A (4:33)

I'm doing great, man. I'm stoked to to hear that our last episode was in the top 10 of all the episodes you've ever done. And I think this is a great lesson that a lot of YouTubers don't think about the power of sponsorships. A lot of them are focused and obsessed with growth and numbers and increasing views. And that's all good. But how do we make this a sustainable career for yourself as a YouTuber financially? And I think that this is an under a topic that's not discussed enough. So I'm stoked to to chat about it today.

B (5:01)

I would agree it is a under discussed topic when it comes to podcast. And I listen to a lot of creator podcasts, watch a lot of creator content and again, you do such a good job of putting together just you had this method. And we'll talk about maybe a little bit today. We're going to be talking all about pitching today, about pitching yourself and putting yourself out there as a creator and just some things that you cover in the book and just in general of what you talk about in your programs. And so with that being the case, the tagline, I love the tagline. It says how to attract, price and execute your dream brand partnerships, which I just love that. So let's get into it. Let's just go ahead and go top down. If we're talking about pitching ourselves as creators, Whether we're on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram, whatever it is, what are the key things that we should be thinking about and should be doing from the get go and then we'll just go from there.

A (5:54)

Why don't we start at where do you need to be in terms of audience size or reach? I think this is like one of the first questions that people wonder when they're growing an audience is would brands even be excited about partnering with me? The first myth, I think is that you just have to wait for them to come to you. This is, I'll just keep building and then when I am worthy of collaborating with a brand, someone's going to reach out to me. That is the mindset for most YouTubers for, for most creators. And so I think it's most useful to talk at the beginning about the fact that there really is no minimum subscriber number or minimum viewership number that every single brand it's like this uniform threshold that every brand adheres to. I think probably the most challenging thing is that maybe one brand one time told you, oh, we only work with people who have x thousand number of subscribers or viewers or whatever. And then you just in your mind thought, I guess that's what every brand thinks. And so I just got to get to that point before I can start working with brand and brands. And the most important thing to understand is that every brand is different, especially if you are a creator who is in a very specific niche. This is a really important topic because I work with lots of different creators who have very specific expertise. For example, I have a creator who has a business called Digital Pathology Place. She is a physician or a veterinarian and she talks all about digital pathology. And so her, her posts, her videos, they're not doing hundreds of thousands of views, they're doing hundreds, maybe thousands of views. But who's her audience? It's doctors, it's lab techs, it's people, medical device manufacturers, it's people who are decision makers in this industry. And they're so excited to collaborate with her because there's not lot of places for them to market. And so this, it's a really important thing to understand is like the more niche that your top your content is, the lower the, the bar is in terms of what your overall audience size needs to be before you can start collaborating with, with brands. And so this is, I think this is the first most important place to start to understand, to give you the permission that like, hey, you don't need anyone. Like you can just start reaching out to brands regardless of where you're at, especially if you're more niche.

B (8:04)

Yeah, for so long it was said on these podcasts that hey, you needed to reach a certain threshold of viewer count per subscriber numbers or whatever it may be. But all it takes is one sponsor willing to give you one deal and then you're good to go. So it really doesn't matter the size of your audience. What matters is the trust they have in you. I call it here on this show, trust, currency. I call it that trust. The currency that you've created and built up over time of whether you're a doctor or someone creating vet content like what you're talking about. And you have 900 views on a video. If seven of those 900 views buy a high ticket item, then that deal deal is worth it for both the sponsor and you. So now we've talked about where you should be or at least a Mentality of, okay, this is where you should be. The next step is, okay, Justin, get to these people. How do I get and knock on the digital doors? Or do I send a cold email? Do I find them on LinkedIn or all of the above? Talk about just the overarching kind of themes that you're teaching your students.

A (9:08)

Yeah. Can we take a step back here? Because this question is premature.

B (9:12)

Okay.

A (9:13)

Because the better question is, what brands should I be collaborating with?

B (9:16)

There we go.

A (9:17)

This one actually holds up a lot of people because the wrong answer is the brands and products that I authentically love and use.

B (9:24)

Yeah.

A (9:25)

