In short
How founders and creators can monetize distribution via sponsorships—especially using the “R.O.P.E.” method (Relevant, Organic, Proof, Easy to execute) and audience research to land $10,000 in 30 days.
Guests
Justin Moore, creator/influencer marketing operator. Background: computer engineering; MBA; worked in medical devices product management. His wife April started a YouTube beauty/lifestyle channel (2009) and they shifted from free-product partnerships to paid deals. Justin later built an influencer marketing agency for 7 years, closing 5M+ in deals and helping 1,500+ creators earn 3,000+ sponsorships; built a 600k/year business.
Key claims
Social media/personal brand is “last moat” via trust; influencer marketing is full-funnel (awareness to conversions) not just bottom-of-funnel ROAS. Businesses fail by lacking clear objectives and underfunding tests. Sponsorship pitches should be tailored to ICP painkillers (not “interests”).
Notable examples
April’s early paid deal ($700/month for two videos). A Women in Tech podcast deal rising from $500 to $6,500/month after asking brand objectives. Survey-driven content personalization and a staffing-agency sponsorship example tied to “retention/recruiting” pain.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOUnderstanding Sponsorship Value
0:45 to 2:36
Discussion on the importance of knowing your ideal customer for effective marketing.
“He's closed over$5 million in deals personally.”
Justin's Journey to Influencer Marketing
2:36 to 5:32
Justin shares his transition from a corporate job to starting a YouTube channel and influencer marketing.
“I just went out and bought it or, Oh, I just went to their website and picked it up.”
The Evolution of Income through Sponsorships
5:32 to 8:31
Justin explains how he and his wife monetized their YouTube channel and grew their income.
“but I critically kept my job for several years because we basically, we had this, we picked this number, dude.”
Building a Personal Brand
8:31 to 11:36
Discussion on the necessity of building a personal brand for entrepreneurs in a competitive landscape.
“This framework is something that I've developed over many years to essentially do outbound pitching or even inbound pitching.”
The ROPE Method in Sponsorships
11:36 to 14:00
Justin introduces the ROPE method for effective pitches to brands and partners.
“The flip side, though, is as the businesses, what are some of the biggest mistakes that businesses make when they're looking for partners to sponsor?”
Understanding Customer Needs Through Surveys
14:00 to 17:06
Learn the importance of surveying customers to tailor your offerings.
“oh, I opened a bakery and so people are coming to me for the donuts, but really they're coming because they like, I don't know, you have like the specialty coffee that you make.”
The Power of Knowing Your Offer
17:06 to 18:50
Explore how refining your business offer can lead to better deals.
“And so she had a very clear offer of what she was going to provide to them.”
Saying No to Misaligned Partnerships
18:50 to 19:42
Understand the value of rejecting opportunities that do not align with your values.
“And then they get into the actual execution of the partnership and they're just resentful the whole time.”
Architecting Your Life Around Your Goals
19:42 to 21:18
Discover how to align your business with your personal lifestyle goals.
“Hey, I don't know if you remember this, but when we started this podcast, we entered into a social contract.”
The Journey from Time-for-Money to Scalable Business
21:18 to 23:24
Learn about transitioning from trading time for money to creating scalable systems.
“That really is like at this point in my life is like really important to me is like, yeah, I get fulfillment serving one person at a time.”
Show all 21 chapters
Identifying What You Truly Want
23:24 to 25:13
Realize the significance of knowing what you want in your entrepreneurship journey.
“I'm glad there's somebody else out there who's going through the same process right now.”
Growing Your YouTube Channel for Sponsorships
25:13 to 28:00
Get insights on how to pivot your YouTube strategy for revenue growth.
“I think you're lucky and fortunate of like you kind of knew what you wanted earlier on and have architected it, which is awesome.”
Understanding Audience Needs Through Polls
28:00 to 29:00
Learn how to effectively gauge what content your audience wants.
“that these people are going from zero to a million, but like, what if 90 % of your respondents, okay, here we go.”
Identifying Pain Points for Better Engagement
29:00 to 31:00
Discover how to identify your audience's challenges for effective content.
“So this is kind of why I think it's that, hey, how do I use AI to grow my business?”
The Importance of Pain Points Over Interest
31:00 to 32:40
Understand why addressing urgent needs matter more than general interests.
“Because I would think that how do you get started as an entrepreneur and how to use AI to grow your business are two different subs.”
Gathering Data for Effective Outreach
32:40 to 34:30
Learn how to collect relevant data to attract potential sponsors effectively.
“This is, I think you're, I think you're before we start, give me some feedback on like your biggest pain points in your business right now so that I can ensure that I can help you solve them.”
Crafting Relevant Outreach Proposals
34:30 to 37:10
Explore how to structure proposals for sponsorships based on audience data.
“important part of this and then step two is we go back to the rope method it's how do we craft outreach where it's exciting to the brand to respond to me.”
Monetizing Your Audience Effectively
37:10 to 39:50
Learn strategies to monetize your audience through targeted content and sponsorships.
“We could do a targeted blast just to that segment with this offer.”
Implementing Audience Feedback for Growth
39:50 to 42:01
Discover the importance of audience feedback in developing content and securing sponsors.
“because like if you could illustrate to somewhere.com that you could bring them one client who hires two employees, that's worth 10 grand to them probably or more.”
Strategizing for Sponsorship Success
42:01 to 43:55
Learn how to gather insights from your audience to secure sponsorships effectively.
“So I think what I need to do and tell me what you think.”
The Importance of Authenticity in Promotion
43:55 to 45:08
Discover the value of authenticity when promoting sponsorships and connecting with your audience.
“I want people to know, Justin's not sponsoring this.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Justin Moore:If you're a founder or entrepreneur listening to this and be like, why should I care about this? It's because your lunch is going to get eaten unless you have distribution in this way. With how many businesses I've talked to and worked with, you would be amazed at how many of them don't actually know who their ideal customer is. They don't actually know who they're trying to market to. I like a lot of the advice you have, which is like, I believe that building trust at scale is the most valuable thing that I can do right now. And for many founders who have founder-led brands, I think it's the most valuable thing if they want to scale.
