actor, you have credibility when it comes to community, and right and growing an audience and things like that. So it's like that is as the in the MasterCard commercials like to say, that's priceless. It's very hard to hire. So not only do you have amazing production quality, but you've got this authority in this particular space. So like, I think that too many creators minimize their own expertise. And because they just think that the only reason they're commoditized they think, Oh, well, they don't work with me, I got to lower my rate because, you know, if I don't, if I don't meet their budget, then they're gonna go work with someone else. And, you know, a lot of this comes down to having the confidence to realize that no, you actually have something very potent And you should not be backing down here, you should be standing your ground.

Jay Clouse  40:03

I think creators also underestimate the investment, these people are putting in the process of vetting or trying to hire you, you know, to the Creator, like, you get this drive by opportunity sometimes of hey, we want to collaborate with you on this campaign. And you reach out to them, and you name your number, and maybe you don't hear back from them. But you're probably under estimating how painful it would be for them to say, you know, actually, we gotta go with somebody else, because they might have already talked to their boss about you, they might have pitched you specifically, it's just like hiring somebody, sometimes you get so deep down the hiring process, and they start negotiating with their salary, it's more painful to kill that process entirely, find a new candidate, and then have the same conversation again, where the you might get into the same negotiation again, rather than say, You know what, this is a little higher than what I was looking for. But I can't not work with this person. So we're going to do it.

Justin Moore  40:56

There are so many other reasons why a brand would decide to pay you a higher rate than perhaps someone at a commensurate following or convention commits or influence is charging, that have nothing to do with what you think it does, right. So you're in your mind, you're fixated on your numbers, you Oh, my open rates, or my click rates are my followers, My impressions or whatever, that's because that's the world we all live in. As creators, it's like, that's how we measure our success of ourselves, right? But when, when it comes to a brand, like there's all these intangible qualities to partners that they're not going to tell you about. But it's reality. So if you're the person who is responding to every email, they send in six hours, versus two or three days, you're the person who doesn't give them a bunch of flak when they're asking for a few edits on a video or to the copy on a newsletter ad or something like that. You are the person who when if there's an agency, the brand comes back and says like, Hey, I know we didn't have this in the creative brief when we reached out, but there's this new requirement that we have to have in the sponsorship, I understand that it wasn't part of it. And you're the person who was like, you know, no big deal is let's make it it'll take me like five minutes, I'll do a quick new voiceover. Like, you underestimate how valuable that is. Because if they're working with 20, other creators, and believe me, I've worked with 1000s of creators in my day, a lot of whom are DeVos are divas about it, I'm just sorry, this reality that, you know, it's just been like pulling, you know, it's like, just like pulling teeth to get every single thing from them for to make actually this campaign happen. If you're the person who's just like, absolutely easy to work with what happens, not only do you make that your contact at the brand of the agency look like a hero, but chances are, that person is going to move on to another job in two years, because that's what happens in this industry, everyone moves around all the time, right. And so when chances are, they're probably going to work at a similar brand or similar agency. And when they start running, you know, create campaigns with creators and partners, they're gonna remember you, and they're gonna reach back out and be like, Hey, I moved on to this new agency. I love working with you this last brand. You know, let's do it again. And so 5060 Surprise 70% now of the deals that my wife and I are doing on an ongoing basis are from exactly that. It's this Rolodex, and these this trail of amazing relationships that we built over the last decade. And yeah, our influence has massively waned in terms of our top level impressions and metrics and all that stuff, viewership. But we made the most money that we've ever made every single year since then, right. So it like this, this, this, yeah, this is just a complete misnomer that you have to just like, stay on this content hamster wheel and constantly, you know, have the same performance year after year after year. So that's why I think sponsorships can be such an important part of your business, because you can make a lot of money doing them, even if your influence is waning.

Jay Clouse  43:37

I think every creator listening to this has had the experience of feeling like you're behind the ball, and you're coming up on a deadline, and you have to do something. I don't know why we expect organizations which are run by people to operate differently, like so often people within organizations have a deadline, they have to move quickly. Who are they going to call the person who responds quickly, who is easy to work with. It's such a low bar to stand out as a collaborator. It's, it's it sucks, but it's true. It's like such a low bar to stand out as somebody who's easy to work with. And it's a competitive advantage that anybody can take an almost nobody does.

