Why Your Media Kit is Probably Trash: Lessons from Justin Moore

Occasionally a book is so good that it just becomes the book on a subject. For example, the audience is listening. A Little Guide to Building a Big Podcast by Tom Webster.That is the book on growing your audience as well as how to write a great survey.And if you started podcasting and your goal is to get sponsors, then the book, like the book that you need to get is, is sponsor Magnet by Justin Moore. And today I am so excited to have him on the show and share some insights. Hit it, ladies. The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson.Podcasting since 2005, I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson, thanking you so much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, this is where we help you plan, launch and grow your podcast. And today we are talking monetization with Justin Moore.Everything we talk about today you can find out@schoolofpodcasting.com996. I'll have links to the book and he's got other goodies coming. Here's my talk with Justin Moore, author of the book Sponsor Magnet.I have been accused of being a curmudgeon because I've been doing podcasting for a long time and they're like, ah, that guy's never going to change. I'm here to tell you, I've always said if you provide new feedback that makes sense and like a little proof behind it, I will change my mind.And because of the book sponsor Magnet, I have lit my, whatever you would call your press kit, your pitch kit, your, you know, your sponsor tool. Yeah, it's everything. Just like there was a lot of things on fire.And I've talked about this book in the past and, and the one and only Justin Moore has joined us to talk about it a little more. Justin, thanks for coming on the show, Dave.

I'm stoked to be here, man.

I was listening to it on the way home. That's another thing. Do you make more money on the physical book or the audiobook?

I make more money on the physical book. It depends where it's fulfilled, whether it's directly from me or with Amazon.But honestly, I don't really care that much about making money on the book. And we'll get into that. It's more about just getting in as many people's hands as possible because the.

Audiobook had these little like, ooh, I thought this was such a great idea. When did the audiobook come out versus the physical book?

Yeah, so the audiobook came out mid June 2025 and the paperback and ebook came out January 21, 2025. So about six, roughly five, six months.

Later, you said, hey, if you've read the book and put this into practice, let me interview you on the audiobook. And I was like, that is a brilliant idea. So that was very, very cool.

You know, the. The quick anecdote there. I. One thing that I always.So I like reading business books, but the ones that always resonated the most with me were the ones where I could heal, hear actual, like, case studies of people taking this stuff and putting it into practice. And so that was my version of this is like, let me go out there. And it was more than that.It was like, hey, let me hear how this particular chapter you got value out of. Right. So the pitch chapter, the negotiate chapter, or whatever. And so, yeah, I'm thrilled to hear that that resonated.Cause I thought that was pretty. Probably the most fun part of the audiobook.

Well, the one question that we have to get out of the way is everybody wants to know, like, how many downloads? How many views do I have? Like, when can I start monetizing? And I always say, when you have an audience. But you don't monetize a podcast.You monetize an audience. But I've got four people listening. That might be a little early.

Yeah. All right, I'm going to share an anecdote. So I moved from California to Minnesota back in October. Last October.And I hired a handyman to help me with a bunch of odds and ends around the house. Dave. And I made an offhand comment to him, like, hey, oh, yeah, I need to figure out.I want to get those, like, you know, those gutter, like, kind of guards that you put over your gutter so leaves don't get in or whatever.

Yeah.

And I was like, hey, I need to do this because, you know, I don't want ice and water in there to freeze, and it'll be a problem during the winter. He's like, okay, hey, hey, Justin, there's only one company that you should talk to in. It's Brand X. You know, this local company, XYZ.I've been doing this for 30 years. They're the best in the business. You should call them. You know what I did, Dave? I didn't go on Yelp. I didn't go on Google.I didn't do any more research. I called the company that my handyman recommended. They came out. They did an estimate for fricking five figures for these gutter guards.I don't know if I'm gonna do It. But how interesting, right? I got a recommendation from a single guy. He does not have a social media presence.He does not have a community or a newsletter or podcast or whatever. He has influence amongst his customers. And so if you take it down to just very, very basic first principles, influence is word of mouth. Right? That.That's what it is.And so regardless of Whether you have 10,000 followers or if you have a, you know, a thousand average download, you know, average listeners per podcast or 100 or whatever, if you have influence over a body of people, you can do sponsorships. But the types of brands that you actually will target will definitely change.