Most people start there. They're like, oh, if I use it, that's what I'm going to lead with when I reach out. Oh, I've used your brand or your software for three years. I'd love to collaborate. And then you never hear back. The brand goes to you and you feel sad and maybe you turn into a hater of the brand. You're like, how dare they never. Like what? Not respond to me. And there's actually another step here that's in between actually reaching out to the brands that you love. It's Dusty. We need to learn more about our audience. And I'm not talking about demographics. Demographics is table stakes. I can go into my YouTube analytics and I can learn about their geographies and their ages and their sexes, and that's fine. And that's good data. The more important thing that we need to learn, it's what is keeping them up at night? What are their problems? What types of jobs do they have? Are they married? Do they have kids? How are they interacting and consuming my content? Are they in line at Starbucks, scrolling for two minutes and watching 30 seconds of my video? Are they sitting down every Sunday and catching up on the last four podcast episodes that you publish? Jesse, what brands and products and services are they using and loving right now? This is. These are, like, surveys that you need to be sending out to learn more about them, to get a colorful texture of what I call the psychographics of your audience. Because that. Especially that last question, like, what brands and products are they using and loving or interested in? How much more powerful of a pitch is it? If you are armed with this survey data, where you know that 40% of these survey respondents says, oh, I'm having issues with bookkeeping. We're small businesses or something, and we're having this challenge. Even if you do not create content around bookkeeping, Dusty, it is your job to then go and be like, oh, wow, I didn't realize that a big chunk of my audience was having that issue. I better go out there and pitch a bookkeeping software company and say, hey, I have this big chunk of my audience who is having this issue or would love. They're already talking about your, your software. I would love to expose my full audience to your tool. And I bet you could think of a pretty creative way to integrate their tool into your software. So again, it's not just about you that is table stakes. It's about how could you solve problems for your audience, which will then unlock more ideas about potential brands that you can serve and surprisingly interesting new types of content that you create as well.

B (11:40)

And finding you're, you're going diving much deeper than just those, just general demographics, which is what most people say, hey, get your pitch sheet together on a one page PDF and make sure you let them know the demographics of, of this is how many males or female percentage and all that stuff you're talking about actual the nitty gritty. And I'll give a concrete example of this for me and my audience is that I've created a community over on a Discord server which I have a little small paywall to get there. Let people put a little money where their mouth is, per se. And the people that are there are all the time interacting with each other. And what I like to do is just sit there and I'm, I feel like I'm spying on these people and they're just conversing back and forth of the, the Every day there's multiple problems being presented in that group of people that are exactly the audience that we're trying to reach here on this podcast. And there's some amazing people and some people that I've gotten to know, their families and, and like you said, the jobs they have and what they do and what they're trying to accomplish and their goals, that is such much more powerful than just getting raw numbers of, hey, I have this and that. So that's great. Now, all right, so I don't jump ahead anymore. What is next? What's the next thing that we do?

A (12:48)

All right, so now we have some brands in mind. Maybe our audience already identified those brands for us. Great, we got a short list now. And so what you should not do is DM the brand on Instagram and say, hey, would love to collaborate with you. Let's chat. You know, we'd love to talk about collaboration ideas. Maybe you get left on red. Maybe the brand says, oh, thanks, we'll pass it along to the Right person. And then you never hear back. And so the first thing to understand is that the person handling the brand's social media accounts is likely a community manager, a social media manager. They probably have no decision making power. They are the person who is working at Chipotle, the person who was the social media manager there, they're giving a five dollar coupon for a free burrito to someone who got a lukewarm burrito in their takeout. Right? They're, they're handling those angry customers in the dms. They're not the person who is influencer marketing manager or the digital strategy coordinator or something at a brand. And so it is a much better investment of your time to use tools like LinkedIn, for example, if you're in the US which is the largest basically professional networking site, to start analyzing the marketing hierarchy at that brand and identifying the exact person that you need to be targeting. Because your efforts there are going to be such better spent. Because Dusty, what happens when you receive a message or an email that is obviously not meant for you or is not the right person? You either don't respond or you delete it. Right.

B (14:21)

Oftentimes you can tell from the subject line, oftentimes I'm just like 100, I'm done.

A (14:25)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not for me. And it is worth your time to educate yourself around the types of titles that you need to be targeting. In fact, in the pitching chapter of my book, I have a graphic here of, here's the, it's like, I call it the job title targeting matrix. Like here's depending on the size of the company, whether it's, you know, less than 15 employees or 15 to 100 employees or 100 plus employee employees, you need to be targeting different titles. So for example, if you are targeting a smaller company, mom and pop shop, let's say the director of marketing is probably a person. There's probably only one person who works in marketing there and they're doing everything. They're running the pay per click ads on Google, they're running the Facebook ads, they're doing the penny saver ads in their local community. And yeah, if they're working with creators, they're probably the person, they're wearing all the hats. But when you start targeting a larger company, this is when they start getting multiple people in their marketing organization. Maybe they now have managers, they've got a, maybe a VP of marketing, maybe they've got a coordinator. Right. And so just starting to understand and familiarize yourself with these types of titles is very Important so that you can understand have a higher success rate when you reach out.

B (15:35)

Yeah, I, I think that I liken it to. Getting people to guest on this podcast has evolved over time. And early on I was having to beg and plead people to come on. And then as the show grew and got a little notoriety, then people were approaching me. But then there were those folks that I wanted to get that were really large. And I would include you in that as far as like people who influence in a specific topic, like what you do for sponsorships. And I realized that the little DMS on Instagram or I would go on their YouTube channel, I get their email, I'd copy it, I'd do a blind. A BCC email. 15 or 20 creators, maybe one would respond, maybe they wouldn't. Now I've really got it down to a science of I find people who are trustworthy that know these people, a network of people. And I do reach out on LinkedIn and there will be the rare occasion where if it's a young creator and they're an individual, I will reach out to them on Instagram or something of that nature, because that's where they live. And so it's exactly what you're saying is that you're finding these people where they are, you're meeting them where they are. And for these people who are directors of marketing, they're not going to respond to every Instagram dm that's for their personal home life. Right. They're going to actually go to LinkedIn and say, oh, this might be a good opportunity for our company or this creator, or they might give it to the right person to get back with you. And I've found that in both getting people on the show and then finding sponsors for this podcast and my YouTube channel. So really good stuff there. I'm so glad that you mentioned that. Don't just send a random cold DM on social. That's just not going to work anymore.