Justin Moore  44:13

Well, that's the thing is like, you know, that's the other reason why I view it as my mission to kind of educate the next generation of creators. I have a mission to help creators big and small land a million sponsorships by 2032. So in the next 10 years, and a big reason is that, you know, a lot of creators who are coming up now have never had a quote unquote, real job, Jay. They're coming out of college or they're coming out of high school, they blew up on Tik Tok, they're making money and they don't understand that you can't reply back to an agency with Yes. Right? Like, you just simply can't do that like email, adequate basic stuff. I'm not I'm not joking here, man. This is this is true, right? And so it's just like helping them understand how important that is when it comes to business relationships and how to be professional and how to not take things personally. Right? If a brand is saying ain't like hey, can you remove this? It's not them saying, Hey, you suck, or your video sucked. It's no, like the legal team said, you can't have a Nike logo on the hat in your video. Right? So it's just like very, it's very, it seems obvious, but to a lot of creators who are just coming up, it's not.

Jay Clouse  45:16

So I get the vibe with you that you are an advocate for pitching brands, as opposed to waiting for brands to come to you. How do I do that?

Justin Moore  45:30

I love it, I love it, you know, your email inbox, you have absolutely no control over right, whether a brand decides to reach out to you today or tomorrow, or never, you literally have no control over that. So if you're, if you're literally just waiting for brands to email, you, then you're never going to get a deal you may have, you know, just by sheer like growth, when you hit a certain point, yeah, you're gonna get some inbound deal flow. But until that point, you need to be supplementing that, you know, deal flow with outbound cold pitching, okay. And the most important thing to think about when it comes to actually reaching out to brands with a compelling proposal is to make it about them, not you. Because what most creators do is they will say, Hey, my name is Jay. And I was born in Columbus, Ohio, and I have six siblings, and I'm a Sagittarius, and I, you know, have a record of that, right. But that's what the 99% of creators do. And that's the pitch they get all day long. I don't care if you're a consumer brand, I don't care if you're a b2b SaaS platform, whatever, like all partnerships increase pretty much are like that, Oh, I love your product. I've been using it for two years, big web, everyone says that, right? So how much more impactful is it if you spend 510 15 minutes of research going and looking at circles, Instagram, looking at their YouTube channel, looking at what they're posting on their blog, their press releases? Who have they done joint partnerships with, right, and then use that to inform your proposal. So when you go to them, and you pitch them this Tiktok idea to Jay, basically, you're gonna, you're gonna know, I'm just it's the example we use. You know, I, you basically say to them, Hey, I saw your VP of Marketing at a South by South southwest fireside chat, say that they're, they believe that short form video could be an impactful way for them to get to deliver their message. Right, from your research, you found that out? And so you come to them and say, I absolutely agree, I'm actually starting out, I'm doing Tiktok. Right now I've got this, you know, then that's when you tell them about all your stuff, you know, and this is why I'm the best person to be doing this. I would love to do this for you. X, you know, X, Y, Z, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, right? Because I believe that it's going to help you accomplish this objective that you've already identified based on a research. What do you think? That's the proposal? That's the pitch? Do you see how it's not about you, it's about them. And it's about whatever you're proposing is a direct response, a direct solution to this problem that you have already identified? You know, with a with an assumption, this problem, it's not hard. It's not hard to like, like, look at all the bread crumbs that brands are leaving on social media, go back and scroll Instagram as a research tool, go back and scroll back on their Instagram last June or July and see what they were posting about. If they're posting about that hashtag summer fitness challenge, you know, campaign, chances are they're going to run that again, Jay? Maybe not circle but. Right. Right. So and you use that as your research. Hey, I saw you were running this last year. Are you going to be running that campaign again, this year, I'd love to activate for you on Tik Tok doing that, right? So like you instantly they're gonna think, Wow, this grader will really did their research. They scrolled back on my Instagram, they looked at our, you know, at our blog or press releases, right. So it's not hard is the point. It's not hard to do even a little bit of research. So, you know, if you're telling yourself, you know, if you're listening to this and saying, like, pitching doesn't work, and you know, I, you know, I every time I message brands, they ghost me or they don't respond, they say no, well, yeah, it may take you 100 pitches to get one or two responses. Because you're pitching in this very uninteresting way, I am not going to, I'm gonna be totally real with you, I can get a response 50% of the time greater than 50% of the time when I do a cold pitch now. And it's because I use this very specific pitching methodology that I teach my course called the rope method. R stands for relevant to a campaign that they're already working on. O stands for organic, meaning you can tie your pitch back to organic content that you've already posted. He is persistent, which means you're emailing regularly, even if they don't respond. And E is easy to execute when they say yes, when you craft your pitches using this framework, your response rate is going to skyrocket. I guarantee it. It really comes down to understanding how to not put extra work on their plate by saying hey, let's collaborate What do you think? And they're like, ah, like, seriously, this person is making me telling asking me no, like, what do they want? Want to do like Toby, right? So you have to give them something to react to.