0:30Okay, Justin Moore. I have been honestly really excited for this conversation for over a month. For those who don't know, Justin is not just a content creator. He's helped over 1 ,500 people as content creators land over$3 ,000 a piece sponsorship deals. He's built a$600 ,000 business a year. He's closed over$5 million in deals personally. The dude is legit. If you're an entrepreneur and you're like, oh, the content creator, shut your mouth. Listen to this episode because you're going to learn. a how do you utilize under leveraged distribution channels that you already have access to number two how do you partner with content creators what does the scope of work look like who should you be looking for and then number three justin's gonna walk me through step by step how i can monetize and get a sponsorship for ten thousand dollars in the next 30 days he has promised me that it's a guarantee going to happen so i'm freaking locked in i'm excited
1:21Justin Moore:justin what did i miss dude no i'm stoked man we're gonna my favorite part is like using you as a guinea pig and getting you to your first 10 grand. I think that's going to be a blast. The really cool thing is you've done marketing and brand management on the corporate side of things. And obviously you got into the creator business. Walk me through what was life like as a W2 employee? When was that? When did you make the switch? So I was very much not doing this. I was not in this industry at all. I was in medical devices, actually, and product management. My background's in computer engineering.
1:52Justin Moore:What happened was my wife, April, started a YouTube channel in 2009. It was very much a side hobby. You really could not make money on YouTube in those early days. So for a long time, brands would reach out offering to send her free stuff. So it wasn't like, hey, we'll pay you a bunch of money. It was like, hey, you want this free hair curler? Because she was talking about beauty and lifestyle and all that. And so essentially what happened is for years, she was just accepting the free stuff. This is awesome. We were in our early 20s, no money, living in a studio, doing that whole thing. And then I decided to go back to school, get my MBA at night after work.
2:22Justin Moore:And I started taking these classes all around advertising and marketing and negotiation. And I just kind of the gears started turning dude, where I was like, man, her videos are riddled with hundreds of comments of saying, Hey, April, thank you so much for telling me about this brand. I just went out and bought it or, Oh, I just went to their website and picked it up. Thanks so much. And I went to my wife one day. I was like, I really feel like we're getting the short end of the stick here. Like a$30, $30 hair curler for free is not adequate compensation for the value you're providing to these brands.
2:51Justin Moore:And so sure enough, the next brand, I said, let's email them. Hey, do you have a budget? Can you compensate me to talk about you? And they said, oh yeah, if you could talk about us in two videos a month, we will pay you$700 monthly. And dude, our minds were blown because that was like most of our rent at the time. The very first taste of like side hustle income that we got was like, wow, there's ways to make money in this world that don't rely on a nine to five paycheck. And it's kind of uncapped, right? Like if we could find 10 more people like this, like why couldn't we make 10 times as much money?
3:25Justin Moore:Right. And so this is what ultimately led us down the road of, of, you know, doing over$5 million worth of deals that that's 600 individual sponsorships with brands over the last, you know, 15 years. And then I also along that path decided like, Hey, we actually have a really interesting skillset here of, of working with brands and understanding, you know, how to actually achieve results for these brands. And so I decided to start an influencer marketing agency where I went out there and got deals for other creators at this time. So I learned a whole new set of skills of like actually doing prospecting and reaching out to brands and being in the boardrooms with these, you know, they're saying, Hey, we want to spend a million dollars now across 200 partners, not just you, April and Justin 10 K or whatever million dollars.
4:07Justin Moore:Hey, what should the strategy be? And so ran that business for seven years, paid out millions of dollars to other people. And so this was really my perspective is like, I've been on both sides of it over the last five years, starting to building this business, educating creators. This is really where this perspective has come from. Do you know what companies spent on social media influencer marketing in 2024? I know that the Goldman Sachs study said it was around 280 billion in 2023, and then it was supposed to grow from there. So that was a worldwide number. This is supposedly United States,$24 billion in 2024.
4:43This year, it's estimated to be$32 billion. So like a 30 % jump year over year. So people are spending, marketing dollars are moving here. They're shifting here really, really quickly, which I think is fascinating. You had that same moment where you realized like, oh crap, I can make real money with this. At the time, did you think I'm going to systematize this? Or did that kind of just come later through trial honor?
5:07Justin Moore:I think that we had to be very intentional, but as with most entrepreneurs, when you're trying to convert your side hustle into a full-time thing, you kind of have to be a bit intentional or you should be intentional and not just like quit and be like, all right, YOLO, let's make this happen. I'll figure it out. For us, it was like, you know, we were building a family. So my wife was pregnant and I was like, okay, I would love to get my job to pay for the birth at the hospital bill and all that. And like she quit to do, you know, social media full-time in 2012, but I critically kept my job for several years because we basically, we had this, we picked this number, dude.
5:42Justin Moore:It was like, okay, in order for me to also quit, we need to make$10 ,000 more per month above my full-time salary. So we wanted like a buffer. So we needed to replace my salary plus 10K a month. And that was the number. And we said, okay, once we hit that number, if we hit that number, I have to quit because otherwise I'm never going to quit. Because when you still have the job, it's all fun money. It's all extra money. It's all like, oh, this is great. It's awesome. But like when you quit, it's like, okay, you know, fun's over now. Like this is legit now. We're all the eggs are in the same basket.
6:17Justin Moore:Both my wife and I, we're all doing this thing now. And so we were very intentional about systematizing and creating a process around what we were doing because we knew that there were stakes. Like we're going to quit. We're both going to quit and do this full time. And so we can't mess around here. I think it's really interesting that social media audience building is becoming more and more of a business. I tell founders this all the time. Companies like Uber, Facebook, when they started up, they raised a bunch of money. They raised billions of dollars. And what's interesting is, let's say Uber, for example, half of the dollar, billions of dollars were spent on acquiring customers.
6:53Social media, having an audience, that is just another form of distribution. you can now reach people in a much easier way than you ever have been able to in the past and so if you're a founder you're entrepreneur and you're kind of like i don't really understand the content side of it this is just another distribution channel and you need to figure out a way to leverage it and you started like 2012 just seems crazy to me i have like a very
7:16Justin Moore:maybe a hot take on this which is that building a personal brand and building organic distribution is going to be the last moat in the age of AI. Pretty much anything can be duplicated and replicated very, very easily. And, but if you have a following, if you have people who trust and believe in what you say, they will buy it from you. If you build trust in that way. And so if you're a founder or entrepreneur listening to this and be like, why should I care about this? It's because your lunch is going to get eaten unless you have distribution in this way. Yep. And that's why you see so many brands now that are founder led brands.