A (17:03)

One thing, one question that this might lead to for a lot of creators listening is I don't have a LinkedIn or I don't have a. Maybe I have a LinkedIn, but it's for my professional life and I don't want people in my real life to know or my professional life to know that I like, make content on the side. And I think it's time that we take a pause in this podcast and give some. Give you a. Give everyone listening some tough love, okay? Because I was you. I was you. I used to work in medical devices and I lived A double life. I felt no one knew in my professional life that I made content with my wife on the side. I've been a creator for 15 years as well, and it prevented me from being able to utilize a platform like LinkedIn to do these types of kind of sales outreach when I was trying to collaborate with Brandon. So one day I literally just decided, you know what, it is okay for me to be a multi passionate person, for me to have interests outside of my real job, and for me to list on my LinkedIn that I also make content. This is a passion of mine. And I, for years, Dusty, I feared this. I feared people learning, I feared the awkward conversation. Oh, you were a YouTuber. You know, I feared this whole thing. And then I finally just decided one day I was like, you know what, Screw this, this is stupid. I'm gonna, I'm gonna own this. And you know what happened? Yeah, people found out the first, like that first week, someone came up to me, hey, I saw you updated your LinkedIn and you make videos on YouTube. And you know what, instead of making fun of me, they said, wow, that's pretty cool. Tell me about that. How do you do that? Tell me, what kind of camera do you use? People were actually interested instead, yeah, there was a few, you know, people who were a little condescending, making side remarks here and there, but the majority of the people were actually thought it was pretty cool. And so I spent years building up this narrative in my head that people would make fun of me and all this. And then when I finally just stood up and took ownership and was like, you know what, I'm gonna just, you know, this is who I am and I'm gonna own that. I feel like that was a big obstacle that I removed from myself to ultimately be able to do it full time one day.

B (19:04)

I'm so glad you mentioned that that happened. That happens to so many people. And it was me forever in that I was wanting to separate my ike so called real life from my creator life. And as soon as I bust down that wall, and like you said, I put YT at the end of my name on some socials and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna own this thing. I am a podcaster, I am a YouTuber, I am someone who. And I'm proud of that and that. I'm not sure what it is. It's like a paralysis of just the nature of. I don't know if we're embarrassed or we're like, oh, like you said, you don't want to have that conversation of, oh, no. I mean, I'm a creator, of course you're an influencer or whatever. My, my wife and I joke all the time. She's a teacher and she says, man, I wish I could be an influencer. I'm like, yeah, I got a lot of people would like to be an influencer. Right. Okay, so we got. We're here, we're at this point to where we know where to reach. We've done the, the due diligence and the deep dive audience. What do we do next?

A (19:56)

Okay, after we have reached out and gotten a hold of this potential brand prospect first, I think it's. We can't gloss over the fact of, like, what do we say? What are we saying? Yeah, when we reach out to these people, I think this is another thing that holds people up. So it's one thing to actually target the right person, but it's another thing to. To know, okay, what am I actually reaching out with? What message? And so I have this pitching methodology that I teach in the book called the Rope Method. So, R, O, P, E and so R stands for. Your pitch has to be relevant to a campaign that the brand is either running currently or has run in the past. O stands for organic, meaning that you can tie your pitch to organic content that you've already posted that illustrates that your audience has an affinity for their brand or their product. P 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, oh, yeah, this sounds interesting. What did you have in mind? And so the form that this takes. So again, going back to that terrible pitch that we mentioned earlier is like, hi, my name is Justin. I love your brand, I'd love to collaborate. Has none of those elements. It's not interesting. They don't. You're not giving them any proof that you're credible. And actually, why don't we do a real time. Should we do a real time case study for you, Dusty?

B (21:11)

Yeah, let's do.

A (21:12)

Let's say, okay, I'm Dusty. You're. You tell me, give me a handful of brands that you would love to sponsor the YouTube Creators Hub podcast and let's just do this in real time.

B (21:22)

So I'm not going to use any real companies just for the fact of. I don't want to burn any bridges or I do have sponsors of this show, but I do know what I did early on. And to approach the sponsor of this show, which was tubebuddy for forever and it was. So it was the opposite of what you're teaching right now. So I'm so glad that I'm having you on because I see all the mistakes that I have made up to this point. Now, some of the sponsors that I brought on recently, I can see some of the stuff that you're talking about. So let's just say there's this new AI company that is. That's able to design thumbnails there. I just. These people pitch me all the time. But I found one that I really love and I use it. But I think it's going to be perfect for my audience. So let's just say is the YouTube thumbnail, whatever you want to call it, that's the company that we're. That I'm trying to get to sponsor the show.

