This episode of the podcast features an interview with Justin Moore, the "Creator Wizard" himself. Justin shares his origin story as a creator, including how he and his wife transitioned from doing free product reviews to building a multi-million dollar brand deals business. He provides insights into the influencer marketing industry, discussing agency models, creator-brand partnerships, and the importance of professionalism and relationship-building. The conversation covers topics like sponsorship strategy, email marketing, user-generated content, and the evolving creator economy. Justin and host Roberto Blake also debate the role of authenticity and AI in the future of creator-brand collaborations.
In this engaging episode, Roberto Blake interviews Justin Moore, known as the "Creator Wizard" and an authority on sponsorship strategy. They discuss the evolution of brand deals in the creator economy, Justin’s journey from medical devices to managing over 500 sponsorships, and his transition into running an influencer marketing agency. Justin offers insights into the complexities of sponsorship contracts, effective pitching strategies for creators, and the value of building strong relationships with brands. They also dive into the impact of AI on user-generated content (UGC), with both sharing their thoughts on authenticity and the future of AI in influencer marketing.
Justin Moore is a creator sponsorship expert, founder of Creator Wizard, and a veteran of over 500 sponsorships. Starting in 2009, Justin has navigated the highs and lows of the creator economy, building a reputation as a skilled negotiator and educator. With his platform, Creator Wizard, he shares actionable sponsorship strategies for creators, helping them optimize brand deals, avoid pitfalls, and build profitable partnerships.
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Announcer (00:00:01):
Are you an entrepreneur, creative Pro, or in a transition to becoming one? Welcome to the Create Something Awesome Today podcast, where it's all about enabling you to develop the skills and mindset, encouraging success and helping you to thrive with everything you do, and of course, helping you create something awesome today. And now your host, creative entrepreneur and founder of Awesome Creator Academy, Roberto Blake.
Roberto Blake (00:00:28):
Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake, and I'm here with the one and only Justin Moore, the Creator Wizard himself. How's it going, Justin?
Justin Moore (00:00:34):
Well, what's up Roberto? Glad to be here, man.
Roberto Blake (00:00:36):
Yeah, to see you, Matt. So for the five people living under a rock in my audience who don't know who you are, can you tell them your villain or hero origin story?
Justin Moore (00:00:43):
Oh God. All right. Well, I started my first YouTube channel along with my wife in 2009, if you could believe it, man,
Roberto Blake (00:00:49):
Back in the olden days,
Justin Moore (00:00:50):
OG creators shout out, represent, and this was back in the time the YouTube partner program had literally just started.
Roberto Blake (00:01:00):
Wasn't it Invite only back then?
Justin Moore (00:01:01):
It was invite only back in the day. My wife got rejected three times before she got in.
Roberto Blake (00:01:07):
Marquez got rejected five. PewDiePie couldn't get in until he partnered with Machinima.
Justin Moore (00:01:10):
Dude, it was a badge of honor to be respected in the early days, although it felt like the end of the world for sure, to be clear. And I was not a YouTuber. It was my wife who started this. And so she had a beauty channel that was her first channel. I was in medical devices, so I was in the background. And so the origin story is that when the first brand reached out, it wasn't, Hey, well let me pay you. Hey, will you take this free thing to talk about it on your channel? And she was like, yes, amazing. Give it to me,
Roberto Blake (00:01:38):
Please. Same thing happened to me. Yeah.
Justin Moore (00:01:39):
Yeah. I was super stoked. And that was actually the case for years, taking free stuff in the beauty space, the cosmetics, it's expensive, right? For that type of stuff. And she was stoked about it, right
(00:01:52):
On.
(00:01:53):
And so it was several years into her journey that until a brand actually reached out and said, Hey, how about we compensate you for a longer term partnership to talk about us every month in your content? And she was like, and then she had turned to me who I was in business school at the time, can you take a look at this? I don't understand this contract, this type of thing. And so here I was, Mr. MBA, I'm going to help do this. And so I started looking at the contracts, no idea what I was doing. I remember a story. I sent it to our family lawyer who helped with our estates and wills and all that stuff. And she was like, what are you doing on the internet? This is bizarre, this thing that. And so that was fast forward many years, my wife and I have done over 500 sponsorships, 4.5 million from sponsorships as a primary revenue stream as creators.
Roberto Blake (00:02:42):
Nice.
Justin Moore (00:02:43):
In 2015, I launched an influencer marketing agency to get deals for other creators. So basically it was like we were doing great on YouTube, but we thought this can't go on forever. There's no way
Roberto Blake (00:02:54):
That, yeah, there's got to be an exit strategy.
Justin Moore (00:02:56):
There's got to be some sort of exit strategy. So it's like, okay, we got the tiger by the tail right now. What can we do to leverage our success right now? And so
Roberto Blake (00:03:02):
In 2015, had you guys had your first child yet?
Justin Moore (00:03:04):
We had just had, my first son was born in 2014. So that was definitely coloring this perspective of diversification. Right?
Roberto Blake (00:03:11):
Yep. Makes
Justin Moore (00:03:11):
Sense. And so started the influencer agency, and it was very simple at the beginning. It was like, Hey, let's go to the brands and agencies that we're already working with and saying, Hey, are you looking to work with other creators? Because we have a bunch of friends who are family vloggers that was we your niche, create other channels. And they were like, yeah, actually this is a big problem for us. Whenever we try to do campaigns, people don't respond. They're not professional, they're not timely, they're not communicative, this type of thing. And so I was like, I'm actually really good at all those things I think, and so let me facilitate this for you for a fee for an investment to manage it. Right.
Roberto Blake (00:03:44):
I have a question about this because a lot of people, there's a lot of mystery around the agency side and the brand deal side, and you have unique insight played every side of the field. You've worked with brands, you've now run an agency, you now help people with their individual brand deals. I want to ask you something on the agency side, working with the brands, how do the fees work? Is it a percentage of the overall campaign plus a flat fee plus performance or what is it? What does it typically, what does that look like?
Justin Moore (00:04:09):
So every single deal, so we've got to split hairs a little bit here because when people hear the word agency, they think of an agent who represents me or a manager who represents me. In a lot of those scenarios, the agent or the manager will receive a percentage of your deals. So it's like 20% or 15% or something like that.
Roberto Blake (00:04:29):
But sometimes it's the opposite and it gets that they get a percentage of the overall campaign.
Justin Moore (00:04:34):
So the hair I was splitting is that my customer, when I ran an agency, I did not have a roster of exclusive talent.
(00:04:42):
So
(00:04:42):
I was not representing creators at all. My customer was the brand. And so when I went to a creator to say, Hey, this brand wants to work with you is because we had signed a deal with the brand for a hundred K, 200 k or whatever, and there was a management fee associated with that, but whatever creator said, this is my rate, this is not my charge charge. We paid them their full rate. We never took a percentage of that because that wasn't the business model. And so I think that's a confusion about agencies because there's a difference.
Roberto Blake (00:05:09):
And then standard deals. Now most agencies do get a 20% fee from the creator side. We don't know if a lot of them, would you say a lot of them today you were in the industry, you would know do a lot of them take the fee for the brand like you did, and then still also the 20% from the creator. Now,
Justin Moore (00:05:25):
Every agency is different. That's the really tricky part is that a lot of, I mean, back in the MCN days, in the
Roberto Blake (00:05:31):
Early days, oh my God, don't get started on that.
Justin Moore (00:05:32):
I mean, there would be multimillion dollar deals that would be struck and then the creator would receive a pittance of
Roberto Blake (00:05:39):
That. Yes, I remember.
Justin Moore (00:05:40):
And so we have our own MCN horror stories from being in various over the years. And so I sought to change that when I wanted to start working with creators and bringing them more business. And so basically what happened that I ran the agency for five years and had multiple full-time employees. My payroll at the height of it was like 50 KA month, dude. It was intense. And then Covid crushed everything. Of course, all the contracts that we had got obliterated. And I was in this real,
Roberto Blake (00:06:11):
Because in that niche, that's also real world creators. So that put the cost on the content itself uncertainty.
Justin Moore (00:06:18):
Well, a huge percentage of our customer base was travel, hospitality, food and beverage retail, which all got crushed by Covid, right?
Roberto Blake (00:06:28):
Yeah. Another casualty of
Justin Moore (00:06:30):
Covid, another casualty. And so here I am in this dark night of the soul, and I thought to your point, I have this kind of interesting perspective now where I've been a creator in the trenches for many years doing deals, but also have now been in the boardrooms with these big brands and these big advertisers where they're deciding how to allocate money to specific creators and why they're passing on other people on some people. And so I was like, maybe I should just make some YouTube videos about this, right? This is kind interesting. And so that was what I made my first video on June 20th, 2020, I think.
Roberto Blake (00:07:00):
Yep. I remember your early videos and I remember you even asking in my channel reviews for feedback on your stuff.
Justin Moore (00:07:08):
Yep. Yeah, dude, it's been a whirlwind. And so honestly, I took this very, very niche topic around sponsorship strategy, and it always blew my mind that brand deals and sponsorships are the number one revenue stream for a lot of creators.
Roberto Blake (00:07:20):
Disproportionately,
Justin Moore (00:07:21):
Disproportionately, and there's no one focused just on this.
Roberto Blake (00:07:24):
Yes.
Justin Moore (00:07:24):
And I was like, I'm going to be the guy for that. That was the business plan.
