234: Sponsor Magnet by Justin Moore

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1. 00:00:00 All right, Mike. So today, we're going to talk about Justin Moore's sponsor magnet.
2. 00:00:04 But before we do, we have some follow up items to hit first things first,
3. 00:00:11 as I was supposed to talk to you about accountability. And I did not do that.
4. 00:00:14 So do you remember what this is for?
5. 00:00:17 The accountability. It's for us writing a book, isn't it?
6. 00:00:19 Yeah. Right. It's, yeah. Yeah.
7. 00:00:21 And I still want to write the book.
8. 00:00:24 Like my goal is to still write the book, but I, no, I'm not, like, man, man,
9. 00:00:29 man, man, man. I got to figure out a way to maintain these follow up items and not
10. 00:00:33 let them fall off the radar. But that's, that's for another time.
11. 00:00:39 My, my next one was to think about my granny hobby.
12. 00:00:42 And I said it was probably going to be a physical hobby.
13. 00:00:47 I think that this is going to be running.
14. 00:00:50 I really think this is going to be running. And I, we talked about this.
15. 00:00:54 That's not a great idea. I still want it to be running.
16. 00:00:57 Like I still want it to be running. So I, I just want it to be running, like,
17. 00:01:01 because I can like maybe, maybe it could be vibe coding.
18. 00:01:05 Yeah, it could be, but vibe coding still takes too much of my brain.
19. 00:01:08 Like I don't, I don't want to be in front of a computer screen.
20. 00:01:12 Yeah, that's, that's fair.
21. 00:01:14 So for, for listeners, for context, the pro show today,
22. 00:01:17 we talked about Corey's experience at a hackathon and why he's so sick, why,
23. 00:01:21 I'm so sleepy and out of it. So for everybody who's like, wait, he seems like
24. 00:01:25 really off and out of it. Yes. This is accurate and I'm doing my best.
25. 00:01:29 Here we go. Here we go. But no, I, I really think like I want my granny hobby
26. 00:01:34 to be low, slow cardio of some, of some, I like that.
27. 00:01:42 I mean, I, I feel like that hits, but you know, maybe, maybe it doesn't.
28. 00:01:46 So all right. Then my last one, my last one is how do I make pockets in my
29. 00:01:50 schedule more productive? Like, so how do I fill those small periods of time in
30. 00:01:56 my schedule with actually productive things as opposed to something where I
31. 00:02:00 need, you know, like a half hour ramp up, you know, work hard for a couple hours
32. 00:02:04 and then half hour ramp down? I actually don't know. Like this, this one has been
33. 00:02:08 a struggle for me. I think the last two weeks has probably not been the best
34. 00:02:11 time for me to try to implement something like this only because I've been
35. 00:02:15 feeling like I've been running wall to wall with just normal stuff. But I do
36. 00:02:20 really want to think about this one more because there, I think we talked about
37. 00:02:25 this a little bit last week or last episode, but my schedule doesn't, I don't
38. 00:02:31 get to pick it all the time, right? So it's like, I have to figure out what to
39. 00:02:35 do with those 35, 40 minute, you know, hour long windows that don't allow for
40. 00:02:41 that really deep thinking time. And I really need to look at my schedule and
41. 00:02:45 think about this. This is where I think something like your personal retreat
42. 00:02:49 journal comes in and helps out. The thing I have to figure out is how do I
43. 00:02:54 stay consistent on doing that? You know, doing that Sunday, get ready for the
44. 00:03:00 week because my week starts on Monday, like any sane human being. But that's
45. 00:03:05 for you Sunday starters, Sunday starters, it doesn't make any sense. Sunday's
46. 00:03:08 the end of the week. Mike, what are you? Are you a Monday start or a Sunday
47. 00:03:12 start? I guess in Monday, like all my calendars, I use Monday as the first day
48. 00:03:20 of the week, but it kind of really doesn't matter. I just do the daily
49. 00:03:24 planning. I disagree with you. It does matter. Monday is the start of the week
50. 00:03:27 and Sunday is the end. But but I do, I do need to think about that. Like how on
51. 00:03:31 Sunday do I stay consistent with doing that plan for for the next week? And I
52. 00:03:37 think that'll help me find the pockets. So those are my follow-up items. Mike,
53. 00:03:39 what did you have for this week? I had a couple of them. So first one was... Well,
54. 00:03:47 actually, I'm going to take these a little bit out of order. Make a list of the
55. 00:03:50 things that I'm putting off. So I started to do this and then I realized the
56. 00:03:53 things that I was putting off are stupid. And as soon as I started putting those
57. 00:03:58 things on my time-block plan using the personal retreat planner that we talked
58. 00:04:01 about last time, that list basically went away. That's great. I'm really leaning into
59. 00:04:10 using this this planner and I'm forcing myself to do the three intentions for
60. 00:04:15 the week and then the three tasks for the day. And so it really does help me stay
61. 00:04:20 intentional as I go throughout my day. And I knew this and I've done it in the
62. 00:04:26 past, but I guess I'm realizing now that I had kind of slipped a little bit in the
63. 00:04:31 regularity of that habit. Because with the planner, I want to do it even on
64. 00:04:34 Saturdays and Sundays. I want to make sure that there's no gaps in my
65. 00:04:38 daily pages by the time I get to the end. I'm struggling with that. Like I'm
66. 00:04:42 struggling with Friday, Saturday and Sunday right now. And this is when you
67. 00:04:45 ask me for feedback. I was like, "Let me give you... Let me get another week in it.
68. 00:04:48 I'm struggling with Friday, Saturday and Sunday." So yeah, I agree. Yeah. And that
69. 00:04:55 seems to have alleviated the necessity. That seems to have negated
70. 00:05:03 the necessity for maintaining the list. The making the list was a good way to
71. 00:05:08 initiate this. But the next one was don't save all my fun time for the weekend. I
72. 00:05:14 have been able to make a little bit of traction on this, but not a lot because I
73. 00:05:19 still feel like I am a little bit behind. And we have a trip coming up where we're
74. 00:05:24 gonna be going to Tennessee for the National Homeschool Soccer Tournament
75. 00:05:29 next week. So I have to get ahead before we leave. The last one was to create a
76. 00:05:37 time-free zone where I don't care about time for the reasons that have been
77. 00:05:42 previously discussed. I haven't really made much progress with this either.
78. 00:05:48 However, I do think that what I want to do for this is incorporate some regular
79. 00:05:56 gaming time. Now this is kind of dangerous. I think gaming could be a
80. 00:06:00 slippery slope. FC26 came out. That's the FIFA soccer game. We're a big soccer
81. 00:06:06 family. I really like that game. They have this seasons thing where you play
82. 00:06:11 like 10 games and then based on your results you either go up or you get
83. 00:06:14 relegated. And they have different levels of that. So the highest level is level
84. 00:06:19 one. And then based on how many points you win there you can win, you know, you
85. 00:06:24 can maintain or you can like win the title. You know, if you're really just
86. 00:06:28 absolutely crushed it during those 10 games. Well, a couple years ago I won the
87. 00:06:33 title for like the top level of the seasons in FIFA. They don't really have
88. 00:06:37 like a leaderboard where you can say on the top 10, you know, FIFA player in the
89. 00:06:43 world. But like that's the top level for the seasons. I was pretty good at it. I
90. 00:06:47 this yeah, that's my my thing is soccer. So I would love to be able to just play
91. 00:06:53 like a couple of games a day because they take like 10, 15 minutes when you play
92. 00:06:57 them online. And I've been able to do that kind of intermittently here and
93. 00:07:02 there but it's not a not a regular thing. I think there's a lot of benefits that
94. 00:07:07 come from gaming for me because I don't we've talked about before like I have
95. 00:07:13 trouble identifying the thing that I do for fun. That actually legit is like
96. 00:07:17 super fun for me. So I should figure out a way to do it a little bit more. And I
97. 00:07:22 want to when I do it not think like, Oh, I've only got time for one game. Then I
98. 00:07:25 got to go, you know, do something else. I want to just be able to enjoy it when I
99. 00:07:29 do it. That makes sense. That doesn't make completely make sense. Alright, are we
100. 00:07:34 ready to roll to sponsor magnet? I think so. Let's do it. Alright, so today's book
101. 00:07:41 is called sponsor magnet how to attract price and execute your dream brand
102. 00:07:45 partnership. This came from Justin Moore, which Mike, if I'm remembering correctly
103. 00:07:50 did you see Justin Moore speaker? Did you hear Justin Moore speak at CX? Is that
104. 00:07:55 kind of where this book came from? Well, I originally met him at craft and
105. 00:08:02 commerce. Okay. And I remember it was the first year I had gone there as an
106. 00:08:08 independent creator. And so I didn't have like a team of people that I was
107. 00:08:13 hanging out with. I was sort of there myself. And I walked into the the opening
108. 00:08:18 party thing, which was at this restaurant called Great Western, I think it was
109. 00:08:24 sort of like a Buffalo Wild Wings type bar with a bunch of like the mini bowling
110. 00:08:29 and all like the adult video games, you know. And I was kind of it was loud, not
111. 00:08:38 my not my scene at all, you know, the introvert who is there with a whole
112. 00:08:43 bunch of people and a whole bunch of noise. And I'm like ready to leave and
113. 00:08:49 bump into Justin. And I was familiar with him because I had followed him online a
114. 00:08:53 little bit at that point. And he ended up being just like one of the nicest guys
115. 00:08:57 he had ever ever talked to like, dropped everything, talked to me for 10, 15
116. 00:09:03 minutes mentioned, you know, I had just gone out on on my own. Very encouraging.
117. 00:09:09 And then later on in the craft and commerce conference, he spoke from the
118. 00:09:12 main stage and he talked about the agency that he had to shut down and was just
119. 00:09:17 very vulnerable about some difficult stuff that he had to go through, totally
120. 00:09:22 resonated with me in the place that I was at. And after that, talk to him again,
121. 00:09:27 and that was the situation I described in a previous episode where I felt like,
122. 00:09:34 you know, it's right after his keynote. Everybody there is wanting to go up to
123. 00:09:38 him and tell him, Hey, you did awesome. Great job. And he just like drops
124. 00:09:43 everything and talks to me for 10 minutes. And it's like the 400 people that are
125. 00:09:47 there in the tree fort music hall for the conference are watching us. But he
126. 00:09:53 just has this way of when he talks to you, you feel like you're the only person in
127. 00:09:58 the room, you're the only person in that he really connects is he's not like,
128. 00:10:02 you know, scan in the room, or who am I going to go talk to next? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
129. 00:10:06 One of those people. So just one of the most authentic genuine people that I've
130. 00:10:10 ever met. And my path continues to cross with his because we're both members in
131. 00:10:14 Jay Klaus's lab community. So I end up running into him a lot of different
132. 00:10:19 places. Now the different events that I go. He was at CX. He was at a dinner that I
133. 00:10:24 went to at CX with with Jay's group. Just a great, great guy. And I guess for a
134. 00:10:31 long time, I thought, well, the sponsor stuff that Justin talks about seems
135. 00:10:36 really good. I'd like to dip my toes in that. But it's probably not for me yet
136. 00:10:40 because I don't have a big audience. Okay, I'm glad you said that. Yeah, I want
137. 00:10:45 to bring that up right at the beginning here that this is not, you know, only
138. 00:10:49 relevant to people who have 10,000 people on their email list or things
139. 00:10:53 like that. There's, there's a lot of great stuff in
140. 00:10:57 this book. I was thinking about how do you summarize this book? I was going to say
141. 00:11:01 this for style and rating, but I'll share it here at the beginning. It's sort of
142. 00:11:03 like a creator business masterclass, which there's a lot of different
143. 00:11:09 applications you can get from that, even if you don't consider yourself to be
144. 00:11:12 a creator. So yeah, this confirms my previously held
145. 00:11:18 thought that Justin is a super smart and thoughtful guy.