Yeah, I know in the book, you talk about, you know, you're just starting out and you're going after Campbell's Soup and all these giant companies. It's like, no, no, no, let's start maybe with somebody local or smaller.And again, to me, the thing I loved about the book is you go, yeah, that makes sense. And so I just thought it was amazing. And the other thing that I just.The whole book, I love the way it was laid out, is you actually say, like, word for word, this is what you say. Because a lot of times people like, I don't even know what to do or what that. So it's all in the book. I mentioned that I set my media kit on fire.You want to jump into why I should do that? Because this. This was, again, was another one.I was like, yeah, that makes total sense, because there are different things that you work with sponsors for, and I love the fact that you called them partners. So get into that a little bit.

Yeah.So I think the conventional wisdom, I think, is, okay, let me make this, like, pixel perfect media kit that has all my stats, has my download numbers, has my audience demographics, if I have it, has maybe a few examples of past partners that I've worked with.And I'm just going to kind of attach that as a PDF or, you know, sending it out to any brand that is potentially interested, whether this is outbound, me actually reaching out to them, pitching a collaboration, or in response to Inbound, where they're actually reaching out to me and saying, hey, we'd love to collaborate.And in my opinion, that is the absolute laziest thing you can possibly do as a creator, as a podcast or whatever, because essentially what you're communicating to that prospective partner is that this is how I work with every single brand. Here's a boilerplate media kit, oftentimes with pricing like, hey, package 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, pick one.And the brand looks at those and says, well, they kind of have to contort themselves to potentially try to fit into one of the prefix boxes that you've allowed them to hire you with. And so the analogy that I give is like, imagine that you go to a doctor, you have some sort of ailment, right?You go into the doctor's office, you go into the room, you're twiddling your thumbs, waiting for them. They come into the room, you open your mouth to tell them about the symptoms, the problems that you're having, and they go, shh.They say, no, no, no, I don't want to hear that. They take out their prescription pad, they write a random prescription, they hand it to you, and they leave. That's what you're doing.When you have a media kit that you send to every single brand, when you're not even in the least bit interested into what the brand is trying to accomplish, what are their marketing objectives, then it's going to be very difficult to help them understand why they should be paying you multiple thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars to collaborate with you. And I think a lot of podcasters, frankly, Dave, they think they heard one time, oh, CPM advertising.That's the only way in which I can make money on my podcast.If I'm getting a thousand listens or whatever, and a brand's going to pay me 25, $35 per thousand listens, like, that's not going to be worth it for me. I don't want to do 20, 30 bucks for this.And so the permission that I want to give you or the kind of hopefully, mindset shift that I give everyone listening or watching is like, no. There's other ways to charge podcast sponsors that don't rely on cpm.

I always say it is an income stream. And the people that are saying you can make money from day one, I got $3.47 for my. It's a dead show. So. But I paid $9 for hosting.I made $3.47 because the CPM was $5 and I think 6 cents per thousand. And I went, yep, I made money from day one. But no. So, well, you mentioned influence.And a lot of people right now are on this show at least are doing audio, and they kind of got their toe in video. Is there, from a sponsor standpoint, is there more weight in video over audio.

Or does it matter 100%, dude, you want to know why?It's because of the repurposability when you have video, of course, when you're Doing audio only, you can do things like audiograms, for example, that you could, with a little sine wave or whatever and have a little clip. But with, with video, the ability for the, for the sponsor to potentially purchase or license the rights to a cut down of your ad read.With video, the mileage goes way up that they can get out of a collaboration.So if you can actually say to them, hey, in addition to me doing this ad, read this, you know, pre roll or mid roll spot, talking about your brand, I will give you the rights to cut down 30, a 30 second version of that or I can even do it for you, a 30 second version of this read that you can, you know, put on your social media use for paid advertising on, you know, Instagram, TikTok, whatever, that's hugely valuable to these brands.And so if that alone, if sponsorships is a revenue stream that you think you should have as a podcaster, that would be a reason enough to, to pursue a video for your podcast.

To me, again, it's one of those things that I, I'm not kicking and screaming, I just, I'm not a fan of video because then I have to shave and all that.

Well, you know what, I didn't shave for this. You know, I just keep it a little nice and trim, you know, nice and nice and manicured.