Roberto Blake (00:07:28):
I heard a statistic that for like 66% of creators, and I'm trying to remember whether this came from the Creator Economy report from Kajabi or ConvertKit, either of them, and it was something to the tune that the biggest revenue stream for 66% of creators surveyed, and I don't think their sample size was small. I think it was over a thousand creators for 66% of them brand deals was the single largest revenue
Justin Moore (00:07:50):
Stream. I've seen a bunch of ones that have come out with, there's been Signal fire report, like a bunch of them. The information has put out, a bunch of them has said brand deals, sponsorships,
Roberto Blake (00:08:02):
It still keeps confirming they all have the same through line that that's the biggest one.
Justin Moore (00:08:06):
And I think that a lot of the creator economy startups have kind of ignored this category. They built out so much infrastructure and tooling for directly monetizing your fans and courses and memberships and all that stuff is great. It's great to have all that
(00:08:19):
Stuff.
(00:08:21):
Part of the ugly little secret, I think, or the people thing that people don't talk about is that
(00:08:26):
Give me the Tea.
(00:08:27):
Yeah, I'm going to give you the Tea dude, is that creators hate using software tools like that to manage their brand deals. Everyone tries to get you to use their own proprietary platform to go in here, log into this tool and upload your draft content here and communicate with the brand here and all this stuff. And there's a hundred of these tools and no one, everyone's just jaded with using all these tools. And so it's a really tough category to break into for software tooling because of that reason could just creators a fle.
Roberto Blake (00:08:51):
I would agree with that, and I think it makes sense, and I mean at this point, you could just do something like people are making stuff with notion enough. People knew that. So I agree with you that on the SaaS side, the only thing that I could think of that would make sense for that on this side, and there used to be a company that did this back in the day, famed it is if you actually have the marketplace, which again, there used to be a lot of brand deal marketplaces, the creators could go. There was great Vine Logic, who I've worked with in the past before, I think, I don't know what happened to them.
Justin Moore (00:09:19):
Logic.
Roberto Blake (00:09:19):
There was a couple of them, some of them became other companies. They got out of the creative Space memo Real, yeah, I talked to the CEO multiple times and everything. They went to a completely different space. I think there was a VC funding maybe potential there that influenced some of that, and then famed it got acquired by YouTube and no longer was publicly available and became a concierge service for YouTube brand Connect. I think that it'd be great for something or someone to bring back a brand deals marketplace because I think that was one of the most accessible opportunities for creators
Justin Moore (00:09:50):
Do the toughest part. A lot of the platforms themselves have tried this and it's a really tough business and one of the main reasons is that when a brand wants to run a campaign, it's almost never, we only want to activate on this one platform. It's not like, oh, we're just going to do YouTube. A lot of times they want social amplification on other platforms too. So it's like you're going to do, maybe the hero asset is a long form YouTube video, and then there's cuts of it that go on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook
Roberto Blake (00:10:16):
Things or unique supplementary short form content.
Justin Moore (00:10:20):
Yes, exactly.
Roberto Blake (00:10:20):
Content to supplement it. Agreed.
Justin Moore (00:10:22):
And so it's hard for the platforms to sell in this really large media buy to the large advertisers because they're like, well, if we're going to spend this, can't we duplicate or syndicate the assets onto these other platforms? And they're like,
Roberto Blake (00:10:34):
Well, and then the other thing is platform competition, so why would they want to enable a competitor?
Justin Moore (00:10:41):
Right? Right. Yeah, it's a tricky landscape man, and I think that that's one of the reasons why there's been such a voracious appetite for this type of content because it feels like this thing that's like these deals being made in the back dark room and I don't know how they're done and who's make profiting off it. There's so much skepticism behind the sponsorship process, but I think it's largely for a specific reason, Roberta, which is that most creators don't, their first thing that they think of is not sponsorships. It's like, I want to get monetized on YouTube. That's the very first thing I think of, and when I sit people down and say, look, what if I told you that you could make so much more money pursuing an actual sponsorship strategy where you're not just waiting for brands to reach out to you?
Roberto Blake (00:11:23):
Yeah, I don't believe
Justin Moore (00:11:24):
You. You're actually reaching out to your dream brands and saying, here's how I can help you accomplish your objectives. You'll make way more money doing that than waiting to get sold. What's worked for waiting to get
Roberto Blake (00:11:33):
Monetized worked for me. I mean, I brokered for myself on my own behalf about roughly $200,000 this year in brand relationships. I've never,
Justin Moore (00:11:44):
Let's go.
Roberto Blake (00:11:44):
I've never done that before. I've done six figures, as you know for a while now with brand deals alone, not counting the affiliate side. Affiliate has done well for me in the past, used to my biggest revenue stream. Thanks, COVID, another casualty. But the thing about it is, and even I, I'd done one-off brand deals for most of my career as a content creator, but the long-term partnership thing was something that hit different. I started doing that a while back. I believe one of the first was two buddy for me,
(00:12:12):
And
(00:12:12):
That went very well. It was a great partnership. They got acquired by another company, so the structure of deals changed with the acquisition, and so the thing that I'm seeing Justin and a lot of the skepticism is I think that until people see what their own eyes, that ad revenue is not what they dreamed and not what they hoped. I think some of this is also kind of the mindset of moving out of an employee mindset to an entrepreneur mindset. I think that, and you can tell me, correct me if I'm wrong, so with ad revenue creators get into that and they think of it almost in a pseudo employment fashion where I upload content, I make money because I uploaded content, and so I'm getting paid for the thing I make, which is where the frustration of the small career comes in is why is two making money off of ad revenue when I'm not, and they feel that's exploitative.
(00:13:01):
I would disagree. I actually worked in web posting and know the cost of bandwidth. I also know when I had a snafu in my Comcast bill, they charged me for the bandwidth for my live streaming, and I saw what that really cost. Then I was like, okay, I'll never complain about these platforms. They're giving me free hosting again because I'd pay double this amount of money apparently for the bandwidth. So I've been just looking at that. I think that the idea that you have to actually approach a real business model is the struggle for creators. It's the same thing with they're waiting to be picked and chosen by a brand waiting for somebody to tell them what's going to happen. That's more of an employee mindset. An entrepreneur mindset is I'm going to prospect and I'm going to hunt and I'm going to bring home that bacon. I'm going to bring home that fresh kill from the forest.
Justin Moore (00:13:49):
I got a comment on one of my YouTube videos literally just a couple of days ago, man, where it was like in caps, it said, how are you getting sponsorships when your videos are averaging a thousand views per video? I'm getting 10,000 views on average and no brands are emailing me. That was legit. Literally the exact
Roberto Blake (00:14:07):
Comment word
Justin Moore (00:14:08):
For word. Okay, word for word. And so I am very diplomatic. I'm not someone to be a keyboard warrior, but basically what I explained is that if all you're doing is waiting for brands to reach out to you, you're going to be waiting a really long time because there is basically an infinite supply of creators on the internet,
Roberto Blake (00:14:28):
Another one every day.
Justin Moore (00:14:29):
If you're thinking that 10,000 views, there's some arbitrary threshold that you need to reach before you start getting brands to reach out to you. This is the mindset for a lot of people is that once I get to this point, or once I get to this many subscribers or I'll get on their radar, and what I tell people is you have to put yourself on their radar. They do not have the personnel or the capacity or the to be monitoring
Roberto Blake (00:14:53):
And be aware that you exist
Justin Moore (00:14:54):
To be aware that you exist. And so a lot of what I talk about tactically is like you have to start talking about the brand and the types of
Roberto Blake (00:15:01):
For
Justin Moore (00:15:02):
$0 areas in the areas where they hang out, whether it's on Twitter or whether you're tagging them on Instagram and you're doing a frame where you're talking about how are you using the tool or something like
Roberto Blake (00:15:11):
That. You can't spam them. It has to be that you prove legitimate value. I feel like one the best, this is where I started with a lot of this. One of the best ways is affiliate marketing. When I was a small career, I didn't have a lot, I wasn't even getting a ton of views. But you know what I did? I was able to go and I was able to talk to brands, and I was doing more tech content back then that supplemented my freelancer tutorials. It's like, oh, here's the hardware you need for as a freelancer, graphic designer, video editor, whatever. I was able to use my Amazon affiliate sales as a selling point and show proof that I can make sales in this category, and I did this much volume and it's worth this much money. And that meant I'm not a nobody. It's like it doesn't matter. I wasn't selling the views. I was selling to a degree my reputation in that market vertical, and I was selling my proof of revenue generation.
Justin Moore (00:15:59):
I love that because there's a couple of reasons that that's really advantageous. Number one is that if you can illustrate, a lot of creators think that all it takes is me illustrating my authentic affinity or love for the brand. Oh, I've been using you for three years. But that's table stakes. That's what everyone's going to say. And so you have to help them understand it's not just about your love, it's about can you illustrate that your audience has an authentic affinity for their brand or their product? Right.
Roberto Blake (00:16:28):
That I've created and curated a community of people that already have a desire for what the brand offers. They just lack awareness.
Justin Moore (00:16:35):
Well, and that you're the conduit to let them access
Roberto Blake (00:16:38):
It. Yes.
Justin Moore (00:16:39):
And a big something. I just want to clarify something I said earlier about tagging the brand on social media. A lot of people say, okay, well if I talk about them for free, why would they pay me? And the real unlock here is that when a brand decides that they want to run a paid campaign with the creator in almost every circumstance or something very specific, a message, a campaign, a promotion, something soundbites that they want you to get so they can cut it down into a 15 second ad on Instagram or something. Those are not things that you're saying organically when you give 'em a shout out on your Instagram stories, that is why they're hiring you.