A (22:05)

Okay, so essentially what you're going to do is you're going to go to this thumbnail company's website, you're going to go to their blog, you're going to go to their LinkedIn handle, you're going to go to their social media, Dusty, you're going to go to their Instagram. If you're a YouTuber listening to that, you're like, oh, I hate Instagram. I don't want to use it. Look, Instagram is a research tool going back to the R in the rope method, which is relevancy. We want to see what is this AI thumbnail tool posting about on Instagram. You know what? They probably are posting about this new feature, a new feature that they just came out with where you can A, B, C, T, ABC test thumbnails. You could upload three different things or you can use it to pull from different sources, whatever, some feature, right? And this is what, what they believe is going to drive a bunch of new signups or trial signups for their tool. And they're. They've been posting about it every day for the last three weeks or last month or whatever. Surprise. What do you think they care about that feature? That's what they care about. And so when you reach out to them, Dusty, this better be the subject line, whatever the feature is called. ABC testing on YouTube, Creators Hub, podcast question mark. Something like that. Relevancy in the subject line. And then the first sentence of your pitch better be focused around that. It's not, hi, I'm Dusty. I get this many views on my downloads, on my podcast, I get X, Y, Z. They don't care. They don't know you. What they care about is themselves. They care about their own initiatives, their own objectives in the company. The first line of that pitch is, hi, I saw this new feature, this new tool. In fact, I was testing it out. I think it's amazing. Here's the results that I got on a recent test using your tool. And I actually just talked about the importance of a B testing thumbnails on my podcast. And you link that episode. Here's the timestamp. Here's the exact time where I talked about it. So they click on that. This is the O, the organic. Right? They click on it and they see, oh, wow, Everyone who's listening to this podcast episode cares about this feature that we have in our software, Right? So that's the O. And then you say, hey, I would love to help spread the word about the importance of this tool in the following ways. I can do five podcast integrations I can do. I can turn around the first integration within 10 days. I'll give you usage rights to repurpose an audiogram or a short of this clip on social media for three months. Use paid usage rights. Right? And here's how I've helped TubeBuddy achieve XYZ results in the past. Are you free on Thursday at 10am to talk about this? Yeah, that's the pitch. The pitch is not, hi, I'm Dusty. I would love to collaborate. Yeah, you see how different that is?

B (24:34)

Do you think of it in a reverse way? In that you have to think before you even approach these companies, what are they going to get out of it? Because we oftentimes think of, oh, the money we are going to get, or, oh, we're trying to keep the lights on here. We're trying to, we're trying to keep moving forward with our business. We fail to think about what are they going to receive from this partnership. Because that's what this is, right? It's a relationship, a partnership between you, the brand and the company, whether it be a physical product or a software, which what we're talking about here. So do you think of it in, do you ever consider it in your mind of just. This is. Let's think of what they're going to get out of it. How important is that aspect?

A (25:12)

Dude, it's the entire. It's the entire ball game. Because you making money is a byproduct of you helping them accomplish a business outcome.

B (25:24)

Right?

A (25:24)

They don't have random piles of money for creators who are reaching out, pitching them, hey, collab, let's collaborate. They don't have that. You know what they do have? They have big piles of money that are called budgets for their own initiatives, for their own feature launches. They said, hey, let's allocate 100k in marketing budget to spread the word about this new ABC thumbnail test feature. That's what they have money for. And so your job is to proactively, speculatively identify these initiatives. When you reach out and say, hey, if you allocate 20k of that to me, I will help you accomplish that business outcome that you've identified for quarter one.

B (26:04)

Yeah, that's. That I think is where working with so many creators in my coaching program and with some other things that I'm doing right now with our group that we have, our mastermind group, I see that is probably the biggest holdup is that it is a me first mentality of what is my brand going to get, what is the number at the end of that contract for me? And that really what happens is people can get a first deal, they can get deal number one. But what I've always told people is it's deal two, three, four and five that are, that's where you're making the real money. Sometimes deal one is getting you in the door, right? But deal two, three, four and five are the deals that are really going to help you. And if you want to do that, you've got to put in the hard work and the effort and the research now to be able to get and land that deal. So I'm so glad you brought up that point.