Well, the other question that everybody's going to ask, well, what do I charge? And I've always heard if you're not hearing no, you're not charging enough. But are there other?Because one of the things you talk about, and I love the analogy you said, hey, instead of being in a negotiation where they're on one side of the table and you're trying to get them to pay more, we always feel like they're trying to pay less. He's like, go on the same side of the table and work with them.And this is where I just thought it was brilliant because you were saying, well, it depends on the campaign, like if it's a conversion campaign that's more valuable than a branding campaign. So, you know, and then you, you warn like, well, don't do like, well, my friend got, you know, $22 cpm.So, so how is there a dartboard we just throw something at or what do we do when it comes to pricing?

I think I'm going to have to go down a bit of a rabbit hole with this question because I do think it'll be valuable for your listeners. I don't want to go surface level here because if there's one Major takeaway from this conversation.I hope it's like understanding directionally how to price yourself as a podcaster. So I talk about in the book. One of my primary frameworks is called the ARC framework. So it's arc.So this has to do with what is the brand's objective by collaborating with you. And there's 100% of the time it's going to be one, two, or all three of these things.It's A is awareness, R is repurposing, and P and C is conversion. So arc. So let me quickly explain.So an awareness campaign, when a brand reaches out to you and say, hey, we want to, you know, you to do a read for us, and they're saying, hey, we're coming out with a new product, we're coming out with a new feature. We were available only in the uk, now we're available in the US that is an awareness type campaign. Okay? R is repurposing.So if the brand says, hey, the primary reason that we want to work with you is after you do your read, after you do this integration, we actually want to get the rights to take the footage and repurpose it right on social media, on our website, on E commerce partners, on, you know, for paid advertising, whatever. And then the C, the conversion is when you say, hey, what would a win look like for you? And they say, lots of sales, right?Lots of downloads of our app, lots of trial signups for our software program or whatever. And so something very attributable, something measurable.And so the reason that it's so critical that you ascertain what the brand's objectives are with the collaboration is that your pricing should change. Dave. So let me quickly explain why this also means that you should not have standard pricing in your media kit or a place on your website.Oh yeah, this is how much I charge for an ad read. Because your pricing should change. And so let's say, for example, let's kind of explain this working backwards.So if you were to ask a brand like, hey, what's success for you?And they say sales, conversions, whatever, trial signups for this software, they have what's called a cpa, a cost per acquisition metric that they are likely beholden to your contact that's negotiating with you by their boss or if it's an agency, by their client, right?So they're, they're, they've, they've got this napkin math of partnerships that they've done before where they say, okay, if we were to hire Dave for a sponsorship for his podcast, we're gonna make a conservative assumption that of the 10,000 people that you know watch listen to this episode over the next 30 days, let's say a thousand people, 10% are going to click the link in the show notes, okay? That, that go that drive to the landing page for our software. Okay? So 10%.So of the, a thousand people that hit that landing page, we have math that shows that 25% of those people actually sign up for a free trial. So 250 people of the 10,000 that listen to the episode, then those people sign up for a free trial.And then of the 250 people, we have math that says about 20% convert to paying customers of our software. And we know. So that's 50 people. Okay? So we know that our software costs $10 a month and our average retention is 10 months.So the average LTV or lifetime value of this customer is $100. So we, if we get 50 paying customers from this deal with Dave times $100, 5,000 is the max we're going to pay Dave.And by the way, they don't want to pay you $5,000. That's the break even, right?

Right.