7:54It doesn't matter that it's, Oh, I'm building a SAS company that helps with hotel reservations in a certain market. You need to be a founder led brand. If you want to attract good talent, if you want to have a good distribution channel, if you want to have opportunities to either have investment or sell your business, having a personal brand is, is definitely, I totally agree with you. I think it is also the last moat because of that trust factor in it. Okay. Okay, let's pivot just a little bit now. So for business owners, entrepreneurs, you have this method called the rope method. Can you talk about like over time how you've developed this rope method and what that is?
8:27Justin Moore:I'll quickly define it and then I'll talk about how it can apply to you and your business as a founder or entrepreneur. This framework is something that I've developed over many years to essentially do outbound pitching or even inbound pitching. It's a formula essentially to ensure that whatever you're proposing to this partner, whether it's a brand, a company, whatever, is compelling and that they'd be interested in moving forward and discussing like a compensated partnership with you. So R stands for relevant, meaning that your pitch has to be relevant to a campaign that the brand is either currently running or has run in the past.
9:05Justin Moore:O stands for organic, meaning that you can tie your pitch back to organic work that you've already published that illustrates that your audience has existing affinity for their brand or their product. P stands for proof. So you can show how you've helped others achieve results. And E stands for easy to execute when they say, Hey, yeah, this is actually kind of interesting. What did you have in mind? And so a lot of people have told me that actually this is just a, this is a sales formula. It's not just like about pitching brands. It's very much just about like, how do you craft something where the brand understands or the partner understands what's in it for them.
9:39Justin Moore:That's the reason. Like I was listening to your book and the minute you explained it, I was like, holy crap, that's for any business owner. If you have a list of previous customers or you have a list of potential customers, you have to craft that good first email. And it has to be, like you said, are relevant. Why are you emailing them? What's the message that you're trying to communicate? Do you think the rope, could you make that into like an AI prompt where you're like, hey, I want to do this cold outreach, make sure that it follows the Roke method in my messaging. And these are the kind of the points that I want to hit on.
10:11Like, are you using it like that? You know, I mean, I do. I have, we have tooling in our coaching program that helps people with that.
10:16Justin Moore:When you say tooling, you mean AI tooling? Like you've created your own GPTs or what? No, it's not a GPT. I mean, it uses GPT and it uses perplexity and chat GPT and Claude and everything, but it's much more robust than that. It's, it's, we have our own tooling that helps do the research for you about what these brands are, what campaigns they're running. Is that why you're using perplexity? Yeah, perplexity is like a big one for the research part of it. Actually, Tretachi PT and even Claude are getting pretty good at the research part too. So we're just playing with different tooling depending on the model.
10:44Justin Moore:But yeah, we're really trying to develop kind of like micro SaaS to help our students with a lot of this type of stuff. It's pretty cool. Well, it's interesting. Most business owners think of like, oh, I'm getting leads. I'm getting business. I have to get new business, new business, new business. And so like water's going into the bucket. Oh, I got to fill up this bucket. And there's this massive hole on the underside of the bucket where the water just continues to leak out. And those are customers who you've either had or serviced and you're losing them and you're not retaining them, whatever the reason is.
11:08If you can focus on either reselling to those customers who you've already purchased from you or keeping the customers who are already currently customers of you, all of a sudden you're going to see your revenue jump just because your churn is lowering. And a lot of it has to do with that messaging, how you're staying in touch with them, how you're making sure you're on the same page with things. And so for me, when I was like looking at the road method, I'm like, this is this would be a perfect method for people to implement. What have you seen from the flip side? Like, obviously, you're working with creators who want to partner with brands and they want to get sponsorships and who wouldn't want to do those things.
11:40The flip side, though, is as the businesses, what are some of the biggest mistakes that businesses make when they're looking for partners to sponsor?
11:47Justin Moore:There's a the number one mistake is not having clarity around what your objectives are when you work with influencers. A lot of people think, oh, I should be doing influencer marketing or my competitors are doing it or this other D2C brand, they're crushing it. And they just say, OK, let's allocate some sort of sample or test budget to working with creators. But then the other one is like not really devoting not enough time or resources or a large enough sample size of a budget for creators to work with to really give this the old college try and really actually determine is influencer marketing going to work for us or not?
12:24Justin Moore:because mistakenly, a lot of people are looking at influencers as like purely bottom of funnel conversion focused tactic, right? They're looking, okay, if I could spend this 50 grand on Facebook ads, I should be able to generate a two X row as, or, you know, return on ad spend or whatever. So this should generate a hundred grand. That's really not the right way to look at creators. Creators are really actually full funnel, right? They can help build awareness, right? They can help build consideration. You can actually get assets from them to repurpose, to use as creative in other ways, put it on your website.
12:58Justin Moore:And then, yeah, they can, they can help drive conversions. It's another marketing channel, but you have to be a bit more thoughtful about how you utilize it. How do you know whether or not social media or, or content marketing is going to actually do well for your business? You have to test it just like any other marketing channel. You have to decide, okay, like what, what are we trying to accomplish? What is the, if first of all, identifying our ICP, right, our customer, our ideal customer persona of who we think our customers are listening to influencers or listening to creators in this like, you know, psychographic demographic, whatever.
13:33Justin Moore:So how can we go out there and identify the most influential people in this subset? How do they do that? It is funny with how many businesses I've talked to and work with. You would be amazed at how many of them don't actually know who their ideal customers. They don't actually know like who they're trying to market to. I liked a lot of the advice you have, which is like, do a survey. Yeah. Yeah. Many business owners don't even do a survey. They don't even ask like, how did you hear about us? Or why are you here? They think, oh, I opened a bakery and so people are coming to me for the donuts, but really they're coming because they like, I don't know, you have like the specialty coffee that you make.