Roberto Blake (00:17:13):
Exactly. I'll put it further to challenge the idea of if I do it for free, why would they pay me? Let me ask you something. What are the odds that someone entrusts their reputation and their business to a stranger versus somebody who has at least tried to speak up for them? What are the odds that somebody who's spoken up for you complimented for you? Advocate, even if you don't have a deep intimate relationship with this person, this person at least is acquainted and at least they act on your behalf In good faith, are you going to trust your reputation, let alone your money, your reputation with somebody who's already spoken up for you or a stranger?
Justin Moore (00:17:50):
Dude, I can tell you this with certainty because I've literally talked to brands about this. They make tooling called social listening software for brands to do this exact thing where they have keywords, their brand names, certain long tail keywords, and
Roberto Blake (00:18:05):
They measure things like sentiment,
Justin Moore (00:18:06):
And they measure, yeah, they measure who's talking about them. Is this person somewhat influential? And so it's so much easier.
Roberto Blake (00:18:11):
Also, are you saying nice things about me or are you criticizing me,
Justin Moore (00:18:13):
Dude? Okay, can we go here?
Roberto Blake (00:18:15):
Yeah, we
Justin Moore (00:18:16):
Can. Can we go here, dude? Because this is one of my favorite things to talk about. If you're out here watching, if you're out here watching and you're listening and you're thinking, you know what? This brand pissed me off or they didn't pick me or they low-balled me. If you are turning to Twitter or you're turning to or X and you're turning to TikTok to drag a brand publicly, you are potentially sealing your fate for not working with not just that brand, but lots of other brands. Because lemme tell you one thing that we had to do as an influencer marketing agency on behalf of our clients, we had to go out there and perform audits of prospective partners to understand how they were conducting themselves on social media. And so it wasn't just on the platform that we were going to hire them on, let's say YouTube.
(00:18:57):
We had to then go and look at Twitter and look at blogs or look at other things. And so do you think a brand wants to be associated with you? If you're dragging this other brand here, regardless of what the context is, maybe you were in the right, that's fine, but you know what? Go complain to your private group. Text with your friends, okay? Yep. Not publicly on social media. I can tell you specific scenarios of creators have a loss out on significant deals because they were running their mouth on social media. And again, I'm not saying I want to limit your free speech, but it's like these are real consequences to your actions.
Roberto Blake (00:19:27):
No, it's that you have to make a decision about what matters to me more right now, and also what matters to me more should I have the dream opportunity? So is having your say, worth giving up this other thing or this opportunity, and what are the real consequences or put a different way, alright, so you're a married man with a family. If you were to make a choice and you had to weigh, here's how April's going to respond to this missed opportunity, is she going to care more about whether I was in the right or whether I wanted to have my say or the fact that I don't have as much money for the kids' college fund right now?
Justin Moore (00:20:07):
Dude, I think,
Roberto Blake (00:20:08):
Okay, Wilma Flint, stone frying pan, let's go.
Justin Moore (00:20:12):
I think it'd be great to have April's input on this conversation actually too, because she has always been like me. And first of all, she hates the business stuff. She hates talking, being on brand call. She'll do it, but I'm the one who's always done it. She likes it. But she's also really understood this for a long time too, because again, to be fair, a lot of the brand deals that we've done over the years have been because they wanted to hire April. I was behind the scenes. And so she understood expressly that she was kind of the talent. She was the person in front of the camera. And so absolutely part of being a sophisticated savvy business owner is understanding that there's a perception, there's an optics part of running a business. It's not just about the work product that you generate about,
Roberto Blake (00:20:57):
It's about the perception, it's about the optics, it's about how you present yourself in the marketplace.
Justin Moore (00:21:03):
Dude, okay. Here's the other thing. Okay, we're getting into it, man. I'm getting passionate about
Roberto Blake (00:21:06):
This stuff. No, I love this. I love this
Justin Moore (00:21:08):
Stuff, which is that a lot of the times when people complain on social media, because I've seen it all, people tag me in this stuff all the time.
Roberto Blake (00:21:14):
Yes,
Justin Moore (00:21:15):
I believe that people have an unrealistic expectation of what a brand sponsorship is and should be. Okay? When a brand is hiring you to talk about them, this is a business transaction. They're sometimes paying you tens of thousands, thousands, even hundreds of dollars, but there's an exchange of value. And so there should be a rightful expectation on behalf of the brand, for example, to provide feedback on the content that you deliver, the draft that you deliver to them. And if you are pronouncing their brand name incorrectly or you're illustrating the product
Roberto Blake (00:21:46):
Incorrectly, using the wrong assets.
Justin Moore (00:21:48):
Using the wrong assets, yes. If you are doing things that are either breaking the contract that you have, whether it's a handshake, you shouldn't do a handshake contract, but they, you're breaking something about the expectations,
Roberto Blake (00:22:00):
You're not fulfilling your end of the bargain.
Justin Moore (00:22:01):
You're not fulfilling your expectation. That is not a grievance that you take to social media. That is something that, and maybe here's the thing, things come up all the time in contracts that are anticipated. Maybe for example, here's a great one. Let's say this happened April nine several times where a brand would hire us and we would shoot all the assets. It was approved, we would get ready to post, and the brand puts on the brakes and they said, we didn't anticipate this, but we're out of stock and we can't go live with this because we're going to point a bunch of traffic to this page of a thing They cannot buy of a thing they cannot buy. And that is outside of our control. Of course we're frustrated, but am I going to go to the brand and be like, this was malicious, this was intentional. No, this is like things happen. And so what I've always preached in a lot of the content that I'm creating through Creator Wizard is you have to understand if you can have empathy for your partner throughout this partnership, everything is going to go better.
Roberto Blake (00:22:57):
I think there's that. I think there's also a such thing as professional standards too. Even when you're in the right, even when there's been a grievous wrong, there's professional standards for a reason because they protect you. I talked to somebody, I'm sure you're familiar with Ian Corzine. He's a social media lawyer in the space done entertainment law. There's a lot of things that you should or shouldn't say even when you're in the right, because it creates a trail of legal liability that might limit your options in the future, should you need to pursue legal action. So the thing is, discretion about part of valor, something you don't say can't be used and weaponized against you because you might be in the right, but if you communicate it in the wrong way, you now lose the upside that you would have legally and financially if you have to ever litigate it. And this is a really good teachable moment. I had a very close friend that I've also done some business with in the creator space, and she had a situation where she actually did pursue legal counsel, and the best thing she ever did was never create a social media paper trail of anything where a disparagement clause could be
(00:24:01):
Activated
(00:24:02):
Or to where the brand could skew the perception of the representation or whether she fulfilled
(00:24:08):
Her
(00:24:09):
End of the bargain because there was no social media paper trail to be used against her in the litigation. She got a great settlement out of it when she pursued legal action to hold the brand accountable. And the thing is, she also kept the professional boundaries in such a way that she's never publicly disclosed the brand that she had the altercation with, which doesn't signal to anyone else that she's litigious and that she is a risk or a liability to work with in the future. The thing is, the person that wants to work, where is another sponsor would never know for sure if she's in right or wrong, but their legal department might say, oh, that's a risk. Don't touch her.
Justin Moore (00:24:44):
Okay. So first of all, that's a great example of someone who handled it professionally. One thing I do want to say though is that despite all of the tiktoks and tweets that you hear people talking about, this brand screwed me, this really challenging situation that is, I believe still the very, very small minority,
Roberto Blake (00:25:10):
It would have to be
Justin Moore (00:25:11):
Of what happens when you do brand partnerships. The vast, vast, vast majority of them go off awesome swimmingly. Both sides are happy, everyone's happy, you just don't hear about it. It's like Yelp, right? Most people go there, they go there when they're pissed off with their food, unless you're like a Yelp elite or whatever. But most people don't go to take to social media to write a glowing review of, oh, I just had this great, although I teach that in my
(00:25:34):
Course, by the
(00:25:34):
Way. But so I think it's a really important thing. This turns off people to the prospect of doing partnerships a lot of times because they think it's like this mine field and they have to arm themself.
Roberto Blake (00:25:45):
I have to protect myself. We have a negativity bias.
(00:25:48):
We have a negativity bias that also is a form of something that people exploit because they know how algorithms work when they do these complaints and everything like that. I mean, you see, especially in particular in X and TikTok in particular, because there's a rallying cry behind that because people have been screwed by something, even if it wasn't, people even outside of brand deals just have like, ah, they have a bad boss. They relate to it on that level. And so there's this rallying cry to, Hey, I've been screwed over too. Let's go ahead and commiserate over our grievances. Misery loves company. We know that. I mean, we see it in outrage, culture, outrage, marketing. To some degree, brands will not all of them, and I don't recommend this and I'm not going to, you could probably think of a couple of that I'm thinking of, especially with recent events, but a lot of times they will literally court negativity and outrage as a means of marketing because they know that no one will be talking about the thing that they were outraged about in two weeks in the news cycle. But in the meantime, people were talking about them.
Justin Moore (00:26:54):
Yeah, dude, honestly, I mentioned my wife and I have done over 500 deals. I can count on literally less than one hand deals that we've either been paid super late or never paid. We've only never been paid twice out of 550 deals. Now actually just invoice five 50 recently. So two times
Roberto Blake (00:27:15):
What count deals? Are you saying individual invoices or relationships?
Justin Moore (00:27:19):
No, individual invoices.