The whole reason that they're doing influencer marketing is to turn a profit. So whether they're going to pay you a half of that, a third, a fourth, maybe less, depending on their risk tolerance.And so this is why brands who have conversion focused goals are so hard to negotiate with, because they just, they cannot exceed this CPA that they're beholden to by their boss.However, contrast that with an awareness campaign where they're saying, we want to spread the word, we want people, we want to get more eyeballs on this product launch.The contact that's negotiating with you, they don't have their boss breathing down their neck being like, hey, how many trial signups for a software did Dave drive in that last? They're not, they're not thinking about those types of metrics. It's views, it's downloads, it's engagement, it's comments, it's a lot more.I say that the metrics are a lot squishier with those types of campaigns. And so your negotiating leverage just absolutely skyrockets you in a, in an awareness campaign. Let's quickly touch on.Let's say it was, it was repurposing. They said, hey, yeah, we want to get this footage.Well, if they, if they came inbound asking you how much for an ad read, and they say the primary goal is to get your footage after the ad read, you should not say, okay, well, here's how much I charge for an ad read. They just told you they don't care about that. You should say, hey, knowing that that's your goal, that you want to use my.My footage for ads, I can actually make you five 30 second ads that I don't even post. I'll vary the hook, I'll vary the calls to action.You're basically leveraging my name and likeness as the school of podcasting guru, and it's gonna be five times what I was probably gonna charge you for an ad read. But this is what you said you want. This is aligned with your goal.And so the beautiful part about that is that your amount you can charge is completely detached from your listenership or your audience in that scenario. So you see how you really getting into the weeds and understanding what the brand's goals are very much impacts what you should be charging.

And that's why you light your media kit on fire. Yep, exactly. Well, you mentioned Ark. We might as well mention your other one, Rope.This is another one that I was just like, oh, it just makes so much sense.

Yeah, so, so rope. The rope method has to deal with pitching.So first let's do some definitions here, which I think a lot of people, they hear the word pitch and they're thinking, oh, oh, this is me actually going and reaching out to a brand and pitching them on why they should sponsor my show. When in reality, if a brand reaches out to you, you still have to pitch them on why you're the best person for the job.Because you know what, they probably reached out to 20 other podcasters at the same time to see, you know, kind of kick the tires on everyone. How much, you know, are they charging? Like, are they interested, Are they available?Do they have exclusivity arrangements with other partners, competitive partners, et cetera.And so you still kind of have to put together a compelling pitch of, like, why they should hire you, or especially why they should pay you 2 or 3x what these other 19 podcasters are charging for the same average downloads or listens. Right.And so the rope method is an acronym, so it's R O, P, E. So what I say is your pitch has to be R relevant to a campaign that the brand is either currently running or has run in the past.O stands for organic, meaning that you can tie your pitch back to organic work that you've already published that illustrates that your audience has an affinity for their brand, not that you do. The brand doesn't care that you have an affinity for it. That's table stakes. Oh, I love your product. I've used it for five years.They don't care, does your audience? Because that's who they care about. Your. Their prospective, future customers of them. Right.P in the rope method stands for proof, so you can show how you've helped other brands achieve results. And E stands for easy to execute. When the brand says, hey, yeah, this is actually kind of interesting. What did you have in mind?So, Dave, I think the easiest way to explain how you put a pitch like this together with the rope method would be should we just try and get a sponsor for your show and just do something in real time here as a working example?

Well, I am my sponsor. But you're sure we can. Doesn't mean I can't partner with somebody.

That's right.Okay, so if there was like, a short list of, like, one, two or three brands or companies or software programs or something, who would think, man, this would be awesome to do a sponsorship with them.

Well, I have this guy named Brendan that wants me to talk about Podpage all the time on this show because, you know, I work there. I mean, it's like, you know, you could mention that you work at PodPage, if not Brendan, Captivate, Buzzsprout, Rode.All of those are brands that I talk about on a regular basis to different people.

Love it. Okay, so I'm gonna. While you're talking here, I'm going to pull up Buzzsprouts. Can I share my screen here?

I think so. Okay, so this is where Justin shared his screen.And I know this is an audio podcast, but I left this in here because, number one, we weren't doing things that were super visual. And number two, you get to hear him just think through the process. So if you've ever wanted to climb into Justin's brain, you can do that now.And also notice this doesn't take an hour to do.