14:06So if you don't ask the question, you don't actually know what your customers are coming there for.
14:11Justin Moore:Tying back to something you said earlier in the episode around like, hey, like a lot of these businesses, they've got customer lists. They've got email lists of these people who have purchased. They may not be sending a regular newsletter or a regular digest to those customers. Number one piece of advice, start, start today, start emailing them and understanding what's going on in their lives. And to your point, yeah, doing these surveys can be super powerful. Here's a quick example. So I am a business. I have customers who are creators that I'm coaching, right? And I am surveying the heck out of them because I want to know, for example, what are their biggest challenges?
14:43Justin Moore:What are their biggest pain points? What's keeping them up at night? And I use those answers to customize and personalize the content that I sent to them. For example, if someone tells me that like the main question that I care about, really, I ask a bunch of questions, but the main one I care about is what is your biggest goal right now as a creator for this year? Like, what's your goal? And I have a bunch of different questions that you ask, but like, if someone says quitting my nine to five job, that's the goal this year is I want to quit and do this full time. when I market my products to them, my courses, my bootcamps, my workshops, my coaching programs, et cetera, I send different testimonials to them depending on what they said their goal is.
15:22Justin Moore:So if they say that their biggest goal is quitting their nine to five, I'm going to send them a testimonial of someone who said, oh, I went in Justin's coaching program and I was able to quit my job. So yeah, it's very, very important to, and this philosophy about personalizing your marketing can be applied regardless of what type of business you have. Well, and what's crazy is once you know who you are, life gets so much simpler. I'm not gonna say easier, but it gets very simple because if you don't know who you are, you don't know what you're looking for. You're, you just scatter. Like you have the scattershot approach.
15:53You have the story in your book of this woman who, once she like refined her offer and she started saying no to brands, you tell the story, but she ended up landing a much better deal for herself than she otherwise
16:03Justin Moore:would have just because she got focused on what her offering was. Right. Totally. Yeah. That was from Esprit Devorah. So she runs a podcast called the Women in Tech Podcast, Women in LA Tech Podcast. Yeah. To your point, like she was very resistive actually to monetizing it all. Like she's actually had interest from brands for a long time, but she was worried about, you know, her appearing like a sellout or not authentic because she's built this connection with her audience over many, many years. And so after, you know, doing some coaching with her, I basically said, look, even if they're coming inbound to you and saying, hey, we got 500 bucks, that doesn't necessarily mean that that's their only budget.
16:39Justin Moore:Let's learn about their objectives. Like we were just talking about, right? Let's actually ask them. And funny enough, like we were talking about, like they didn't know. They were like, well, we need to actually, we need to think about this. Let us talk some more internally. And she kind of was, was invested in this conversation. It wasn't just in it for the money. Let me understand more about how I can help you. And they came back with a deal that was 6 ,500. It went from$500 to$6 ,500 simply because she had the audacity to ask about their goals. And so she had a very clear offer of what she was going to provide to them.
17:10Justin Moore:And that was what got the deal over the finish line. And if I remember right, it was like$500 one time into a$6 ,500 a month ongoing engagement. So it totally paid off. This is one of my favorite things in business is going through the exercise with companies to help them understand who they are. What are their core values? What are they focused on? It's honestly one of my favorite exercises. I'll sit down with a team of executives and I'll be like, okay, if you had to pick two people in your company that you think if you started another business, you would conquer the world with, who would they be?
17:43And so they were like, they write down their names. Okay. Jenna and Greg. I'm like, great. Now write down all the attributes that you love about those people. So they'll write down the attributes, right? Like loyal, smart, hardworking, whatever. And then you get all of them to put their attributes up on a board. so you've got maybe five or six people they've listed two people and then you've got maybe 10 attributes per all of a sudden you've got a couple hundred attributes and you start looking like what are the commonalities like oh that's really interesting we all really care about being done at five so we can spend time with our family and oh we all really like to joke and we have potty humor okay that that's kind of a core value and so it's like this executive team comes together and they realize these are the types of people we want in our company so it's not necessarily going out and getting customers, but it is who do I want to attract within the company?
18:31And once you have that, it just frees everything else up. It's like, no, these are our core values. This is what we believe in. It makes hiring way easier. It makes holding people accountable way easier. So I agree with you just going through the thought process of like, what's our offering? Who are we trying to identify? Who are we trying to sell to? Frees you up to then focus on the things that are most important.
18:51Justin Moore:Well, you know, one thing also that I think critical about doing this process is it will give you a lot more clarity and comfort with saying no to partnerships or business development type deals if there is not alignment there. Because what oftentimes happens when I work with creators is that they will accept a partnership that's either not enough money or the mission and the ethics and the values of the brand are not super in alignment, but it's like, oh, it's like money. I should take it. And then they get into the actual execution of the partnership and they're just resentful the whole time.
19:22Justin Moore:They're like, ah, man, I shouldn't have done this. Like I'm annoyed, like knowing like not only what you're like, heck yeah, number is to like actually do the deal from a financial perspective, but just like be honest with yourself about whether or not this is something you even want to pursue. It's just going back to that basic, very basic Derek Sivers book. Hell yeah or no. That very simple framework, right? Hey, I don't know if you remember this, but when we started this podcast, we entered into a social contract. I would spend time, energy and money producing this podcast, interviewing these individuals and giving you insights into how to build, buy, start, grow your business.
19:55And you would like subscribe and leave me five-star review. Now, out of that, we both get to talk to really cool people and hear really cool insights. We both get a ton of value, but I just want to help you keep your word. So would you do me a favor? Will you go leave a five-star review for me on Apple or Spotify? It would really help. And if you want, even share this with a friend.
