Transcript 0:00 Welcome to the Newsletter Operator Podcast. I'm Matt McGarry. And I'm Ryan Carr. And in this podcast, we teach you exactly how to build, grow, and monetize your newsletter. 0:08 We'll talk to the best newsletter operators, creators, and media founders in the space, breaking down their strategies and growth tactics. Awesome. Let's get into it. 0:16 [upbeat music] Hey, welcome to the podcast, Justin. How's it going? What's going on, guys? Stoked to be here. Yeah, thanks for coming on, man. 0:33 Tell us, like, who you are, what's the name of your, your business or newsletter, whatever you call it, and what do you do? All right. My name is Justin Moore. 0:40 I'm the founder of Creator Wizard, and I'm a sponsorship coach, so I help people learn how to find and negotiate their dream partnerships. 0:48 So how this started, I-- my wife and I have been on YouTube since two thousand and nine actually, so we've been on [chuckles] social media a really long time and have done hundreds, over five hundred sponsorships ourself personally over the years. 1:00 But then I also ran an influencer marketing agency for about seven years kind of on the other side of it, so I was in the kinda boardrooms with these big brands, these big advertisers, uh, and agencies trying to decide how to spend millions of dollars now across, let's say, a hundred creators or something. 1:16 So it's like a totally different ballgame, totally different conversation, platform strategy, types of partners they wanna work with, and so on. 1:22 And so I developed this kind of really interesting two sides perspective to partnerships, and so about three years ago, I, I decided to start educating people on all the mistakes that I just saw people making, you know, uh, when they would interact with a brand or negotiate, 'cause I was on the receiving end of this running the agency, right? 1:38 And so honestly, dude, just started making some YouTube videos for fun to, you know, how do you negotiate? How do you, like, price a brand deal? How do you do all this type of stuff, right? 1:46 And that has blossomed into a fully-fledged business where I'm now I have courses in coaching and, you know, tons of media, newsletter, all sorts of different avenues. 1:55 I was also in a metalcore band growing up, so, like, that definitely probably, like, impacted, like, my ability to be fun on camera maybe. But, uh, yeah, that's, that's my quick story. That's awesome. That's awesome. 2:06 What's the metalcore band name just for, for those listening? The metalcore band's name was Othello after the Shakespearean play. That was a fun chapter in my life for sure. Love that. 2:15 [chuckles] You definitely have a lot, lot of great personality on camera. You do a good job with that. 2:18 I'm trying to learn that too, so I'm, like, very scale myself and just doing the written content, finally doing, like, more video stuff soon. But, uh- I got you. 2:24 It's cool that you've been on both sides of the marketplace, so to say, 'cause that gives you, like you said, a unique perspective. I've kind of had the same experience in a different way. 2:32 So tell us, I wanna talk a ton about sponsorships and strategy there, but I also wanna talk about how you grew your media and education company to where it is now. So give us a breakdown of, like, where it is now. 2:42 Like, how many newsletter subscribers do you have, what the engagement looks like there, and what the business model is for this. 2:49 So, like, you have a couple different products, so just give us an overview of the media side. Sure. So I've got thirty-three thousand creators on my newsletter now. 2:57 Uh, and this started it in June twenty twenty, so it's been about three and a half years or so. And, uh, I have a YouTube channel. I've got social media. I've got a private community. 3:07 And so the way in which the-- well, we'll talk about the newsletter 'cause this is inside baseball here, is that, man, every single call to action in every single social media post I would make, YouTube video, anytime I was guesting on any sort of podcast, whenever the g- the, the host would ask at the very end, "So Justin, where can people connect with you and learn more about you?" 3:26 I would say, "creatorwizard.com/join." [chuckles] That's the opt-in to my newsletter. I would say that. I would not say my social media handles. I would not say anything. I would not dilute the CTA, [chuckles] right? 3:36 And so every... uh, like, this has really been the playbook over the last three years is that it's been a game of inches for me. 3:43 It's never been like, "Oh, I was on someone's podcast, and I gained, like, five thousand subscribers." It's never been that for me. It's always been this grind over three and a half years. 3:50 There's no, like, hook or l- or, or like hack or, like, you know, template or, like, something that, that someone told me that, like, it made it grow overnight. 3:57 It's just been this kind of just, like, y- a- a- that and then also just kind of doing stuff like this, being on podcasts like this, going and speaking to someone's, like, private membership with, like, ten people there. 4:07 And so a lot of it's been kind of through this, like, these very small, intimate things and then, you know, kind of word has, has traveled from there. 4:13 And so that- that's, you know, I've got the, you know, video content obviously. I've got the short form stuff. I've got the newsletter that's now four times a week. Matt, uh, as of last week, I'm now doing four, four... 4:24 well, three broadcasts and one nurture sequence, and so it's, it's a lot. But I definitely look at my newsletter as, like, kind of the engine behind everything that I'm doing in the business. 4:33 So in addition to all the stuff that I'm putting out on the newsletter, let me quickly share, like, the newsletter I'm sending you paid sponsorship opportunities. 4:40 So, [chuckles] like, it, it's, yeah, it's like, it's like, it's a very high value newsletter. 4:43 But in addition to that, it's also, like, you know, videos and how to be a n- better negotiator and better partner and all that stuff. 4:49 And so there I, I very, I skew very heavily on kind of, like, the I'm just gonna, like, pummel you with, like, value before I ever pitch you, like, my courses or my coaching or anything like that. 5:00 The value prop is really important. I think that's what's helped you grow. I mean, that's kind of obvious, but I think a lot of newsletters miss that. 5:07 It's like, "Join my newsletter," like Matt's weekly newsletter, and you get my analysis and my news, and it's all about, like, me. 5:13 But tell us the value prop of your newsletter again, and I think that's g- We'll, we'll break that down, right? 5:18 So let's talk about what failed first because I think that's interesting is that when I started the newsletter, I was like, "Lead magnet. 5:24 Let me go lead magnet crazy," 'cause that's what, like, I thought you were supposed to do, right? Is like... 5:28 And so I, every time I would make a new m- uh, YouTube video, I would make, I would spin up a new, you know, landing page in ConvertKit, and I'd make a little checklist, and I'd be like, "Your money management checklist for creators," or, "Your pricing brand new pricing checklist," or w- right? 5:40 I would spin up all these things. And growth was just kind of like, it was like this. Sorry, I just had to use that one. You guys didn't know I had a soundboard, did you? But that was how it felt for the longest time. 5:51 It was just like a wet noodle. It was, like, not interesting or exciting. 5:54 And my wife and I received so many inquiries, like, just we've been doing this for so long that, like, we know so many people, and we're on all these different platforms, and, like, we just get a, we see a ton of deal flow.As well as I was running the agency, so I know a lot of people. 6:08 And so I'm just... I, I'm kind of in this, like, I've just been in this industry, this ecosystem for a long time, that I see so many deals. 