So the first thing that I want to do is I'm going to go to Buzzsprout's website because I want to see what are the things that they are promoting. Sometimes you'll see a banner the top of a brand's website where it's like, hey, we're doing XYZ promotion.Or there's some seasonal thing or there's a discount or whatever. That's a good indication of something that's relevant. Right. Going back to the rope method, keep podcasting even when you hit roadblocks.Real podcast success stories. So they've got ratings, get listed in all these things. All these players. Okay, got. Okay, guide. Your guide to.Okay, so they've got step by step guides. This is interesting. I'm going to pull that up just so I can look. Video tutorials, courses, et cetera. I've already got a good pitch for you.I'll keep going though, but I've got a good pitch for you. Okay, so I'm keeping scrolling. I'm just gonna slam to the bottom here because I want to see what are they posting on their own social media.So I want to see. Okay, so they've got 137k subscribers on their own YouTube channel. So that's interesting. And how often are they posting?So the last video that they did was three months ago, and it seemed like the same guy, he's made. I don't know if this guy works there or I don't know, but this is interesting to me.So they have only published in the last 12 months, they've only published 12 videos. That is interesting to me. Okay, so let's keep going.Another thing that I want to do, Dave, is I want to look at Buzzsprout's Facebook page because there's something really interesting that you can learn when you go to a brand's page. Because if they are running currently running ads or have run ads in the past, you can actually see what those ads are, Dave.So if you go to their Facebook page, you go to the about section, you go to page transparency, then see all scroll down here. It says this page is not currently running ads, but you can still go to their ad library.It says there's no active ads, but you can X out of this thing that says active ads. And we can see what ads they were running in the past. So actually from April to September of last year, they were running ads all around how you.They've got a mobile app for iOS. You can actually watch the ads. One of the my favorite things to do is copy and paste.Literally just control a this entire page, drop it into ChatGPT and be like, what does Buzzfeld care about right now? What are they running ads for? What are the top five things that they're. They're running ads for right now? And let's pick one.Let's pick one as the thrust of this pitch. So just wanted to show you this kind of little hat, little trick here.What you can, you know, how you can inform yourself about what it seems like they care about in their universe. However, I mentioned that I have a, an idea of something that, that you should pitch to them so There's a lot of different angles that can go here.So education, right? What a perfect partnership for someone like you, Dave, who also has courses, also has educational materials.What if there is some sort of co, some, some joint partnership here where you, you actually license your education material to Buzz Prop customers. You actually get more customers of your courses in your community by tapping.Wouldn't you love to have buzzsprout email their a hundred thousand podcasters about your stuff?

Yeah, they wouldn't suck.

That wouldn't suck. Right.And so this could be a type of a sponsorship where you're talking about them on your podcast, they're talking about you to their audience because again, they want to position themselves as advocates for their customers, as people that are helping them grow their podcast.And so a lot of people don't think about this as a sponsorship, but these are the types of holistic things, especially for someone like you, who also sells things directly to his listeners and audience. How can we leverage the, the customer bases of other brands in a way? So that's one pitch that seems like a no brainer to me.The other pitch to me is that they, they do not have a consistent content strategy on YouTube and probably other social platforms too. So a pitch to them could be, hey, I've got all of this collateral in my library.I would love to syndicate some of these education materials about growing your podcast onto your YouTube channel. And I've identified the top 10 keywords that long tail keywords that I think you should be ranking for on YouTube that you're not.And I will make you 10 videos to help you target that. And I will leverage my reputation and my credibility with school podcasting to make this content for you on autopilot. It's turnkey.I'll make you five videos a month. It's going to be 15 grand. It's going to be, I don't know, whatever it is, whatever the number is that gets you excited. But like that's that.So again, going back to the rope method, right? R is relevant. Right. So two things that we just said were relevant. Maybe ads that they're continuing to run.Are you going to be doing that campaign again next year? You know, or let me create some content for you or oh, I would love to help educate, you know, do some webinars or education for your customer base.So that's the relevancy O is organic. Right.So we're actually going to tie back to a pitch or tie back to an episode that you've created in the past about why it's so important to invest in your podcast and career. Something like that. I'm sure you've got a hundred episodes about that. Right. So that showcases the relevancy of your audience to Buzzsprout. Right.It's prospective podcasters P is the proof. So you can say, hey, I've helped POD Page do xyz, right? So you're actually showing them something relevant.And then the easy to execute thing is you're actually saying exactly what you're going to do for them. You're saying, hey, I'm gonna make you five videos. You know, five videos a month. Or I'm gonna do five ad reads a month.I'm gonna, I can do the first one within two weeks. I'm gonna grant you usage rights for the next three months. Are you free on Thursday at 10am to talk about this? So it's very, very specific.It's not, oh, I would love to hop on a call and pick your brain and figure out how we can collaborate. They don't have time. They don't know who you are, Dave. Well, they probably know who you are, but most people, they don't know who they are.They don't have time to waste around talking with people who they don't even know what they want. And so you have to pick something very, very specific. So how are we feeling now? We're going to pitch Buzzsprout or what do we think here?

