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[00:00:00.240 --> 00:00:06.240] Look, adulting can be a challenge, but there is an easy button for at least one item on your to-do list.
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[00:00:57.440 --> 00:01:00.000] That's policygenius.com.
[00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:02.480] And now, onto the show.
[00:01:02.800 --> 00:01:06.000] This is your path to $1,000 plus brand deals.
[00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:08.160] Even you've got a small audience.
[00:01:08.160 --> 00:01:14.960] This is how to get your piece of the $480 billion, billion with a B dollar creator economy pie.
[00:01:14.960 --> 00:01:22.640] And to help school us on this is the author of Sponsor Magnet, which you can find at sponsormagnet.com, Justin Moore.
[00:01:22.640 --> 00:01:24.160] Welcome to the Side Hustle Show.
[00:01:24.320 --> 00:01:26.240] Dude, Nick, I'm so thrilled to be here, man.
[00:01:26.240 --> 00:01:27.360] I am pumped for this one.
[00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:28.000] Stick around.
[00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:39.120] We're covering what brands really care about, how to reach the right decision makers, and how to maximize your earning power, not just with one-off campaigns, but with long-term partnerships.
[00:01:39.120 --> 00:01:40.160] And that's just round one.
[00:01:40.160 --> 00:01:46.880] We've got three rounds with Justin today, including his business idea donation for Side Hustle Nation and the triple threat.
[00:01:46.880 --> 00:01:51.040] But first, just want to get a sense of what's possible in this world.
[00:01:51.040 --> 00:01:53.760] You've got dozens and dozens of people that you've worked with.
[00:01:53.760 --> 00:01:59.920] Is there anything that really stands out to you in terms of like a really small audience-sized creator who landed somewhere?
[00:02:01.080 --> 00:02:02.120] Yeah, 100%.
[00:02:02.120 --> 00:02:03.400] So I have a coaching client.
[00:02:03.400 --> 00:02:04.120] Her name is Dr.
[00:02:04.120 --> 00:02:10.200] Alex, and she has a podcast called Digital Pathology Place.
[00:02:10.200 --> 00:02:10.680] Okay.
[00:02:10.680 --> 00:02:18.760] She's a veterinarian, like a physician, and her podcast on average gets hundreds of listens, not tens of thousands.
[00:02:18.760 --> 00:02:21.240] And her YouTube videos, same, you know?
[00:02:21.240 --> 00:02:21.800] Okay.
[00:02:21.800 --> 00:02:31.960] And she is absolutely crushing it with brand partnerships, Nick, because if you think about who is in her audience, it's the lab techs.
[00:02:31.960 --> 00:02:35.400] It's the people who work in the C-suite at the hospitals.
[00:02:35.400 --> 00:02:38.760] It's the people who work at the biopharmaceutical companies.
[00:02:38.760 --> 00:02:47.080] And if you're over here, medical device company XYZ, and you're sitting here thinking, how am I going to spend this $20 million marketing budget?
[00:02:47.080 --> 00:02:48.200] That's what they're thinking, right?
[00:02:48.200 --> 00:02:55.640] They're thinking, okay, well, maybe we could continue buying ads in that prehistoric trade magazine that sits in the doctor's office.
[00:02:55.640 --> 00:02:57.080] Yeah, I was going to say trade magazines.
[00:02:57.080 --> 00:02:57.480] Sure.
[00:02:57.480 --> 00:02:57.720] Right.
[00:02:57.720 --> 00:03:00.280] That whoever knows if anyone reads those.
[00:03:00.280 --> 00:03:03.560] Maybe trying to run like pay-per-click ads on Google.
[00:03:03.560 --> 00:03:07.560] It's heavily regulated, so they may not even be able to run ads on Meta.
[00:03:07.560 --> 00:03:08.680] You know, who knows?
[00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:11.400] Or maybe they could roll out the red carpet for someone like Dr.
[00:03:11.400 --> 00:03:11.960] Alex.
[00:03:11.960 --> 00:03:20.200] They could say, all of the people, even though it's a small audience, all the people who are in this kind of niche community, these are the people that we want to get in front of.
[00:03:20.200 --> 00:03:22.120] So let's fly her out to our factory.
[00:03:22.440 --> 00:03:27.720] Let's pay her to come and speak on stage on our behalf at an upcoming trade industry event.
[00:03:28.200 --> 00:03:36.920] And so she has her business funded by tons of these niche medical healthcare players because of who she represents.