6:13 But the vast majority of them are kind of at a below a threshold that, like, we, we just wouldn't entertain for whether it, it's just not the right fit or the not the right compensation level or something. 6:24 And so I would just be deleting these emails, like, over and over. All these emails were getting every day, every week, I was just deleting them. 6:29 And then one day I was like, "Hmm, what if I just took these links and put them in my newsletter?" [laughs] Right? These, like, application links where it's like brands are saying, "We want... 6:38 We're trying to find creators, like, partner with. We'll pay them," right? And so one day I made this, like, little section of my newsletter that was like brand deal opportunities. And, like, people went nuts. 6:47 They were just like, "What?" Like, "You're sending me brand deal oppor- paid? Are these real? Can I click on these and apply them?" Like, yeah. 6:54 And so, like, it was very clear right away, like, right when I started doing this, that this was, like, really exciting, and so I just did a hard pivot. I was like, all right, screw the checklist. No more checklist. 7:03 You know what the value prop for the newsletter is? I'm gonna send you paid brand deal opportunities every week. That's the value prop. No lead magnet, nothing. You want... 7:09 Hey, if you want paid brand deal opportunities, sign up. If n- okay, if you're not signing up, I don't see why you wouldn't, but okay, fine. Your, your loss. Right? 7:16 So I, I pretty much [laughs] just, like, did this hard pivot and, and that was when things I think really took off. 7:21 And did you have any problems with the lead magnets where people might have been coming for the lead magnet but not engaging with the emails? Was that a problem or was that... Did they work okay for you? 7:29 I mean, it was okay, but it just, like, the volume was so low. Like, I, you know, I was just... I was getting maybe five to 10 people a day. It wasn't, wasn't anything meaningful. 7:37 I mean, that, that's not, not, not meaningful, but it's like it wasn't, like, you know, a ton, right? It was just like, it seemed like people were just kind of interested, not that interested. And so it, it really... 7:47 Or, or honestly, in the early days, I was not very sophisticated with, like, analyzing the engagement of my subscribers and stuff, totally honestly. And so I'm not sure, but probably not. 7:56 [laughs] And I like your newsletter concept. 7:58 This is kind of like a lead magnet you get every week, and so people are expecting to get it and open it and engage with it, and where it's like if you just send me 20 brand deal opportunities, I would open that PDF, and I would use that, and I probably wouldn't really check your emails again. 8:11 Well, that, that's the, that's the big insight for me is that it's actually the promise of future content is what you should be leading with, not this high-sugar content checklist or downloadable or something. 8:24 And yeah, you could get a, get a big influx of people to join, but, like, are they really gonna be that engaged or excited to see your name again in their email next week? I don't, I don't know. 8:31 So, so I, I really feel as though positioning it as, like, it's not the thing I'm sending you, it's the thing I'm gonna send you every week. 8:38 If you were to break down your growth sources, like where you're getting subscribers from now over time, what does that look like? Like, what, what channels are you utilizing? What does the mix look like? 8:48 So I've d- I've actually experimented with this heavily over the last three years. 8:52 So I w- for a long time, I was doing paid sponsorships, so I was, like, paying to do ads in other people's newsletters, like, that were kind of creator-focused. Made a bunch of mistakes there we could talk about. 9:01 You know, like, not really u- fully understanding, like, the demographic/psychographics of some of these newsletters that I was sponsoring. Let me give you a quick anecdote 'cause this is interesting. 9:10 I think it's like, you know, there are certain newsletters in the creator economy or kind of influencer marketing sphere where it's like it seems like it would be a good fit to sponsor, but what ultimately I realized what it was actually a bunch of industry folks on that newsletter, not actual creators or influencers, which is what I'm... 9:25 who I'm trying to reach. And so you actually do need to be quite mindful about understanding the audience persona, even though if on the surface it looks like a good fit, you know? So I've done paid sponsorships. 9:36 You know, I've done, like, paid recommendations stuff, like through SparkLoop, a couple thousand bucks a month for, for a good while doing that. I've done paid Facebook ads. 9:44 Matt, I actually hired you to do a session to help me set up my paid stuff for, for Facebook and Instagram, and that, that has worked really well. 9:50 Now I'm on the Creator Network on ConvertKit, so doing recommendations there. And then just again, the same, this, you know, podcasts, you know, all my content, you know, YouTube, all this stuff. 10:01 I, I honestly, like, if I look at my traffic sources, it's like, it's just, like, equal everywhere. It's like n-no one channel. 10:06 I would say actually the Creator Network is, is definitely a standout source on a consistent basis for me, but everything else is pretty much equal. Tell us about the Creator Network then. 10:15 'Cause this is pretty new and a lot of people don't know about it yet. So how are you using that? Any tips for other people that wanna use that to get more growth from it? What would you recommend? Yeah. 10:24 So Creator Network is a program that ConvertKit has. Full disclosure, ConvertKit is a sponsor of mine, but I'm a huge authentic fan of them. Basically, it's like you create a profile. 10:34 They have a kind of a searchal- searchable da- like a directory of, like, creators basically, or anyone who has newsletters on their platform. And you can essentially swap recommendations with other people. 10:45 So you don't have to swap, by the way. 10:47 You could just, like, choose to, to, uh, recommend anyone that you want, but you do have to, to be able to, to be eligible to be recommended by other people, you also have to recommend someone else at least. 10:57 And so, you know, the... what you'll wanna do is, like, go and find other newsletters that are kind of in a similar niche to you. 11:03 I've found, like, just reaching out to them directly and saying like, "Hey, you know, I, I would love to recommend you," or, "I just recommended you. Would you like to swap recommendations?" 11:10 This is something that, you know, is encouraged to try to make sure that you're serving the right, the s- the same audience. They do have a paid recommendations feature. 11:18 Obviously, they now own SparkLoop, and so, you know, they're heavi- more heavily integrating that. 11:22 I actually got one tip that I can give about something that's actually moved the needle for me was from Chanelle, friend of the pod I, I'm, I know. Chanelle from Growth in Reverse. 11:31 She did a thread on, on X around how to optimize your profile in the Creator Network, and this was actually really smart. 11:37 It was, like, ensuring that the little blurb in your headline and your description about, like, who you are and what your newsletter is about is, like, punchy, right? 11:45 It, like, it looks like almost like a landing page where the value prop is there. It's not just, like... 'Cause by default it's not that. 11:50 It's, like, your name or your newsletter name, and then it's just, like, it's just not optimized. 11:54 And so, like, there's a little bit of strategy that you can do there in terms of, like, making sure that, like, someone who doesn't know you would look at that profile and be like, "Oh, I wanna recommend this person. 