Yeah, I love it. Well, the thing is, it's. We're just doing what we want people to do to us. Like, we hate when we get a bad pitch. Like, hey, I've got this plumber.Do you want him on your show? And you're like, I can't even connect those dots. But.

Right.

And there may have been some creative editing here that took all of maybe eight minutes and if that to just find out what did they do in the past? J.C. penney, which makes me sound like 800 years old, but insert your store of church probably does some sort of back to school sale.So it's really easy to approach them and go, hey, are you doing any kind of back to school sale like you did last year? You mentioned in the book there was a campaign and somebody reached out and said, hey, I saw where you did this last year. Are you doing it this year?Here's how I think we should do it. And it was just like brilliant stuff. So.

Well, I think, I think a lot of people, they, they listen or they watch what I just did and. Or they think that research has to take hours. It doesn't.You can click around for three or four minutes and be like, oh, they were running that campaign like last.So this is actually a critical insight, Dave, which is that if we're sitting here, you know, and we want to do a back to school campaign, it's probably too late actually, because they probably, you know, these large companies like JCPenney and Sears and what other old companies can we bring up here? You know, they're. Or let's, let's do Target, right?Like the Target is still around a company like that who is spending $50 million, $100 million on advertising a year. I don't know if they're spending the price, something like that.They probably allocated and planned out that those marketing expenditures six months ago, a year ago maybe. Right. Because they're not just working with creators, they're working with broadcast tv.They're doing print, you know, they're doing out billboards out of home, all sorts of stuff. Right. And so it takes, it's actually really complicated to actually deploy all that marketing capital. And so they have to do this way far in advance.And they employ an army of agencies oftentimes to help them deploy the capital.And so absolutely, if you want to do it back to school for sitting here in August, time of recording, you probably want to be pitching them holiday at this point or maybe even New Year, New Year, new you, New Year resolution type things. So you do have to be a bit strategic.

Yeah. The other thing that I just about the time I'm like, oh, this is brilliant, this is great.And then you come in with this, the last step, and you talk about, hey, when the campaign is over, you mentioned how you have mushy metrics in some cases, but you take the metrics that you've put together and you go, hey, based on what I saw, this worked well. This worked well. And you were saying, even they, they might love you if you say, oh, by the way, I'll give you an example.I was using a microphone that I bartered to use. They're like, oh, we'll give you one if you talk about it. I'm like, okay.And the, the engineer obviously wrote the copy and I was talking about alu dyninium magnets or something, whatever it was. And finally my audience is like, what is that? Like, I don't even know what that means. And I was like.So I emailed him, I said, can I just say, it's got a nice tone to it and it's very clear. And they're like, yeah, whatever, you know, but it was just a case where they didn't know how to market their own stuff.So I love the fact that you come at the end and you're like, hey, there should always be an end of campaign report. Are there any tools that you use to give that information?Because I know in theory we would assume that they have some sort of conversion tracking on their end. Is there anything we should be doing on our end and if so, what should we use for that?