Jay Clouse  50:03

So good. And anyone listening to this, who's also still doing client services? Same advice applies in terms of lowering the bar to just making it a yes or no question. Like you've done the imagination for the brand for the client, you're saying, Here's my pitch. And they could literally just say, yes, let's do that, because you've outlined enough about what this future could look like, instead of like you're saying, saying, I want to collaborate and then putting it all back on them to imagine well, how are we going to do that? What do you mean by that? What would that look like? Why are you so smart, and again, the bar, the bar is just so low, stand out above the million pitches that this person is getting in their inbox?

Justin Moore  50:40

Well, and the other the other reason, though, that that's important is that a lot of creators think like, oh, but if I give them my ideas, they're gonna steal it, and they're gonna give it to another creator. I'm just like, it's just the same idea with like, a business idea, like, no one's going to do it, no one's going to execute on it, ideas are a dime a dozen, they're not going to do that. And if they do, like, don't worry about it move on to another brand. Like, it's not a big deal. Like you trust me. Like, if you do this, the majority of brands are going to be stoked about it. And yeah, they may say, Yeah, we're not activating on this platform right now. But this is an interesting idea. What if we did it a slightly different way?

Jay Clouse  51:12

Two questions, one, do a quick follow up on the word activate, because you're using that. And second, if I want to send this pitch, how do I know who to send it to?

Justin Moore  51:21

I use the word activation activate. Because that's basically like, I am going to, you know, hire this person to deliver a campaign message on their platform. That's kind of the terminology that a lot of brands and agencies use when it comes to doing campaigns. It's just like, hey, this is an activation. And so it's, it's not, not like a secret like, you know, Illuminati terminology or something. It's just it's very much just like parlance in the space. Important. Part, it is important, for sure it is important in this it is important, and then knowing who to contact. So this very much is an art and a science. I do go into a lot of detail about this in my course. But one of the most important things to realize is that titles are not made equal at different sizes of companies, the Social Media Manager at Walmart, or at a large consumer brand, is not going to be the person who works with influencers or creators on paid campaigns. That's just not the case there. It's a different department. They've outsourced that to their advertising agency or their media agency or influencer agency, you DMing them and saying, Hey, I'd love to collaborate with you, like that's, you're gonna get ghosted, you're gonna be left on unread, right. And so the most important thing to realize is start getting and contrast that with if it's a smaller brand, right, mom and pop shop five people, you can see on their LinkedIn, they don't have you know, they have less than 10 employees. Yeah, maybe the social media manager or the marketing manager, or the VP of Marketing is going to be your person. And so a lot of it comes down to like understanding, like scale of the company, and understanding who you should start, like, it's very easy. Just go on to their LinkedIn, look at their employees. And if there's only one person in marketing, that's probably a person who's doing everything, they're wearing all the hats, right. And so a lot of it does come down to like, process of elimination based on your, but there is it it can get quite complicated as the business gets larger, because there's digital strategist, there's influencer marketing manager, usually, that's a great title. By the way, that title did not exist six years ago. So it's a lot easier now to find it than it used to. Influencer, marketing manager, digital strategist account, like that's the thing is, as an agency, account executives, account managers director, so it can get quite complicated. And so there's, there's frameworks that you can use there. But you absolutely will increase the response rate, if you're, you know, making sure that you're sending to the right person, because what happens when you send to the wrong person, what happens when you get an email, that's obviously meant for the wrong person, you delete it, or you don't respond, right. And so the same thing happens, right? So it's not when you send to the wrong person, it's not that they hate you or your pitch sucks. It's just that you're not sending it to the right person. So you do you need to invest the time and energy to to do that.