12:02 This seems like a good fit," you know? There's, like, kind of small tweaks that I've made there. 12:05 I will, I will say, though, that, like, I think I have caught the tidal wave a little bit-Because I'm a meta creator in that I, like, serve other creators. 12:15 So, like, a lot of people think like, "Oh, yeah, I wanna recommend Justin," like, that's a good fit, right? And so it's not the same for everyone. 12:21 Like, a food blogger or something is, like, you're not gonna be as recommended heavily as, like, maybe me or something. So I'm, I'm very self-aware of that. That, that's good to have. I have that same kind of [laughs]... 12:30 effect with my stuff where, like, I have a newsletter about newsletters, so people that are in the newsletter open it at a higher rate 'cause, like, they're, they're nerds like that [laughs] like I am, so. Right. Right. 12:38 I'm kinda worried about some people managing these relationships. Like, if so- if you're sending someone, like, 1,000 subscribers a month and they're sending you 100, like, do you just pause that? 12:46 Like, how do you manage those relationships where there's... It's never gonna be, um, 50/50, right? It's always gonna be off a little bit. Do you think about that? I, I do not think about it at all. 12:56 I spend zero time thinking about it. I'm very much... Like, I have an abundance mindset for all this stuff. 13:03 Even in the beginning days, early days, like, if I saw someone who had a cool newsletter or a cool project they were working on, even if they had, like, 500 subscribers on their newsletter and I was at 8,000 or something, I was just like, "Hey, let, let me... 13:14 Like, let's do a swap." Like [laughs] let's do a swap. Like, that's 500 people that I may not have on my list even though I had 8,000. I've literally never thought about it. 13:22 And I just think that that is a distraction, and boring, and a scarcity mindset view to look at things, and like, "Oh, I need to, like, track to make sure it's, like, equal." 13:30 I just, I think it's like spend, so spend time on, like, more useful things. [laughs] I agree. 13:36 There, there is some point where I think maybe if you're doing a lot of paid acquisition, it's like I'm investing so much to grow my newsletter- Oh, paid acquisition is a different story. Sorry. 13:43 Yeah, like, definitely agree. Like, like from a, from, from a paid acquisition perspective, like, if you are compensating, uh, like, it's like a compensated thing, then you do need to, like, know your numbers of course. 13:52 But I, I thought you were mentioning just in terms of the organic side. No, I'm really talking about both. When you do paid ads, do you use the recommendation network, or do you use SparkLoop to do paid recommendations? 14:02 So when I was doing it... Uh, I- it's paused right now, so I'm not doing it because I've diverted that budget into cold traffic to my webinar, which we can talk about if you're interested. 14:11 [laughs] Um, but, um, I was doing, I was doing SparkLoop paid, paid recommendations at that time. So I was a- I was a- I was actually, uh, it was kind of an arbitrage. I was making money. 14:19 It was profitable for me, so I was acquiring people super cheaply with the funnel that you helped me set up, Matt. I swear he's not paying me, guys, anyone listening. 14:27 But if you probably sh- you- he probably should pay me. And yeah, I was acquiring him at like, I don't know, a buck, a buck 50, two bu- two bucks, like, max. 14:34 And on average I, I was making about three bucks on the SparkLoop backend, so it was pretty sweet. It makes sense to do it that way. 14:41 So, like, free recommendations for organic, paid recommendations if you're doing paid ads to grow your list. It seems like a good, good way to think about it. I'm curious. 14:50 L- so you mentioned y- you've kind of described yourself as a meta creator. You, you have a niche audience that you're trying to reach. 14:57 How has that been a challenge from the paid growth perspective running something like Facebook Ads, running, running on ad platforms like that? 15:04 And what tips do you have for folks that are maybe targeting a similarly defined niche in, in approaching paid ads? I'll be honest, it's been tough. Like, it's been, you know... We've tried a lot of different things. 15:17 I would say the, the best lever though has been the creative, not necessarily the targeting. The targeting has been, you know... It's we've found some pockets of success for sure. 15:27 You know, definitely, like, segmenting by, like, niche, you know, type of creator, you know, in terms of, like, food creators and, you know, fitness creators and, like, you know, labeling it. 15:37 'Cause, you know, when I look at my business, like, the types of folks that I help, it's usually people who are making, like, brand-friendly content, right? So travel, hospitality, food, tech, you know, home. 15:47 Like, you could, you could think of the, the, the, [laughs] you know, the, the ideas. And so we use those kind of niches or those verticals to, for targeting. 15:53 But it's really the creative, varying up the creative to ensure that, like, you know, we're finding the right pockets of audience who are resonating with that creative. That's been the biggest lever for us, I would say. 16:03 Makes sense. And one, like, quick note on your Facebook ads. W- we've had some, like... When we set up your ads, they were pretty simple and basic- Mm-hmm... 16:10 but the value prop of your newsletter was so good, I think that made our CPA in Facebook really good. I think it was about a dollar. Mm-hmm. 16:17 So that just speaks to, like, if you have a great value proposition for your newsletter, everything's gonna be easier in your business. [laughs] So it all really comes back to that. Right. 16:24 I wanna shift focus to monetization. So you do a lot of stuff. Like, you have sponsorships, coaching offer, course, I believe. 16:31 Maybe break down what, what the different ways your business makes money are, and maybe even if you can give us a pie chart of, like, what's, what, what revenue streams you have, and we'll go from there. Yeah. 16:42 So everything flows from the newsletter, right? Like, that, that's really my big, my big source. 16:47 We are now, as you mentioned, we are now doing sponsorships on the newsletter, which was not something that we did as of, like, a year ago or nine months ago maybe. 16:54 That's now almost a 20K a month revenue stream for us, so pretty sweet [laughs] because that, we didn't have that before. So that's sweet. 17:00 And then, but really the core of the business is my education, so the courses and the coaching. So I have a course that's called Brand Deal Wizard, and it's, like, I have two versions of it. 17:09 I have an on-demand version and a co- a live cohort one that I teach three times a year. 17:13 You know, the goal of that program is basically to help you create a, a, a system to earn, you know, lucrative, consistent income from sponsorships rather than just, like, waiting for these one-off deals to land in your inbox. 17:25 And so we go through everything noticeable to pitching, negotiating, the actual execution phase, post-campaign reporting. 17:33 You know, and I work with both owned platform creators like newsletter operators, bloggers, podcasters, et cetera, but also social media creators. So it's not just, like, influencers, by the way. 17:41 And so, so that's really been m- I would say kind of my signature offer for the last couple years. Starting to dabble into the on-demand version, which is less. It's 1,500 instead of 3,000, which is the cohort version. 17:55 And so that's also a new thing as of, like, six months ago. After I created the signature program, I was like, "Okay, this was an aspirational thing." 18:02 I have a lot-- It was more of an intermediate to advanced level offer. And I thought, I have all these people who are more introduc- like, beginner. They're be- kind of beginner creators. 