Read the full transcript
20:17Justin Moore:This is going to It sounds so weird and I don't mean this to sound weird, but there is a so excited unending stream of opportunity. You can say yes to a lot of things. Lots of people wanting to do deals with you and partnerships and take it, be an advisor to this. We'll give you equity and do these deals. And like you really, really, really have to be intentional about what is important. And to me, the most important thing is 10X in the newsletter. That's all I'm going to focus on. And so like it means saying yes to like no to like really cool opportunities. And it's really hard. I agree with you there is no shortage of good opportunities but there is a shortage of my time yeah and what I value and I've had a lot of opportunities in the last year of people reaching out to me to start businesses or partner with them yada yada but I have to travel and like that's one of my non-negotiables like I'm not traveling I'm I want to be here at five every day to play with my kids and so I'm not maximizing dollar values but I am maximizing that lifestyle but when you've got like a hundred thousand dollar check staring at you that's where it's like do i really do i really want to be there after five i don't know my son pooped on the bed last night oh i could take a break you know what i mean like justifying all this stuff is a balance dude let me give you an even more tangible example i stopped doing one-on-one coaching calls about a year ago so i charged a thousand dollars an hour for my sponsorship coaching and i've done lots of them lots and lots and lots of them and like to me the old justin like how long would i've had to work to make a thousand dollars and this person wants to pay me in one hour who am i to say no to these i have like a a long list of people willing to pay me a thousand dollars per hour i woke up to this reality maybe a year and a half ago where i was like i would like not look forward to like i would wake up and i'd have like an endless stream of one-on-one coaching calls on my calendar and i I couldn't really what it was is I didn't have the space in my life or my business to create net new.
22:15Justin Moore:That really is like at this point in my life is like really important to me is like, yeah, I get fulfillment serving one person at a time. But really, what I really get core fulfillment from is teaching people a scale. And the only way in which I can do that is creating new frameworks, new methodologies, new ways to teach people lots of people, not just this one person. And so I had to, I had to like create space in my life and my calendar and be like, okay, I'm, I'm really going to say no to like this long list of people who want to pay me a thousand dollars an hour. If I have this larger North star.
22:46Justin Moore:Yeah. Doctors and lawyers have that same problem. They're always jealous of entrepreneurs. Cause they're like, I'm just trading my time for money, which is great money for them. But they're like, wow, I want to buy real estate or I want to have something that's passive. And I think a lot of people mistake mistakenly think about entrepreneurship. Like I want to buy a business or start a business and have it be passive or have passive income. It's like, no, no, you have to go through this period that you just described where you are trading your time for money. Many times when you're starting a business, you are trading your time for money and then build systems at scale that then allow you to buy it back.
23:17And now I sound like Dan Martel.
23:19Justin Moore:Yeah. But, you know, buy back your time and then, you know, you can do things. It's just cool to see because I have a hard time saying no. And it's like, cool. I'm glad there's somebody else out there who's going through the same process right now. It makes me think that there's hope for me. Well, there absolutely is hope for you. And I think that the other, this happened to me recently, one of my best friends is a business owner, and he owns like several small, small businesses in manufacturing aerospace arena, very successful, like doing really well. But he has juggled like, you know, different nine to fives over the years while running these kind of other businesses with operators.
23:55Justin Moore:But he said to me, this is something the other day when I was visiting him recently, I was like complimenting. I was like, man, it's amazing what you've built. Like, this is so cool. He's like, you know, I appreciate that. But like you and April, you and your wife have had time freedom for the last 12 years, basically. And I don't have that. I still don't have that. I still have to be at a certain place at a certain time, even though I own a business, you know, like I have to do this. And so like that's like it was a very interesting comment because like I sometimes I look aspirationally to others when in reality, like I actually have like we have like a pretty amazing life.
24:30Justin Moore:There's so many amazing things that have come from like being able to just like go to our kids field trips anytime, you know, classroom activity. We go. They're sick. We can stay home. We can care for them. It's just like so many benefits to like this particular business and life that we built that is somewhat unique, I think. Yeah, I thought a lot of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs are like are getting into the space. And I always say you need to understand what you want. I don't care if it's if you want a lot of money. I don't care if you want to be famous. I don't care if you want to spend time with your family or if you want to be the mayor of your small town or give whatever it is.
25:02You just need to know what you want and then architect your life around that. Otherwise, you're going to build something that you're just not happy in. I do feel lucky and fortunate in that regard. I think you're lucky and fortunate of like you kind of knew what you wanted earlier on and have architected it, which is awesome. Yeah, I completely agree, dude. Okay, for the last little bit, I'm going to ask you for some consulting. I have been very focused on growing my YouTube channel in particular. That's been my main focus. And the reason behind this, I'll give you the quick reason behind it, is I believe that building trust at scale is the most valuable thing that I can do right now.
25:41And for many founders who have founder-led brands, I think it's the most valuable thing if they want to scale. I've started a venture studio with my brother-in-law. It's a healthcare venture studio where we bring in companies who are either wanting to be incubated within our company or accelerated. We have about 5 ,000 employees, 8 ,000 patients, 60 facilities. And so we use those assets as leverage to then either accelerate or incubate ideas, right? And I think in order for us to fully leverage that, we need to have some type of a distribution channel, either post incubator accelerator, or in order to get into the incubator accelerator and attract the best people.
26:14That's the thesis behind growing an audience at the moment. And so I've been really focused on my YouTube channel in particular. It's on entrepreneurship. It's geared towards entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs who are trying to make their first million dollars. This isn't Larry Ellison and Elon Musk. This is, you know, people who own small businesses and are running them. I thought it would be fun to like sit down with you and just get either an audit or just some ideas of how in the next 30 days could I generate$10 ,000 in sponsorship revenue? Because I have not focused on it. Frankly, I have not cared about it, but I'm to the point now where I'm like, I get enough people reaching out to me.
26:51I should probably be doing some type of revenue to offset the team that I have that I'm paying for every single month. So what do you think? Where do we start with that? Should I share my screen or what should we do? Dude, yeah.
27:01Justin Moore:Let's share the screen. Let's get a lay of the land and then we'll go from there. Tell me what to do. Tell me what to pull up. Pull up your YouTube channel. The audio podcast is also a thing as well, right? Yep. So let's start with the YouTube channel. Here is my studio. Okay. Oh, I hate my face so much. Yeah. Look at these stupid dumb people. It's a great face. Come on. So here are. Let's go first principles here. Analytics. Before we even get into the analytics, because I think this is what a lot of people do. They go, OK, I'm getting this many views and this audience demos. Let's go back to what we were talking about earlier.