[00:03:36.920 --> 00:03:43.320] And so, again, like she's not, she does not have hundreds of thousands of followers, but brand partnerships has become a huge part of her business.
[00:03:43.320 --> 00:03:46.560] Does it need to be a B2B type of play?
[00:03:46.640 --> 00:03:50.000] I mean, we've seen some examples on the show in the past.
[00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:52.800] Brian Orr comes to mind from the HVAC school.
[00:03:52.800 --> 00:03:58.640] Like, we're going to create a podcast for HVAC technicians and help them train, you know, how to be better at their job.
[00:03:58.640 --> 00:03:59.840] Killer business.
[00:03:59.840 --> 00:04:07.280] And Harry Duran comes to mind with the vertical farming podcast, where it's like, we're going to talk to founders and CEOs of vertical farming companies.
[00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:10.320] And it's like so niche-specific.
[00:04:10.400 --> 00:04:17.120] It's like, like you said, if you want to spend this ad dollars, we're the only game in town or we're one of the only new media games in town.
[00:04:17.120 --> 00:04:22.960] But do you see it's almost got to be kind of in that micro-niche B2B type of market?
[00:04:22.960 --> 00:04:24.880] I wouldn't say B2B necessarily.
[00:04:25.440 --> 00:04:32.960] It definitely helps because there's a lot of businesses who are seeing the light in terms of the value of working with creators and entrepreneurs in this capacity.
[00:04:32.960 --> 00:04:36.160] But I do think having some sort of niche helps.
[00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:38.800] However, what I would say though is that let's say you are small.
[00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:42.720] Let's say you have sub a thousand followers or listeners or subscribers or whatever.
[00:04:42.720 --> 00:04:46.000] What you pitch to the brand has to change though.
[00:04:46.000 --> 00:05:00.160] So if you come to them and you say, you know, oh, I would love to talk about your, you know, your brand or your product on my YouTube channel or my podcast or my newsletter or something, and they go take a look at it and you're getting an average of 100 views per video or listens or whatever.
[00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:00.560] Yeah.
[00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:02.160] Not really going to move the needle for them.
[00:05:02.160 --> 00:05:03.440] Let's just be real here.
[00:05:03.440 --> 00:05:03.920] Right.
[00:05:03.920 --> 00:05:08.320] And so how about instead, if we approach the pitch a little bit differently?
[00:05:08.320 --> 00:05:14.240] So what I would do is I would say, okay, let me go and do a holistic analysis of this brand's social presence.
[00:05:14.240 --> 00:05:17.760] Let me see, are they posting on social media at all?
[00:05:17.760 --> 00:05:20.080] Or do they have a podcast for their brand?
[00:05:20.080 --> 00:05:21.680] Do they have a YouTube channel for their brand?
[00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:23.040] Are they sending, do they have a blog?
[00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:24.400] Are they sending out a newsletter?
[00:05:24.400 --> 00:05:27.440] If they are posting on some of these platforms, is it good content?
[00:05:27.440 --> 00:05:29.040] Is it consistent content?
[00:05:29.040 --> 00:05:32.360] And then I would reach out to them and I would say, hey, listen, love your brand.
[00:05:32.360 --> 00:05:35.800] However, I think you could be telling your brand story in a much more compelling way.
[00:05:35.800 --> 00:05:38.680] I would love to create content on autopilot for you.
[00:05:38.680 --> 00:05:40.920] I'll send you five, 10 videos a month.
[00:05:40.920 --> 00:05:43.080] I'll do, you know, I'll stand up your podcast.
[00:05:43.080 --> 00:05:43.880] I'll be the host.
[00:05:43.880 --> 00:05:45.400] I'll interview people on your marketing team.
[00:05:45.400 --> 00:05:46.520] I'll interview my friends.
[00:05:46.520 --> 00:05:48.600] It's turnkey, $7,500 a month.
[00:05:48.600 --> 00:05:49.320] What do you think?
[00:05:49.320 --> 00:05:52.680] And yeah, syndicating that content on my platforms could be part of it.
[00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:57.560] But also you're saying, hey, go take a look at my platform because it serves as my portfolio.
[00:05:57.560 --> 00:06:01.560] Even though I might have a thousand followers, like I know what I'm doing when it comes to creating content.
[00:06:01.560 --> 00:06:05.800] And so again, as you grow, depending on your size, what you pitch has to change.