18:11 They haven't done a lot of partnerships. And so I'm not serving them right now because I don't have kind of a lower ticket offer thatCould help them essentially. And so this is what I did. 18:19 I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna create this program called Gifted to Paid," where it's like all these people, they have all these like free product offers in their inbox, like, "Oh, here's this free thing," and like, "Talk about it on your Instagram or TikTok or something." 18:30 And like how do you convert that into a paid partnership? This-- That was the idea with the program, and I created it. I did the whole thing. 18:36 You know, I spent a ton of time developing it, hired copywriters, did the whole thing, and it, and it did pretty well. It, it did pretty well. But what I ultimately found was that people were confused. 18:45 They were like, "Which one do I buy? I, I don't, I don't know, I don't know which one I buy." 18:49 And so this, this v- this confusion was having an impact in terms of cannibalizing enrollments for the, for the different programs. 18:55 And so I ultimately decided to stop selling the lower ticket thing and wrap it in as a bonus into the signature offer. So, so now I no longer have that. 19:04 So I've got the, that signature program, and then a relatively new offer on the back end, which is called my Wizards Guild program, and this is asynchronous sponsorship coaching. 19:14 When I ran the a- the influencer agency, and I interacted with so many different talent managers and brokers and agents and all this stuff, their model was like they don't eat unless they get their twenty percent of, you know, their, that person's on their roster of their, their deal. 19:30 And so I always thought that that model was shitty because it was like oftentimes... 19:35 And we even personally had experiences being in various like networks and stuff like that as, as creators, where we felt pushed into certain deals or just it felt like it wasn't great or just like we felt like if we didn't take it, then they would like not send us more work. 19:50 It was this really weird dynamic. And so, uh, I never really like was down with that. And so I was like when I started this, this education stuff, I was like, "I'm gonna do a different model." 19:58 And so this asynchronous coaching is the pitch is basically a thousand bucks a month. 20:03 We are, uh, on speed dial for you twice a week basically, and we're gonna help you negotiate all these deals that are in your, you know, in your inbox or in your pipeline, and you keep everything. 20:12 We're not gonna take a cut. Like we're, we're... It's like financial advisory. It's like assets under management or fee only, right? 20:19 Like this is the kind of the parallel that I draw, and I think it's a pretty compelling pitch because it's like again, the people who are in this program that we have right now, they're making six figures plus, and so it's like paying us 10K a year, if you commit to annually, it's 10K a year, like to keep everything basically and just have us in their speed, on speed dial. 20:35 It seems like a pretty cool value prop. And so I'm actually thinking that that may become the core offer eventually, but I don't know. I'm, I'm like, I'm just, I'm baring it all for you guys. I don't know. Yeah. 20:46 And you, and you're, you're ma- you're growing really fast, but all this changes as you grow. Out of those three things, what's the, the biggest one? Is it like one that's like far and ahead? 20:54 Is that the, the course, or is it- It, it's the courses. Yeah, the courses. Talk to us about how you sell that or... 'cause a lot of people really suck at this [chuckles]. You know what I mean? 21:03 It's like selling a, a course that's over a thousand dollars, that's, that's a hard thing to do. 21:08 So what type of like marketing funnel or sales method has worked for you to get people to get your newsletter subscribers to buy the course? Not only is my course not a thousand, it's three thousand for the cohort. 21:18 I, I like, I, I, for the longest time, that's all. I didn't even have the evergreen. It was, it was the only way you could pay me was this three thousand dollar cohort. 21:24 Well, initially it was, it was cheaper initially, and I raised the price, but I've never had sales calls either. I've always sold it directly off the newsletter. 21:31 Um, and this always blew people's mind, and they're like, people have always said there's like this like threshold, like after 2K, it's like really hard to sell something unless you have like sales calls and stuff like this, and I was just like, "Uh, it seems like it's going pretty well for me." 21:41 But honestly, the, the, it was just like obscene amounts of value. 21:45 Just like I, I, on my-- If you go and look, for example, my YouTube channel, like I publish like real coaching calls, public coaching calls on there where you can get massive amounts of value. 21:55 You sit and listen to me for hours and hours, like helping other people and all that stuff too. And so really, it's like people have pre-qualified themselves when they decide to join. 22:04 And so if you're on my newsletter, most of those people have like watched a lot of my YouTube videos. 22:08 And so I think this is one other argument for any newsletter operators that might be listening of having a secondary platform where you may be able to deliver more value. 22:17 Maybe it's a YouTube channel, maybe it's a podcast, maybe it's a fricking TikTok. I don't know what it is. 22:22 But it's like allowing people to have the multiple touch points to interact with you just to honestly time in ears. 22:29 I, I, that, that's a really-- it's a hard, uh, thing to describe, but like the value of that, uh, in terms of like someone developing their know, like, and trust factor with you, it's, it's immeasurable. 22:39 And so I don't know what that looks like depending on, on the, you know, the different businesses that, that folks run. But like to me, that really was the playbook. 22:45 It was just like, I'm gonna give away massive amounts of value. I'm not gonna charge for basically anything, and like, "Hey, if you wanna join this program..." 22:52 So I always say this, I think it's like the, the, the worst sales pitch ever, but I'm just like, I don't care if ninety-nine percent of people never pay me. 22:58 I, I say this all the time on my videos, my YouTube [chuckles] and podcasts, all that stuff, 'cause it's true. Like, I'm not... Like I mentioned, my wife and I, we have this really robust business. It's awesome. 23:06 Don't need the money. 23:07 But it's like I really b-believe that I wanna, like I feel like I wanna educate the next generation of, of, of creators and, and media operators to like, you know, do better at this stuff 'cause it can have such a profound impact on your life and your business. 23:20 And so I think that flippancy kind of about the, about it, you know, has, you know, just doesn't seem like a sales pitch, I think. Yeah. It's like the abundance mindset that you mentioned earlier. 23:31 And then I guess tactically speaking, you were, you were saying that everything flows from the newsletter. 23:37 What does that-- What does the actual sales process from free subscriber to the newsletter to one of these courses look like? Like, are you using placements within the newsletter? 23:45 Do you have email marketing automation set up? And of those placements, like what is the most successful for you? Sure. 23:52 So the, the model for the last two years before I, I launched the evergreen version of the program was very much a cart open, cart close, ten-day email sequence type approach. So-Do the course three times a year. 24:05 Uh, we would, you know, lead up and do some, you know, hype around the, the enrollment or the cart opening, essentially. We'd do, you know, daily emails for ten days, then the cart closes and, and that's it. So it was... 24:16 It was very much a kind of a traditional email sequence. Have started to get more sophisticated with, with that now that we have the evergreen program. 