27:39Justin Moore:How can we survey this audience using, let's say, a YouTube community post or poll? or if you have started any sort of newsletter assets where you've been trying to extract some of these viewers from YouTube onto an email list, how can we learn more about where these people are at in their business journey? You have a suspicion that these people are going from zero to a million, but like, what if 90 % of your respondents, okay, here we go. So you've got some info. What if 90 % of your respondents are still going from zero to one? They haven't even started the business. This is a great question.
28:15This is the poll that I've had, which is what kind of content do you want more of? How to buy your first business, how to grow and scale a business, how to get started as an entrepreneur, or how to use AI to grow your business. So this is of the last, let's call it four months, people who have answered. The majority of them are hitting on this, how to use AI to grow your business and how to get started as an entrepreneur. If I go back to just the most recent newsletters, looks like it's flipping me off sideways. Sorry. How to get started as an entrepreneur. is definitely top there. Same. How to get started as an entrepreneur.
28:49Okay. How to use AI to grow your business. Now, we're not dealing with the law of large numbers here on each one of these, right? Because we're getting like 30, 40 respondents. So that's why you're seeing such dramatic...
28:57Justin Moore:It's still like directionally interesting, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So this is kind of why I think it's that, hey, how do I use AI to grow my business? So there's people who have like got businesses that they're running. And then that wantrepreneur crowd who are like, well, how do I even get started? How do I find the business or buy the business? Go back to the polls. Do you have other questions that you're asking? Just the how did I do today? Should I have more questions? This is where I'm... We need more questions, bro. Really? I want to know. Yeah, dude. We need a lot more questions. Okay. Next question for your newsletter.
29:29Justin Moore:What is keeping you up? What is keeping you up at night? What is keeping you up at night? Yeah. What are your biggest problems that you're having right now in your business? Is it, I don't know the answer is, worried about making payroll? Is it work-life balance? is it you know whatever you could you're better at brainstorming this yeah yeah yeah but i get what you're saying though yeah so what are your current challenges like not just what are you interested in learning about like what are your current challenges yeah what are your current challenges because if the answer to you know one of these questions is recruiting like retention like i can't keep employees they're always quitting or something then you use that data and you go pitch a staffing agency.
30:12Oh,
30:14Justin Moore:okay. And you say, hey, I've got, you know, look at this, look at the results of these polls over the last four weeks. Everyone is saying they're having recruiting issues. I would, I think it'd be an amazing idea for you to sponsor my newsletter for the next three months. Okay. So let's drill down on that a little bit. So let's say the two that I have are how to get started as an entrepreneur and how to use AI to grow your business. So I know that the majority of respondents are interested in those topics. I don't think this is that interesting, bro. Being interested in a topic is very different than an active problem that I have.
30:48Justin Moore:We're talking painkiller versus vitamin here. This is a vitamin. Oh, what content would you like to see? What problems are you having? That's what they'll pay money for, to solve their problems. How do I craft the survey then, right? Because I would think that how do you get started as an entrepreneur and how to use AI to grow your business are two different subs. If I say in your business, What's the biggest challenge that you're facing? I'm not going to get answers from the how to get started as an entrepreneur crowd. Where are you putting these questions? Is it just like at the very, at the footer or the bottom or something of these?
31:19Justin Moore:No, it's right at the top. So, so I do a little intro and then right here, give me your feedback. And then I get into the, to the meat and potatoes of the newsletter. But admittedly, I'm a newsletter novice. So please rip away. Tell me what I'm doing wrong. The best practice here would be asking this question right after they join your newsletter on the post opt-in confirmation page. Yes. Because you'll get a much higher opt-in than in the email themselves because people just don't like answering surveys. My results have been 90 % opt-in or like actually filling out the questions after signing up for the newsletter right when they're joining because they don't think they're going to get on the newsletter unless they fill out the survey.
32:05Justin Moore:But when they're on the newsletter, it's like 40%. So it's like way lower. I'm on Kit. Okay. And so is that a function within Kit where it's not? I use a tool called Write Message for that. Write Message. Okay. I'm going to have to look it up. All right. So that's piece of advice number one. Get it right when they sign up. You get it right when they sign up. And then again, focus on the pain points, the actual painkiller problems, not the like nice to have stuff. And, and the way in which you're actually integrating it into here. Yeah, you can, I mean, this is okay. Like it's not like tactically bad, but making it just generally bad, not generally bad.
32:41Justin Moore:This is, I think you're, I think you're before we start, give me some feedback on like your biggest pain points in your business right now so that I can ensure that I can help you solve them. Okay. Like to, to me, you know, something like that is to me, to me, I think it's like being very clear that why they should be answering this question. Will you talk about vitamin versus painkiller or for, do you say that? Yeah, this is like a, this is a really important thing. So like people don't want to buy vitamins. They want to buy painkillers. They don't, they don't, something that will help them in some amorphous distant future where they have to take a vitamin every day for like 60 days, 90 days.
33:20Justin Moore:And like, maybe at some point it'll help me. People are much less interested in doing that than buying Ozepic. Let me take a shot. Okay. And it will immediately help me do this thing. It's way easier. It's 10 times easier than doing all the diet and exercise. This is a urgent, painful thing that I'm experiencing or give me the, give me the, the pain meds. I want the thing that's going to make my pain go away immediately. and so by asking people hey what content do you want me to write that's the painkiller because it's like just tell me just tell me right away like what i need to write about but the vitamins are what are you struggling with because that takes time for me to aggregate and to analyze and to to craft and create sort of content around is that kind of sorry what i meant more is like the painkiller data is going to be the thing that's going to get you the sponsorship oh okay because if you can go to a sponsor and say that like these people on my list are having this urgent active issue that's why they're going to be more likely to purchase or patronize your product or service because they are they need this this problem to go away immediately okay okay so that's step one gather some more data gather some more data is is very you know very important part of this and then step two is we go back to the rope method it's how do we craft outreach where it's exciting to the brand to respond to me.
34:42Justin Moore:So let's pull that example of the, the, um, you know, training or retention issue. What we're going to do is we're going to go out there and we're going to find a staffing agency. We're going to go to somewhere.com. I don't know, right. It's like Nick, Nick Cooper's staffing agency. Right. And we're going to see what campaigns they're running. Are they running some sort of campaign around like black Friday or something where you can get your first, you know, executive assistant for half off for the first month and they'll pay for that first month. I don't know. I'm just saying like, let's go back and research what campaigns they were running last year.