[00:06:05.800 --> 00:06:06.120] Okay.
[00:06:06.120 --> 00:06:16.440] So this is where it blends from being a UGC partner, being a marketing consultant, so to speak, or content creator versus we're buying impressions from you.
[00:06:16.760 --> 00:06:20.920] If you don't have a lot of impressions to sell, you got to get a little more creative on the other side.
[00:06:20.920 --> 00:06:25.480] And we had a woman on the show who was, the brands didn't care about the size of her following.
[00:06:25.640 --> 00:06:27.720] They wanted the content to post on their own channels.
[00:06:27.720 --> 00:06:32.040] And it was like sometimes two, 300 bucks, sometimes a thousand bucks a video.
[00:06:32.040 --> 00:06:32.280] Yep.
[00:06:32.280 --> 00:06:37.320] It's like she got really good at creating these hooky little short clips.
[00:06:37.320 --> 00:06:43.320] It was like the hourly rate from some of that, if you can put that together, was like, oh my gosh, this is fantastic.
[00:06:43.320 --> 00:06:44.200] 100%.
[00:06:44.200 --> 00:06:59.640] And if you can start getting really creative about negotiating those types of deals for UGC or user-generated content is you may determine once you get pretty good is like, hey, instead of paying me a flat rate or paying me a thousand bucks or whatever it's going to be, pay me a percentage of your ad spend.
[00:06:59.640 --> 00:07:05.640] Meaning, like if this asset starts performing really well and converting very well, the more money you spend, the more money I make.
[00:07:05.640 --> 00:07:11.960] So, there's really creative ways that you can start thinking about setting up compensation with these types of arrangements.
[00:07:11.960 --> 00:07:17.200] Yeah, this is one of the, I mean, especially UGC is one of the biggest shifts that we've seen in this space.
[00:07:17.520 --> 00:07:23.200] It's been almost 10 years since the last time we did a dedicated episode about landing sponsorships, landing brand deals.
[00:07:23.200 --> 00:07:25.680] I mean, what are some of the other big shifts you've seen here?
[00:07:25.680 --> 00:07:29.200] There absolutely has been a gargantuan shift to short-form content.
[00:07:29.200 --> 00:07:40.000] I mean, you know, when we started out back in 2009, we had a blog, we had a YouTube channel, and brands were just starting to dip their toes into the idea about, you know, paying someone to like talk about them in a YouTube video.
[00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:44.400] And long-form content, podcasts, and so on was like, that was really the kind of standard.
[00:07:44.400 --> 00:07:46.640] And then obviously it sponsored blogs and so on too.
[00:07:46.640 --> 00:08:03.200] But over the last for sure, 18 to 24 months, a lot of brands have shifted a much bigger percentage of the marketing pie over to short form content, whether that's Instagram reels, TikTok, YouTube shorts, and so on.
[00:08:03.200 --> 00:08:08.320] One of the reasons, Nick, is because of the increased repurposability of those assets.
[00:08:08.320 --> 00:08:17.680] So when you sponsor a blogger or a newsletter operator or a YouTuber or something, like that content, that integration, let's say that sponsorship goes live on the brand on that person's platform.
[00:08:17.680 --> 00:08:22.240] And then for a lot of them, it kind of disappears into the ether, especially with like newsletters and all that.
[00:08:22.240 --> 00:08:26.560] Yeah, some YouTube can have more of an evergreen shelf life.
[00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:27.200] Okay.
[00:08:27.200 --> 00:08:40.080] But if you think about a 30-second video or a 60-second video that someone might create, oftentimes the brands are negotiating for the rights to put that content elsewhere, maybe on their website, on their social media, to run paid advertising with it.
[00:08:40.080 --> 00:08:53.440] And so now the ROI or the ROAS, the return on ad spend that they're thinking when they pay you 2,500 bucks or whatever, or 10 grand, it starts becoming like, okay, I understand why I need to pay this creator to secure those rights.
[00:08:53.440 --> 00:08:55.040] So there's a lot of different reasons.
[00:08:55.040 --> 00:09:00.600] And of course, like, there's a lot more mind share around people consuming content in that format.
[00:09:00.600 --> 00:09:02.520] And so that's been a big shift.
[00:09:02.520 --> 00:09:02.920] Got it.
[00:08:59.680 --> 00:09:06.360] So that's something to have in your back pocket as you're approaching brands.