Roberto Blake (00:27:20):
Individual invoices. Okay. Wow. Then I've done more than think that I thought I have if I count the invoices.
Justin Moore (00:27:26):
Yeah. Yeah, dude. So I think that again, you'll
Roberto Blake (00:27:30):
Be hundreds by now.
Justin Moore (00:27:30):
Yeah, dude. I mean, you're the sponsorship coach. Here we go, bro.
Roberto Blake (00:27:35):
Can I just, you're the
Justin Moore (00:27:35):
Guy, guy. Let just take a quick second to acknowledge something, which is that Roberto also has courses, products around brand deals, sponsorships, things like this. But you have been so gracious, man, of being supportive of the fact that I talk about this stuff too,
(00:27:54):
And I feel like that's somewhat of a rare thing in the creator economy. My wife and I grew up in a time where people climbing was like a thing. You would go, you would collab, you would stand, and then that person would never talk to us again. And we'd be like, we never approached it like that, but I've always felt like you've just been such a incredible person in that way, and it's meant a lot to me, man, honestly. And so I just want to say that anyone out there who is looking at other peers in their industry as competitors or in your niche or whatever, it's not. You can raise each other up. Rising tides, float all boats,
Roberto Blake (00:28:29):
Man. I believe in comradery more than competition. Now, I grew up an athlete, and the thing is, I think this has always been with me. Someone reminded me, someone I grew up with was reminding me is like, dude, we'd be at the competitions and you would literally still root and cheer on the other runners on the other team or push them to go because, and they were like, I never could figure that out. But they're like, in the long run, I figured out you respect the idea of shared struggles and you actually believe iron sharpens iron and you actually mean it. And you want people who can push you. You want people who will make you be better, and you don't care who that is. You don't care where they come from, you care about the shared struggle. You believe that there's a comradery, and I think I've always felt this way. You saw that I tweeted something the other day that no one has a respect for the idea of a worthy opponent.
(00:29:24):
Now, I don't think of this in any adversarial way, so it's not that it's like, but it's more that comradery and that friendship and knowing you as a person and over the time. But I think even if someone did look at someone as a competitor, can you look at someone and respect their ability and what they bring to the table and that is different than you and acknowledge that they too are worthwhile and that it's not a winner take all or winner take most, and that there's some value that if you had to be in the arena with someone you're glad it's them because it'll be a good damn show. And because there's a value to having a great and worthy opponent of an adversary that pushes you to your best.
Justin Moore (00:30:02):
I think it's like in today's age of hyperpolarization on the internet, that's increasingly rare because a lot of people are either not willing to back up their opinions about things, or they feel that somehow acknowledging other opinions minimizes their viewpoints. And I think that this is actually a good example is that when I have this really intense belief that 99% of creators should not hire managers and
Roberto Blake (00:30:27):
Agents, I agree with you,
Justin Moore (00:30:28):
And I was quite terrified, if I'm honest, to talk about that publicly for a long time when I started doing creator wizard stuff,
(00:30:36):
Because
(00:30:36):
I have so many friends in this industry who are managers, agents, all that stuff too. And I knew that when I opened my mouth, I was going to get a lot of pushback because I'm jeopardizing these people's entire livelihood
Roberto Blake (00:30:49):
In theory,
Justin Moore (00:30:49):
In theory,
Roberto Blake (00:30:50):
Unless they actually deliver.
Justin Moore (00:30:52):
And so what I had a conversation with a friend and mentor who basically was just like, this is a limiting belief. If you believe it, you have to say it right? And so I called up my closest friends who were managers, and I said, look, this is what I believe, and I explained why I believe this, and in my head, I was building it up to be this thing that they would hate me, and they would get really mad and all this stuff too. And people were like, dude, I respect that. Thank you for calling me and telling me this.
Roberto Blake (00:31:19):
You hear back from 'em, that makes me feel better because the things you're describing are none of the things I do.
Justin Moore (00:31:23):
Dude, that's so funny because a lot of the people were like, I agree with you. I agree with what you're saying, and I'm also trying to make strides in my own business to help evolve and all this stuff. And so I built this whole narrative up in my head of I can't do this for some fictitious reason of how people will perceive me. Do
Roberto Blake (00:31:43):
You know that that was actually what held me back for the longest time from selling online courses, was that there's this belief that it's only hucksters or charlatans, or why would somebody if they're successful then sell a course on a thing or that's wrong? That in theory, what if I started making more money from coaching and courses than I started making from being a content creator? They'll only look at me as illegitimate. And that way I was like, well, wait a minute. Why would something that is scaled not outperform, something that isn't, why would labor ever outperform a product that doesn't even make logical sense? So I realized that there were logical fallacies and arguments and things that were limiting my belief system because they were popular. And I forgot one of the chief rules of being a content creator. What is good is not always popular, and what is popular is not always good. And so I had to correct a lot of my own limiting beliefs as a creator and as a business owner to realize that and said, well, what makes for a good course or what makes someone an expert and is expertise necessary versus experience? Okay, so one of the things I learned was I thought about my lived experience. It was like learn, you can get better by having a tutor. And a tutor isn't a teacher with a degree. A tutor is an upperclassman that took the class before you
(00:32:56):
And they had experience. They're not an expert, they're not a master. The teacher might not even be a master that they have experience and experience is valuable. How much did we benefit from our parents? And they don't have expertise. Not that we can quantify and say, oh, you're a vetted expert. Here's your certificate, here's your reward, here's your degree. It's like, is a first time parent an expert? No, but they can still raise a perfectly good child. So I think that we overvalue credentialism to some degree. I'm not saying that, oh, there's never look at credentials, but I'm saying we overvalue it so much and that we forget that also being in the trenches is different than having those credentials and being far removed. You can be credentialed and out of touch,
Justin Moore (00:33:34):
Dude.
Roberto Blake (00:33:34):
You can be credentialed and out of touch. You can be an out of touch expert. You could be an expert at something and not have the temperament to teach. You could be a very poor communicator, have very low empathy for a learner and for a certain person's learning style, somebody who's not as expert as you though. But that has tremendous empathy for the person because lived the same experience of struggling to get this and we're made to feel stupid or made to feel embarrassed. That person doesn't have to be an expert to be a much better teacher than the expert does. And anyone who's ever had the unfortunate situation of being made or mocked by someone who you entrusted to teach, you can understand exactly what I'm saying, that that empathetic upperclassmen might be better as a mentor and a teacher than the teacher that made you ashamed to try to learn.
Justin Moore (00:34:21):
Dude, that's so profound. That hurts, dude. Honestly, though, it's funny because people don't bat an eye paying $6,000 for tuition at a university or something.
(00:34:32):
But when you ask an entrepreneur or someone or a creator, influencer, this type of thing, if you say, okay, what can you do to get ahead in your career? Everyone else goes back to school. You get a certification, you advance in your job, all this stuff, whatever. But when you're a creator, where do you go? What do you do? And so I don't know what it is for anyone watching or listening the flip or the switch that you need to flip in your head to understand that whether it's learning how to make better content, whether it's learning how to monetize better learning to get better brand deals, whatever it is, it's going to have a massively profound impact in your business, which it is. It's a business, right?
Roberto Blake (00:35:10):
Yes.
Justin Moore (00:35:10):
And so I think that the stigma around learning from mentors and peers and courses and memberships and all this stuff too is thankfully starting to subside. It's still there, but for me at least the thing I was there, man, I had the imposter syndrome. The thing that helped for me is I just focused on individual transformations that I was helping people achieve. So
Roberto Blake (00:35:30):
It's like
Justin Moore (00:35:31):
I'm going to work one-on-one with this person, how I started. I didn't have a course. I'm going to work one-on-one with this person, and I'm going to help them negotiate a deal that they would've charged 500 bucks. They now got 5,000. There we go. That's all I need. That's all I need to feel like this is worthwhile.
Roberto Blake (00:35:46):
What did it for me? That was what did it for me. That's why I stuck with coaching so long before trying to move into, I'm only now pursuing the 500 plus course model. And the big thing that I did enjoy a lot and still do with the one-on-one coaching is the individual transformations that happened. The fact that there were so many of my peers, I remember one of our awesome Creator Academy students, she came and she was thinking of doing a brand deal. She was waffling between whether she could get 1200 for a one-off thing. And it's like, no, I pushed this Centura on a relationship basis thing that turned into a six month relationship that was going to be 5,000 per month. And so it went from, oh, can I get this $1,500 deal? I was like, well, no, you have all this social proof. You've been on television before you did this thing, and a one-off is not thing. Let's go this. And the package to negotiate even had a bonus thing in it, a performance-based bonus thing in it in terms of referrals. And so the thing is, and so that ended up being very good for her, and that was Alexis. And as a result of that, that's a conversation that she would've never had with the brand if she wasn't in the community because she was undervaluing herself. We all have these limited beliefs in this imposter syndrome. I was talking with Jay about something, our friend Jay Klaus, I'd love your feedback on this because one of the things, and I want to talk to you about UGC, I cannot let you leave without talking about UGC.
Justin Moore (00:37:16):
I got some hot takes on that.