So I think that of course, hopefully you have some sort of metrics on whatever podcast hosts that you're using that will give you some type of information about the performance of the episode, hopefully some audience demographic info, et cetera, ages, geography, so on. I'm actually surprisingly less interested in that type of information.Of course they'll probably want to see it and it'll be helpful, but I actually think the qualitative information that you can pull as a result of the episode. Episode is way more important. I don't know about you, Dave, but like, I have a newsletter, I have a podcast that I'm actually relaunching next week.And when I did have a podcast, I had three seasons of it, I would very often get feedback from my audience that was private. So they would DM me on Instagram or something, or they would reply to my email newsletter whenever I would do a sponsorship.They would reply and be like, hey, I've heard about that tool. Do you like it? Or oh, I tried that six months ago. It sucks. Why do you like it? You know, this type of thing. And is the brand seeing that feedback? No.It's being sent to you privately? Yeah.If you do a sponsorship on a public facing social media platform like YouTube or Instagram or whatever, and people are posting comments, the brand can see that, they just refresh the page. Right.But when you're getting private feedback from your audience, especially if it's related to perceived shortcomings of the sponsor, and it is your duty as a partner to cycle that feedback to the brand and say, hey, here's what the general perception of your tool is in the marketplace. I actually think we should lean into this, not stick our head in the sand.I had four emails or four DMS of people saying, hey, I tried that protein supplement six months ago and it sucks. And you are, if you do that, you are allowing the brand to give you new insights that, that you would have never known.Maybe you give them that feedback about the protein powder sucking and they say, oh, we actually reformulated it. Three months ago.So this person who said they tried it a year ago doesn't really understand that we've completely from the ground up, revitalized the formulation or whatever. Right. Let's go out back into the market, do another integration talking about this because it seems like the market isn't aware of that.And so this is a really, really critical insight.I think a lot of people are scared to, to circle perceived negative feedback or neutral feedback about the sponsored back to the brand, but that stuff is gold. It's almost like market research that they're getting in addition to partnering with you.And so what I encourage people to do when putting these post campaign reports together is not just the quantitative data that you share with them. Of course they'll need that for their own reporting, but the qualitative stuff too, because the numbers aren't always going to tell the full story.

Yeah.And because if you do this and podcast B does not, and I mean for me, anytime I get any kind of feedback on like, hey, Dave, did you know there's 10 seconds of silence because you forgot to unmute that channel in the middle of your episode? I am so grateful to hear that so I can go fix it.So it's not like the sponsor is going to be like, how dare you say, you know, they're going to like, oh, that's good to know.

And, and you know, the other critical thing about this dude is, is that because most people 90, I'll, I'll just throw out a stat. 99% of podcasters are not doing this because you know why they're not doing it? They're terrified of what the brand will say in response.If they say, if they say, hey, how to go brand? And the brand says, we hate you, you drove no sales or no one signed up for the tool.Podcasters are really scared of that, of that feedback from the brand.And so if you're the one who is has very low ego about it and you realize that there's only Nelson Mandela has this great quote, it's like, I never lose. I either win or I learn. Right.And if you can have that approach when it comes to like talking with sponsors, if they say, if you ask them that and they say, hey, went great, well, what are you gonna do? You better pitch them on the next deal. They just said they loved working with you.But if they say, oh, you know when, okay, they'll probably say that. They'll say, hey, oh, went average.We were hoping it would get more views or sales or whatever, then you can Say, great, thank you for sharing that feedback with me. I have some ideas about why that might be, of how we can improve it next time, but do you have any ideas about, about why that might be?I asked the sponsor this one time, Dave, and they said, oh, gosh, we're so sorry, we sent you the wrong brief. We actually are doing.We've seen way better success with case studies for integrations now where you're showcasing, like success stories for our customers. Can you do another integration just with that? So the brand, like took the L. They were like, oh, I'm so sorry, that was our fault. Right.And so there's all these situations where I think in the absence of any sort of feedback, you just assume the brand hates you and, and you assume that if the brand wants to work with you again, oh, they'll just come back and reach out to me. No, they're busy. They're working with lots of people. It's up to you to come back and repitch them.

Yeah.And that's where your background, working as an agency yourself and then just working with a gazillion different podcasters, that's where this information comes from. And it's amazing. And the only thing I really hated about the book was the last page because it was done.And I was like, oh, I would like more, please. So when I'm done going to sponsormagnet.com and buying the book, I understand there are new things on the horizon.

I do. I'm slowly building out the cinematic universe for creator wizard, which is my business. And so I have a coaching program. It's called Wizards Guild.And it's a totally different model in that we are not your agent, we are not a manager of you. We do not take a cut of your deals, of deals that we help you negotiate. It is a completely a flat investment to have us in your corner.And we will help you with your pitches, your negotiations, you know, your pricing, your packages and so on. And it's just a flat investment every year. And so you keep everything, every, every dollar of the deals that we help you land.So I feel like this model is so much more value aligned because we want to be able to say, hey, that's a terrible deal. Don't take that. We don't want to be financially incentivized to like push you into deal because we need the 25% or whatever.And the reason I created this model was because of just really terrible experiences with managers and networks over the years. So the coaching program is probably the quickest Growing part of our business.But the thing that I think frankly is the most exciting thing that we're working on is year two of our in person event called Sponsor Games.So basically I've taken my eight step sponsorship wheel framework that I outline in the book and I turned it into eight games that you play to actually master the concept.So the pitch game and the negotiate game and there's actually finalists from each of the games and you can advance to the sponsor tank where you pitch a real panel of influencer marketing managers brands and there's a grand prize winner of cash. Who's the. It's a one person emerges from the tank victorious.So it's coming up in March of 2026 and it was probably that the highlight of my life having that event last year and I'm just so excited to continue to grow that.