[00:09:06.440 --> 00:09:09.240] Hey, it's not just something that's going to live on my channel.
[00:09:09.240 --> 00:09:16.440] If you want the reusage rights, the recycling, the licensing rights to this content, absolutely, you can have it.
[00:09:16.440 --> 00:09:20.920] But there's a step up in the pricing tier in that case.
[00:09:20.920 --> 00:09:22.280] So talk me through.
[00:09:22.280 --> 00:09:23.480] I'm a new creator.
[00:09:23.480 --> 00:09:25.240] I don't have a huge following.
[00:09:25.480 --> 00:09:26.600] I'll let you pick the niche.
[00:09:26.600 --> 00:09:29.320] It could be the veterinarian thing or something else.
[00:09:29.320 --> 00:09:36.120] But like, okay, I think this is going to be a viable path to monetize to finding the decision makers to get my first deal here.
[00:09:36.120 --> 00:09:36.440] Yeah.
[00:09:36.440 --> 00:09:41.240] So I think the first and most important thing to realize from, if I'm saying, where do I even start?
[00:09:41.240 --> 00:09:43.160] It's like, first go and find.
[00:09:43.160 --> 00:09:46.280] Are there other brands sponsoring other people in your niche?
[00:09:46.280 --> 00:09:47.160] That's the easiest way.
[00:09:47.160 --> 00:09:48.200] That's the lowest hanging fruit.
[00:09:48.200 --> 00:09:52.920] Is like, maybe there's other creators, other newsletters, other, you know, YouTubers that you follow or whatever.
[00:09:52.920 --> 00:09:56.440] And just start acknowledging, okay, let me go back and look at their last 10 videos.
[00:09:56.440 --> 00:09:57.640] Like, were any of those sponsored?
[00:09:57.640 --> 00:10:04.360] You can even search on people's YouTube channels for hashtags, like hashtag sponsored, the word sponsored, sponsoring, partnering.
[00:10:04.360 --> 00:10:07.880] You can start to see like, okay, wow, this person was sponsored by that.
[00:10:07.880 --> 00:10:09.640] And that's the best place to start.
[00:10:09.640 --> 00:10:10.600] So that's a good sign.
[00:10:10.600 --> 00:10:16.040] If that company is in alignment with you, they have budget, they have a track record of making that kind of investment.
[00:10:16.040 --> 00:10:16.600] Exactly.
[00:10:16.600 --> 00:10:19.480] And they already see the value in partnering with creators.
[00:10:19.480 --> 00:10:22.760] A lot of times people will go to a brand that has never worked with a single creator.
[00:10:22.760 --> 00:10:24.760] And it's just a, it's a, it's a harder sell.
[00:10:24.760 --> 00:10:26.760] The edge, the sales cycle's longer.
[00:10:26.760 --> 00:10:30.440] You're going to probably get frustrated because you're having lots of conversations that don't lead anywhere.
[00:10:30.440 --> 00:10:33.720] And so I would say start there for brands that already really kind of understand.
[00:10:33.720 --> 00:10:41.880] The second step, and it's a really critical one, Nick, is realizing that whether you like the brand or not is kind of irrelevant.
[00:10:41.880 --> 00:10:43.280] It's kind of table stakes.
[00:10:43.280 --> 00:10:45.280] Because at the end of the day, it's not about you.
[00:10:45.520 --> 00:10:48.640] It's about will this sponsor serve your audience?
[00:10:48.640 --> 00:10:55.360] Because really what brands care about is, hey, does your audience represent a pool of future prospective customers of us?
[00:10:55.360 --> 00:10:56.960] We don't care that you like the product.
[00:10:56.960 --> 00:10:59.040] We care is your audience interested in it.
[00:10:59.040 --> 00:11:06.560] And so what I advocate for in my book sponsor magnet is like, let's actually start a proactive dialogue with my audience to learn more about them.
[00:11:06.560 --> 00:11:09.520] I want to learn what's, you know, going on in their lives.
[00:11:09.520 --> 00:11:10.640] What's keeping them up at night?
[00:11:10.640 --> 00:11:12.160] What problems do they have?
[00:11:12.160 --> 00:11:13.440] A lot of people get fixated.
[00:11:13.440 --> 00:11:17.200] Oh, I'm in this like veterinary niche or I'm in this DIY quilting niche or whatever.
[00:11:17.200 --> 00:11:21.680] I guess the only brands I can work with are like fabric brands or yarn brands or something.