Roberto Blake (00:37:17):
But one of the things we talked about is monetizing day zero. Okay? So many creators overemphasize ad revenue, so their first thing in their mind is YouTube ad revenue, and I get that, but at the same time, and then they think, okay, and I have to hit this sub count or this to do brand deals. And the thing is, I am trepidation with this because sometimes I'm like, okay, when you are not based on subscriber count, but when you're just a rookie and inexperience with anything, and you also haven't had the benefit of peers and mentors and so on
(00:37:48):
And so forth, I think that you will initially negotiate very poorly and you could develop bad habits if you start too soon because desperate to get anything,
(00:37:57):
You could even do too much free work. You could do any number of things, and you can get bad habits, and you could trap yourself, especially if you already had imposter syndrome into a price point of early brand deals, that becomes harder and harder for you to ask for more. And you struggle with that versus because you don't have anything to build your confidence off of unless you came from something else. Like if you're Emily D. Baker, you're a lawyer. If you're so-and-so maybe you were an engineer, mark Rober, you're an engineer, you had some basis for confidence that you can use to pursue and ask for what you're worth. I think that a lot of creators confidence comes from their creator experience only. Therefore, they will undervalue and
(00:38:40):
Underprice
(00:38:41):
What they represent and who they are. They don't know their worth. If you're too early, that's a problem. So I just want your perspective on this is when is the appropriate time in a creator's situation? I understand what I'm asking, to pursue brand deals. When should you pursue brand deals?
Justin Moore (00:39:00):
I disagree with that.
Roberto Blake (00:39:01):
Okay,
Justin Moore (00:39:03):
Fantastic. Here's why I disagree, okay? I have this concept that I call this sponsorship continuum, okay? Because you're right. When you are just starting out and you're early in your journey, and let's say you're getting hundreds of views on average for your YouTube videos, let's say you reach out to a brand and say, Hey, I would love to collaborate with you. Let me talk about you on my YouTube channel. That's likely not going to move the needle for them. And so yeah, of course they're not going to either they're pay you or they're going to pay you a very small amount. And yeah, you're probably going to stunt your growth or stunt your development by taking deals like that. However, what you should be pitching at that point in your journey is actually something quite different. You say, Hey, I did it an audit of your social presence brand. I looked at your YouTube channel. I see that you're only posting your 32nd TV ads there. Or I looked at, I noticed you don't have a TikTok, or I noticed you don't have a blog presence. Let me create some content on autopilot for you brand that actually lives on your platforms,
(00:40:05):
Your owned, yeah, UGC, you are owned and operated platforms, and go take a look at my YouTube channel because that is my portfolio, okay?
Roberto Blake (00:40:15):
I agree with all of this, by the way
Justin Moore (00:40:17):
Yes, yes. Okay. And so what I said I disagreed with about that is that this, I think unlocks the threshold thing for a lot of people, which
(00:40:26):
Is that I agree with you on
(00:40:27):
This.
Roberto Blake (00:40:27):
My thing was on pitching the value of your channel too early when you don't have even something where you personally have felt the confidence yet in your thing, which is very hard because imposter syndrome, but you get what I'm saying,
Justin Moore (00:40:42):
The problem, okay. The problem with that though is that when will you, unless there's some external factor that gives you the confidence to start advocating for yourself,
Roberto Blake (00:40:50):
Which is where I just have acknowledged that that's where most creators are, unfortunately,
Justin Moore (00:40:54):
You're actually, I would say right to that. Okay, so we talked about the really small creator.
Roberto Blake (00:41:01):
Yes.
Justin Moore (00:41:01):
Let's say you grow, right now, you're doing thousands of views per video, so maybe you're starting to feel a little more confidence. Now I say at this point, maybe it's a hybrid pitch where are you're going to create some content for them. You're going to maybe, maybe syndicating on your platform is starting to become meaningful, and then yeah. Now when you achieve some serious scale, when you're getting tens of thousands of views or downloads or whatever, maybe the thrust of your pitch then can be, I will just talk about you on my platforms,
Roberto Blake (00:41:26):
Right? We agree wholeheartedly. I think that for smaller creators who haven't built up enough confidence, built up their chops yet, or don't have some outside social proof, like the profession you come from, especially like the entertainment or vlog sphere, lifestyle
(00:41:39):
Sphere,
(00:41:40):
Because the thing is someone who's going more education, thought leader content can leverage their reputation even then because they're not leveraging reach, they are. It's the value of what they represent or who they are in their industry or the fact that they have some claim to authority. You can leverage and you can build pricing around that much more easily. And you already have internal confidence maybe as a result of authority or credential. You have something like, oh, well, I'm an MBA, so then you have confidence, oh, I'm a doctor, I have confidence. There's something to that. But like a working class creator who doesn't have something authoritative in their background, I think for them, UGC ends up being great because at least they can be an advocate for the brand on the brand's channels, and it's a great deal for the brands otherwise have to find agency and the right models and actors. So
Justin Moore (00:42:29):
Here's the problem, Roberto with UGC, okay, I understand. No, I'm not trying to throw anyone under the bus or whatever, and I agree it can be a very great and lucrative way to make money in the beginning. It can be. The problem is is that with the rise of ai, it's going to be easier than ever for brands to create UGC like ads and assets that literally emulate creators, almost identically
Roberto Blake (00:43:01):
Hot take on that.
Justin Moore (00:43:02):
And so let me finish the thought,
Roberto Blake (00:43:04):
Go for it,
Justin Moore (00:43:05):
Which is that if you are building a business exclusively around this and not leveraging your personality and the special sauce, that is you, you're going to be for a rough patch in about five years. That's my hot take.
Roberto Blake (00:43:20):
So my hot take and counter to that is this, I believe that consumers want and believe that they deserve better and that the age of authenticity is backward of vengeance.
(00:43:36):
And I actually believe there's also mass public anti AI sentiment as well. And I believe there's anti AI sentiment around DeepFakes and deep fakery, and I think that brands who participate in high levels of deep fakery with these AI influencers are going to get so much backlash. I believe that it's going to be like the NFTs all over again. I believe that AI influencers are the new NFTs. I believe the corporate push for that will get tremendous brand and reputational backlash damage. And I believe that people want to be able to some degree to vet that there are people like them that are representing them in a brand story. And I think that representation is going to be representation. Authenticity will be the new prestige in a brand because AI influencers will just be an extension of a logo and no one's buying the logo anymore.
Justin Moore (00:44:27):
So I generally agree with that. But what I will say though is that I the average consumer, so if we're talking about the AI influencer, I'm going to follow this person on Instagram. I agree. People are going to push back against that. However,
Roberto Blake (00:44:41):
Yeah, I don't think it working lifestyle.
Justin Moore (00:44:43):
If you see a random ad in your feed, the average person is not really connecting the dots. Is this a real person or not? You could tell now, but in three years it's going to be really tough. And so if you just see some person holding up a toothpaste or a toothbrush brand, oh, this is the best toothbrush I've ever had. People are not using their critical thinking skills when they're just swiping their FYP. And so yeah, there might be a pushback against it, and maybe the platforms have
Roberto Blake (00:45:08):
To, well, the regulations will have
Justin Moore (00:45:09):
To, the regulations will have
Roberto Blake (00:45:10):
To
Justin Moore (00:45:11):
Put a watermark that it's AI generated or
(00:45:12):
Whatever. That will be where the pushback will
(00:45:14):
Come, but it's probably going to be a good 5, 7, 10 years before this. Either pushback happens or the regulation happens. Well,
(00:45:21):
The regulations aren't going now
(00:45:22):
In that five to 10 years. You could be bankrupt as a creator if you've built your business on that. I agree. So you have to build a business that can survive throughout that transition.
Roberto Blake (00:45:33):
I agree. I think in the long tail, we're right about where we're predicting these things go. But you're right in the interim though of that messy transition, I do agree with you. I still also think that things like familiarity, bias, I also think brands have proven, even with influencer marketing, brands have proven that they are not as good at clever and agencies, even ad agencies have not proven, they're not as good or clever at understanding audiences as they think they are. And that people who are actually a part of those communities and represent those audiences, know them better, and they do know better because there's intuition. And I think that the corporate side loses a sense of intuition. Data is great, but they overly rely on data. And if you torture the data enough, it'll sing any song you like. So the thing is, I still believe that human to human disproportionately will win. There will be some outlier exceptions on this with AI of, oh, this thing looks cool,
(00:46:26):
But at the end of the day, think about it. Even the modern version of Star Wars practical effects win over the audience and they can see through it and stuff like that, versus people do not like these contrived AI monstrosity sometimes in their art that Marvel got called out for that. Whereas, okay, star Wars goes in this direction, Marvel goes in this direction. And then who was the clear winner on that? All things Star Wars considered the audience responded more to the authentic textured texture feels real. Polish feels fake. And I think in general, a warning to content creators is that authenticity, understanding your audience, good emotional intelligence, communication, all those things that get taken for granted in the pursuit of winning an ADDIE award.
Justin Moore (00:47:11):
Yeah.
Roberto Blake (00:47:12):
Well, I think that brands and corporations can miss the mark very easily.
Justin Moore (00:47:17):
I mean, a hundred percent, you're right. I mean, I've been in a lot of these briefing meetings with brands where they're kind of clueless about this stuff. But I will say though too, that I'm not an AI pessimist. I have built my own AI tool for my own business.
Roberto Blake (00:47:29):
. Yeah,
Justin Moore (00:47:30):
But what I am saying though is that I think that actually, I want to say something too, which is that this whole idea about creators understanding their audience better,
(00:47:43):
Fundamentally, I agree with that, but I do believe that a lot of creators take this too far to an extreme where they are so stubborn during conversations with brands about what the brand is asking them for. And of course, it's your platform. You can decide to do whatever you want with it, but if you have a iron fist approach to partnership strategy, it's going to be really difficult. Because again, going back to this whole thing around how brand partnerships are a business transaction they're trying to accomplish, it's also a business objective. Yes, it's a relationship thing. And so if you go into this number one, during the negotiation trying to take every single last dime off the table, what are they going to think of? You we're at the outset, they just signed the deal, and they're like, wow, that person's pretty greedy. How do you think the deal's going to go?