146. 00:11:22 So, okay, cool. Let me let me run through a little bit more of the
147. 00:11:25 background. So thank you because I couldn't remember exactly where the
148. 00:11:28 where the book came from. But so it's Justin Moore, right? We we learn
149. 00:11:32 early in the book. So we're maybe getting a little bit into the
150. 00:11:36 introduction right now, but we'll we'll keep this kind of high level.
151. 00:11:40 He basically ran or runs a sponsorship agency. I think he ran. I don't think he
152. 00:11:44 does it anymore. Correct. But he does not anymore.
153. 00:11:48 Yeah. So he ran a sponsorship agency where basically he helped
154. 00:11:50 creators and brands connect, right? And and develop these sponsorship
155. 00:11:55 partnerships, if you will. It came out of the fact that his wife was making
156. 00:11:59 content, right? And I don't know if he actually says
157. 00:12:03 it was YouTube, but but it was videos, right? His my wife was making video
158. 00:12:07 content. And they basically started to get these
159. 00:12:10 sponsorship opportunities. And they did it wrong in like in a
160. 00:12:14 bunch of different situations. And he's really it's awesome that he
161. 00:12:17 describes it that way because he describes how how they did it wrong
162. 00:12:20 at different times. And and he's like, and the funny thing is he kind of
163. 00:12:24 makes fun of himself while he's doing it, which is which makes it even better.
164. 00:12:28 But then he describes about how, you know, we made a lot of revenue doing this
165. 00:12:31 and we've developed a model. And then this is the nature of this book is
166. 00:12:35 basically, I want to share that model with you. So it's like, if you're thinking
167. 00:12:39 about reading this book, or if you, you know, if you if you haven't
168. 00:12:41 read it yet and you're trying to figure out whether or not to read it,
169. 00:12:43 it's a really good how to guide, you know, like like you said, masterclass on
170. 00:12:51 thinking about you as individual player, partnering with, you know, somebody who
171. 00:12:57 wants to get their brand out or get their get their name out. And like, how
172. 00:13:00 do you how do you do that? So that's the nature. That's the context of the book.
173. 00:13:04 The book is broken into essentially introduction. There are eight steps
174. 00:13:08 in this sponsorship wheel that he describes. And then there's a kind of a
175. 00:13:14 motivation, little tiny bit motivation, and then he gives you some success
176. 00:13:17 stories. And that's the that's the nature of of the
177. 00:13:21 entire of entire book. So it's broken down. I think what
178. 00:13:25 seems very logically, like he just walks you around the the eight steps in the
179. 00:13:29 in the wheel. And without further ado, I think we should just
180. 00:13:33 jump right into into the introduction. Let's do it. Okay, so basically,
181. 00:13:40 he's describing how he got into this idea of sponsorships in the
182. 00:13:45 introduction. You know, the introduction is called
183. 00:13:48 becoming a sponsor magnet. And he's trying to motivate the idea of,
184. 00:13:52 you know, how do you get these? How do you attract these sponsorships?
185. 00:13:56 And how do you be a good player in in the space?
186. 00:14:00 What I think makes the most sense to do here is you combine the introduction
187. 00:14:04 and it's becoming a sponsor magnet with the nine common mistakes, which is
188. 00:14:08 essentially kind of like chapter two, right? He lists out these nine common
189. 00:14:12 mistakes that prevent prevent landing these sponsorships. And I think if you
190. 00:14:16 combine these two and wrap them into one package, what he's really doing is he's
191. 00:14:20 really giving you the overview of like, Hey, these are some things to think
192. 00:14:24 about when you're thinking about starting into sponsorships. And when
193. 00:14:27 you're thinking about working with big brands. And what's what I like that he
194. 00:14:32 does here is he talks about both like, he doesn't actually say any names of
195. 00:14:37 brands. Like throughout the entire book, if I'm if I'm correct, he doesn't say
196. 00:14:40 the name of any of the brands, you can kind of like, try to piece them
197. 00:14:44 together and be like, Oh, I think this would probably have been this company.
198. 00:14:48 But he doesn't actually say the name of it. But what I think he does a good job as
199. 00:14:51 he describes big brands and small brands. So like he's saying like, Hey, you might
200. 00:14:54 be working with a brand that's like a fortune 500 kind of a situation or you
201. 00:14:58 might be working with just like mom or pop shop down the road who who really
202. 00:15:01 wants to to, you know, increase some some advertising or increase some of
203. 00:15:06 their marketing in a different way. The nine common mistakes, right? I'll go
204. 00:15:12 through them real quick and then I'll turn it to Mike and see what what he
205. 00:15:15 wants to add in this intersection. Don't aimlessly create. Don't pitch random
206. 00:15:20 brands. Don't target giant brands. Don't envy others deals. Don't work with
207. 00:15:25 toxic brands. Don't let your ego control you. Don't badmouth brands. Don't ignore
208. 00:15:30 the changing world around you. Don't outsource the business stuff. And what I
209. 00:15:33 love about this is as I'm reading these, I'm thinking someone did that.
210. 00:15:38 Someone did that. Yeah. Someone did that. And it might have been Justin and his
211. 00:15:41 wife April or it might have been somebody he's worked with in the, you know,
212. 00:15:45 1000 plus partnership deals that he's done or sponsorship deals that he's done.
213. 00:15:48 So it was like really cool to be like, Oh, yeah, somebody's done that. Oh, yeah,
214. 00:15:51 somebody's done that. Oh, yeah, somebody's done that. And it brought a lot of
215. 00:15:55 credibility, I think, to the book as I was reading it. So that's my general high
216. 00:16:01 level, you know, 30,000 foot on the intro and those nine common, common mistakes.
217. 00:16:06 Yeah, I, one of the things I love about this book and Justin in particular is that he's not
218. 00:16:13 afraid to share the mistakes that they've made along the way. And I don't know that all of these
219. 00:16:20 were made by him. I feel like if he had made these, he would have told us a specific story
220. 00:16:25 associated with him making this mistake instead of something that they, they noticed when they're
221. 00:16:30 working with creators. By the way, he shares a lot of interesting information and statistics
222. 00:16:37 about his experience with that, that agency. And you kind of can see why he didn't want to do that
223. 00:16:44 anymore. Sounds a lot like herding cats, which I get, you know, that's, that's been my experience
224. 00:16:54 in the creator world too, is that a lot of creators are, I don't know, I was going to use the word
225. 00:17:02 flaky, like, I'll make stuff when I feel like it. Fortunately, I feel like it on a regular basis.
226. 00:17:07 But if I had to do something by a specific deadline, I'm not sure I've got the, you know,
227. 00:17:12 the systems to actually show up and do that. And just having to do that at scale, like,
228. 00:17:20 this is the average, like, this is the average average creator. They need a little bit more
229. 00:17:24 hand holding a little bit more structure and to have to manage all that for a bunch of people.
230. 00:17:28 It kind of reminds me of the worst parts of the integrator job that I left a couple of years ago,
231. 00:17:35 but doing that over and over and over again. Yeah, I mean, that, that makes total sense.
232. 00:17:42 What did you think about his sponsorship wheel? So in, in this first, these first two sections,
233. 00:17:48 and it's, it's kind of strange because he doesn't like call them chapter one, chapter two. They're
234. 00:17:52 really the book, how do I say this? The book flows more than that, I think, is the way I would describe
235. 00:17:57 it. Because even when you get to, like, step one, you know, he just calls it step one pitch,
236. 00:18:02 right? And then he goes from there. So it doesn't lay out like a, like a normal book where it's
237. 00:18:07 chapter one and it's more formal. But what did you think about the sponsorship wheel?
238. 00:18:11 Well, I like this a lot. I like this, this framework. And I like the wheel and the eight
239. 00:18:18 different steps that he has here. When I first came across it, I thought eight steps, that's too
240. 00:18:26 many. But then when you understand what he's trying to do with this, it's necessary, I think,
241. 00:18:32 at least if you're going to do it the right way. Side note, when I was at Crafts and Commerce this
242. 00:18:39 last year, I met a lady named Charlotte who basically what she does is she works with people to create
243. 00:18:47 signature frameworks. I totally want to work with her at some point when I have the funds to do so.
244. 00:18:53 She did the framework for Ali Abdul, I believe, for feel good productivity. She also worked with
245. 00:18:59 Justin on this sponsorship wheel. So basically what she does is she takes the bones of what you've
246. 00:19:05 got and the rough system that you have in place and then creates a very visual framework like
247. 00:19:10 this that is much easier to grok for the average person who reads a book like this.
248. 00:19:15 Is that not an incredible value proposition? Well, and that's really interesting because as I'm
249. 00:19:21 reading this, I'm thinking, man, the visuals are effective in this book, right? So like the fact
250. 00:19:26 that there was this framework that it's cool to know that he actually worked with somebody who
251. 00:19:30 supported that process. I didn't know that. So I don't know that she did all the visuals. This is
252. 00:19:34 different than just like an illustrator or somebody who is creating the visual identities attached
253. 00:19:39 with a book like this, because there are a lot of visuals that he shares throughout chapters.
254. 00:19:44 I don't think that's what she worked on. I think what she worked on was she took Justin's whole
255. 00:19:48 system and she packaged it up into a single visual where you can look at it and be like,
256. 00:19:52 yes, that is the sponsorship wheel because Justin's thing is the sponsorship wizard,
257. 00:19:59 right? Or is it Creator Wizard? Creator Wizard. Yeah. But he basically has like cohorts and
258. 00:20:06 things that he leads where he helps people implement this and actually get sponsorships.
259. 00:20:13 There's a conference that he hosts in February or March and it's expensive and it's during
260. 00:20:21 the school year, so you probably can't go. But when I heard it announced again for next year,
261. 00:20:25 I was like, oh, Cory, you and I should totally go to this. It's in San Antonio. It's called
262. 00:20:30 the sponsor games. And literally, it's like a two day crash course in this where people will
263. 00:20:38 walk through all the different steps of this. And then at the end, they have the pitch that
264. 00:20:44 they're going to share with the brands in order to get their dream sponsorship, that sort of thing,
265. 00:20:50 which I think is such a cool idea. And it gives such tangible value to the people who attend.
266. 00:20:57 It's not just information that you collectively, oh, well, I'm going to apply this someday.
267. 00:21:01 You walk out of there with the pitch ready to go. And then the award winners and stuff.
268. 00:21:06 So I just got really distracted because I went and I did the wrong thing that you should do
269. 00:21:10 when you're recording a podcast and I looked up sponsor games and I was like, oh, man, this looks
270. 00:21:13 fun. Like this actually looks really, really fun. Oh, wow. So it's in March. Yeah, that's
271. 00:21:20 what that looks really cool. Yeah, I'm going to try to go to that this year. I wanted to go
272. 00:21:25 last year. We ended up having a family trip over the dates of the conference. So I'm going to try
273. 00:21:29 to work around at this time because I heard great things from people who were there. And
274. 00:21:35 yeah, I mean, like that's where I'm at with my creator business. I feel like if I could actually
275. 00:21:40 get decent sponsorships, not just well, you've got 10,000 subscribers and you get this many views.
276. 00:21:45 So make us three videos and we'll pay you a hundred bucks each. You know, which if you take
277. 00:21:51 the standard approach, the rate card sort of approach, the number of downloads for your podcast
278. 00:21:57 episode, like you got to have an insanely big audience in order to make any money that way.