[00:11:21.680 --> 00:11:25.040] When in reality, let's pull that example for the thread.
[00:11:25.040 --> 00:11:26.640] Sorry, I did not mean to make that pun.
[00:11:26.640 --> 00:11:28.400] Let's pull that thread for a second.
[00:11:28.400 --> 00:11:46.000] If you start asking questions of that community, I don't know, for example, maybe you realize you send out a Google Form survey in your next newsletter or you put out a poll on your YouTube community tab or something and you realize that, wow, I didn't realize 50% of my audience, they homeschool their homeschooling families and they're really into DIY and crafting and all that.
[00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:50.480] That represents a very specific type of psychographic of consumer.
[00:11:50.480 --> 00:11:54.960] Maybe I should pitch a brand like ABC Mouse, which helps kids read.
[00:11:54.960 --> 00:12:00.640] I bet you could probably think of a pretty creative way to integrate a brand like that into your DIY and quilting niche.
[00:12:00.640 --> 00:12:04.480] And so again, it comes back to like understanding your audience.
[00:12:04.480 --> 00:12:09.040] And also you should be asking, like, are there any brands and tools and products that you're using and loving right now?
[00:12:09.040 --> 00:12:11.760] What if 30% of them say one brand in particular?
[00:12:11.760 --> 00:12:18.640] Well, you better go take that data and go pitch the brand and be like, hey, I've got this huge cohort of my audience that is interested in using your product.
[00:12:18.640 --> 00:12:20.560] I would love to expose my full audience to you.
[00:12:20.560 --> 00:12:20.880] Got it.
[00:12:20.880 --> 00:12:29.440] It was biting my tongue a little bit because it's like, well, if you're the face of the brand, or if you're the face of your own personal brand and your content, it's like, you got to be at least comfortable.
[00:12:29.520 --> 00:12:33.560] You know, ideally, you're a user, you're an advocate, you're a fan of this company that you're pitching.
[00:12:33.720 --> 00:12:37.560] It's like, because you don't want to become just a pitch person for whatever random thing.
[00:12:37.720 --> 00:12:39.320] Like, I wouldn't recommend this.
[00:12:39.320 --> 00:12:40.680] Oh, oh, 100%.
[00:12:40.680 --> 00:12:50.520] So, what I meant is that, of course, you have to be a tool that you would recommend, but really, that's not what you should be leading with in your pitch because the brand doesn't care that you like it.
[00:12:50.760 --> 00:12:54.360] You need to illustrate to them: does your audience have existing affinity?
[00:12:54.520 --> 00:12:55.480] That's really what I meant.
[00:12:55.480 --> 00:12:56.200] Got it.
[00:12:56.200 --> 00:13:14.040] Okay, so step one: kind of creating this list or this spreadsheet of potential partners, the companies and services that you use, the companies that you see sponsoring other creators in the space, and maybe the companies that your audience is already into if you do a little survey.
[00:13:14.040 --> 00:13:23.560] More with Justin in just a moment, including how to get in touch with the actual decision makers at these brands and what to put in your pitch coming up right after this.
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[00:14:24.400 --> 00:14:26.800] Years ago, this is probably 2009.
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[00:15:40.400 --> 00:15:46.320] What I did early on, and this is kind of embarrassing, but like, this was my genius idea.
[00:15:46.320 --> 00:16:01.960] I was going to comb the archives of Entrepreneurs on Fire, like the last 50 episodes or something that John did, and itemize out all those sponsors and identify the top 10, 25, whatever, like the ones that I liked, the companies that I liked, the companies that I used.
[00:16:02.280 --> 00:16:03.720] Hey, they're sponsoring this show.
[00:16:03.720 --> 00:16:06.040] They would be a great sponsor for the side hustle show.
[00:16:06.040 --> 00:16:17.080] And beyond that, it's like we went through a handful of those and then, you know, scroll down the website and look for something that says partnerships or work with us or media.
[00:16:17.400 --> 00:16:23.160] It was like, that's kind of where the trail went cold in trying to find the decision makers.
[00:16:23.160 --> 00:16:30.600] And sometimes it would come back and be like, well, we work through an agency or let me forward your email.
[00:16:31.400 --> 00:16:36.440] It was really difficult to actually connect with somebody who had the buying authority.
[00:16:36.440 --> 00:16:36.760] Right.
[00:16:36.760 --> 00:16:37.080] Yeah.