A (26:54)

Dude. The Iran and Influencer marketing agency for seven years, which is something we talked about on our last episode and I've worked with hundreds, thousands, I've done thousands of campaigns through that agency. And I can, I could say with firsthand experience that the majority of creators have this one off transactional mindset when it comes to doing partnerships. It's not about how can I build this relationship, how can I continue to get deals with this brand or this agency over and over. In fact, dude, if you look at my wife and I's business, my, our personal social media, if you looked at our footprint on the Internet right now, it's at the lowest it's ever been in terms of views and all that, right? And yet we're making the most amount of money we've ever made not because of how many views we're getting and how many views we're guaranteeing to our sponsors. It's because we know the product that we're selling. The product that we're selling is professionalism, it's timeliness. We're going to hit every deadline we're going to hit every talking point with aplomb for these sponsors. When they come back to us with feedback or edits and they say, hey, can you change this, like, quick voiceover here? Even if it was not outlined in the contract, as long as they're not asking for an entire full reshoot or something, we're saying, hey, you know what? No problem. That's going to take me 30 minutes. No big deal. I got you. And we are making our brand contact look like an absolute hero. So these brands, the recurring relationships that we've developed over the last 10, 15 years, that is what it's all about. It's not about convince. You know what it's, you know what it's like, dude, it's like you get a deal with the brand. This is what most creators do. They get a deal with the brand. It's. And then they literally never talk to them again. It's. It'd be like quitting your 9 to 5 every single month.

B (28:41)

Yeah.

A (28:41)

You do the dog and pony show, you convince them, you go through the interview process, you convince them to hire you, and then you're like, peace, that was great. I'm gonna. And you're back out on, on the street hustling for spare change. Next brand. Oh, yeah, you, you want to work with me now? How about, how about this brand? You know how much easier it is to convince a brand you just did great work with to hire you again? Infinitely.

B (28:59)

Yeah. It's been this show tube buddy's been with me through, through its cell and for eight, nine, ten years. And I'm not saying they're going to be with me forever because they probably won't be. But as far as right now, they are. And I'm so thankful that I was able to work with them. And it's just like my parents used to tell me, word gets around. And whether or not you think tubebuddy's gonna talk to company A, B, C or D, they may not talk to them directly, but word's gonna get around that, hey, you know what Justin and what they have going on over there, he and he and his wife with, with their business, they're gonna, they're gonna treat you right. You're gonna get what you pay for. And those things are going to. That's why when I get these reviews and referrals for my coaching program, and it's something that I just started last year, one of the biggest things that put the biggest smile on my face is the other day I got an email from A client, and he had a screenshot of his YouTube channel and analytics, and he put an arrow of like when he started the coaching and just the analytics just going just through the roof. There's nothing that makes me happier than not when he paid me the money to hire me. Yeah, that's great. That helps me provide for my family. But what really means something to me is that, okay, I'm doing what I said that I'm doing. I'm not just pitching something as I'm gonna give you this and that. And it's not like you said, the dog and pony show. So I'm again, very good point there. All right, so we've done all that. We know who we're talking to. We've done the research, figured out how to reach out to them. How do we close this thing once we get the conversation started?

A (30:27)

One more important aspect real quickly about the pitch and getting them enticed is realizing that what you pitch them is likely gonna be very different from what you ultimately agree to. So the likelihood of you just speculating exactly what they're going to be excited about and then being like, sounds good. Exactly what you pitched. Where do I sign? Is really unlikely. That's not the point of. Of doing this rope pitching method. It's about giving them something tangible that they can react to. So they say, hey, I love your initiative here. This is a really interesting idea. Yes, that's important. But you know what? That campaign is almost over. In fact, this is the focus now for the next quarter. Are you interested in that thing? So you have to understand and be nimble and ag and realize that don't have this box where it's like, hey, you want to do this or not? It's hey, like, I'm pitching this thing, but I'm totally flexible to understand what's an objective for you moving forward. So that will likely lead to hopefully a phone call. Yeah.

B (31:25)

And what. Maybe that what you were talking about a minute ago is just to get the door open. That. That's. That's to get the door open. Once you're inside the door, this thing can go in a many different directions. You've got to be willing to pivot it totally.

A (31:38)

And, and, and really, it's about my. My ideal scenario is let's get this. This brand on a phone call. Like, get them on a zoom call, put a. Put a face to the name and just ask questions. A lot of people listening to this might be. Feel terrified. Like, phone call. What if the brand asked me a question? I don't know the answer to. Just say, I don't know. I'll get back to you. I've never been, I've never been asked that before. I'll get back to you. And so it's more just like you research some questions ahead of time. Hey, I saw you're coming up out with this. How did it go? I saw you ran this campaign last year. How did it go? Have you worked with creators in the past? How did it go? Just like pretty basic questions, but you're asking, you're acting invested in the outcome, which you are. Right. Which is very different, like you said, than most creators are concerned with. What's the dollar sign? What's the amount I'm going to get paid? And then from there you say, hey, this was all really useful information. I'm going to go back and I'm going to put together a proposal for how I would love to bring this campaign to life. And this is the biggest hack right here, Dusty, in terms of closing it.

B (32:37)

I love.