(00:48:26):
They're going to be edgier when they're giving you feedback about it, the whole thing. There's going to be more animosity in this, right? And so there's a way in which you can approach not violating the creative integrity of your connection with your audience, but also being a great partner, having a good relationship and not, again, the thing I say all the time is your goal is not to get a brand deal. Your goal is to get the brand to hire you over and over and over again, right? It's like firing yourself from your nine to five job every single month. Now you're back out there next month hustling for spare change. What brand wants to sponsor you next? It's like it's so much easier to convince a brand to hire you again, right?
Roberto Blake (00:49:03):
No, I agree with you. And in fact, they often say that retention is better than acquisition, and I that with these long-term relationships. That's true. And that's why again, right now, the only brand partnerships I'm doing are long-term relationships. I'm not doing one-off deals right now. I'm open to some of the right ones because some things are meant to be temporary in the sense that there's just not, for example, an availability of the need for something or something might be seasonal.
Justin Moore (00:49:31):
And for anyone listening, I know a lot of folks may be earlier on in their journey and they say, okay, well Roberto, Justin, it's easy for you guys because built up a big platform to force the long-term thing. But it's like brands will never agree to do a long-term deal with me. And what I say to you is that, look at it from the brand's perspective. I do this a lot where it's like, let's put the brand hat on. They have a lot of experience working with partners who are flaky, who are not communicative, who don't hold up their under the bargain. And so do you think that they want to risk signing a 12 month deal with a creator that they've never worked with, that they have no track record with? And so of course they're going to be jumpy signing a long-term deal. And so what I always say is, yeah, make this first deal. Absolutely knock their socks off so that it's a bike foregone conclusion that they're going to hire you. Again.
Roberto Blake (00:50:14):
A small professional will beat a big flake,
Justin Moore (00:50:18):
Dude. Okay, if you looked, I get passionate about a lot of stuff, but if you looked at the metrics of my wife and i's YouTube footprint, social media, we are literally at the nadir, the lowest point of our entire journey, our viewership, our reach, all this stuff too. And we have literally made the most amount of money every single year. I've in this same place since we started. And so it's because brands don't just value that. They value, they know the product that they are purchasing. When they hire April and Justin, they know it's going to be a great thing to work with them. They know we're going to hit every talking point with the plum. We know we're not going to give 'em a bunch of flack with feedback and we're not going to, if they give us edits, we're going to be like, yeah, sure, no problem. We'll do a 32nd voice new voiceover. We're not going to charge you another thousand. It's not a big deal. It takes two seconds. And so that's what they're purchasing.
Roberto Blake (00:51:08):
Exactly.
(00:51:09):
And that's why I say it is about the relationship, and then it's like, what kind of partner are you in that relationship? So the thing is, I even use this analogy, I tell people it's like you need to make yourself attractive to a brand to begin with. And it's not just about waiting around for them to come holler. It's that even if you approach them, you are, oh, thank God this person showed up on my doorstep. How do you become that? What does that even look like? Dude, actually, I want to ask you that. What are some other things we've talked about, I'll just throw the word professionalism out there. What are some things that make a creator attractive to a brand?
Justin Moore (00:51:38):
Okay, bro. Hold my microphone. I'm going to grab something by my backpack. Two seconds. Ready? All all. Okay. Okay. You ready for this guys talking about attractiveness?
Roberto Blake (00:51:52):
All right. Ah, perfect. Perfect answer.
Justin Moore (00:52:00):
My first coming book, sponsor magnet. This is exactly what I talk about in there, man.
Roberto Blake (00:52:04):
Okay. Yeah,
Justin Moore (00:52:04):
Because a lot of it people think that if I build it, they will come. Right? Of course. That's what everyone wants, right? But there are a lot of different things that you can do. We talked a little bit about getting on their radar, which is a big part of it. We talked about there's other elements of when it comes to extracting yourself or extricating yourself from toxic relationships, this is something a lot of people don't think about. It's like, well, I can't, there's this one sponsor or this one partner that I've had for years, and they pay me a super small amount, but I don't want say that they need to just pay me more money. I don't want to rock the boat. I need the money, all this stuff too. And so a lot of this happens a lot with creators who've been doing it a long time, where they let these toxic relationships prevent them from forging healthier relationships with sponsors, and it prevents them from just having mental space to go after some of these more
Roberto Blake (00:52:58):
Ambitious partnerships. They keep the relationship past this expiration date.
Justin Moore (00:53:00):
That's exactly, dude, cheers for that. Listen, cheers on that one. And so there's so many different aspects, but the biggest part of being attractive, it's not just about, so first of all, also you have to be someone worth recommending. This is another part is when you are making friendships and with your niche neighbors and other people in the industry.
Roberto Blake (00:53:20):
I love that niche neighbors,
Justin Moore (00:53:21):
A lot of people. But the Shelley coined that, by the way, our mutual friend Shelley.
Roberto Blake (00:53:24):
Oh yeah, Shelly, Nathan. Shelly saved the day
Justin Moore (00:53:26):
Day. Yeah, I got that from her. And a lot of times other creators will be like, Hey, can you introduce me to your sponsor or to your partner or whatever. Oh,
Roberto Blake (00:53:34):
Yeah, me and him do that all the time.
Justin Moore (00:53:36):
But a lot of times this happens, people are trying to withdraw from a relationship or a bank without putting any deposits in either. They're never, you look at their platforms and they haven't uploaded a video in three months, or a lot of it comes down to doing the work and being someone worth recommending from people in your industry,
Roberto Blake (00:53:56):
Right?
Justin Moore (00:53:56):
So there's a lot of different things that you can do, but again, that's the initial attraction. There's a whole host of other things that you have to do once you nail that first seal.
Roberto Blake (00:54:05):
Yes. To sustain.
Justin Moore (00:54:06):
To sustain it. Yeah,
Roberto Blake (00:54:07):
Exactly. You got to keep that brand relationship fire going, dude.
Justin Moore (00:54:11):
Yeah, man. Totally.
Roberto Blake (00:54:12):
Yeah, no, no, this makes perfect sense and I'm glad you brought these things up. So more, I wanted to dive a little bit into the user generated content side. I know there's a lot you can say there. I think we're both advocates for this. I think that for the smaller content, but even without that, I'll give you guys a little anecdotal story. I had a friend who was a fellow creator who I also done some work with, and she had, I think at the time, I want to say 20 to 30,000 subscribers, if I'm remembering correctly. She came to me and a friend for advice about her brand deals. She was going to charge 500 per video, six month contract on her platform. She was looking at her subscribers interviews, and I was like, well, no. Here's what you represent in the niche for them.
(00:54:59):
Here's how few female creators they've worked with over the years, let alone the quarter. I think you have much more value because of what your platform and your demographic and who your reach is. They're trying to expand into this market. They need you more than you need them because they actually need to show that they are working with people like you. They need to attract your demographic in a way they've never done before. So I'll tell you what Big Brother Roberto says, go to them and ask for at least 1500. And if I'm wrong, because the notion of a disrespectful offer, they can't offer you less than 20 at worst, 30% of what you asked for, because then after that point, it's insulting and they're not going to do that. So they're not going to make a disrespectful offer. They'll, at worst case, how you down to 1200, which still more than per video, which is more than double of what you were going to ask for. So the thing is, left her own devices. This was going to be 3000 bucks, six times five, 3000 bucks. They didn't blink at 1500, so it became a $9,000 deal.
(00:56:08):
And so she ended up tripling what she would've otherwise got. But the value of that was a couple of things. One, having peers you can go to,
(00:56:16):
Whether they're niche natures, whether it's an upperclassmen, someone more experienced. So there's a lesson in that and being able to have people you trust to go to with the business side of what you're doing as a content creator and that you can respect. So don't isolate yourself, which I did for the first three years, from zero to a hundred thousand. I was very isolated. I didn't talk to anybody, and would I'd be much better off if I had talk to people and not been as closed off? The other lesson here is do not mistake your reach as your only value. If reach is all you sell, that is all they will buy, and they'll low ball you on that, and they'll use it as an insecurity in the negotiation. Again, not everyone's a shark, but generally speaking, understand that representation or relatability to the audience is a very highly valued commodity, and very few people have it,
Justin Moore (00:57:07):
Dude.
Roberto Blake (00:57:08):
So there's that reputation of being good to work with, easy to work with, being likable, not being a problem, and also the way your reputation is in brand sentiment and can be measured through social listening, working with the brand. And then on top of that, your capacity to maybe prove that you generate revenue. So these are my four Rs. This is what I talk about, and that's a lesson just on one side of that. And here's the kicker for you. That creator later was offered another relationship with them on the UGC side, a separate deal, because in the middle of that deal, that deal was not even done to completion. They came back to her. She was so easy to work with that deepened the reputation that she had internally with them, the relationship value she had internally with them. And they were so satisfied that they were like, and now they take reach off the table. You come to do stuff on our platform, which takes reach off table. So then they offered her from that YouTube contract, a contract to do some UGC for Instagram, multi-platform B platform agnostic, and boom, she got another deal. So you got another couple thousand dollars here,
Justin Moore (00:58:19):
Dude. Okay, so a couple things I want to say here. Number one, regarding the reach piece, if brands just wanted to reach more people, they'd buy ads. They would buy ads, right? End of story. And so you're a hundred percent right on that thing. I can share my own anecdote about this very specific thing. Big fan of Circle. Shout out to circle. They're a sponsor of mine, but this is what I used to run my community and did a deal with them, multiple deals with them, but first it started on the newsletter that went well.