279. 00:22:01 So Justin's whole method here is perfect for people who are kind of like on the cusp like
280. 00:22:07 like I am. I can make some money that way, but I can't make real money and he's showing you a
281. 00:22:11 different way to do it basically. Yep. All right. So we talked about the sponsorship wheel. I
282. 00:22:17 strongly encourage you, you know, to go take a look at that. You can find it, you know, just by
283. 00:22:22 searching the sponsor wheel. And it breaks down into basically what the next eight chapters of the
284. 00:22:29 book are, right? So it's pitch, negotiate, contract, concept, produce, feedback, publish, and analyze.
285. 00:22:36 And what he's going to do is he's then going to walk us through each of these steps and he's going
286. 00:22:41 to talk about essentially what should you be thinking about around your pitch? What are common
287. 00:22:46 pitfalls that people think about around your pitch? He's going to give examples of this is a pitch
288. 00:22:50 that went well, this is a pitch that went poorly. Right? These are mistakes we made, you know,
289. 00:22:53 when we were helping folks pitch. And like what I really love about this is I've, I mean,
290. 00:23:02 I've probably not really done sponsorships or tried to get sponsorships in the way that he's
291. 00:23:07 describing them ever in my life, but it made complete sense to me. It was like, oh, that actually
292. 00:23:13 makes a lot of sense, you know, why you would do it this way versus that way. The other thing is,
293. 00:23:17 I think he calls out the most common flaws or the most common, like, you would think this would
294. 00:23:26 work or you're probably thinking this is how you would approach this. So, and he calls that out
295. 00:23:31 and he's like, let me tell you the other way or like the way to not have that happen. So let's go
296. 00:23:36 into pitch. And basically, he's describing the idea of, I guess one of the counters he comes out
297. 00:23:44 with quickly is the idea that brands will come to you. Oh, I've built this channel and I've got
298. 00:23:49 these followers and, oh, come on, brands, like, if you build it, they will come and like come,
299. 00:23:54 and he's like, no, no, no, no, you still are going to have to go out and tell people
300. 00:23:58 about what you do and what value you can add to them. So this is an active process. And he
301. 00:24:03 does an example with bees and the fact that there are still scout bees that go out, even when they
302. 00:24:07 found a source, there are still other scout bees that are going to go out and do it, which I think
303. 00:24:10 is a really cool kind of metaphor of what you what you need to be doing. The other one is he's
304. 00:24:17 going to throw in some additional frameworks throughout this book. So we get our first framework,
305. 00:24:22 additional framework here in chapter one, it's called rope. So he said your pitch needs to be
306. 00:24:28 relevant, or organic, oh, it needs to show proof P and that needs to be easy to execute E. And
307. 00:24:36 basically, if you can make the pitch that way, you're much more likely to land that sponsorship
308. 00:24:41 sponsorship deal. I think one of the hard things, Mike, so you're going to have to help me, like,
309. 00:24:47 as we as we talk about this, I feel like there is a lot of really good information packed into
310. 00:24:52 this book, right? Like in, it's a very dense book that is at the same time incredibly easy to read,
311. 00:25:00 right? So I don't want to get to style and rating yet, but it's like, there's so much here that's
312. 00:25:04 like actionable in takeaway, like you can do a takeaway right now. This rope framework is one that
313. 00:25:11 that makes complete, complete sense to me. The other one in this chapter, and I promise I'll give
314. 00:25:16 you a chance here in a second, but the other one in this chapter is he actually acknowledges like,
315. 00:25:20 hey, if you're going after a big brand, here are some things to think about. If you're going after
316. 00:25:24 a medium size, but here are some things about it. And it's like, okay, if I combine rope with this
317. 00:25:30 subcategory of brand, I can't help but feel like I'm 90% of the way to at least getting a response,
318. 00:25:37 right? At least having somebody hear the thing that I'm trying to put out there to them. And it's
319. 00:25:42 like, that's a huge win, because you're not just floating down on a iceberg, just praying somebody's
320. 00:25:46 going to find you. I'll get off, I'll get off my soapbox now. But it's like, I just, I think it's
321. 00:25:52 awesome. I mean, I absolutely think this first chapter is just incredible.
322. 00:25:57 Yeah, so there's a lot of what to like about Justin's style here. So you mentioned the bees,
323. 00:26:02 that was an interesting metaphor, I'll say, for essentially the 80 20 principle, because he talks
324. 00:26:08 about exploit versus explore 80% of your time you want to stick with what works 20% of the time you
325. 00:26:13 want to find new opportunities. And you can apply that to sponsorships, you can apply that to just
326. 00:26:19 your general work day, you can apply that just about anywhere. But it's packaged in an interesting
327. 00:26:26 way that you have never heard before. Indeed. We've read so many productivity books, we've heard
328. 00:26:32 about the 80 20 principle, hundreds of times, probably not in this way, though. And then he follows
329. 00:26:38 that up with not only the framework, which there's lots of lots of these frameworks, sometimes by
330. 00:26:43 the way, there with books like this where there's lots of frameworks, it feels like, oh, this just
331. 00:26:47 keeps getting more and more complicated. There was a book that we read that I actually felt that way
332. 00:26:52 about I can't remember which one it was. I think it was a Richie Norton book, maybe. Okay. But
333. 00:27:01 that you don't get that with this because they're all self contained into this is, you know, step
334. 00:27:06 one pitch. But there's lots of stuff that I jotted down to my mind map for for this. That is just
335. 00:27:12 like brilliant business advice that you don't need to know all the the reasons why all you need to
336. 00:27:20 know is that you need to make your pitch about them, not about you. All you need to know is that
337. 00:27:26 email is the best way to send your pitch. All you need to know is that you should send that email
338. 00:27:30 on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Yeah, exactly. Like the nerd in me wants to get into, well, why
339. 00:27:37 do you say that, Justin? But then for somebody who is a creator who is trying to get sponsorships,
340. 00:27:45 you don't have in addition to everything else that you have to do, you don't have extra time
341. 00:27:52 to figure out why I should do what he's telling me to do. Really, there just needs to be the proof
342. 00:27:58 that this is the person who really knows what they're talking about. And I feel like Justin has
343. 00:28:01 friendly established himself as the person who knows what he's talking about when it comes to
344. 00:28:06 getting sponsorships. And then he gives you all of the details that you could possibly need
345. 00:28:12 all the specifics to do this the right way and absolutely zero filler.
346. 00:28:17 And this is this is one of those books. So I have to, you know, I have to air my my bias here.
347. 00:28:23 I get really annoyed when they they link you to the extra resources, which you know based on the
348. 00:28:31 books that we've read before. And again, I get it. I understand the way this works. We're trying
349. 00:28:35 to build an email list. So therefore, what am I going to do? I'm going to link you those things.
350. 00:28:38 I'm going to then build the email list through the fact that you downloaded my resources.
351. 00:28:41 But in this situation, I was like, man, I really want those resources. Like these these resources
352. 00:28:46 seem really relevant and they seem really actionable. And I really want those resources.
353. 00:28:50 So it's it's one of those areas where and here's my my key point. And when I say this,
354. 00:28:55 it's an easy choice in my mind to give that address because of my email address because of
355. 00:29:02 the value I'm going to get back on this. Like if there is an example of a of a situation where I
356. 00:29:07 do not feel like I'm being exploited or taken advantage of, like the value add seems so much
357. 00:29:13 greater for what he's giving compared to what I am, that it's worth being on on that email list,
358. 00:29:20 where there's been other books in the past where I've like, really, like, yeah, that's not I mean,
359. 00:29:24 come on, like that's not really a resource. I'm not really gonna, you know, go out there on that.
360. 00:29:28 Let me ask you a question because I actually did not go download the resources, but there is the
361. 00:29:34 the call to action at the end of every chapter. However, I did notice that the URLs are all different.
362. 00:29:41 So is it they all go to the same place and you get like a big toolkit or other specific resources
363. 00:29:47 that each one of those links? I don't know the answer to that because because of my week, right?
364. 00:29:52 Like my one of my action items from this is actually to go back and click those links and go and get
365. 00:29:57 his get his resources. Yeah, just because I didn't have time. I didn't have time to do it this week.
366. 00:30:01 Okay, my thought is or my my expectation is that those are all just based on how he wrote the book.
367. 00:30:08 Those are going to be the resources that are relevant for the step that you're at.
368. 00:30:12 Because if you are at step one and you're sharing stuff that people should be looking at when they
369. 00:30:17 get to step eight, they're going to get confused and that's going to cause them to not take action.
370. 00:30:24 So that's my my guess is to how it's it's packaged there, which I think is brilliant, by the way.
371. 00:30:30 And it creates that feeling that you were just describing where it's like, oh, well, they want
372. 00:30:34 my email address is like, no, actually, this seems like you have some valuable stuff that could be
373. 00:30:39 useful to me right now. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right, let's move on to step two. Step two is
374. 00:30:44 negotiate. And in this situation, basically, he's he's trying to say like, hey, negotiation is part
375. 00:30:51 of this process. And you got to think about it. He describes another framework in here. He's called
376. 00:30:57 the arc framework, which is awareness, repurposing and conversion. So he said in order to under in
377. 00:31:03 order to properly negotiate, you need to understand where the brand is coming from. Are they trying
378. 00:31:07 to increase awareness? Are they trying to repurpose material? Or are they trying to convert people
379. 00:31:11 into sales? Which what's interesting about this is I hadn't really thought about repurposing material.
380. 00:31:17 Like for some reason, like creators making content that I can then chop that up and repurpose it into
381. 00:31:24 my own thing as a brand. That was a new that was a novel concept to me. I know I've seen it done before,
382. 00:31:31 but I just had never thought about like, Oh, yeah, that's actually what they might they might want
383. 00:31:35 to do with that. And basically, what he what he gets at in this first situation is essentially
384. 00:31:41 standard pricing messes you up. Like when you're negotiating, if you if you fix too hard early and
385. 00:31:47 say, this is my price and blah, blah, blah. He said, no, everything is a custom deal. Right. And we
386. 00:31:53 want to think about how everything is a custom deal. Now he then goes and he he describes things
387. 00:31:59 like, is it a competitive? Is it a cost plus? Is it dynamic? Is it merit based? He goes through
388. 00:32:04 the different phases of your pricing. So phase one is competitive pricing. Phase two is cost plus
389. 00:32:08 pricing. Phase three is dynamic pricing. Right. And he gets into these, then he gives you kind of
390. 00:32:15 examples of how he's used these pricing strategies in different contexts and kind of how they
391. 00:32:21 how they've impacted the negotiation process. Right. So again, this situation, like,
392. 00:32:28 he's not telling you, and what I think is really, really cool is he's not telling you,
393. 00:32:33 this is the way you do it. He's saying, here is the environment you're playing in.