Jay Clouse  53:56

I love that call out about looking at the size of the company. Because if you do actually go to LinkedIn, and you look at the company page, it'll show how many employees work there. And if it's a small company, even if you reach the wrong person, they might literally be sitting next to the right person, but at a large company, not exactly. I'm a creator, I am actively making things. I haven't had a brand deal. I haven't worked with a brand. What's the best first slash next move that I can make to get towards my first brand deal?

Justin Moore  54:24

Oh, it's super easy. Jay, start talking about the brand organically on social media. A lot of people think that, oh, well, if I'm talking about them already for free, why are they going to pay me? Right? But you have to understand that when a brand actually decides to run a campaign, there's oftentimes some very, very specific key messages that they're trying to relay in that campaign. So it's a summer promotion, right gotta get that Beachbody fit. I'm trying to get six back by summer job. I don't think it's gonna happen. But you know, like they're running these campaigns right there. You know, or some gym equipment or something, right? It's related to a seasonal promotion or yada, yada, right? And so you're not saying that when you're talking about them organically, right? You're not saying, Oh, go click the landing page and Justin 20 for 20% off your first purchase, you're not saying that, right. And so that's what the brand needs you to say. So that you can chop up that content. And they can repurpose it into an app, or to use it on their website or exclusive content, they put it on a landing page, or an E commerce partner or whatever, right. And so brands actually have software that they pay for Jay called social listening software, where they're actively trying to find people who are already talking about them on social media, because it's so much easier to educate and convince and onboard a partner that's already a fan, who already has authentic affinity for the product, then someone who's coming in cold that they have to you know, that they're going to risk like bunking, you know, like, the product description are the features and benefits of the product? No, I want to go and I want to hire Jay, because he's been talking about circle for the last 18 months. Like, it's a shoo in, like we're gonna pay him. Yeah, even if his rate is a little higher than we wanted. It's fine. He's a advocate and evangelists. Like, let's pay him people who get it that he's already been talking about circle, let's go hire him. Right. So it's like, like all day long brands will make that investment because you have already illustrated to them that your audience is primed for hearing that message. There is a lot of research that had been done in the 1930s by the movie studios about this called the marketing rule of seven where, you know, it takes someone seven times on average, to hear about the movie before they go in, they do buy ticket, right, go and get their button the seat. And so it's like the same concept applies here is that you know, you authentically vouching for products and services. You know, just normally in your content every day will lead to these awesome relationships with brands because then you can, you know, lean on that organic content that you've already posted in your pitch. Because the brand if they already haven't seen you post about them, which they probably already have. You can use that as fodder for when you reach out.

Jay Clouse  57:06

I'm so impressed with the way that Justin has been able to grow his business so quickly his creator business over the last 18 months or so. And niching down to sponsorships for creators has been a big, big part of that something we can all really learn from. I've personally taken a lot of notes from Justin from his TikTok strategy from his YouTube from his Twitter strategy even and I've been pulling that into my own style as well. If you want to learn more about Justin you can find him at creatorwizard.com You can also find him @creatorwizard on Twitter and Tiktok or you can find him @justinmooretfam on Twitter and Instagram as well. Links to all of that art in the show notes. Thanks to Justin for being on the show. Thank you to Connor Conaboy for editing the first ever video of this episode. Thank you to Nathan Todhunter for editing the audio. Emily Clouse for for making the artwork and Brian Skeel for editing our music. And if you want to say thank you, please leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify. That helps a lot and subscribe to the channel on YouTube. We're trying to grow this thing quickly. Make a big splash. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.