[00:16:37.080 --> 00:16:39.080] That is a very big challenge for sure.
[00:16:39.080 --> 00:16:44.200] And you can also convince yourself that pitching doesn't work if that's the extent of what you do.
[00:16:44.200 --> 00:16:48.520] And by the way, I just want to like empathize with you for a second there because that's exactly what we did when we started, right?
[00:16:48.520 --> 00:16:51.880] It's just, you know, because you're not, you don't go to school for this type of thing, right?
[00:16:51.880 --> 00:16:54.680] Like that seems like an intuitive way to do some sleuthing.
[00:16:54.680 --> 00:17:06.040] But I have this magic search terminology that I share in the book that really helps you triangulate these decision makers at these brands, but it depends on the size of the brand.
[00:17:06.040 --> 00:17:14.840] So what I mean by that is that if you are targeting a small mom and pop shop, let's say less than 15 employees, probably there's only one marketing person who works there, right?
[00:17:14.840 --> 00:17:19.160] The director of marketing, the social media manager, if there is even a marketing person, right?
[00:17:19.160 --> 00:17:24.760] And so of course you need to change the type of person, like job titles that you're searching for.
[00:17:24.760 --> 00:17:31.400] As brands get larger, let's say 16 to 100 employees, they start having a hierarchy in their marketing team.
[00:17:31.400 --> 00:17:37.000] So maybe they now have a marketing manager, they have a coordinator, maybe they have some directors there.
[00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:43.640] And so a big part of what I teach is like learning to start studying, let's say, the LinkedIn profiles of some of these roles.
[00:17:43.640 --> 00:17:53.680] So going back to what I mentioned in terms of the magic search terminology, it's brand name, job title, and then the word LinkedIn in your favorite search, you know, let's say Google.
[00:17:53.680 --> 00:18:00.880] And so the reason I recommend this is that I have found that Google is a much better tool to surface the different jobs.
[00:18:00.880 --> 00:18:05.600] Of course, you can invest in LinkedIn Sales Navigator and so on, but like that's like 600 bucks or whatever it is.
[00:18:05.600 --> 00:18:06.080] Yeah.
[00:18:06.080 --> 00:18:11.200] And so what I found is that you can actually find all these search results of like these people in these marketing teams.
[00:18:11.200 --> 00:18:17.760] And so the first one that I would, I would recommend trying at, let's say, a medium-sized brand would be the job title would be influencer marketing manager.
[00:18:17.760 --> 00:18:29.680] Dude, it's so much easier to find the decision makers these days than it was like 10 years ago because pretty much any, every, especially consumer brand has either an influencer marketing manager, a partnerships marketing manager, an affiliate marketing manager.
[00:18:29.680 --> 00:18:34.800] And so those are like the best place to start, I've found, especially if they're doing these types of activities.
[00:18:34.800 --> 00:18:35.280] Got it.
[00:18:35.280 --> 00:18:41.840] And I think that influencer marketing manager was the same role that our UGC guest, Megan, talked about looking for.
[00:18:41.840 --> 00:18:50.080] And sometimes it was just DMing the brands on Instagram, especially if they found what looked like other UGC content in that brand's feed.
[00:18:50.080 --> 00:18:51.920] Hey, you know, I'm a UGC creator.
[00:18:51.920 --> 00:18:53.920] It's like it was, it was a more natural leading.
[00:18:53.920 --> 00:18:57.360] Would you mind putting me in touch with the influencer marketing manager?
[00:18:57.600 --> 00:19:11.680] The tricky part, though, I'll just put a caution here about DMing brands on social media is that especially as brands get larger, the chances that the person managing the social handle, that they have any sort of decision-making power for paid partnerships is like really low.
[00:19:12.080 --> 00:19:17.120] Normally those people are like community managers and, you know, they're in the DMs with people who are, let's say, it's Chipotle.
[00:19:17.120 --> 00:19:20.560] They're complaining, someone's complaining about a lukewarm burrito and they're like, here's a $5 coupon.
[00:19:20.560 --> 00:19:20.720] Right.
[00:19:20.720 --> 00:19:24.720] They're not the like, oh, here, yeah, talk to us about this like Q4 holiday campaign.
[00:19:24.720 --> 00:19:25.280] Yeah.
[00:19:25.280 --> 00:19:36.680] And so I really would recommend going to the effort of using tools like LinkedIn to triangulate who's actually the decision maker and then using other tools like hunter.io or Apollo or whatever to actually find their email addresses.