(00:58:51):
Then I proposed, Hey, let me create some social assets that I can talk about how I use Circle. You can repurpose those as ads, et cetera. And then now this relationship has morphed into, now I am going to be a paid speaker at their summit. I'm going to be doing workshops for some of their top customers who have some of the largest communities on their platforms. And so one lesson that I hope you take away from this whole conversation is that a sponsorship doesn't just have to be a 92nd integration on my YouTube video. It can evolve into these other brilliant and beautiful things that you can do in partnership with the brand that have nothing to do with your YouTube channels because of what you represent to them, to their industry, to their customer base. Brands are desperate to talk about anything other than their product.
Roberto Blake (00:59:38):
Yes,
Justin Moore (00:59:39):
They're desperate because all the, oh, yeah, we got a new feature here. Or the weekly update, like blah, blah, blah. No, imagine, oh, we're doing this webinar in partnership with Justin from Creator Wizard, sign up here, log in. They love that kind of stuff.
Roberto Blake (00:59:49):
That's the same relationship I have with Kajabi. I just did a webinar for them around creator AI tools. It was like, and their community loved it.
Justin Moore (00:59:57):
You get more exposure, you get exposure to their community. I talk about, I have my course sponsored, bro. Literally,
Roberto Blake (01:00:04):
I love this
Justin Moore (01:00:05):
Dude. So it's like you go think about it, right? The brand gets to get in front of a really high value persona of creator. This is someone who's investing money into their business. They want to be in front of those people I created. It's called the Rising Creator Grant. I say, okay, hey, you purchase X number of seats. I have a pool of people who are really deserving but can't afford to participate yet. You purchase their seat, they get to enroll for free. I will, if you purchase enough seats, I'll have your VP of marketing come in and do a guest session, or
Roberto Blake (01:00:35):
That's brilliant.
Justin Moore (01:00:36):
And so now the creator loves them. They're super vocally advocate for the brand on social media. They got to join the course for free. The brand's thrilled they get to, and I get more course enrollments, right? It's like win, win, win. Everyone wins, everyone. Everyone wins, man. So sponsorships, again, do not have to conform to this very the box that you think it is.
Roberto Blake (01:00:55):
I think that people make these brand sponsorship relationships. They focus too much on it from a purely transactional standpoint versus the relationship equity of relationship with the creator relationship, brand to creator, relationship, brand to audience, relationship creator, audience. I think that if you look at it in this very secular way and that there's not some winner take all or winner take most at all, dude,
Justin Moore (01:01:23):
I'm going to get the book sponsored, bro. Literally, I'm going to, I'm going to go to several of my favorite vertical specific partners. I'm just shooting my shot, the convert kits of the world, the circles of the world, the Lulus of the world. I'm going to go to them and I'm going to say, Hey, I would love for the ceo, Nathan, let's say Nathan, to do write a forward in here. And this is the Convert Kit edition of Sponsor Magnet. You're going to have a badge on the cover with the ConvertKit logo, and the forward's going to be written by you about the power of newsletters and sponsorships.
Roberto Blake (01:01:55):
Interesting.
Justin Moore (01:01:55):
And the rest of the book is going to be me. And so, hey, when you're having your craft and commerce conference or you're doing a thing, yeah, well purchase 500 of them, put 'em in the book bag for everyone. That's distribution. That's distribution for me. I get in front of their customer base, I get more book sales. I get my name spread out there. Again, it's win, win, win. And so it's just like anything can be responsible. This is my takeaway.
Roberto Blake (01:02:17):
Let me ask you on this, tell us, we rarely get to hear about this. Tell us about email sponsorships.
Justin Moore (01:02:21):
Okay, so it's a 20 K month business for me now,
Roberto Blake (01:02:25):
20 KA month. Just the email. It's almost a quarter million a year. Just purely on email.
Justin Moore (01:02:28):
Just purely on email, man. And it's like I have multiple different types of sponsors. So I've got a primary and a secondary insertion. By the way, I have 30,000 creators on my newsletter, creator wizard.com/join.
Roberto Blake (01:02:41):
Smart plug. Yeah, of course.
Justin Moore (01:02:42):
If I don't say it, no one's going to, right? Well, you would in the show notes probably. Right? But I appreciate that.
Roberto Blake (01:02:46):
Well show notes x.com, formerly Twitter. Yes,
Justin Moore (01:02:49):
Yes, yes.
Roberto Blake (01:02:50):
I constantly shot,
Justin Moore (01:02:53):
But again, these are sponsors that I shot my shot, man.
Roberto Blake (01:02:56):
When was the first email sponsorship? How big was the newsletter?
Justin Moore (01:02:59):
The newsletter, the very first one I did about a year and a half ago, I would say. And I was at 15,000, maybe 15,000. Actually, no, I did some earlier than that, but mainly when I started it in earnest, it was like 15,000.
Roberto Blake (01:03:15):
15,000. How much for an insert? At 15,000
Justin Moore (01:03:18):
When I did my very first insert, I think it was seven 50.
Roberto Blake (01:03:22):
$750? Yeah, per
Justin Moore (01:03:23):
Insertion.
Roberto Blake (01:03:24):
And that's per insertion. Is that for four a month or is that for
Justin Moore (01:03:28):
One time? That
Roberto Blake (01:03:29):
Was single insertion.
Justin Moore (01:03:29):
Single insertion.
Roberto Blake (01:03:30):
Single insertion. So see right there, a lot of you, I know a lot of you have started using ConvertKit. I've been advocating for ConvertKit. I'm also a new ConvertKit ambassador. There we go. Not sponsor, but an ambassador. I've done a sponsorship with them before, once or twice. So yeah, so just so you know, okay, seven 50 per email. If you were able to sell the inventory of, let's say you did
Justin Moore (01:03:52):
Newsletter, I do four a month, a four a week by the way,
Roberto Blake (01:03:54):
Four a week, you do four a week. But if someone was doing two a week, that's 1500 per week, four weeks in a year. So that is right there. $6,000 a month on was a relatively modest sized 15,000 mod size newsletter. And that's that powerful. And remember, that's the only reputation aside. That's the only reach leverage they have. And then what was the open rate?
Justin Moore (01:04:20):
So 50%, 45, 40
Roberto Blake (01:04:22):
5%, 45 to 50%. Okay, so there you have it. Those are some baseline metrics for you to extrapolate from in terms of pricing. And that starts very modestly. You've now doubled the overall subscribership, but the revenue has increased exponentially
Justin Moore (01:04:39):
For you. Well, you want to know why? It's because,
Roberto Blake (01:04:41):
Because I think right now that would be wouldn't right now that be like what, 5,000 in insert or something.
Justin Moore (01:04:45):
So here's the thing is that to your story with your friend, she was using her own metrics to calculate how much she should charge, right?
(01:04:55):
And one of the things I talk about is I have this ARC framework called a RC. There's three goal types that a brand will have when they want to collaborate with the creator, awareness, repurposing and conversions. A lot of people think that conversions is the only thing a brand cares about. I am doing a lot of deals in my newsletter where it's not about how many people are clicking on the link. What they care about is someone opens my email, they see that giant brand logo at the front creator wizard in this edition sponsored by you screen, or this sponsored by whoever it is, right? ConvertKit is a sponsor of mine actually too. And so one thing I hope you take away from this is regardless of stop trying to be like, okay, let me extrapolate, this is what I have. And Justin was charging this much
Roberto Blake (01:05:37):
Purely
Justin Moore (01:05:38):
Scaling numbers, scaling and all this stuff too. If you are using whatever I'm charging or any creator, any friend that is trash, it's garbage in, garbage
Roberto Blake (01:05:44):
Out. I have a story about that, dude.
Justin Moore (01:05:46):
How do you know whether your friend
Roberto Blake (01:05:48):
Did ask getting ask a friend or how do you know they're getting a good deal? I remember another one was a one-on-one coaching client of mine. She was in the DIY niche. She was in the DIY niche, and she was feeling some kind of way because she's like, I have the same reach or as good or better numbers as my friend over here, and she got this deal. Why did I get this deal? I think it's for all these different reasons. I was like, would you be satisfied if you got the same deal as hers? Yes, I feel like that would be good. And you feel you'd be appropriately and fairly compensated if you got the same deal as hers. Like yes. It's like her deal was trash. She could have gotten twice as much. She was already underpricing and you used her underpriced by 50% as a metric for what's fair.
(01:06:31):
I'm going to reeducate the way that you approach and think about your value because she's undervaluing herself. Maybe if you feel very generous, you can go back to her because you paid for my lesson. You could feel generous and give it to her for free. But I was like, here's what you in theory could have done and should have been done. And I went through all the reasons that her friend underpriced, she thought that someone else's deal was a fair deal. She didn't realize that her friend was just a rookie at the negotiations or whatever happened or whatever happened. I was like, okay, so let me tell you how things work and where you were drastically underpriced here and here is this negotiation lever, this negotiation lever, this tactic. And I was like, yeah, you and your friend, you guys get low balled because you keep equating your value to your reach exclusively. You had no other basis for this. They didn't even calculate, she didn't even calculate the cost basis of the actual sunk cost of the DIY project materials into the,
Justin Moore (01:07:28):
I'm so glad you brought this up. Okay, so there's four pricing styles that I like to talk about, which is you've got the competitive pricing style, which we just discussed
Roberto Blake (01:07:35):
Cost
Justin Moore (01:07:35):
Plus, which is what you just discussed, which is making sure that I'm not losing money on this fricking thing, right? There's another really toxic style, which is dynamic pricing, and that is where the Oh, everything okay?