394. 00:32:40 Negotiations happen like this. And you got to think about both sides. And, and it's not this like,
395. 00:32:47 maybe this is too strong of a way to put it. It's not this cutthroat businessy thing. It's like,
396. 00:32:52 hey, remember, there's people on the other side of this. And he does this like throughout these
397. 00:32:56 steps. He's like, remember, there's people on the other side of this. So there are times when you
398. 00:32:59 got to, you got to put your feet in the ground, you know, and you got to say, no, I'm not going to
399. 00:33:02 budge on this one. He goes, but those are very, very few. And then there's a lot of times where
400. 00:33:06 you're just going to be like, yeah, okay, this isn't what the contract said, but I'm willing to
401. 00:33:09 give on this one because my goal is the next one, right? We're going to do this one and I want
402. 00:33:14 another one and I want another one and I want to show you that I'm a human to work with. And I think
403. 00:33:18 this is just such a different mindset when it comes to negotiation. Negotiation says, I need to win,
404. 00:33:22 I need to win. And he describes it. If I'm remembering correctly as a win, win, win. Yep. And basically,
405. 00:33:28 it's you win the brand wins and your audience wins. Exactly. And I think that is a really cool way to
406. 00:33:34 frame negotiation. Yeah. And that is sounds simple. But if I can tell you, as a creator who stumbles
407. 00:33:43 across that win, win, win, and the Venn diagram that he shares, it also feels profound because it's
408. 00:33:49 like, oh, yeah, that makes all this tension that I'm feeling as I'm getting these emails from brands
409. 00:33:55 that want to collaborate. And I don't really want to collaborate with them. And I don't really know
410. 00:33:58 why it's like, oh, you just hit the nail on the head, like this visually represents why I don't feel
411. 00:34:04 like this is going to work. Because even if we could figure out a way where it's worth it for me
412. 00:34:10 to make money from it, this isn't something my fans would really enjoy. So lots of stuff like that.
413. 00:34:17 It's just like, so it's so brilliantly simple. And this is this chapter in particular, I feel like
414. 00:34:26 this is the reason why I say this is a business masterclass in a book, because there's so much
415. 00:34:32 stuff in here, which I have studied. And I have gone through the courses, I even went to business
416. 00:34:37 school. So like, I'm getting all these flashbacks, well, these are places that have heard all this
417. 00:34:41 stuff. But he lays it forward in such a simple way where it's easy for anybody to understand.
418. 00:34:49 That's the thing, like competitive pricing, cost plus pricing, dynamic pricing, merit-based pricing.
419. 00:34:53 I've heard all those terms before. I know generally what those are. I could not have told you very
420. 00:34:58 succinctly what the pros and cons were with each of them in five minutes, like he does in this section.
421. 00:35:05 And the other thing that I really liked about this is he gets into ways to measure this.
422. 00:35:11 He gives you exact numbers that you should use as the basis for pricing for your
423. 00:35:16 on the the campaign goals for the awareness, for repurposing the conversion, where, you know,
424. 00:35:21 it's 10 cents if it's awareness, or it's 0.65 cents for repurposing. And he gives you the formulas,
425. 00:35:28 AVV, which is views from the last 10 videos divided by 10 content only formula use AVV times CPV.
426. 00:35:36 Right. And if you're going to do an exclusive, an exclusivity thing, you add an additional 10%
427. 00:35:41 of the base for each of the 30 days. I don't want to give everything away here, because there really
428. 00:35:45 is some some great stuff. And I if you can't tell already, like I'm a fan of this book, you
429. 00:35:50 should totally go buy it. But this section in the mind node is like half of what I've got there.
430. 00:35:57 There's so much in here. And negotiating isn't something that people typically think about.
431. 00:36:03 They think about, well, business is just, you know, I got to price my thing right. And I got to
432. 00:36:08 do paid ads on the right platforms. Like, no, there's communication involved here. You have
433. 00:36:14 to frame it the right way. You have to present it the right way. When you do that, that's when
434. 00:36:19 you can actually get the exponential results compared to the flat rate, you know, send me your
435. 00:36:24 rate card type of stuff. I get those all the time from very small companies. You know, I just made
436. 00:36:31 this app. I like your channel. I want three exclusive videos. What's your rate card? I never
437. 00:36:36 respond to those, because it's not a win, win, win. I've never heard of these things before. I'm
438. 00:36:41 not going to recommend it to my audience. I said, really think it's awesome. Like I did with Morgan
439. 00:36:45 back in the day. And then the other thing is like, I don't even know what to tell them in terms of
440. 00:36:50 pricing. So I feel like next time I get one of those, I got to make sure that it really is a win
441. 00:36:54 win, win, win. But then I'm totally going to steal this. I'm totally going to apply this.
442. 00:36:58 And we'll see where it goes. But I guarantee, you know, even if it's a, oh, sorry, it's way out
443. 00:37:02 of our budget range, you know, not just the budget, but the budget range. It's one of the
444. 00:37:06 things he hits on in this this section. At least I'm not wasting my time going back and forth.
445. 00:37:13 Yeah. I mean, Mike, Mike said it best, right? Like his mind map is this is a huge section of his
446. 00:37:18 mind map. This is a huge section of my notes too. This is one of those. I mean, he talks about
447. 00:37:23 everything from deliverables, usage rights, and exclusivity and how that impacts thing. He talks
448. 00:37:28 about KPIs. He talks about the relay framework, right, which is reflect, educate, listen,
449. 00:37:37 try to remember them all listen, what's a adjust and then yield, right? Like, so he's got all these
450. 00:37:46 different things, but it doesn't feel like, you know, like we've read books before where it feels
451. 00:37:50 like listicles, right? And they're just constantly throwing like these lists at you and you're like,
452. 00:37:54 you kind of get bored with them. This felt like, oh, that actually makes sense. And that's a way
453. 00:37:58 for me to remember what I need to do here and how to unpack this. I just think he, you know,
454. 00:38:04 I think he does a really good job at helping you process a lot of stuff that I would say
455. 00:38:11 probably most people are not comfortable with, right? The negotiation phase is like an uncomfortable
456. 00:38:18 thing that you do, but you got to do it. And that's part of the process.
457. 00:38:22 You got to do it, exactly. Now, one other thing with this, this particular section,
458. 00:38:26 but it applies to this book as a whole. I remember, I don't remember how long ago,
459. 00:38:32 but I remember coming across, Tiago Forte talking about the, when after he had launched his
460. 00:38:39 building a second brain book, which I really enjoyed, what that did in terms of cannibalizing
461. 00:38:45 sales of the building a second brain cohort that he was leading. The reason for that,
462. 00:38:52 in my opinion, is that when people understand the frameworks there,
463. 00:38:59 they're going to go do them on their own. Now, if you were to take that approach with Justin
464. 00:39:07 in this book, he would be like, great, I don't have to be involved. I'm so happy that this is
465. 00:39:12 working for you now, but there is a large number of people who, even if they know exactly what to do,
466. 00:39:19 they're going to be like, ah, people, I don't want to, or you got to give me the exact scripts,
467. 00:39:26 you know, and you got to get a force me to get on the phone and make the calls. No,
468. 00:39:30 go back to like my sales days, the dialing for dollars. I always hated doing that, but
469. 00:39:35 sometimes you had to have somebody who's like, you got to make 100 calls today.
470. 00:39:38 So if you are trying to decide between like the book and the cohort, I think it's going to be very,
471. 00:39:45 very clear what Justin's, like his coaching and the cohorts that he does for this stuff,
472. 00:39:52 which is really expensive compared to the books, like $1,500. I think he's even got one like $3,000.
473. 00:39:57 For the right person who just needs a little bit of an extra push from someone who really knows
474. 00:40:03 what they're doing to give them specific advice in specific situations, this can be the thing
475. 00:40:10 that pours gas on the fire for your business and is totally worth it. For everybody else,
476. 00:40:15 there's still lots that you can clean from this book. So it's totally worth the $20, $30 that you
477. 00:40:21 would spend on it. I think the best analogy that I can make to what you just described is there are
478. 00:40:27 people who go to the gym and they, they just need to understand like, here's my routine, here's my
479. 00:40:32 lifts. I know how to do all the lifts and I'm going to go to the gym. Then there's people who go,
480. 00:40:35 I could do that, but I'd really like a trainer. Like, I really think a trainer would be great.
481. 00:40:39 And like this, it's the same camp here. Like, I think you have those two, those two different
482. 00:40:43 worlds and you know which one you are. Like you, you, you know, internally, which one you are.
483. 00:40:47 And I think I actually am kind of shocked that he put this much into, into a book.
484. 00:40:53 Well, see, that's, that's what I'm saying. I'm, I'm not because I think this is not too different
485. 00:40:59 ideal customers. This is the same ideal customer at different points in their journey.
486. 00:41:06 In their journey, yes.
487. 00:41:07 So by over delivering, in my opinion, so much value in the book, you are significantly increasing
488. 00:41:14 the chances that this person gets to the point where they are qualified for the core offer,
489. 00:41:21 where you work closely with them. And I think that's brilliant and it's rare.
490. 00:41:27 Yeah. Yeah, that makes, makes sense. All right, let's move the contract.
491. 00:41:30 Right. So we went from, um, basically negotiating. Now we've actually got somebody on board,
492. 00:41:38 they're going to come in and we're going to make a contract. And the, I thought there were
493. 00:41:42 some hilarious stories in this one, because he, he goes through this section where he describes
494. 00:41:47 and he's like, are you, are you seeing the problem now? Right. Like dear reader, like,
495. 00:41:51 are you like, oh, we were okay with it. It was fine. Everything's good. We don't need a contract.
496. 00:41:56 And then he's like, do you see, like, do you see what's going to happen here? It's like foreshadowing,
497. 00:42:00 foreshadowing. And I just thought that was like a really funny way to, to outline this chapter.
498. 00:42:05 But basically, I would say, you know, he, he sums this up and says, um, my serious advice and
499. 00:42:10 one of the best investments you can make, um, in yourself and your business is to hire a lawyer
500. 00:42:14 and create a boilerplate contract template for you. And he even goes as far as to say like,
501. 00:42:19 90%, 95% of that contract will be the same every time. And then you'll adjust the scope of work.
502. 00:42:25 And you'll adjust the scope of work, right? And it's like, it just makes sense to
503. 00:42:31 do this upfront. You know, don't mess around with it. Trust me, from all my past experience,
504. 00:42:36 don't mess around with this. So it's like, I don't actually have a lot of notes on this section,
505. 00:42:41 because like the, the, the message was so clear and so concise that it was basically like, hey,
506. 00:42:47 listen, have a contract. Don't go into this without a contract. And I was like, okay, it makes sense.
507. 00:42:52 Yeah. So as a business major and an independent creator who has worked with somebody to get the
508. 00:42:59 boilerplate, uh, template, there's still lots of stuff that I got from this particular chapter,
509. 00:43:05 little things, which you don't even realize that this is a thorn in your side until he names it.
510. 00:43:12 So he actually says, for example, sign all your contracts as whatever LLC FSO, the person,
511. 00:43:22 because when you're talking about a personal brand, you are the person. That is who they want
512. 00:43:28 on the, in the content that you're going to be creating. But a lot of creators that I know,
513. 00:43:36 they don't have a, what is it, a sole proprietorship, because they have their own separate media
514. 00:43:44 company set up as either an S corp or an LLC, because of the limited liability. It's just,
515. 00:43:50 it's smart. You know, that's one of the, the things that's on my list for my kids is they get,
516. 00:43:56 get older. And you know, Toby does the editing for, for bookworm and intentional family. Um, I,
517. 00:44:02 I want to just like drill this entrepreneurship stuff into them, not that they have to, you know,
518. 00:44:07 run their own business necessarily, but just they understand how this works. So when they get older,
519. 00:44:13 I'll help them set up their own LLCs. When they turn 18 and they decide that they want to,
520. 00:44:18 you know, continue this side hustle or, or whatever. And that's the kind of stuff where like,
521. 00:44:24 you don't even really think about it. And then if you've got somebody who actually knows what
522. 00:44:28 to point out ahead of time, you're like, Oh, that's really helpful. Thank you for saving me a whole
523. 00:44:33 lot of time and effort. And this whole section is like point after point after point after point
524. 00:44:37 after point like that. You know, and just for those of you who didn't know, because I didn't
525. 00:44:43 know when it's the FSO is the, it's for services. Yes. Right. So you're, you're saying it's in the
526. 00:44:50 legal entity of the company, but it's the services of that individual or the service of those people
527. 00:44:55 that producing the content, which that kind of stuff. I mean, it's, it's golden to learn it from
528. 00:44:59 somebody else who, who messed it up and not have to learn it on your own. Well, see, it's not even
529. 00:45:04 necessarily messed up. But what it does is it streamlines the whole process, because I can tell
530. 00:45:07 you, you know, my whole thing is perfectional media, media group. So because I make content,
531. 00:45:14 I make videos, I make podcasts. And so that way the accountant doesn't ask questions at the end of
532. 00:45:19 the year is like, Oh, this is part of the content that you make. Okay, that's revenue associated
533. 00:45:24 with, with that. But if you're going to do business with a brand and you sign the contract,
534. 00:45:31 you know, perfectional media group, wait, wait a minute, we want to work with Mike Schmitz.