35:14Justin Moore:Hey, you're going to be running that campaign again this year. That's the R in the rote method is the relevancy going and seeing what campaigns are they running or are most likely going to run in the future. Because right now all I'm, all I would be able to approach them with is like, Hey, this many people are interested in starting their business or this, how many people are interested in using ai to grow their business so i have a very broad yeah and everyone's saying that that's what every like that's not interesting there's a hundred a thousand newsletters or youtube video channels talking about that stuff right okay so you need to do what what's the differentiation point here right how much data is enough data it's like oh i mean 10 people respond or like i had 5 000 people like what i think directionally the problem question around like what's going on in their lives, what's keeping them up at night is like one piece of the data.
36:00Justin Moore:It would be nice to get other data like, you know, revenue size of the business. You know, like I was actually just talking with a potential sponsor recently and like they told me one of their goals is like, you know, maximizing the number of new businesses that are making over a million dollars in revenue on their platform. That was a goal. And so I didn't have that data. I was like, okay, maybe I should add some revenue numbers to my onboarding survey so that I can have some, you know it's not hhi like household income is like a pretty common one to ask for consumer facing companies but like b2b focused companies like getting revenue figures might be interesting so like maybe if you had that data that could also be potentially interesting to to sponsors i don't know that it's necessarily like an audience size thing but if you could if you could show them hey like 20 people responded to this that have businesses making over a million dollars that could be a worthwhile sponsorship even though the sample size is small that's an interesting piece because like honestly with the newsletter it's been an afterthought for me like i have the only reason i started even collecting emails was because somebody was like you're getting that many views you should be collecting emails like oh okay and so like i have it and like i send it out but it's definitely not optimized as you saw i have one survey and i'm not sending anything like there's no good onboarding process so i i think for me that's a really good takeaway is of course you should have a better onboarding process just like any business and you can upsell these sponsorships with the newsletter.
37:22Justin Moore:So you say, yeah, I could talk about you on my YouTube channel and in the podcast, but I also have a segment on my newsletter of 600 businesses that have all self-identified as making 100 to$500 ,000 in revenue a year, which is what it sounds like you're trying to target. We could do a targeted blast just to that segment with this offer. Talk to me about how do you get people to actually, so I know that upon signing up for the newsletter, you send them a survey, but let's say that I didn't do that. How do you get people to actually answer the survey? Cause that's just, it's hard. You have to incentivize them somehow, whether you could do giveaways, like sometimes, you know, Amazon gift cards, like, or find something very valuable.
38:01Justin Moore:Maybe you're going to raffle off a free coaching call with you or something. If they fill it out, you just got to figure out to send it in an email, in a newsletter or just a separate email. That's like, Hey, I'm trying to get a better psychographic of my audience. Can you just fill this out? It's not about you. No, don't say I'm trying to get, I'm no, I'm trying to serve you. Not I'm trying to get more data. Cause that's a, that's a, that's a personal thing. Every email you should send should be like, how is this going to help my reader? This one individual person. And, and so that's the lens is like, I'm trying to give you more personalized advice.
38:32I feel so stupid.
38:34Justin Moore:Yeah. No, don't, don't feel stupid. I mean, this is a, this is a really common thing actually is like, you know, right. As if you're talking just to one person, it's the positioning of it though. It's not like, Hey, I need you to help me. yeah hey i want to help you yeah help you know answer these things right but would you do it separate you would do it separate then so what i like to do is i think you you do all the things you have it in the newsletter and then let's say once a quarter you could send a dedicated blast be like hey i just want to make sure i have your like you could do it either your preferences updated or i want to serve you make sure i'm serving you in the best way possible so you could do a dedicated email like once a quarter too do you have an ideal length is it like very short 10 questions no yeah like like make make them all make all the questions as relevant to them as possible like you know clear as to why you want that info my survey is eight questions i also have like a logic on the question so if they answer yes to this question yeah if then then i'm gonna answer it go down like a different tree of the questions all right so i've got some work to do just identifying my customer basically like who's my icp i think so yeah what about just on my channel because I'm just curious to get your feedback and thoughts.
39:41I'm like, oh, okay. This is the ballpark of once you get that dialed in of kind of where you could be from a monetization standpoint.
39:50Justin Moore:This is why I don't like get hung up very much on following and viewership and all that because like if you could illustrate to somewhere.com that you could bring them one client who hires two employees, that's worth 10 grand to them probably or more. So to me, it's not about the size of your YouTube channel or the size of your following. Obviously, like as a proxy, that helps directionally, like the more eyeballs you have, the more potential clients you have. But like, it's much more about the composition of your audience. It's a lazy proxy. Yeah, it's a lazy proxy, but it can be somewhat useful.
40:28Justin Moore:But like, it's much more the data that you can point to and say like, you know, yeah, a thousand people watched the video, but it's 300 of these people have businesses likely in all likelihood that are doing a million dollars a year or more, whatever the number is. Right. A lot of it is like a narrative, dude. It's like how you position a sponsorship of your channel as a way for them to accomplish a business outcome. Could I take examples from guests who I've had on? So I've had guests and I do ask them, I'm like, Hey, just let me know if you got any business from the podcast. And many of my guests will message me and be like, I got business.
41:01Some of them obviously doing much, much better than others.
41:04Justin Moore:But 100 % dude, you could even, I would also, you could run a test for yourself. You could say, do a, some sort of workshop yourself. Say, Hey, put it in your YouTube community tab or whatever. And be like, Hey, I'm going to do a one hour workshop on finding your next business, your next business idea or whatever it is using AI, you know, one of those two things, right? Using AI to blah, blah, blah. It's going to be$27 and I'm going to do it at this date. you know here's the little of simple paywall and then if you get 60 people to sign up there you go there's proof when you ask people to do a thing they do the thing oftentimes that that's what brands are looking for is that you actually have influence right that people listen to you and so you can also get first party data by running little experiments like this okay i'm gonna try to synthesize this i'm gonna do this like i'm not just gonna freaking talk about this i'm gonna do this so people are gonna follow me and if i fall on my face i'm just gonna have my mom wiring me $10 ,000 to say we did it, but, but, or, or transfer it from another account.