A (32:37)

Yes, it's. You say, because a lot of people say, okay, how much do I charge? How do I actually price this? And the biggest mistake that people make is they say, hey, okay, what's your budget? And then the brand stonewalls. They say, oh, we don't have a budget. We've never done this before. You tell us, like, what do you usually charge for this type of thing? And everyone listening instead of stammering and being like a thousand. And then you like, cry later in the shower or something, which I've duck. Not that I've ever done. Come on, either, man. That, that, that'd be hilarious. You say, hey, this was so great. I'm going to put together a custom proposal for you. Typically what I'd like to do is I like to put together three to four packages to give you a sense of, of how we could, you know, bring this campaign to life. Do you have a sense brand? Do you have a sense of what I should set those three to four tiers at from a budget it feasibility perspective? And then you shut up. You lean into the silence, you don't say anything. And no joke, dude, I have done this across hundreds of negotiations. And 75% of the time they will tell you a range. They will say 1, 2, 3k or 10, 15, 20k or 100, 200, 300. So not only do you learn how much time you should spend on this proposal, probably, but 25% of the time they are going to stonewall you again. They're going to say you know what, we don't know. We've never done this. You tell us. And so you say, okay, that's fine. And so when you put this proposal together, package one, you still put together your packages, but package one, which is going to be the lowest amount, has to be your hell yeah number. Which means if they pick that, you say, hell yeah, let's go, I'm excited. Not, oh, oh God, I gotta do this now. I was hoping they'd pick package four. And so that number is going to be different for everyone. And noticeably absent from this calculation probably you're realizing, is views, conversions, sales, affiliate performance. Right. All the metrics that everyone is obsessed with and thinks matter. And of course that matters sometimes to some brands. Of course. But at the end of the day, you have to be enthused, you have to be excited about doing this partnership or else you'll start resenting it.

B (34:51)

I guess the follow up question that, that I would have to you, and I'm sure a lot of creators would have and have asked me numerous times, is once they have the number, a lot of creators do this thing that I call they, they chase. So they'll say, okay, a thousand bucks or they, they'll do the package thing or they'll just give them the one number of a thousand bucks and the company says, oh. They lean back and they say, oh, that may be a little bit, bit out of range for us. What do you do then? Do you if you know for a fact, for me, I know early on in my career I would chase. I would say, okay, maybe I could do 750. We're just using a thousand because it's a round number. Maybe I could do 500 now. I know I will. I'm not chasing, I am not, I'm not going to undervalue my time. What I'm worth, what I know my content can produce. So what do you do in that case?

A (35:42)

Case? So there's a lot of different directions we could go with this conversation. The first and most important one is absolutely do not chase when you are not hearing back from them because you think that you're scaring them off.

B (35:56)

That's right.

A (35:57)

Because a lot of times when I ran the agency, this happened constantly where a creator would send us a rate, we'd be like, okay, thank you so much, we'll get back to you. Once we touch base with the brand. And then three days later they would reach back out and be like, you know what, I can do it for 500. Because they really wanted the deal, they really wanted the money, when in reality, we just hadn't heard back from the brand yet. Like, why are you coming down on your rate? We didn't come back and say, hey, can you do it for less? And so I think in the absence of any update, a lot of creators think that the lack of update means that the brand is not interested. But in reality, they just haven't gotten a green light. They haven't gotten new information from their client or their boss if it's the brand directly. And so just play it cool. That's the first advice I can give you is don't just negotiate against yourself. That's a really bad okay. And then the second thing we got to go back to everyone listening. I hope a big takeaway is you should never, ever be spitting back just one number anymore. When a brand reaches out and says, hey, how much for one YouTube integration? Never again. You are always going to be providing packages to them, even if they didn't ask you for that. Because how did the brand. How would the brand know that you, dusty, have a discord of 2,000 of your most. I don't know how many you have, but 2,000 of your most engaged podcast listeners or YouTube viewers in there, where you could potentially do an integration on that discord. You could have the VP of marketing or the, you know, R and D person from this YouTube thumbnail person come in and do a guest session on your discord. That could be a sponsorable thing, but they didn't know you had that discord. So allowing sending packages to the brand allows you to, you know, educate them about all the various ways that you could potentially amplify the campaign. And if you're a YouTuber, thinking, sitting here listening to this, thinking, I don't have anything else. All I have is my YouTube and the only thing I can offer in packages is, like, more YouTube videos. Here's a 2025 resolution for you as well. You gotta have at least one other platform that you can offer to a brand when you're putting these packages together. Another way in which you could potentially amplify the campaign, whether it's a private community, whether it's a newsletter, whether it's social media. Again, you just have to realize who you're up against. When a brand is because they didn't just reach out to you, they probably reached out to 20 other YouTubers, right? And so if you're the one who can offer them other creative ways to amplify their message, that's a game changer.

B (38:15)

So I know that it's going to be unique for different creators. And as far as the deliverables, as far as, okay, we're going to deliver you two longs and four shorts. And for those of you who don't know the slang here for YouTubers like a long form video and a vertical short video, what are you coaching your clients and people that hire you and your agency as creators? What is the average or what is the normal thing? That is, I guess you would say, just the norm as far as deliverables, just so people listening to this can get a baseline of, okay, you have the bronze goal, bronze silver and gold package, which Justin's teaching us the package kind of deal now. So what should we be offering deliverable wise in these packages?