535. 00:45:36 We don't want to work with his agency. So that eliminates a whole bunch of back and forth and
536. 00:45:42 a whole bunch of extra discussions, you know, and it's not something that you would typically think
537. 00:45:45 of. Yep. All right, great. I'm ready to move to step four concept. Let's do it. All right. So in
538. 00:45:52 the net, in the next step, we're actually going to start talking about the concept. So we still,
539. 00:45:57 you know, if you're thinking about this from a relationship standpoint, you still haven't created
540. 00:46:01 any content yet, right? You're still in the process of figuring out what to do before you
541. 00:46:04 create it. And his, his take here would be basically you want to create this creative brief,
542. 00:46:11 a one to two page document that says this is what I'm going to do. Right. This is the concept. This
543. 00:46:16 is the thing I'm thinking of. And the reason why is because if you do this here and you do this
544. 00:46:21 well, you don't then produce content that when it goes through the review process, they go,
545. 00:46:26 wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. You can't do that thing. If I'm remembering correctly,
546. 00:46:31 so it might correct me if I'm wrong, this is the one where he had to reshoot one because he put,
547. 00:46:35 he put like the pictures of the product with food. And the, and the company came back and said,
548. 00:46:40 no, no, that product can't be anywhere near food. Or he gives another example of like there were
549. 00:46:44 little kids in the video and they're like, Hey, it's actually illegal for us to do kids near this
550. 00:46:50 product for XYZ reason. And he's saying that you avoid 99% of those issues. If you submit the
551. 00:46:57 concept and you tell the brand what you're going to do and have them give you feedback prior to
552. 00:47:03 you actually producing the content. Yeah, so I haven't had a bad situation with this, but I
553. 00:47:10 definitely have had the fear of the bad situation. So I really appreciated this section. The one
554. 00:47:17 actually I think I can think of two six successful partnerships that I've, I've done. The one I'll
555. 00:47:24 share about here was the Morgan sponsorship where I did a sponsored video. They sponsored my newsletter.
556. 00:47:31 It was easy because I'm a big fan of the product. But they were approaching this the right way.
557. 00:47:39 And I had no idea what in the world I was doing. So I got the contract and there's some scary
558. 00:47:45 language in there. Like you're going to do a round of revisions. What? So I might have to redo the
559. 00:47:51 whole thing. I have ignored most sponsorships just because it's not worth the hassle for me
560. 00:47:57 thinking about that sort of stuff. But for whatever reason, I decided to do it with,
561. 00:48:01 with Morgan, and it turned out great because I produced the content, shared it with them
562. 00:48:06 beforehand. And they said, this is absolutely perfect. We don't need any revisions. But in the
563. 00:48:10 back of my mind, that was like, that kept me up at night. They're going to ask for this back.
564. 00:48:16 And Justin's point here is, look, you can spend an extra 30 minutes up front and create this
565. 00:48:22 in this specific way. And it's going to save you. It could potentially save you a whole day
566. 00:48:28 on the back end. It's totally worth it. Exactly. So, I mean, I don't really have a ton more to
567. 00:48:35 add to this one idea other than tell them about your concept before you actually start creating
568. 00:48:40 the material. We go to it and I'll step five. Now it's time to produce. And basically,
569. 00:48:47 he's saying stick to the approved concept. When you start making content, make the content you
570. 00:48:53 said you were going to make. If something happens, you encounter a roadblock, be a professional and
571. 00:48:59 communicate, be proactive. And this is where I said it before, it feels very authentic in terms of,
572. 00:49:07 I've worked with all these people and, oh, okay, here's another part of this that he says explicitly.
573. 00:49:14 He basically is like, the bar is low. And he even says it at different times. The bar is in the
574. 00:49:20 basement. It's not like you have to hit this super achieving bar, which I think is so funny
575. 00:49:27 for him to call out so directly that it's like, if you have proactive communication and you said,
576. 00:49:31 hey, we hit this roadblock. Let's work a way to solve this. You're better than X% of all
577. 00:49:37 creators, because most of them just don't say anything. And they just let it happen.
578. 00:49:42 And then he talks about when you're producing, there's a couple different
579. 00:49:46 audiences or a couple of different groups that you don't want to upset your audience and the
580. 00:49:49 government. Because that basically gets you into trouble, more trouble than other things.
581. 00:49:55 Whether or not you need to acknowledge the sponsorship or not acknowledge the sponsorship.
582. 00:50:01 So he's really giving, again, these practical ideas. Do you know exactly the product that you're
583. 00:50:09 putting forth or that you're going to talk about in your content? Basically, he's just
584. 00:50:16 given that good overview of these are the things to do when you produce your content and you're
585. 00:50:21 dealing with a sponsorship. Yeah, I don't have a whole lot jotted down in this particular
586. 00:50:28 chapter. But there is one thing that I think is worth double clicking on here. Always disclose
587. 00:50:34 your relationship with the brand, no exception. So he gives you specific ways on how to do this,
588. 00:50:39 depending on the type of partnership that it is, which I really appreciated. But this right here,
589. 00:50:46 this is something that has always been a little bit of a struggle for me. And I think one of the
590. 00:50:53 reasons why I've shied away from sponsorships is that I've had this limiting belief in my head,
591. 00:51:02 where sponsorships are simply companies that throw enough money at people that they say yes,
592. 00:51:09 and they're going to make stuff. And there are certain creators where you can totally tell,
593. 00:51:14 yeah, they don't really love this thing. They just got enough money. I guess one example would
594. 00:51:20 be my kids are into Dude Perfect. So every once in a while, they'll have the ads for the mobile
595. 00:51:25 games that they're really into. I'm like, you guys aren't really into this gem matching game
596. 00:51:30 that I've never heard of. Yeah, exactly. You know, stuff like that, I want to avoid. But again,
597. 00:51:36 it's easy to do that if you have that win, win, win framework in the back of your head.
598. 00:51:41 And so just the general rule always disclose your relationship. Now it's no longer, well,
599. 00:51:46 should I do this or not? You know, our people expect me to do this. It's just given me the
600. 00:51:52 permission. And I've I've been I feel like I've been doing this. Like when I did the Morgan video,
601. 00:51:56 I made it clear it was a sponsored video, you got to check the box, whatever. But I also
602. 00:52:01 have just in conversation lately, since reading this book, people asked me about Morgan specifically,
603. 00:52:07 I had a phone call the other day, and they're asking about it. I was like, okay, so full disclosure,
604. 00:52:12 you know, they gave me access to their product when I made that video. But I would totally buy it.
605. 00:52:20 And I probably will in January when my fantastical subscription runs up as an example.
606. 00:52:26 You know, so just being authentic like that. You know, if you really are partnering with
607. 00:52:32 things with brands that are going to be a win for your audience, you don't have to
608. 00:52:41 be shy about saying, yeah, this is this is a totally a sponsorship. This is a paid partnership.
609. 00:52:47 Nobody nobody cares as long as they get something. That's what I was thinking, too. Like, I don't
610. 00:52:51 care. I actually am interested in your opinion on XYZ, right? Like, oh, Mike, tell me tell me your
611. 00:52:57 opinion on this new product that just came out, because I'm probably trying to figure it out. If
612. 00:53:02 it's if it's close and it's relevant, I'm probably already trying to figure it out on my own. And
613. 00:53:07 you giving me your opinion helps me figure that out, right? Like, so I don't see a problem with
614. 00:53:12 that at all. I there are very few times when a creator comes and says, Hey, this is a sponsored
615. 00:53:18 thing where I go. And like, I think, you know, like, that's gross. I'm more like, okay, cool. You
616. 00:53:24 know, like, they like that product. And let's see the let's see the value of it. But I can tell you
617. 00:53:30 that I think this is a big difference. And I kind of wish Justin would have done this. And maybe he
618. 00:53:35 did. And I didn't, I didn't gather it. But I kind of wish he would have done it in a stronger way.
619. 00:53:40 The difference between sponsorships and ads, right? Like, and I, and like, what is the exact
620. 00:53:47 difference there? Because in my head, there's a difference there. If I'm running an ad on my,
621. 00:53:52 on my content, my goal is nothing more like somebody's told me just say this thing. Like,
622. 00:53:59 that's the way I feel about it. If I'm doing a sponsorship, I feel like I'm more invested in that.
623. 00:54:04 And I don't know if that's accurate or not. So you might be able to correct me here. Like,
624. 00:54:08 but it's like, I feel like there's a difference there. Like, I feel like there's a difference
625. 00:54:11 between an ad and a sponsorship. I mean, technically there probably is. But in terms of a creator who
626. 00:54:18 is going to, I'm just going to say sponsorships, because that's how he's framing the deals that
627. 00:54:26 you would get with these companies. And they may want you to just say verbatim these words
628. 00:54:33 in your, your content. I think those are still, I don't know, I still think like they fall
629. 00:54:40 in the same bucket because when I think of ads, I think of like television commercials.
630. 00:54:48 I guess technically for like the focus podcast, for example, and even occasionally on bookworm,
631. 00:54:54 we have ads quote unquote for sponsors. But those ads are always companies that I've vetted their
632. 00:55:04 products before I'm going to show up and talk about them. Most of them require some personal
633. 00:55:11 experience, which is interesting, by the way, because not every sponsor will actually give you
634. 00:55:15 the personal experience. Well, how am I going to talk about personal experience if you're not
635. 00:55:19 going to give me the product, but whatever. So yeah, I think that basically, however,
636. 00:55:27 I would be expressing support for a brand or a product in the type of stuff that I make,
637. 00:55:34 I want, I recognize that I'm putting my stamp of approval on that as the individual creator,
638. 00:55:40 the personality. And it's not just, Oh, well, somebody booked this time slot
639. 00:55:45 on the TV schedule. Yeah, yeah, because that's that is, I guess, a distinction that was coming into
640. 00:55:50 my head as you as I was going to do talk is there are these slots. And we don't really care who we
641. 00:55:54 fill the slot with. We just want somebody to pay for that slot. Whereas a sponsorship is different
642. 00:55:59 than that. Like I actually want to have that win, win, win. Yes. So that makes sense to me. And
643. 00:56:03 like some of them, I think can overlap more, but then there is that distinction between those.
644. 00:56:07 Yeah. All right. So let's roll on to step six. And remember, working through the sponsorship wheel.
645. 00:56:13 So step six is feedback. And he calls out the fact that, hey, feedback can be hard. So, you know,
646. 00:56:19 be careful, right? Remember that, like, really, they're not trying to attack you. They have a vision
647. 00:56:26 in their head. And you either hit their vision, or you didn't, or they need to make this tweak.