24:23 So the funnel for that one now looks like we run paid ads, cold traffic to a, a evergreen, a webinar registration page. Free webinar, about sixty, seventy minutes long. 24:34 I do a lot of education in the first portion of it, and then at the end I present the offer if you wanna join the program. 24:39 Then, you know, they receive a, a drip campaign, like a kind of a nurture campaign over the, over the next couple of months while they're in the program. 24:45 And so yeah, I have a lot of automation sequences, that type of stuff, you know, wired up. I recently became the first beta customer of, uh, Brennan Dunn's new, uh, email agency called Slice and Dice. Shout out to... 24:59 big shout-out to Brennan, he's a good friend. And his mo- Th-they're helping me implement a lot of kind of under-the-hood stuff that I've just I've pushed out for the longest time. 25:08 And so Ryan, your question around, like, how do you, like, you know, plug it in the course, this is one othe- one thing we're working on right now is this kind of, like, personalized recommendation engine so that someone is gonna be pitched the exact thing that they need basically d- based on what they've purchased in the past and if, you know, if they haven't joined the master class and they're... 25:26 You know, it's all this logic. It's like, okay, if they're not an alumni, they haven't watched the master class, or they're not in the c- ongoing coaching program, pitch them the, the free master class. 25:35 You know, so this type of logic. And so that's kind of the stuff that we're building out right now. I love that. That sounds much more sophisticated than probably the average newsletter, like, upsell placement. 25:44 So yeah, it sounds like it'll be successful for you guys. I hope so. I don't know, man. I'm in the messy middle right now. Hopefully. 25:52 [laughs] Well, tell us so far which one-- If you could even give, like, a revenue percentage, like X percent is from the cohort-based course and X percent is from the on-demand course, what does that look like for you right now? 26:03 So I mean, you know, it wa- it was way massively skewed towards the cohort course for the longest time. 26:08 But this most recent cohort that I just wrapped, which was cohort 10, was actually a lot softer than any of the other cohorts in the-- in terms of enrollments because it's the first cohort that I've launched since the on-demand program was available. 26:23 And so I've had, you know, something like sixty or seventy on-demand enrollments in the last, you know, three or four months, let's say. 26:30 And so the percentage enrollments for the, for the on-demand program w-were significantly higher for the last, like, two months than the cohort was. 'Cause again, that's only, like, a f- it's a fixed period in time. 26:40 It's like you get people in, and then they graduate, and this type of thing. But the, man, that beauty of that, that evergreen program, it's like people... 26:47 For, for the longest time, I felt like, you know, the, the magic was in the cohort. 26:52 It was like, you know, I get to meet people, and accountability, and like the, you know, the breakout groups and guest expert s-sessions and all this stuff, right? And I really, really loved that. 27:00 And, and then I really came around to the belief that, like, if I really wanna have the largest impact that I want to, it is not reasonable to wait, like, make people wait three months to, like, get this knowledge. 27:11 Like, it's not... That's not... That's untenable, right? 27:15 Uh, and so I had to definitely restructure things in the business to make sure that I was, you know, still able to feel good about the value that we're providing to people even in an on-demand setting. 27:26 And so what that looked like for us, I kinda call it a hybrid setup, where, yes, the, the education is being delivered asynchronously, but there's still three months of office hour, live office hour support that they get access to when they join the evergreen version. 27:40 And so I just wanted to design something where there's still kind of a in-person touch point if, if, if they needed it. So, but yeah, I, I think the, the evergreen's gonna take over. 27:48 Like, I, I think, I think, in fact, I might stop doing three-a-year live cohorts. I think I might go down to either two or one just because I, honestly, I've seen the light. It's like I can still have the impact. 27:59 There's more predictable revenue. People are coming in all the time. It's ea- easier to forecast head count and revenue. 28:04 I'm gonna-- I'm writing a book, so, like, I'm, I'm probably gonna skip the winter cohort because I wanna have some space for that. So it just has opened up a lot of opportunities in the business, I would say. 28:13 That's, that's really great. One question on that is if you... Was the webinar a big unlock for you? W-Did you try and sell this on-demand course without the webinar, and did that work, or did that not work? 28:24 Um- Yeah, dude, it's a great quest- it's a great question 'cause, like, I'd never done a webinar before. 28:28 People, people were like m- had their minds blown that I was, like, s- doing this cohort program for years and, like, I had-- didn't even have a webinar. It was like there was no webinar. 28:37 It was just, like, the emails, right? When I decided to kinda restructure the program and create this on-demand version, the webinar kinda fu-funnel was, was very much something that came with that. 28:47 By the way, I wanna give a, a quick shout-out to Dorothy and my-- our partners over at Needle's Eye Media because they're the ones who helped me with all this and because I very much was, was not thinking about this. 28:56 But she actually took my course to learn how to get sponsorships for her newsletter 'cause she had a side gig [chuckles] with another newsletter. And so at the very end, it was, like, the, like, the softest sales pitch. 29:06 She was like, "You know, this course was amazing, and if you wanna, like, I-- if you may ever wanna have, like, a larger impact, I think I can help you 'cause this is what we do. 29:13 We run an agency that, like, [chuckles] scales up course creators and all this stuff too." So shout out to Dorothy. But yeah, this whole idea around creating the, the webinar, I was insistent. 29:20 I was like, "Okay, the webinar, it's gonna be I'm gonna go through my entire eight-step sponsorship wheel," because I have this methodology that I've created where it's, like, the eight steps: pitching, contract, you know, pitching, negotiating, contracts, concepts, production, feedback, publication, analysis, right? 29:33 It's, like, the eight steps. And so this is what I did in the webinar is I taught all those steps, right? And what we ultimately found was two things. 29:41 One, people walked away with that feeling like, "Holy shit, this is way too much work." [chuckles] That's number one. And the second thing was like, "Oh, I'm gonna... I got it now. I'm gonna go get... 29:49 I'm gonna go try it myself for six months." Those are the two kind of takeaways, I think, from that format of it, and people would ultimately come ba- You know, they... Like, I would have people who say, "Oh, I tried it. 30:00 It didn't work out. Like, what the heck?" And then they would ultimately join. "Oh, I get it now," you know, because they couldn't obviously get it all from just, like, forty minutes of training. 30:07 And so what I ultimately decided to do was retool the, the master class to be focused only on pitching because if I look at all the surveys that when people-- We have these, like, assessment tools where people rate themself on the different areas in the sponsorship wheel, and consistently, people are always rating themself the lowest on pitching and negotiating. 