A (38:58)

Take that boilerplate mentality and throw it in the trash can. That's my advice, is that it should be different for every brand. A brand might come inbound to you dusty and say, hey, how much do you charge for an integrated YouTube video? You know what your response to that should be? What is your goal? Tell me what your goal is with this campaign. And when they say to you, oh, we're actually hoping to drive registrations or ticket sales for our upcoming webinar or this event, this in person event, that's your ticket to say, hey, I actually think we should do this integration on my newsletter instead. Knowing that's the goal, that actually should be our goal. Or maybe, maybe they say to you, hey, you know what, after you generate the content, we want to take your footage and cut down a 30 second version of this and use it for paid advertising. That's the goal. So then your response shouldn't be, oh, here's how much I charge for a YouTube video. It's Hey, I can actually make you five 30 second videos instead, where I change up the hook, I change up the call to action. You can throw all those five videos into the meta ads black box and see which one performs better. It's gonna be 10k, probably 5x more than I would have charged for a YouTube video. But you said that was your goal, so that's actually a better idea to do instead. So this whole mindset of having a standard like what are the normal deliverables? It depends. It totally depends on the brand's objective. And so you just, if there's one takeaway you get from this episode, it's like every single deal that you do is going to be bespoke. You might charge one brand 10k for an integrated YouTube video and another brand 5k. You don't have standard rates. It's about what is it worth to the brand for you to help them accomplish their business outcome.

B (40:37)

Yeah, I've learned so much, Justin, from having a podcast and from having a YouTube channel and the differences in them in that the trust that I've built with this podcast is so much different than just the one off videos on YouTube or whatever it may be. People have me in their AirPods, 30, 45 minutes at a time, sometimes listening to me hours at a time. Some people have told me they've gone and listened to multiple episodes in a day on their walks and as they work out and I, the, the companies that are approaching me, I want them to know that these people trust me. I'm their companion on their walks. I'm their companion as they clean the house. I'm with them and they trust me. And so, so whatever we're pitching, I, I look at it through that lens, Whether it's a YouTuber, I've got my newsletter that's growing and then I also have my website and I've done some integrations there as well. And so I'm so glad that we've talked about this today because I really think that when it, what it comes down to is are you willing to ask the right questions? Are you going to ask the questions that lead you to a successful, not exchange in money, but a successful relationship that will then lead to possible even more sponsorships down the line? Because if you do the right things and the things that Justin's talking about here and in his book Sponsor Magnet, which he's going to be releasing here at the end of January, I think that you're going to see that it doesn't really matter if you're a so called large YouTuber or a big creator. What matters is do you have an audience that is ready and available and trusting of you that when you pitch a product or service, they're going to go and at least check it out and jump on that opportunity. And for in history from this podcast, I can tell you that when I talk about something here on the show, it never fails. I'm going to get 1012 emails, even more depending on the product of hey, what was that you're talking about? I've even missed links in my show notes and people corrected me, hey, I want to check this book out or this or that. And so knowing that you have an audience that is active and an audience that is going to respond to that kind of sponsorship deal or whatever it is when we stop thinking about them, as just the deals. And we start thinking about them as integrations of how can we help the sponsor and help our audience, and we all are benefiting from it. That's when you're going to get a lot of benefit.

A (42:47)

Dude, maybe to put a nice little bow on this, on this conversation is I can share a real story from one of my coaching clients, please. His name is. His name is Paul and he runs a podcast, YouTube channel, etc, called the Green Industry Podcast and the Green Industry Podcast. Get. Get this dusty. He teaches lawn care professionals how to grow their. How to grow their business.

B (43:09)

I love it.

A (43:10)

This is his this. And he's getting 150,000 downloads a month on his podcast. And so same example of what you mentioned. These are guys who are on their mowers all day long and they've got Paul in their. In his. In their ear pods as they're sitting on the mower for eight hours a day. And so he's built this tremendous trust with them. And Paul just did one of his largest deals ever. He's done a lot of podcast ads and YouTube and social integrations and all this stuff too. But you know what? One of his most recent partnerships was? John Deere, the largest tractor company in the world, hired him to do a live podcast for. At one of their largest trade conferences of the year. They hired Paul to be in their booth doing live podcasts the entire conference. And they paid him a pretty penny for that because he is one of the luminaries, the key opinion leaders in his industry. And so he just had a steady stream of his friends and people on the brand come through, and he just filmed podcast episode after podcast episode. Does that sound like a normal brand deal to you? A normal sponsorship? No, it's not. And so it's. Again, it's this mindset of creativity. It's like, what is the brand? What's important to the brand? In Paul's instance, this trade show, that was important. They had all the press there, the photographers, people on the video, and they wanted Paul in there on video, in their booth, with their branding in the background. That's what they cared about. And so again, this should be the. I hope the lesson for anyone listening is that it's about what is important to the brand because that's what they're allocating money to.