648. 00:56:32 That way they hit the vision that they wanted to do. He basically says, think about whether or not
649. 00:56:38 you can do something. And he throws the time in there in less than 30 minutes. Like he's like,
650. 00:56:43 I love it. Like if you can fix this in less than 30 minutes, just do it. He's like, don't push back,
651. 00:56:48 don't complain whether they're right or sorry, whether they're wrong and you're right. You know,
652. 00:56:53 whether it's in the contract or not, he's like, if you can hit it in 30 minutes, just do it.
653. 00:56:57 Because what I love about this, and he talks about this in the very beginning of the book,
654. 00:57:02 he's playing the long game. And you could tell he's playing the long game. He's, yes, this sponsorship
655. 00:57:08 is important. He's not ever saying that it's not important. But really, what he's going after is
656. 00:57:13 the next sponsorship and the next sponsorship. And he's going after building that reputation of
657. 00:57:18 you are a creator that somebody wants to work with. And getting that reputation of being the
658. 00:57:22 creator that's good to work with, that establishes, you know, that good relationship. And I just think,
659. 00:57:28 I think that's a really wise way to do this. Basically, he then comes in and you know, he said
660. 00:57:35 that there's a bunch of things that you should think about, right? And he gives you through like
661. 00:57:42 the details of it. So here's a simple framework, do for free if, and then he gives you the details
662. 00:57:47 of when you would do it for free. If there's a chance of repeat business, if there's all these
663. 00:57:51 other things. So what I'm trying not to do is as you're listening to this, I'm trying not to tell
664. 00:57:56 you all the cool things that he says, because it's going to not come across nearly as well as he does
665. 00:58:01 it in the book. What I would say like is as you're thinking about feedback, whether it's with a
666. 00:58:06 sponsorship or just in general, these are really cool principles to think about. And really wise
667. 00:58:13 principles, I think to think about. Yeah, the 30 minutes or less. I feel like that's
668. 00:58:20 that's a great piece of advice because I've struggled with this where not, I don't think
669. 00:58:28 with the sponsorships that I've done as an independent creator, but I could definitely think about
670. 00:58:33 creative projects that I've done for people in the past, where you spend all this time
671. 00:58:40 getting clear on everything I had a time. Okay, this is exactly what I'm going to deliver.
672. 00:58:45 And then we've got a new version and I actually want you to do this now too. And it's like,
673. 00:58:52 my natural response to that is, heck no, that's not in the, that's not what you agreed upon. I ain't
674. 00:58:57 doing it. And Justin shares great criteria for deciding whether it's worth doing. And I feel like
675. 00:59:03 for me personally, just asking that question at the very beginning, is there a way I can do what
676. 00:59:07 they're asking in less than 30 minutes? That makes it instantly much less repulsive to me.
677. 00:59:15 And preserves ultimately the long term relationship. So that's that's the right approach for sure.
678. 00:59:20 Okay. So now we're going to actually publish our stuff. And he gives some very, very practical
679. 00:59:26 tips around publishing. So this is step seven. And basically, like, and I wouldn't have thought
680. 00:59:31 about this. And this is like, he's basically like, be careful on the weekend, because you're
681. 00:59:36 working for a brand. And the brand probably doesn't work on the weekend. So if something goes wrong,
682. 00:59:40 there's nobody there to fix the problem. And it was like, Oh, that actually makes a ton of
683. 00:59:45 sense. Like, I wouldn't have thought about this. Had you not doing it? Had you not told us this?
684. 00:59:50 But basically, the way I can describe this publishing, the this publishing chapter is, cross your
685. 00:59:57 cross your teeth and dodge your eyes. And cross your teeth and dodge your eyes. And then once
686. 01:00:01 you've crossed your teeth and dotted your eyes, cross your teeth and dodge your eyes again.
687. 01:00:04 Because he's like, essentially, he doesn't necessarily say it this strongly. But it's like,
688. 01:00:09 you only get one shot to do it right the first time. Do it right the first time. And again,
689. 01:00:16 you get this idea that he has worked with people who like, you know, ready, shoot, aim, right?
690. 01:00:22 And like, that's just the way they are. And they fly off the handle and they publish the
691. 01:00:25 stuff and then they go, Oh, I didn't check the link. The link didn't work. Why wouldn't the
692. 01:00:29 brand have sent me the right link? And they're maybe on like a commission model. And like,
693. 01:00:33 well, now you've lost all your commission, because the link didn't work and people aren't going to
694. 01:00:37 go back a second time. So it's like these really practical think through this really hard kind of
695. 01:00:43 ideas. And again, I just think it's it's really wise stuff. Very, very practical. And yes,
696. 01:00:50 very wise stuff. So let me just share an example with the focus ads. So we get those ads. We record
697. 01:00:58 them. We hand everything off to the editor. He gives everything back. And then I always double
698. 01:01:05 check the the audio files. And I upload them and we published on the Tuesdays that focus is published.
699. 01:01:15 And it doesn't happen frequently. But maybe once every couple of months,
700. 01:01:21 one of those sponsors has not activated the URL. By the time I check it, the day that we're going
701. 01:01:29 to publish. Now, fortunately, for relay, there's somebody whose full time job is sales and has
702. 01:01:36 direct contact to the people at those at those brands. So I say, Hey, Carrie, you know, this link
703. 01:01:41 isn't live. Oh, thanks for letting me know. And she pings them. And within a couple of hours,
704. 01:01:46 it's it's up there. But yeah, if you have to do that yourself, you definitely want the checklist.
705. 01:01:52 That's one of my action items from this, by the way, is to make checklist for
706. 01:01:55 the whole thing. And this is actually one of the slightly overwhelming aspects of this book. Again,
707. 01:02:01 I was going to get to this in style writing. It's one of the overwhelming. It's like, man,
708. 01:02:04 there's a lot of stuff to do here with sponsorships. Like there is a lot. This is a it's a job in
709. 01:02:10 itself. But at the same time, it's potentially what pays for you to make, you know, to be the
710. 01:02:15 creator. So it makes sense that it would be a valuable thing to do. But I could quickly and easily
711. 01:02:20 see how you need an individual who is responsible for making sure all this stuff gets done and gets
712. 01:02:26 done well. That way your personal brand or your, you know, your organization's brand doesn't doesn't
713. 01:02:32 take a hit. But even even if you have an individual who manages all this stuff, it doesn't do anything
714. 01:02:39 if you don't have the systems in place for them to to execute it. So I feel like even if you are
715. 01:02:46 an individual and you get to the point where oh, this is a lot, that's actually kind of the
716. 01:02:52 intention. These are all the places you need the systems. And then if you're going to create the
717. 01:02:57 systems and work these systems, yeah, maybe you can't keep up with it all yourself. And you got to
718. 01:03:03 figure out when is the right time to get somebody in to help you with this. But if you understand the
719. 01:03:09 frameworks that he shares in each one of these chapters and you build those, which I think go a
720. 01:03:14 long way in helping you build the right kinds of systems that you could delegate this effectively,
721. 01:03:18 it's going to make that eventual delegation much more effective. Yeah. Okay, so let's go to step eight,
722. 01:03:25 step eight is analyze is the last step in our wheel. Basically, he's going to say,
723. 01:03:32 okay, now you've done the thing, you need to be again proactive and you need to send what's
724. 01:03:37 called a post campaign report. And he said, this report isn't necessarily part of what you've
725. 01:03:43 contractually agreed to do. This is the one that basically is, hey, look how good of a job I did,
726. 01:03:50 or look how proactive I am, or don't you want to work with me again? And it sends that underlying
727. 01:03:56 message of this is why you want to work with me again. This is why you want me to be a repeat
728. 01:04:03 why you want to be a repeat sponsor for me. So he gets into this whole detail about this
729. 01:04:09 post campaign report and what should be included into it. He says, think of your post campaign
730. 01:04:14 report as your private elevator. Again, this is the reference to from the basement, which where the
731. 01:04:19 bar is really, really low, the whole way up to the penthouse where you're, you're, this ties into
732. 01:04:25 this. And like, I love kind of how he wraps it up to where you're the sponsor magnet.
733. 01:04:29 That if you're doing these eight steps, you're attracting sponsors, not only to you,
734. 01:04:34 you're attracting them to come back to you and to come back to you and to come back to you.
735. 01:04:39 He throws a Nelson Mandela quote in here that I just absolutely love. I never lose. I either win or
736. 01:04:45 learn. And it's like, what a great way to think about life. It's like, oh, yeah, like, yeah, I mean,
737. 01:04:53 could you, you know, can you words, Smith, or, you know, can you nitpick it and say, oh, really,
738. 01:04:57 you're losing? And you're just thinking about us learning. Yeah, sure. But that's a great way
739. 01:05:01 to think about it. It's like, oh, okay, in this situation, I learned a lot. And it, I, you know,
740. 01:05:05 I didn't, I didn't hit it out of the park, but I, but I learned a lot in this, in this endeavor.
741. 01:05:11 There's another one that I'm, that I'm blanking on here, but I'll remember it probably at some
742. 01:05:15 point. But there was another key point that he makes in this, in this analyze step. Mike,
743. 01:05:20 what do you have while I'm, while I'm trying to rack my brain on that one?
744. 01:05:23 Well, he gives you some great advice for creating case studies, which is something that I have
745. 01:05:29 struggled with in the past. So I have a bunch of testimonials for a lot of my products, but I have
746. 01:05:36 a hard time creating case studies. So I've kind of done some research and now how to make them.
747. 01:05:41 And I feel like the stuff that he shares of the, in the one specific section in this chapter is
748. 01:05:46 better than a lot of the stuff that I've online. Yeah. He's got another framework too for reaching
749. 01:05:52 out to, to brands and following up pivot two to three weeks after the submission, follow up with
750. 01:05:58 that another week or two later. I forgot to mention, and then there's the novelty where
751. 01:06:02 you're pitching another idea two to four weeks after that. One more try four to eight weeks after
752. 01:06:07 that. And then you let it sit for several months. Time is the, the last one there. He's got a checklist
753. 01:06:14 for the post campaign report, which I think is, is great. You know, because one of the things that
754. 01:06:19 could keep you from putting this together is, well, I don't know what to put in here. So he gives you
755. 01:06:23 the bones of it. I mean, yeah, this is, this is a really important chapter for not just getting the,
756. 01:06:32 you know, the sponsorship deals, but as you mentioned, the whole idea of the magnet being able to attract
757. 01:06:37 future sponsors. This is the thing that keeps that, that wheels. Okay. So you, you got it to it. It
758. 01:06:42 was that, that pin it thing where it's that timeline for when you should follow up with people.
759. 01:06:48 And what I like about this is it's very procedural. It's very like, do this, and then set an alarm
760. 01:06:55 and do this, and then send your calendar note, and then do this, and then do this, and do this.
761. 01:07:00 And I think I actually think, Mike, you know, this might be a little bit of a bold statement
762. 01:07:05 to make about something I know very little about. I think this is the most important step in the
763. 01:07:09 process. I think you can do all other seven steps really, really well. And it doesn't create
764. 01:07:18 that, you know, as you like, as the flywheel effect, like you like to say, right, whereas if you do
765. 01:07:23 this last step, and you, you wrap it up well, you follow up well, it'll all like, not automatically,
766. 01:07:30 but you have a much higher likelihood of launching into that next round, and then launching into that
767. 01:07:34 next round. But I think this is also the easiest step to be like, we're good successful campaign,
768. 01:07:41 everybody's happy. Like, they're just gonna come back, you know, like, they're gonna automatically
769. 01:07:46 come back, how could they not? It was such a good thing. And I think this ties into the idea that,
770. 01:07:54 I don't mean this in a mean way, but like, people are fickle in terms of like what they're doing,
771. 01:07:59 and like, okay, that was a successful campaign. What's our next one? What's our next one? What's
772. 01:08:02 our next one? But you have to stay on their radar, not in an annoying way, but in a realistic way of
773. 01:08:08 like, Hey, remember that that deal we did? Or remember that campaign we ran? It was great.