Roberto Blake (01:07:49):
Yeah, no, I was just making absolute sure you have time.
Justin Moore (01:07:53):
I got a bail maybe in five minutes or
Roberto Blake (01:07:56):
Something. Okay, yeah. We'll wrap up.
Justin Moore (01:07:57):
So dynamic pricing, which is a lot of creators do this around the holidays, for example. They're like, all the brands want to work with me during Q4 holidays, so I'm going to jack my rates up to X, which is a terrible strategy because let's say the brand just worked with you in the summer. They had a great experience. They went to their, let's say it's an agency, they went to their client and say, Hey, want to hire Roberto again because it was a great experience and they thought they had your rate from two weeks ago. They email you now. You're like, sorry, it's triple now holidays, baby. And they're like, okay, they got to go back to their client. They look like an idiot. You lose out on the deal. And so obviously if your viewership has gone up, there's justification there, but if you're just arbitrarily changing your
Roberto Blake (01:08:35):
Race, all things of being equal, right? All
Justin Moore (01:08:37):
Things being equal, the brands are just, they feel like we just never know what Justin's or Roberto's rate is going to be, and we're just going to stop reaching out to him. This happened all the time when I ran the agency. And then the final pricing style is a merit base style. And so what this means is it is based on what is the value to the sponsor? And this might blow some people's minds, but you may charge one brand a thousand for an integration and this brand 2000 for the exact same scope of work based specifically on how you are providing value to that sponsor. And so if you have a media kit with a rate card, delete the rate card immediately because this is what you're doing when you give a brand your media kit with a rate card. You're walking into a doctor's office, pretend this scenario, you're walking in, you have an ailment and cut the black bone, and you go in and you open your mouth to start telling the doctor all about your ailments, and the doctor says, SH doesn't even listen to you. And he writes you a prescription, hands you it and walks out. That is what you are doing as a creator. If you have a media kit with a pricing page, you have to deliver to them a bespoke, bespoke custom solution saying, Hey, I heard your problems. I heard these objectives that you have. Here is my specific solution for you, and here's the pricing to help you accomplish that outcome.
Roberto Blake (01:09:52):
I don't disagree with that. I have mine out for specific reasons.
(01:09:57):
One, mine is public and my rate card is public, which is actually not a great strategy because for competitor reasons, you wouldn't want to do that. And then even for brands, they could have more on the budget than what you're putting on your cart. There's a reason I do it because one, I'm not entirely relying on as much as it is my largest revenue stream. Now, I'm not relying on my brand deal stuff. So I'm not playing the game at a hundred percent optimal versus 8% optimal. And mine are public because it's a boundary for a conversation of disqualifying offers. I don't even want to have to see in my email to entertain. It's a waste of time for
Justin Moore (01:10:35):
Me. But you're still getting those emails, aren't you?
Roberto Blake (01:10:37):
Largely not ones that would be serious. It's the ones that are truly spam or phishing links or scams or whatever. But in terms of theoretically people who thought they were being serious, but no, I defined what was being, I defined what Sirius was being. So just personally for me, and it just depends on where you are. For me, it was just a way of setting a boundary because there were brands that are legitimate brands that I won't name that had absurd, ridiculous low ball offers that don't even have to hit my inbox anymore. And that's a real thing. It depends on where you're, it depends on your niche. I think for us educators that that's a little bit different.
(01:11:13):
I do still end up doing the final thing is bespoke because one thing I think we both agree on, get him on the call, get him on Zoom, definitely. Definitely get him on that zoom, get 'em on that streamy yard link, get 'em on a phone call, get on. There's so much that happens, especially if you can do a video call that face to face, that interaction dramatically. And I would say the more questions you ask, to be honest is I have a little trick is the more questions you ask, the higher the price goes up,
Justin Moore (01:11:39):
Dude, it's true though, because it's true. You're more invested in the outcome because other people are saying, what's your budget? How much can you pay me? They don't want to get on a call. And so the very nature by the very act of you doing that absolutely changes the dynamic. And so for you, you've got your media kit out there, you've got your rates, and so by asking the questions that can transform the scope. So it's like, Hey, I know you came inbound for this YouTube activation or whatever, but all these things we're talking about, I'd like to send you a revised proposal based on that.
Roberto Blake (01:12:05):
Exactly. No, that's why I do. It's like, so I have the thing that's public, but then when we get into a private call now, we can massage this very quickly, but there is a baseline of what is theoretically a commitment that I'm even willing to make or entertain. So I use it in that particular way, but I'm also more actively pursuing brand relationships I want anyway. And filtering for very, very ruthless criteria in terms of green flags and red flags in terms of, for example, just value alignment, values alignment with a company of like, okay, they do this, they do this. Hey, do I know anyone who's worked with them? How were they treated?
(01:12:42):
So I might go to a creator and ask, well, how did as a brand just creator, creator, they treat you? How'd you feel about this? Then were they professional? Did they pay on time? What was negotiating creative control? What were those things? So yeah, I just think it's extremely important for creators to know what their values are in terms of alignment to their audience's values, their values, the brands, just like how we talked about that relationship, reciprocity, they exist. You really want that. But I mean, again, you are the creator wizard, you're the brand deals wizard. What are some of your final thoughts on this? And then where can people find you?
Justin Moore (01:13:23):
I would say final thoughts are just giving y'all permission if you're watching or listening this, that there is no threshold. There's no number of subscribers or number of views that you need to wait for to start working with sponsors. You create your own reality. You're not going to get anything if you sit on your hands and wait for these emails to land in your inbox. And so if I can give any of you permission, if you were waiting for something, some sign, this is your sign, baby, let's go. Right? And so everything in my world is just creator wizard.com/join my newsletter. You could find everything else from the newsletter, my YouTube and socials and all that stuff too. But thanks for having me, man. This was
Roberto Blake (01:13:59):
A blast. Thank you for taking the time. It's great to have you back again and everything. At some point I would love to put together our creator economy Avengers panel of some kind,
Justin Moore (01:14:09):
Dude.
Roberto Blake (01:14:09):
Yeah, I think for that, it's got to be me, you, Jay. We'll have to fudge the time zone to get Nick in there and probably Daniel. And then who else should we invite to that?
Justin Moore (01:14:20):
Probably Sean, right?
Roberto Blake (01:14:21):
Sean? If we can get him. Sean,
Justin Moore (01:14:23):
You get Sean in there.
Roberto Blake (01:14:23):
Yeah, either Sean or Daryl. Yeah, Daryl. Yeah, they're busy guys. But that's six. That's That's a good thing. That's pretty
Justin Moore (01:14:28):
Good. That's pretty, I'm honored to be up there with the titans of the industry,
Roberto Blake (01:14:32):
Man. Oh dude, you're crushing it. You're killing it. Look underrated. I think that two of the most underrated people in our space are absolutely, well, no, there's three actually. I'm Sean, Daryl, no offense. I'm going to sub out April. I'm actually going to sub out April. Damn.
Justin Moore (01:14:49):
Okay.
Roberto Blake (01:14:49):
No, really love what she's doing with her content and her perspective. And I also think there was a lot of courage in doing, even recently, the two pivots, like the, okay, I'm going to do this thing, and then, oh, you know what? I'm going to start from zero again after 20,000 on this and everything, because in a completely different niche than when you guys were doing vlogging. That's courage, that's guts,
Justin Moore (01:15:10):
That's different.
Roberto Blake (01:15:11):
The will and desire to become a learner all over again. You don't see that very often, let alone people pull it off.
Justin Moore (01:15:17):
Yeah, man, I appreciate that that's come to you.
Roberto Blake (01:15:19):
No, absolutely. Look, I don't think it's generous or kind. I think it's the truth.
Justin Moore (01:15:23):
Yeah, man. Thank you. Thank you.
Roberto Blake (01:15:24):
So yeah, I think incredibly thoughtful content over there. One of the things I want to leave all of you with is you absolutely have to be following Justin and
Justin Moore (01:15:34):
Thank you, man.
Roberto Blake (01:15:34):
You absolutely. I've seen too many creators get real ROI from this man in terms of whatever the investment is. If you're serious and you're ready, then it works out.
Justin Moore (01:15:45):
You don't have to pay me though. I have so much stuff for you
Roberto Blake (01:15:47):
His free content. No, that's why I'm saying even the investment of the time to watch his content is absolutely worth it. And the thing is, if you make money from that, you could reinvest that directly back into your education. So the thing is, there's not really a way to lose here,
Justin Moore (01:16:00):
Dude. Win-win. That's what I'm all about, man.
Roberto Blake (01:16:02):
Yeah, no, absolutely. So again, thanks everybody for tuning in and we'll catch you next time. Stay awesome. Bye.
Announcer (01:16:09):
Thank you for listening to the Create Something Awesome Today, podcast hungry. For more creative and practical ideas, why not visit create something awesome today.com and access all resources and links mentioned in today's show, as well as special bonus content that Roberto regularly crafts for you. Now, go create something awesome today. Create something awesome today, dot com.