B (44:42)

As we close out today, I'm gonna pick up the book, I'm gonna buy it, I'm gonna read it. Not because you decided to come on the show, but because I. I really do believe in the stuff that you talk about. I believe it works. And I've seen proof. And you have proof that you've. You've kind of laid out today in the previous episode. But if someone's on the fence and they're like, okay, I got you, Justin. Okay, you're good at this. You know all about sponsors and deals and how to attract brands. And you got all these big people talking good things about the book. What's your pitch? People who are on the fence. Or they're like, you know what? I'm going to check this out. Or I'm thinking about it. How are you? What are the things that you would tell them right now to go get this book?

A (45:22)

All right, I'm gonna speak to you. Who is listening right into the camera, right into the microphone. You, who's listening here? Who is skeptical that sponsorships is for you. You're saying, hey, you know what? Adsense, I'm fine with it. I don't have to talk to anyone. That's a good living for me. I've got a faceless YouTube automation channel. Let's go. I don't need to talk to anyone. Let's go.

B (45:40)

Thing, right?

A (45:41)

It's the new. It's the new thing, right? For those of you who are just skeptical about the value of sponsorships. And so what I want to say to you is that almost we have this ingrained belief that when it comes to our craft, our creativity, the work, the art that we're creating, somehow collaboration is a normal thing. We will ask our friends, we'll go into the discord, we'll be like, hey, what do you think of this thumbnail? Or what do you think of this video? How can I make the opening better? And we have this mindset that getting opinions, outside opinions and collaborating with other people to make our craft better is a normal thing. That's a totally normal thing. But somehow, when we transition into thinking about how we can make our business sustainable from a financial standpoint, somehow we feel like we have to do it alone. We have to feel like we have to figure out monetization alone. How am I going to make money? How am I going to do this? And I don't want to talk about money. I don't want to ask for help. I don't want to do this. And so what I will suggest to you is that a, an amazing and fulfilling and lucrative pathway to helping you bring your creative vision to life is actually through partnerships and collaborations with brands and companies. And so this is one thing that I lay out in the book is how valuable that mindset shift can be. And so if you're skeptical, still sitting on the fence and not sure if sponsorships are for you and this resonated, I would say pick up the book.

B (47:02)

Yeah. And I would encourage you to do. And I think that I might talk to Justin offline and I may buy a couple extra copies and see if we can maybe do a giveaway through the Discord or through the podcast or something. I think that would. I really do believe in. In what we're talking about, because I think that what you just said there at the end is, makes it really matters, because if anything, when you get a sponsorship. I remember when I got my first sponsor on this podcast, I felt like a real podcaster. I felt like I really was doing something and it was just maybe placebo. It was just me and my mind just making all that up. But when you land a deal and you see the transaction and you're working for another company and it's like you made it, and I think that there's so many creators that are so discouraged that they're never going to reach that milestone that will allow them to have a sponsor for their brand and their content. And I think that we've defunct that myth here today. And your content and your book and all the things that you teach are defunking that every day. And so I'm so thankful for you, Justin, that, that you're willing to come on the show to talk about this and really dive into the depths of what it means to have a, A, a partnership with a company and a brand and how to go through the whole process. Because that's what people want. They want people who are going to show them, A to B, start to finish, how to do this. And you do that so well, my friend. And I'm so thankful for that.

A (48:22)

Dude. Thank you so much again. That's so to say. And this was. This has been a blast, man. I'm. I'm so thrilled to be a repeat guest. And one. Oh, one final thing, if you're still on the fence, I have got a massive amount of free bonuses, actually, when you. If you go to sponsor magnet.com I have a free sponsorship tracker template. I've got a bunch of scripts that you can use. When a brand says, hey, you want to be an affiliate? And you're like, no, I'd actually get paid. What do you say in response to that? So there's a bunch of other things that come if you want the downloads and the hacks and the tricks and all that stuff. I got that too. Yeah.

B (48:50)

Sponsormagnetic.com I knew when I went to the website and I saw Pat at the top. Pat Flynn, one of my digital mentors. I've spoken to him twice through just some things we've done with some partners ourselves. But then I scrolled down and I saw Ali Abdaal, another one of my favorite creators on productivity and him talking about what you've done for him. I think that a lot of time those things speak so, so loud in that what's worked for me in my coaching short coaching business is having people give me those reviews of here's what it's actually done in my business. Not just the pie in the sky of yeah, he may be a good coach or he has a good podcast, but no, the actual real life results of I've worked with this guy. He can show you where this thing has impacted his business, his bottom line and you've got a lot of that on there. So again, it's over@ sponsormagnet.com New book coming out on January 21st. You got it January 21st. Justin. Thank you again my friend. And we'll have you on again when you release your next book.

A (49:52)

Appreciate it, Dusty.

B (49:53)

Hello everyone and thank you for listening to this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hustle podcast. I really do appreciate it. Don't forget you can subscribe to the show for absolutely free and your podcast player of choice. Also, there are ways you can connect with us. You can support us by supporting our sponsor TubeBuddy, as well as supporting us over on Patreon to get access to our creator Discord community. And I also offer YouTube coaching and consultation YouTube channel reviews and just overall business coaching if that's something that you you are wanting to look into. So make sure you check us out there and we'll see you next week.