30:25 All the other stuff people are, like, pretty good.Other than analysis too. 30:28 But pitching, those are the lowest ones, and so I was like, "Okay, let me just, like, develop a kickass master class all around pitching," and then the transition is very easy after that. 30:36 It's like, "Hey, okay, you developed a great pitch, brand responded, now what? Join the program." We've seen a lot more success doing that. And so, man, it's, it's been a grind though, dude. 30:45 I thought, I thought it was gonna be like, "Oh, this is gonna be cool," like, it's gonna work right away and all this stuff. No, not at all. It's been a grind. But I'm, I still see the light. 30:52 I'm still, I'm still running towards the light. [chuckles] I love that. I think our audience especially could really benefit from your expertise. 31:00 I think we'd be doing them a disservice if we didn't talk about how to secure sponsors when we're talking to a sponsorship coach. 31:06 So, I mean, it's a question that Matt and I get a lot just working with newsletter operators and, and media companies. 31:12 Folks are always asking, you know, "I have this audience, they're engaged, maybe it's a valuable niche. How should I get started on reaching out to sponsors, securing sponsors?" 31:23 So I don't know, if you, if you could give a few, a few tips just to start, and then maybe we can dive a little deeper. All right. 31:28 What I'm about to say is going to piss off a lot of people and may even p- piss off the, uh, the hosts of this podcast. I don't know. We'll see. Anyone out there who has a place on your website 31:39 or a page in your media kit that lists how much it costs to do a sponsorship with you, you're making a huge mistake. You need to drag that page of your media kit into the trash can. 31:50 And here's the reason, is that when you are only looking at sponsorships from a inventory perspective or a CPM perspective, right? Which is how arguably, like, a some sponsors, they, they will... 32:03 that's what they'll lead with. They'll say, "Oh, how mu- you know, this is how much we're willing to pay," this type of thing, right? And so it makes sense why, why people, you know, do this. 32:10 But at least in my experience, you cannot price yourself in a vacuum. You do not know how much you are worth to the brand and to the company until you have a conversation with them about what their objectives are. 32:25 And so what I teach is that there are, there are three campaign goal types that every brand or company will have when they r- want to do a, a newsletter sponsorship or sponsorship of any kind. 32:36 The first is brand awareness, okay? This is where it's a new product launch, or maybe they're launching in a new territory. They were in the US, now they're launching in the UK. That's brand awareness, right? 32:45 The second is repurposing. And a repurposing campaign is where the primary reason that they actually wanna collaborate with you is to take your content and repurpose it in other ways. 32:56 If you're a newsletter operator, maybe that means reposting it on the company blog, or maybe it means running paid advertising. 33:02 Maybe you do have a, like a social media presence as well and your, you know, your name and likeness is something that they wanna leverage. Maybe they wanna run paid advertising with that. But that's, uh, repurposing. 33:11 And the third goal type is conversions, right? Where they do, they wanna drive sales, app downloads, trial signups for a software, whatever. Something very attributable and measurable. 33:20 And I think the biggest mistake that a lot of newsletter operators make is believing that conversions is the only thing that brands care about. 33:27 And i- it's been my experience, having done literally thousands of sponsorships at this point between my, my wife and I's business and the agency, that's not true [chuckles]. 33:35 There's lots of brands who have these larger goals where they're not obsessing over the click data or the open rate, or they're not, they're not looking at how many people are actually purchasing the, the item. 33:46 Really, they're just stoked that they got to this video from you in addition to the newsletter blast that they can, like, run paid advertising with. 33:53 And this is a huge unlock for a lot of people, because if you direct a sponsor, a prospective company or sponsor, to that area of your website where it's like, "Here's the five packages," it's like between five hundred and fifteen hundred or two thousand or whatever. 34:04 It's like, "Just pick one." And the company's thinking like, "Oh, okay. Well, we didn't want any of those things. 34:09 And in fact, we had a budget of 50K, but it seems like Matt and Ryan are saying that the, the only way that we can work with them is these five options. 34:16 So I guess, I guess either we're not gonna do this, or I guess we'll just pick package three or whatever," this type of thing. What I'm not saying is don't have packages. We can get into that. 34:23 You absolutely should have packages, but you should not lead the witness i- is the point. I just wanna start here, and I want some, I want some... That was a hot take, so I want some reactions here. 34:31 But, like, this, this is really how you go a- and unlock these, you know, massive sponsorship budgets without becoming a commodity. Yeah, that's- That's smart... I, I love that. 34:43 It's so counterintuitive to what people's initial idea of h- of how they should start off would be, which is build a deck, put it on the website, and start by focusing on the engagement or the conversions, which might, to your point, be setting them up for failure maybe. 34:58 Well, maybe break down an example of, like, we could take someone, even me for example, like a, a small newsletter audience or maybe a small social media audience of 10,000 to 50,000 people, and we've maybe done one or two sponsorship deals. 35:11 Like, how do we go and start a meaningful sponsorship business and find more sponsors? Well, one example that I like, like to give, 'cause this was, like, a, a really interesting example. 35:21 So I was on Nathan Barry's podcast from ConvertKit, and we talked about this similar thing, and he... 35:26 we did, like, kind of a real-life teaching example of a newsletter that he, uh, runs in partnership with a friend, and it's called From Boise. 35:33 It's like a local, hyper local newsletter sharing everything that's going on in the, in the city of Boise and events and, like, you know, human interest stories and, like, this type of thing. 35:43 And so we did the same kind of thought experim- experiment and, you know, at that time, I believe that they were, you know, they did have an Instagram audience as well. I think they had maybe 10,000. 35:55 They, they had also, you know, done paid ads to, to grow the newsletter as well. So they'd been doing a couple things, and they'd kind of dabbled in, in sponsorships. 36:02 I think that they were charging something like $400 per spot, per, per insertion. And we, we went on to talk, and he also had, you know, a place on the website on ConvertKit Commerce. 36:12 I was, like, making fun of him about this, but, like, that's one of the reasons why he was like, "Oh yeah, you can use ConvertKit Commerce to, like, book the ad, you know, ad spots or whatever." 36:19 And so I was like, "I know, Nathan. I know that that's how you wanna do it, but, like, hear me out. Let's talk about why that's not a good idea." 36:23 And so the example that we talked about was, okay, they did a sponsorship with the Boise Ballet.And the Boise Ballet came to them and said, "Hey, we wanna, you know, run a sponsorship in your, in your newsletter." 36:35 And we sent them a proposal, and they picked the top one, and it was like sixteen hundred or two thousand or whatever it was. And I said, "Okay, 36:41 what if instead of doing that, you had actually come to them and said, 'Hey, what is your goal, Boise Ballet?'" And they came back and said... This was like a year ago, and he, he said, "Oh, well, you know." 36:51 They came back and said, "Well, you know, the mask mandates are lifting. You know, we, we wanna get people to start thinking about coming back into the opera or the ballet, and, you know, this type of thing. 