42:01Justin Moore:Look at that.
42:05Don't ask who the sponsor is. So I think what I need to do and tell me what you think. Step number one, I need to get some information on my audience. Like bottom line, send a survey out, send a couple of surveys out and start gathering more specific information about their challenges, how I can serve them. What are they facing and what do they need help with? Number Or two, let's get some proof. Let's get some social proof that if I ask my audience to do something, they actually do it. So host a webinar, get some testimonials from people, whatever, gather some of that information. And then let's say that's two weeks from now, then I can make some assessment of like, all right, this is where people have made money.
42:43This is where I've actually gotten people to say where their challenges are. Now go out and focus and find some brands. So that gives me maybe two weeks to hopefully at least get down the path.
42:53Justin Moore:Is that a good plan? It is. And you know what the most exciting part about this thing is, is that when you secure a sponsorship, when you talk about the brand, it feels like an act of service. Because I said, you say, I asked you, I asked you what your biggest problems are. And here's the graph. Here's what you guys said. Here, I'll show it to you. Here's, here's the little chart. And so I went out there and I struck this deal with somewhere because you were having this issue with recruiting. And so it feels much more like an active service now versus you lining your pockets. Because it is an active service.
43:26You're not just coming out there saying like, hey, I want to make money. Who can pay me the most? You're going with service in mind. It's like, okay, I want this to be useful. And that's been my whole approach. That's why I've kind of felt weird about asking for sponsorships because I'm like, it feels gross. Like, oh, I just, I don't want money. But when you reframe it as, well, I'm solving a pain point for people. So of course that would be valuable for someone to come in and offer a solution to that pain point. it makes me feel a little better yeah dude let's fingers crossed i just thought i just saw the
43:54Justin Moore:mindset shift there let's go let's go let's go all right in 30 days i'm gonna follow this up and um whether or not i hit it i'm gonna give an update i think i can hit 10 grand i think we're gonna do this thing all right let's go justin where can people get this bad boy sponsor magnet.com my friend that's the best place to go it's also available on audiobook uh you know your favorite audiobook place, but yeah, sponsormagnon.com and you can tumble down the rabbit hole and reach out to me from there as well if you'd like. I want people to know, Justin's not sponsoring this. He didn't pay me anything.
44:29I was at a conference and I heard Justin get emotional talking about his motivation in life right now. And he was talking about, he has young kids and his kids are like really similar to my kids' ages. And I didn't, to be honest, I didn't know who you were. And I went and looked you up and I was like, oh, he's putting out like really cool content. and he just launched this book and then I started listening to it and I got really excited because I think what you're building is really cool. But more importantly, I think the why behind what you're building is really cool. So I just want people to know he's not paying me to hold up his book.
45:01I legitimately think it's a great book. You should go check it out. I think Justin's amazing. Go give him a follow and I can't wait to check in with you in 30 days. If you don't hear from me, you'll know why. Dude, I super appreciate that, man. It means a lot. This was a blast. All right. Hopefully you liked that episode and if you've made it this far, you're either really committed or you're stuck doing yard work and you can't actually skip on your phone. So while I have you, the show is growing, but I have a favor to ask of you. Will you please help me grow the show? I want to reach more people.
45:28There's a couple of things that you can do. Like, and subscribe is the simplest thing. Obviously you want to get notifications for when the next episode is coming out. But if you go the next step, will you leave me a review five star on Spotify or Apple? What that does is it tells the algorithm them that, Oh, Hey, this is a high value podcast because more people are leaving reviews for it. And it then pushes it out to more people. So that's why when people are like, well, you log and subscribe and put the five-star rating, it's not just to make themselves feel better. It's actually to get more exposure for the show.
45:59So if you do that for me, I would greatly appreciate it. And I'll see you next time.
From the publisher
🚨MY NEWSLETTER https://nikolas-newsletter-241a64.beehiiv.com/subscribe 🚨
Join me, Nik (https://x.com/CoFoundersNik), as I interview Justin Moore (https://x.com/justinmooretfam). Justin Moore is a legit master marketer, content creator, and the author of Sponsor Magnet, who has personally closed over $5 million in brand partnership deals and built a $600,000 coaching business teaching others how to get sponsorships and secure major brand deals. We track his journey from working in medical devices and corporate influencer marketing to pivoting alongside his wife April's early YouTube monetization side hustle, which eventually gave them time freedom and entrepreneurship success.
This episode is essential for any entrepreneur looking to make money content creator style, even if you hate the word "creator." We discuss why your personal brand and organic distribution are the last moat in the age of AI for first million dollar business owners. Justin breaks down his powerful R.O.P.E. method—a four-step sales formula and sponsorship email template system that can be applied to business outreach for any company, not just content creator sponsorships.
Plus, I put Justin's creator monetization systems to the test: he walks me through exactly how to get your first sponsorship deal and generate $10,000 sponsorship revenue in the next 30 days by gathering the right audience data and understanding the difference between a vitamin and a painkiller solution for your customers.
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Love it or hate it, I'd love your feedback.
Please fill out this brief survey with your opinion or email me at nik@cofounders.com with your thoughts.
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This week we covered:
00:00 Understanding the Importance of Distribution for Founders
02:45 The Journey from Employee to Entrepreneur
05:57 The Evolution of Influencer Marketing
08:47 The ROPE Method: A Framework for Successful Partnerships
12:07 Common Mistakes in Influencer Marketing
14:50 The Power of Customer Understanding and Personalization
18:02 The Importance of Clarity and Saying No
22:43 The Entrepreneurial Journey: Trading Time for Freedom
25:08 Architecting Your Life: Defining Success
26:07 Building Trust at Scale: The YouTube Focus
27:06 Analyzing Audience Engagement: The Importance of Feedback
30:23 Identifying Pain Points: Crafting Effective Surveys
34:07 Sponsorship Strategies: Aligning with Audience Needs
39:47 Proof of Influence: Validating Your Impact
43:35 Reframing Sponsorship: Serving Your Audience