[00:19:36.680 --> 00:19:37.240] Okay.
[00:19:37.240 --> 00:19:39.960] So then comes, well, what do I send this person?
[00:19:39.960 --> 00:19:41.160] I'm coming in out of the blue.
[00:19:41.160 --> 00:19:42.200] I'm coming in cold.
[00:19:42.200 --> 00:19:44.840] How do I stand out from everybody else who's doing the same thing?
[00:19:44.840 --> 00:19:45.000] Yeah.
[00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:48.520] So I have a pitching methodology that I teach in the book called the rope method.
[00:19:48.520 --> 00:19:50.120] So it's R-O-P-E.
[00:19:50.120 --> 00:19:57.160] So what I teach is that your pitch has to be relevant to a campaign that the brand is either currently running or has run in the past.
[00:19:57.160 --> 00:20:06.360] 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 affinity for their brand.
[00:20:06.360 --> 00:20:08.920] Like we were talking about earlier, your audience, not you.
[00:20:08.920 --> 00:20:12.920] P stands for proof, so you can show how you've helped other brands achieve results.
[00:20:12.920 --> 00:20:17.160] And E stands for easy to execute when the brand says that they're interested.
[00:20:17.160 --> 00:20:18.280] Like what did you have in mind?
[00:20:18.280 --> 00:20:18.680] Got it.
[00:20:19.000 --> 00:20:20.280] What if you don't have any proof yet?
[00:20:20.280 --> 00:20:22.120] If you're like early on.
[00:20:22.120 --> 00:20:27.320] Well, if you don't have any proof, the next best thing would be if you have affiliate performance.
[00:20:27.320 --> 00:20:31.960] So maybe you're an Amazon associate or maybe you're part of another brand's affiliate program.
[00:20:31.960 --> 00:20:36.040] That can absolutely serve as proof that you actually are influential.
[00:20:36.040 --> 00:20:48.600] But if you, even, even if you don't have that, even if you have no affiliate performance, the whole idea of why a brand would want to hire you is that when you say to your audience, like, hey, go do this thing that people actually take action.
[00:20:48.600 --> 00:20:58.360] So if you've told them to sign up for a webinar before or you've told them to go check out this thing at this store and you have DMs or you have email replies of people saying like, hey, Nick, thanks so much for telling me about that.
[00:20:58.360 --> 00:20:59.640] I went and did the thing.
[00:20:59.640 --> 00:21:01.720] That can absolutely serve as proof as well.
[00:21:01.720 --> 00:21:02.280] Got it.
[00:21:02.280 --> 00:21:05.000] One example that stands out is Chris from All the Hacks.
[00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:10.040] He said something like 25% of his audience had used his Viori coupon code.
[00:21:10.040 --> 00:21:11.240] It was like a huge percent.
[00:21:11.240 --> 00:21:13.560] And it was obviously the people who answered the survey.
[00:21:13.560 --> 00:21:18.240] So it was maybe a little bit biased, you know, by the people who were engaged enough to take action and do the survey.
[00:21:18.320 --> 00:21:23.120] But it was like, that's really powerful ammunition to take to the next brand and say, yes, these people take action.
[00:21:23.120 --> 00:21:23.600] Totally.
[00:21:23.600 --> 00:21:23.760] Okay.
[00:21:23.760 --> 00:21:25.680] And then the E was ease of execution.
[00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:30.800] Yeah, the E is easy to execute, meaning like we're going to pitch them something very concrete.
[00:21:30.800 --> 00:21:33.680] We're going to say, I'm going to do three YouTube integrations for you.
[00:21:33.680 --> 00:21:39.200] I'm going to have you, I'm going to insert your mid-roll ad into the back catalog of my podcast for 15 days.
[00:21:39.200 --> 00:21:41.680] I can turn around the first integration in the next 10 days.
[00:21:41.680 --> 00:21:44.320] I'll grant you usage rides through the, through the end of the year.
[00:21:44.320 --> 00:21:49.520] So it's something very, very concrete versus, hey, would love to figure out a way to collaborate.
[00:21:49.520 --> 00:21:50.080] Oh, okay.
[00:21:50.080 --> 00:21:50.400] Okay.
[00:21:50.400 --> 00:21:54.800] So making it an easy yes versus here's three packages to choose from.
[00:21:54.960 --> 00:22:00.000] Just like, no, no, no, let's start with something simple, but they can be like, sure, yes, sign here.