36:59 So it's, it's more of an awareness play. We don't necessarily care how many tickets you sell. 37:04 It's more about getting people, like, realizing that, that this is a thing that they can do with their family on a, on a Friday or Saturday night." 37:09 That is such a different goal than how many sales did you drive with that, you know, newsletter sponsorship from, from Boise? How many ticket sales did you, did you generate? That is totally different. 37:20 Now you, you could then come back to them and say, "Oh, so good to know that that's your goal. And, and so we could do the newsletter, but, like, here's some other ideas. 37:30 You know, we actually have this Instagram now with 11,000 people on it. They're, you know, super engaged. We can create some content over there, maybe do some paid advertising. 37:38 Hey, maybe we can do some strategy work for you because we have our finger on the pulse of w- of Boise residents. We know what, what makes them tick. We know what's going on in the community. 37:48 We can help you think of some other creative ways that you might be able to advertise or market your, your services." 37:53 And so this now becomes a ten, twenty, thirty thousand dollar engagement instead of a, oh, sixteen hundred dollar newsletter sponsorship, right? 38:01 And so to me, like, the biggest pi- I tell people all the time, "You're not just a creator, you're a consultant." 38:08 You can help the brands accomplish and companies accomplish these much larger and more ambitious things if you ask them what their objective are. 38:16 And if you don't, and if you don't care enough to ask, and if you don't know, then there's no way in which you can serve them in that much more comprehensive way. 38:23 And of course, this is assuming that you want to do these types of thing. If you're thinking, sitting here being like, "I don't wanna do that. I just wanna operate my newsletter," like, this type of thing, fine. 38:31 Leave a bunch of money on the table. It's no sweat off, you know, skin off my back. But I'm just saying, like, for those who are ambitious, for those who realize that, like, you don't... 38:38 You can make ten times the amount of money without the ten times the amount of work is what I'm saying. 38:42 Maybe tell us, for someone who has a newsletter, they have, like, these, what we call, like, a, a title placement or a native placement in the newsletter. 38:48 That's kind of like a default thing you would offer if you have a newsletter. 38:51 What are some other ideas of, like, types of sponsorships people could offer so they could sell these bigger packages or sell something that helps advertisers reach a different goal? Yeah. So again... 39:02 So okay, here's how I look at this, man. I don't just myopically look at the newsletter. When a sponsor comes inbound or we're pitching someone cold, the newsletter is only one arrow that I have in my quiver. 39:14 I have the podcast. I have my YouTube channel. I have my private community. I have me. I have me, which is an asset. I can come and cr- do a webinar for your customer's brand, right? 39:26 So there's all these, like, tactics, individual tactics that I have that could be potential solutions to a, to a partner. 39:34 And so if the only arrow in your quiver is a newsletter insertion, then yeah, it's gonna be har- you're gonna be commoditized. Sorry. Like, that's just what's gonna happen. 39:41 You're gonna be paying, you know, charging based on CPM. That's what's gonna happen. 39:45 But if you, if they come inbound and they say, "Here's our problem," you can say to this brand over here, "Oh, okay, good to know that that's your problem. Well, then here's what I'm gonna propose to you. 39:54 I'm gonna propose that I come and do a webinar for your customers. I'm gonna propose that you have your VP of Marketing come and do a webinar for people in our private community. 40:02 I'm gonna propose some podcast ad reads, and I'm gonna propose this other thing over here." Then brand over here, "Oh, that's so good to know that you're trying to do this. 40:09 Well, then newsletter sponsorships, that's gonna be perfect for you, 'cause you're looking to drive, you know, sign up registrations to this upcoming webinar. K- sounds good. Let's do a newsletter sponsorship." 40:16 So every- everything is bespoke, right? And so again, if you're sitting here thinking that the only inventory that you have is a newsletter placement, then yeah, it's gonna be really hard to upsell this type of stuff. 40:27 And so which is why I like to stretch people's brains around, like, you know, yeah, even though you may never thought that having a social media presence might be valuable, maybe it is. 40:37 Yeah, and that's what I wanna get at is, like, what are some of those other common things? So webinars is a big one, especially in B2B. 40:42 Maybe if you're gonna like list, list out a c- a couple of the common, I don't know what you would call it, placement services, sponsorships that, like, people could think about exploring so when the time comes, they, they have an idea about how to talk about these or what they could offer. 40:54 I, I just got done pitching this to two different sponsors of, like, I literally just did a brainstorming exercise in partnership with ChatGPT, by the way, um, of like, you know, talking about, okay, what the brand's goals are. 41:06 Here's the, kinda the different assets I have in my, my, uh, armory, and here's... You know, give me some other ideas. This is what I asked ChatGPT of, like, other things that I could do. 41:14 And so yeah, a lot of things we talked about, webinars, you know, sponsorships. 41:17 I, I do have this podcast called Creator Debates where every episode pits two high-profile creators against each other to debate a hotly contested topic in the creator economy. 41:27 So it's like a great, you know, avenue to, like, pitch sponsors. 41:29 "Hey, bring your VP of Marketing on, and we'll debate the latest and greatest, you know, like, you know, spiky point of view in, in your area or whatever," course creation or newsletter stuff or whatever. 41:38 So that, that's a cool thing to pitch. So, so not only guesting on the podcast, but sponsoring the podcast, right? 41:44 With whether it's ad reads, host-write ad reads, or, you know, maybe if it's a brand awareness campaign, Matt, you're gonna have a, a logo art on the, on the podcast cover art powered by brand. 41:55 That's a very big, valuable asset to, like, have something like that for a brand awareness, uh, type objective, right? So we've got the podcast. You know, I have my course sponsored, Matt, [laughs] right? 42:06 So, so this is another one, right? 42:07 It's like I ha- I had all these sponsors I was talking to, and they're like, "We really wanna get in front of your students, because those people have already illustrated that they're willing to pay for education and tools and services and stuff to grow their creator business. 42:20 That's the audience w- we wanna be in front of." And so I c- they kept asking me this, and I was like, "Mm, I don't really have anything yet." And so I finally just invented it. 42:28 I was like, "Okay, well, I just created something called the Rising Creator Grant."I have a bunch of people who are really deserving candidates to participate in the program, but they don't have the financial wherewithal yet. 42:42 And so, "Hey, brand over here, you pay for their seats to enroll. I will talk about you in the program. I'll do some social media promotion." Win, win, win. 42:51 I get more course enrollments, you get to be in front of an engaged audience, and this creator over here loves you now and is, like, your big evangelist on social media because they just got into free-- for free to the course because of you, right? 