774. 01:08:12 Right. Let's do another one. And I found I found this to be true, you know, in the the LLC work
775. 01:08:18 that I do. It's like, if I don't stay on people's radar, they're off doing other things that are
776. 01:08:23 also really good. And they forget about me. So it's like, how do I stay? How do I stay on their
777. 01:08:28 radar? So I think this is a really, really important, important step.
778. 01:08:32 Yeah, so you mentioned the flywheel stuff. I'm actually in Nathan Barry's Creator Flywheel's
779. 01:08:37 course. And one of the things that he talks about in there is kind of like three different phases of
780. 01:08:45 business system development, where the first step is you're just doing the things that need to get
781. 01:08:51 done one off as they happen. The second step is you create linear processes for things. And then
782. 01:08:58 third step is you create these flywheels, which actually build momentum the more that you work
783. 01:09:03 them. So the difference here between a linear process and that flywheel, I think is what Nathan
784. 01:09:11 would call a loop closer. So it's that last step, which creates the momentum for to repeat the process
785. 01:09:18 again. So the linear process that Justin outlines here, I feel like ends with step seven. That's the
786. 01:09:25 published step. And that's the majority of the work here. But you're right, that eighth step,
787. 01:09:31 what that does is that is the flywheel step, we put in all this effort. Why not just do it again,
788. 01:09:38 easier next time? Who's up to? And let me show you all the stuff you would need to make that
789. 01:09:43 decision. And that's the post campaign report. And I just think it's great. Like, I think it's great.
790. 01:09:50 Yep. Okay, affirmations and next steps isn't really a chapter. It's two pages. And basically,
791. 01:09:55 it's the very short summary of, this is what I just told you. And then he flies away. So I don't
792. 01:10:03 really have much to say about that other than it's a fine, it's a fine summary. Is there anything you
793. 01:10:10 want to add on the affirmations in next steps? No, I'm good. Although he does have several case
794. 01:10:16 studies about people that he's worked with who've implemented the sort of stuff, which I think is
795. 01:10:20 not just social proof or hey, you should totally work with me. But I think there's some examples
796. 01:10:27 that are shared there that could be useful to you if you're trying to implement this. Okay, I was
797. 01:10:31 including that as a second or like another section of the text. If you're talking about the sponsorship
798. 01:10:36 success stories, is that what you were talking about there? Yeah, yeah. So I treat that as a separate
799. 01:10:40 thing. And the reason why is because it's a significant number of pages. Like he does not, he does not
800. 01:10:45 hide detail in those success stories. Honestly, like I skimmed through these success stories. And
801. 01:10:52 here's why. I think these are valuable. I'm already sold. Like I don't need these success stories to
802. 01:10:59 help me make, make the decision that I'm gonna, I'm gonna like take these principles and try to
803. 01:11:04 apply them. Like he convinced me through just how good the rest of the material was. So it's like,
804. 01:11:10 I didn't really need these at the end of the book. But I'm sure that like their valuable cases or
805. 01:11:16 examples of, Hey, look, look at how this has worked in the past. I think the other thing that
806. 01:11:22 slightly gets me with these, and this is like a little bit of a negative on this is like,
807. 01:11:26 you can cherry pick these to make them to be not as realistic for most people, right? And not as
808. 01:11:32 realistic for forever. So it's like, I tend to, I'm tend to be hesitant with these just in general,
809. 01:11:38 because I've seen them being created on the front end. And I know that, you know, like they can be,
810. 01:11:43 they can be kind of cherry picked. So I'm not saying he did that. So don't, hopefully you don't
811. 01:11:47 read that as me saying they're 100% negative. I'm just saying like, I have a bias towards that.
812. 01:11:52 Yeah. So the, the reason I called this out is if you look at what he's got here in step eight for
813. 01:11:58 creating the case studies, there's like photos or screenshots behind the scenes facts, things like
814. 01:12:05 that. Those are, that's where I feel like the things that he shares here have more value in addition
815. 01:12:14 to just creating the social proof of yeah, Justin knows what he's talking about. If you could see
816. 01:12:19 what somebody else did for their pitch, for example, or what their sponsorship actually looked like,
817. 01:12:28 it can help you when it comes time to implementing this stuff for yourself. And again, you know,
818. 01:12:34 he's got the resources at the end of each chapter, which probably help you a whole lot more than
819. 01:12:40 looking at these, these case studies would, but I guess I kind of like that sort of stuff. Like,
820. 01:12:43 what are, what are the successful versions of this that have happened in the past? And how can I
821. 01:12:47 copy this in a sense? That's actually what I did with the life HQ launch, by the way.
822. 01:12:53 So Justin Welsh, do you know who Justin Welsh is? Huh? Okay, so he's, he built a huge audience on
823. 01:13:01 LinkedIn. And he launched a course. Nah, I think it was like last spring last summer called the
824. 01:13:09 Creator MBA. And he has a big following. And I had signed up for the wait list. And I noticed,
825. 01:13:18 I basically just like looked at the types of emails that he was sending leading up to this launch,
826. 01:13:24 because there were like 10 of them. And on every email, he talked about something specific. And
827. 01:13:29 then he would link to all of the other emails previously. So this is sort of, well, this is
828. 01:13:35 what I did with life HQ. And it's sort of the basis for some of the creator business accelerator
829. 01:13:39 stuff that I'm doing. I don't even think we talked about that. By the way, I'm working with a group
830. 01:13:43 of five people. It's, it's, yeah, it's, it's not open to the public. So we can, we can skip it.
831. 01:13:51 But anyways, it works because I had a wait list of 200 people when I launched life HQ.
832. 01:13:58 And I was sending these emails a couple times per week. And it's always like, this is my hot
833. 01:14:02 take on PKM. And why I think the big graph view is useless and why you should be using the local
834. 01:14:06 graph instead. And here's why I do my task management in obsidian. Here's how I do my journaling. Here's
835. 01:14:11 how you align all this stuff. So you do more of what really matters. You know, that the stuff where
836. 01:14:16 if someone is coming to the Mike Schmitt's practical PKM universe, they look at it and they're like,
837. 01:14:23 whoa, this is different. This is either for me or it's not for me, right? Getting them to
838. 01:14:29 decide that ahead of time. And I continued to like, just talk about what I'm building and how it's
839. 01:14:34 going to work. The last email in that series that I sent was this is why I don't want everybody to
840. 01:14:38 buy this. And I clearly outline if you are going to use this primarily on mobile, this isn't for
841. 01:14:44 you. If you just want, you know, all these other things, it's not for you. And then when I actually
842. 01:14:49 launched the product, I had 400 people on the wait list. I sold it for $197. And I did 65K in three
843. 01:14:56 months. And I'm trying to maintain that momentum, which has been the hard part. But the launch itself
844. 01:15:04 was really successful. And it was all like, there wasn't Justin Welsh saying, well, this is how you
845. 01:15:09 do this. I knew Justin knew what he was talking about. I knew that he had done million dollar launches
846. 01:15:15 for video courses before. And so every single email that he sent out, I was like, well, if I were
847. 01:15:21 to take that and twist it, you know, to talk about obsidian and and PKM and and life HQ, what would
848. 01:15:28 that look like? And that was kind of my starting point as I wrote those those emails. That makes
849. 01:15:32 total sense. Because because he knows what he's talking about. So why reinvent the wheel? Oh,
850. 01:15:38 exactly. I completely I completely agree. It ties into the idea of, you know, basically there's
851. 01:15:43 nothing new under the sun, right? So we're just going to take these ideas and we're going to we're
852. 01:15:46 going to refactor them. And we're going to we're going to figure out how they apply to our context.
853. 01:15:50 Yep. Let's move on to action items. So I'll start because it's my book. My action items are very
854. 01:15:58 generic. And I'm I'm frustrated by that. But that's where I am right now. Like, I don't have another
855. 01:16:05 way to do more tangible. Like, I want to tangibly start to apply everything in this book. Like,
856. 01:16:12 absolutely stay like I want to do that. I'm just not there. Like, I don't think that I'm there. Now,
857. 01:16:19 the caveat to that, Mike, you may be able to convince me that like for bookworm, we are there. And I
858. 01:16:25 need to like start acting on on those type of things. And I can own more of the of the bookworm
859. 01:16:29 process. I'll let you do that either publicly, or you can do it. Or you can do it behind. Like,
860. 01:16:33 that might be one of your action items is talk to Corey about. But like, so my my two are really,
861. 01:16:38 I want to download the resources because I didn't have a chance to do that during during the reading
862. 01:16:43 of the book. So I want to go and download those resources because I want to look through those and
863. 01:16:46 I want to kind of get an idea. The other thing I'm thinking about here is like, there's an
864. 01:16:51 interesting model here. We've seen people write books like this quite a bit. In the last, I don't
865. 01:16:57 know what six months you and I've read quite a few books like this. I want to see that model. And I
866. 01:17:03 want to try to like take that model and figure out what it means for for the kind of stuff that I
867. 01:17:08 want to write. Because I think Justin did it really well. Like, I think I think he did it very
868. 01:17:12 successfully. I enjoyed the book. And I think that if there's a model that I want to copy, it's his,
869. 01:17:18 right? Like, I think it's a really cool model to copy. The second one is I want to grow an
870. 01:17:24 audience. So I don't know what that means. And I balance the idea of, you know, am I doing this
871. 01:17:33 because I have a thing that I really want to communicate to people? Right? Or am I doing this
872. 01:17:38 because I want to have more people, you know, follow me and listen to what I say. And I really
873. 01:17:44 think it's the first. Like, I don't think it's the latter. I really think it's the first. It's like,
874. 01:17:48 there are these things in my brain that I want to get out to people. And I think will help people
875. 01:17:53 as they travel through life. And I'm trying to figure out like, how do I do that? How do I grow
876. 01:17:58 that audience? One of the problems is I hate social media. So that is one way that you grow an
877. 01:18:04 audience is social media. But like, I hate it. So it's like, every social media post I do,
878. 01:18:09 I have to think like 10 times harder than most people about it. And I'm like,
879. 01:18:14 like, what is the thing? And like, I feel like I'm pushing a boulder up a hill. But I think those
880. 01:18:18 are my two action items out of this is because I think growing that audience allows me to then
881. 01:18:23 utilize those resources, even though I know it's not required. I do think it's part of that process.
882. 01:18:29 It's all part of the same ecosystem. So those are my two. Mike, what are your action items?
883. 01:18:35 Well, number one, if you really want to grow an audience and you're interested in the
884. 01:18:39 creator business accelerator thing, we just started it yesterday and be happy.
885. 01:18:44 So here's what I'll tell you, Mike, is I looked at it. I almost pushed go. Like, I was like,
886. 01:18:49 I was like, so quick. And I was like, Corey, your brain, like, you can't survive. It's like,
887. 01:18:55 if you tried it, that is my concern about just throwing it in there. If you try to do this right
888. 01:19:00 now, like you will die. Like in, and I don't mean that like literally, I mean that like,
889. 01:19:06 I will be in a puddle on the floor. So it's like the only reason I, the only reason I didn't do it
890. 01:19:12 right now was because I would be in a fetal position on the floor, my bedroom.
891. 01:19:17 Well, grow an audience. That's not something you're going to do by next time.
892. 01:19:20 But it is something that does a long term one. Yeah, I would love to work with you on that.