And is this in person or online?

It is, it's in person in San Antonio, Texas.

Even better. Yeah, very cool. So if once I'm done going to you know, Sponsor Games and again I go more please. You have more things coming back I hear.

Yeah, I've got a couple things. So I am launching a new podcast called Sponsor Magnet, same title as the book and there really is no podcast that exists.Just talking about sponsorship strategy and I, I decided well I guess it's going to be me. I guess I'm in the. I'm the guy to do that podcast and so very excited to launch that.It will, it will be live by the time you listen to this most likely. And then I have a totally free newsletter.I've got about 20,000 creators on the newsletter where I basically send out paid sponsorship opportunities on a silver platter brands actively looking for people to partner with and I send that out every week. So creatorwizard.com join is that one.

There we go. Well for me that is the book. If somebody goes I'm thinking about like doing sponsorships or partnerships. I'm just gonna go there you go.Go buy this book. Go check out his YouTube you know, if you want hire him as a coach. Sign up for sponsorship games to get your your skills up.It really is an amazing book and I look forward to. Are you going to be at Podcast Movement?

I won't be at Podcast Movement. I will be at VidSummit and a few other conferences CEX but not unfortunately podcast movement.

I will be at CEX so we can. All right, see you there.Justin Moore, thank you so much A for an amazing book and just doing an amazing brain dump of all your History and everything you've known and putting it into a great book. And thanks for your time today, dude.

I super appreciate the opportunity. It was a blast.

Man. It is a great book. I like the line, even though it's not his line. But I love it. You either win or you learn.And so again, if you are someone who's looking to partner with companies, I strongly urge you to go buy sponsor Magnet. Again, links in the show notes, but I will give you an example.I ran a campaign, an email campaign about an online live weekly class, I guess cohort is the fun word for it. And I sold some seats, which is good, but I didn't sell as many as I had hoped.And so I'm working with a coach right now and he said we'll send a survey out that just simply says, you know, why didn't you buy it and what would you like to learn in the future? And I kind of felt like it was like, why didn't you buy my stuff? And instead I found out that at least on my email list, nobody's looking to launch.Well, I shouldn't say nobody.Less people than I thought were looking to launch a podcast in six weeks and they gave me some great feedback on what they'd like to learn in the future. So this is a case. Where did I win? Well, a little bit, but did I learn? Oh yeah, a whole lot.And I say all the time, find out what your audience wants and give it to them.They'll be very happy, especially if you can save them some time, some money if you make them laugh, you know, the old laugh, cry, think grown, educator, entertain. Yeah, do that. And they'll like you and chances are they'll tell a friend, hey, hey. You should listen to this.This is a really good podcast, but I can't wait to see Justin at cex.And speaking of being on the road in the future, we've got a great conversation with a behind the scenes look at being a producer on Sirius Satellite Radio with David Hooper. Also some weird things in the news.I don't know if it's weird, but in the UK, Spotify and I believe YouTube was included with this, where you're going to have to be age verified. In other words, you have to be 16 to listen to Spotify. That's interesting and that could put a kibosh on your download numbers.But really, I don't know. I'm pretty sure 15 year old kids know how to work a VPN. And also when there's 8 billion episodes published every day, who's gonna police that stuff.Holy cow. But they'll be interesting to watch.I kind of applaud the fact that they're trying to get younger kids off their phone, because I'm just not sure it's a great influence, but that I think that genie's out of the bag. But thanks so much for listening to the show.If you have any ideas you would like to hear on the show, because then nobody goes, oh, you've probably talked about everything. Well, maybe not. Or maybe it's time to bring a topic back. Feel free to go out to schoolofpodcasting.com contact and leave me a message.Again, thanks so much. Until next week. Take care. God bless. Class is dismissed. If you like what you hear, then go tell someone.