43:01 And so it's like boosting course enrollments. Um, that, that's, like, a, you know, a next level tactic. There's so many things, man. Like it- Those, those are good tactics. Yeah... 43:08 you're only limited, you're only limited by your own creativity. Here's another one. I was talking with a sponsor, and they kept saying... This is actually really relevant for, for this audience. 43:16 They kept saying, "Yeah, we've done a lot of newsletter sponsorships over the last couple of months, and it's okay, but it just feels like they disappear into the ether when it's gone, when it, when it's done," right? 43:27 And they just kept saying this on the, on the discovery call over and over. So I just, I wrote it down, I wrote it down. I went, "Okay, that's interesting." 43:32 And so when I was putting the proposal together, uh, for them, I said, "Okay, hey, look, I just created a new section of our website called Partners on our website," 43:42 where if you go there now, I password protected it with the name of the brand, I put their logo on it, I put, like, information about the thing that they wanted to promote, and I said, "Hey, let's, let's put this up there, uh, as evidence of, like, our partnership and, you know, it's something that's more permanent." 43:55 They saw that, they said, "Where do we sign?" So, so it's like, I invented that, right? And so I think this, this is, like, a really good example of how creative you can be in terms of, like... 44:05 'Cause that might just be the, the thing that gets it o- the deal over the line. Yeah. Let's, let's talk about generating demand for a second. We only have so much time, but... So Dan Barry asked a question. 44:17 One new problem he sees is how to stand out from the 50 app newsletters that reach out to an advertiser after they sponsor another newsletter or do another sponsorship campaign. 44:27 And so, like, how, how do we get the first conversation with sponsors i- in a crowded place like this? All right. The-- I love this question, okay? 44:35 Because this is the va- this is the biggest mistake that most people make, is they reach out and be like, "Hi, my name is Justin. I have this newsletter with thirty thousand subscribers. 44:42 Here's my audience demographics, here's my open rates, here's my clicks rate," blah, blah, blah. "Hey, love, would you be interested in sponsoring me?" Right? 44:48 It's this very, like, me, me, me, me, me needy approach, right? 44:52 And so it's no wonder that you're not able to stand out amongst the other fifty people that just, you know, that, that brand that ran in Morning Brew, right? 44:59 And so instead, I have a pitching methodology that I teach in my program called the ROPE method. R-O-P-E. Okay? 45:05 R stands for your pitch has to be relevant to a campaign that the brand either is running currently or has run in the past. 45:13 O stands for organic, meaning that you can tie your pitch back to organic work that you've already published, so let's say past editions of your newsletter. 45:22 P stands for proof, so you can sh- so you can, uh, help brands understand how you've helped other brands achieve results, and E stands for easy to execute when they say, "Okay, yeah, that sounds great. 45:33 This is interesting. Let's talk." And so the form that, let's say, this... Let's, so, okay, let, let's do a real life example. 45:39 So let's say I'm a random newsletter, B2B newsletter, give me like a s- more, more narrow thing that I'm trying to p- pitch Morning Brew. Like, let's, let's do this right now. 45:47 Um, ju- just to sponsor my newsletter, like I have fifty thousand subscribers. I want you [laughs]... Hon- honestly, the offer is on Surface Investigated. I, I want you to sponsor the newsletter. 45:55 We have, like, a one placement or, like, five placements a week, for example. So what is the, what is the... What type of newsletter do you have, though? I w- I need to know what type of newsletter this is. 46:04 This is a newsletter for marketers and founders. Are you j- Wait, is this your newsletter or a hypothetical one? No. Hy- hypothetical. We can do mine. I've [laughs]... Depends on which direction you wanna go in. 46:15 So there's a couple different things that you can do. 46:16 So, like, I wanna know, for example, if I'm going to, let's say, Morning Brew's Instagram page, or I'm going to Morning Brew's website, I wanna see, like, what is the, what is the thing that is the most important thing that's going on in their world. 46:31 I actually wanna go to their LinkedIn because, you know, that's like a, you know, for, for a newsletter like Morning Brew, you know, they're probably gonna be posting stuff on here, or even, even better, I wanna go and find out who the VP of marketing is at Morning Brew, and I'm gonna go see what they're posting on LinkedIn. 46:47 Maybe Morning Brew is promoting an upcoming event. I'm on their LinkedIn page. Recently, they just promoted a webinar in partnership with Jack Appleby, and it's called How to Get Promoted as a Social Media Manager. 46:59 This was a, this was a webinar that they were doing promoting on LinkedIn. So let's say we're sitting here in the beginning of October, this better be what you reach out and, and promote and, and, and ask to pitch. 47:10 You say, "Hey, I saw that you're running this webinar in partnership with Jack Appleby on how to get promoted as a social media manager. 47:16 I have a very engaged, you know, uh, cohort of my audience on my newsletter who is interested in this particular thing. I would love to help you spread the word about that." 47:24 And then you, and you said, "I've also been talking about, you know, the importance of moving ahead in your career," and then you, there's the O, the organic. You link a past edition of your newsletter, right? 47:33 So that's the, you know, illustrating that you have affinity, your audience has affinity for this particular thing. And then you say a- and then you say exactly what you're gonna do, by the way. 47:41 You could say, "Okay, I can do four newsletter insertions. I can, you know, promote it on my social media. I can get this turned around in the next ten days. 47:48 You know, happy to share results of how I've helped The Hustle [laughs] you know, you know, you know, to accomplish XYZ. Are you free on Thursday at ten AM to talk about this?" 47:55 So you're pitching them something relevant to them. It's not just, "Oh, w- which I would love to figure out ways to collaborate," right? It's like, you know, what's in it for them, basically. Yeah. 48:05 That's really smart, and you're backing it up with proof. That's, that's fantastic, Justin. Give us the call to action. Where can people find more about your stuff? All right. 48:11 Well, as I, as I mentioned before, I'm not gonna tell anyone anything else other than the newsletter, creatorwizard.com/join. 48:17 Four times a week, you'll get hilarious dad jokes and some brand partnership opportunities in your inbox. But yeah, honestly, like I'm, I'm here to serve. 48:25 Like I, I, I really view it as I have this like goal that I wanna help creators big and small land a million paid sponsorships by twenty thirty-two. 48:34 And so if that sounds like if you wanna be one of those million, like come on, creatorwizard.com/join. Awesome. We'll link it below, man. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, Justin. Thanks again for having me, guys. 48:44 [outro music] Thanks for listening. 48:47 If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow the Newsletter Operator podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and give us a five-star rating to help support the show. 48:57 If you wanna learn even more about how to grow and monetize a newsletter, go to newsletteroperator.com. 49:03 And if you'd like to work with Matt or Ryan directly, check the links in the description and apply to work with our agencies. 49:11 [outro music]