893. 01:19:29 Maybe there's another action item here for both of us, which is related to this. And that is to sign
894. 01:19:35 up for sponsoring. I'm not sure if you can swing that, but that would be really cool to go to that
895. 01:19:42 conference and put this stuff into practice. But I'm at typing in one right now that says,
896. 01:19:48 think critically about sponsored things. All right. So I've got two which really are not
897. 01:19:58 get sponsorships related, which is something I know I need to do, but is also something I just
898. 01:20:04 haven't had the bandwidth to really think about, which is why I've been putting off
899. 01:20:09 reading this book for so long. I picked it up so many times and started reading it and was like,
900. 01:20:14 I can't even right now. Put it back down. So you picked it for a bookworm. You made us go through
901. 01:20:19 it. I appreciate that. But my two official action items are to define my STP, which is way back at
902. 01:20:26 the beginning and becoming a sponsored magnet, which is surprising transformative promise.
903. 01:20:31 I've got a bunch of the elements of this. I've got the ideal customer profile,
904. 01:20:36 my brand promise, all that kind of stuff. But I think this is an interesting way of packaging this.
905. 01:20:41 And I want to think through what that is and hopefully share that next episode. The other one
906. 01:20:47 is to create checklists for everything. As I mentioned, I think I've got checklists, but they
907. 01:20:52 could be tightened up a little bit. So I want to think through all the different checklists I have,
908. 01:20:57 update them and maybe create some some new ones. And at some point in the next six months,
909. 01:21:03 I do need to do something about sponsorships because I get weekly at least one pitch from a
910. 01:21:11 sponsor, potential sponsor, usually not brands that I would like to work with. So why not be
911. 01:21:18 proactive in reaching out to the ones that I do want to work with. Just makes total sense.
912. 01:21:23 Justin Moore would say that you need to go research those ones that would be a win, win, win.
913. 01:21:28 Yep. I already know what they are. I mean, there are there are very obvious
914. 01:21:36 tools and services that I use all the time. And I talk about them all the time. Literally,
915. 01:21:39 part of my newsletter strategy, I've broken apart into three separate emails now, but
916. 01:21:44 I share a big idea. I share notes from a book that I've read recently. So I'll be sharing the
917. 01:21:49 sponsorship magnet notes to my email list at some point. You can sign up for that if you want
918. 01:21:55 at practicalpkm.com. But the third category is something cool. I find something cool that
919. 01:22:02 I think people will enjoy and I share it. And it's usually PKM or obsidian related.
920. 01:22:08 And I don't need to, you know, it doesn't need to be a big company. I'm not going after,
921. 01:22:15 gosh, I don't know. What's a big company? Lego? I'm blanking. Like those really big ones that
922. 01:22:21 you would see the TV commercials for. That's not who I have to go after. I could go after Morgan.
923. 01:22:27 I could go after the other people who have made incredible obsidian plugins and have commercial
924. 01:22:33 services attached to it. I got a message from Carlos Zopman via Mastodon. I'm not even on Mastodon,
925. 01:22:45 but he is. And I mentioned his actions for obsidian in my newsletter. And then he posted
926. 01:22:50 something about someone must have mentioned actions for obsidian because I got a huge spike in
927. 01:22:54 traffic recently and someone pointed to the public version of the newsletter. I think it was Mike
928. 01:22:59 Schmitz. And I was like, oh, yeah, I love your plugins. And I use this all the time with my
929. 01:23:05 daily journaling stuff. Like people like that, maybe they don't have a huge budget. But like,
930. 01:23:12 I could totally reach out to those types of people and see what opportunities there are.
931. 01:23:16 There's so many things where it's like, I use this all the time. I just need to figure out who
932. 01:23:20 the person is that I would reach out to, which by the way, in the first section, we totally skipped
933. 01:23:26 over this. He gives you the exact formula for Google searching and finding these people.
934. 01:23:31 Yes, yes, yes. It's amazing. Not that you're not that I'm working with Nike or Reebok or any of
935. 01:23:38 those huge brands, at least not yet. But there's so much, there's so much low-hanging fruit there,
936. 01:23:48 even for someone who has less than 10,000 people on their email list like I do.
937. 01:23:52 All right, so we've got action items set. Now let's go to style and rating. My book,
938. 01:23:57 so I start. This might be one of the fastest style and ratings that we've ever done,
939. 01:24:02 or at least for me, for my side of it. It's a five-star book. I mean, this book, this book is
940. 01:24:07 wonderful, and it's wonderful even in the framework of I'm not in Mike's position where I have an
941. 01:24:15 audience. I mean, I have the bookworm audience, but it's like, I don't have my own independent
942. 01:24:19 creator audience. I'm a little bit distant from, I think, who the target audience of this book is,
943. 01:24:27 and I still got a ton of value out of this book. I loved every aspect of this book. I liked reading
944. 01:24:32 this book. My only, only blemish of this book has nothing to do with Justin Moore. It has to do
945. 01:24:38 with "I don't have an audience," like as big as I want. I mean, that's nothing to do with him. So
946. 01:24:43 this is clearly a five-star book. I think it's written well. I think the visuals are good. They
947. 01:24:48 add value. I think the framework makes sense. I think the sub-frame works make sense.
948. 01:24:53 Like there's really very little to nothing I have to say negative about this book.
949. 01:25:01 Anybody who's a creator or anybody who is even in business and is thinking about
950. 01:25:06 partnering with other brands to do sponsorships and those kind of partnerships,
951. 01:25:13 I would 100% throw this book at them. I'm even to the point where it would make sense. I mean,
952. 01:25:19 I don't know because I've never done his cohort. It would make sense for you to recommend somebody
953. 01:25:23 to go to his cohort because it's like, "Listen, this book is so good. The cohort can't be bad."
954. 01:25:27 Right? When I'm in that mindset, I mean, it's a five-star book. It's easily a five-star book.
955. 01:25:34 So that's my rating. I'm not going to belittle it anymore. Mike, what do you got on your styling rating?
956. 01:25:40 Okay. Well, that's interesting. To be perfectly honest, I did not expect you to rate this five
957. 01:25:46 stars. I sort of had a hunch going into this that you were going to get into the meat of this book
958. 01:25:52 and be like, "Yeah, this really isn't for me." That was a scenario playing out in my head.
959. 01:25:57 And I think you can even hear it in my voice when we mentioned the upcoming books. The last couple
960. 01:26:00 of episodes is like, "Are you sure you want to go through this, Corey? I'm not sure this is relevant."
961. 01:26:06 So up until you shared your rating, I have been in turmoil here because I feel like this is a
962. 01:26:13 great book and I want to rate it five stars. But I was thinking in the back of my head,
963. 01:26:17 this just isn't for everybody. And it's got to be a four-star book simply because
964. 01:26:22 the majority of the book room audience, I think there's a possibility they get into this and they
965. 01:26:26 just decide, "Yeah, I don't really care about the business stuff. I'm not going to try to get
966. 01:26:29 sponsors. There's nothing here for me." But if there's anyone who there's nothing here for them,
967. 01:26:35 at least right now, it's you. I loved it. It taught you to think differently about these
968. 01:26:43 negotiations and about the producing stuff. Yeah. So that's the thing. If you go into it and you
969. 01:26:49 never get past that surface level of the sponsor wheel and I'm going to implement this
970. 01:26:57 in an effort to get sponsors, if you decide that that is not for you and you never get past
971. 01:27:04 that level, I think you should probably put the great down. However, every single chapter,
972. 01:27:11 there is great information that is generally applicable. So I think when you get into the content
973. 01:27:17 of the book itself, it is a great recommendation for just about everyone. But I think there are
974. 01:27:23 people who are going to look at the name sponsor magnet. They're going to look at the subtitle,
975. 01:27:27 "How to Attract, Price and Execute Your Dream Brand Partnerships" and be like, "Yeah, that's not me."
976. 01:27:32 And I think that's fine. You can self-select if that's who you are. But I think if you're at all
977. 01:27:39 interested in this book and you pick it up and you start reading through it, you will not be
978. 01:27:43 disappointed. Let me get you off. I think if you're in that camp, just change the name of the book
979. 01:27:51 in your mind from sponsor magnet to partner magnet. Because if you do that, these things
980. 01:27:57 all apply to any partnership, collaboration, whatever you're going to do, these same principles
981. 01:28:03 exactly apply. You just don't necessarily get the financial side of it. But everything else is just
982. 01:28:09 as good. Okay, cool. Yeah, I like that framing. And yeah, I do think this is a great book. So
983. 01:28:18 with a gentle nudge from you, the outlier, I feel, for the audience for this book.
984. 01:28:25 Good rate of five stars too. Which makes it a golden book. So great job, Justin. And
985. 01:28:33 for full disclosure, I shared at the beginning, Justin is a good guy and kind of a friend at this
986. 01:28:40 point. So you can look at my review of this and feel like maybe it's a little bit biased.
987. 01:28:44 Mine's not. Yeah, exactly. We have very differing opinions on a lot of books. I'm thinking of,
988. 01:28:52 was it radical candor? I rated five stars and you were like, you rated it one star or two stars.
989. 01:28:59 So kind of surprised that we align on on this one, but pleasantly surprised. And yeah, this is
990. 01:29:06 definitely a good one. Outstanding. Okay, so let's put sponsor magnet on the shelf. Mike,
991. 01:29:12 you've got our next book. What's next? Next is a bookworm recommendation. And that is made to
992. 01:29:21 stick by Chip and Dan Heath. So thank you, Andrew, for recommending this one. If you want to recommend
993. 01:29:27 a book for a bookworm, by the way, there will be a link in the show notes for this, this episode
994. 01:29:32 where you can, you can do that. After that, what do we read? After that, we are going to do Ryan
995. 01:29:38 Holiday's new book, which will release in about a week from when we're recording this. And it's
996. 01:29:43 called wisdom takes work. And I believe, Mike, if I'm right, it's the last one in his stoic virtue
997. 01:29:49 series. It's number four. And I think he's done with that series after this one, at least in theory.
998. 01:29:55 Yep, he's going to have to find something else. So we're going to do we're going to do wisdom
999. 01:29:58 takes work by Ryan Holiday after that. I just but yeah. All right. You got any gap books?
1000. 01:30:07 No, I do not have any gap books. Well, I guess I do have a gap book, but it's not like one that
1001. 01:30:13 I'm picking on my own. The gap book I'm picking is part of that kind of the like middle mini
1002. 01:30:19 seminary thing. It's called God's Kingdom through God's Covenant. So that's I don't have any time
1003. 01:30:23 otherwise than that. So that's the book that's getting read. How about you? Okay. I don't have
1004. 01:30:27 any picked, but I'm going to bring some books. We have a very, very long drive ahead of us next
1005. 01:30:32 week. So hopefully I will have something to read then in addition to the next book for Bookworm.
1006. 01:30:39 Outstanding. Okay. So thank you all for for listening. If you are interested in more,
1007. 01:30:44 our pro show today was on my experience with hackathons. You can become a pro show member by going to
1008. 01:30:51 patreon.com/bookwormfm. When you sign up, you get a longer ad-free show whenever we whenever we
1009. 01:30:58 were able to sell some ads or get some sponsorships. Hopefully more of those after this one. That's
1010. 01:31:03 right. You get a bootleg that's released right after their courting. So it's about a week or two
1011. 01:31:08 early. You get the bookworm wallpaper. It's $7 a month and it just helps us run the show. It helps
1012. 01:31:15 us keep things moving. So if you'd be interested in doing that, that's patreon.com/bookwormfm.
1013. 01:31:21 All right. If you are reading along with us, pick up Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.
1014. 01:31:26 And we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.