[00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.640] Well, the likelihood of them saying yes, sure, where do I sign is super unlikely.
[00:22:04.640 --> 00:22:11.760] So the point of having that, those bullets of like, here's what I can do for you is more about giving them something tangible to react to.
[00:22:11.760 --> 00:22:12.240] Okay.
[00:22:12.240 --> 00:22:20.240] So I am a fan of ultimately later down the line after you've had an initial discovery call with them providing packages like you mentioned.
[00:22:20.240 --> 00:22:25.120] But for the initial trying to get your foot in the door, it's much more about pitching them something succinct.
[00:22:25.120 --> 00:22:25.600] Got it.
[00:22:25.600 --> 00:22:25.920] Okay.
[00:22:25.920 --> 00:22:26.640] Very good.
[00:22:26.640 --> 00:22:30.640] So that is, don't expect somebody to be like, yes, where do we sign?
[00:22:30.640 --> 00:22:31.360] Right out of the gate.
[00:22:31.360 --> 00:22:31.680] Right.
[00:22:31.680 --> 00:22:39.280] But typically the next step is going to lead to this discovery call and try and craft a more detailed proposal, you know, small, medium, and large type of thing.
[00:22:39.280 --> 00:22:43.280] Like any strategies on structuring those packages?
[00:22:43.280 --> 00:22:43.680] Yeah.
[00:22:43.680 --> 00:22:53.120] Well, the first advice is don't just provide one package because a lot of people do that, especially if a brand comes inbound and says, hey, how much do you charge Nick for a podcast ad read or something?
[00:22:53.120 --> 00:22:56.160] And what a lot of people do is they just spit back one number.
[00:22:56.160 --> 00:22:58.880] They say, 500 or whatever the number is, right?
[00:22:58.880 --> 00:22:59.280] Yeah.
[00:22:59.280 --> 00:23:05.000] And so absolutely don't do that because now you've just encouraged the brand to evaluate you 100% on price.
[00:23:05.160 --> 00:23:11.640] There's no other levers that you've given them to, and so they put you into a giant spreadsheet and there's 10 other podcasters that they reached out to.
[00:23:11.640 --> 00:23:21.240] And if your number that you gave is just too high, based on the, this is what I did when I ran my agency is that there would be this larger budget that we had to work with 20 people, right?
[00:23:21.240 --> 00:23:27.160] So we have 200 grand or whatever, and we were charged by the brand, which is our client, to do this campaign.
[00:23:27.160 --> 00:23:28.920] And so everyone charges differently.
[00:23:28.920 --> 00:23:38.680] So there was this Tetrising exercise that we had to do where we would just see, okay, everyone, we went and we kind of kicked the tires on everyone, figured out their rates, and like, here's the people that we can ultimately move forward with.
[00:23:38.680 --> 00:23:42.920] And then these people who just like charge too much, like we just have to delete their rows and say we can't work with them, right?
[00:23:42.920 --> 00:23:43.400] Yeah.
[00:23:43.400 --> 00:23:49.400] So the first shift is realizing, okay, let's go from only give them one number to giving them at least three different packages.
[00:23:49.400 --> 00:23:57.880] So you say, hey, here's several different ways that I can, that you can collaborate with me so that there's at least one package that they can move forward with you at.
[00:23:57.880 --> 00:24:08.520] I talk about like if you've ever seen the movie Moneyball, I talk about this a lot, which is that like you don't need to be the MVP and have every package be like this knockout 20 grand type thing.
[00:24:08.520 --> 00:24:12.280] Like you can build a really robust business kind of hitting singles and doubles all day long.
[00:24:12.280 --> 00:24:14.840] And in fact, that's really what my wife and I have done for our career.
[00:24:14.840 --> 00:24:17.960] And so that's the first shift is like going from one number to three packages.
[00:24:17.960 --> 00:24:27.960] And then there's this kind of more complex shift, which I think is worth mentioning, is realizing that if you are providing multiple packages, don't make the variance between those packages quantity.
[00:24:27.960 --> 00:24:33.080] This is what most people do: they say, okay, package one is one post, package two is two posts, package three is three posts.
[00:24:33.080 --> 00:24:36.200] And if you pick package three, I'll give you a 10% discount or something, right?
[00:24:36.200 --> 00:24:36.760] Okay, okay.
[00:24:37.000 --> 00:24:45.200] It's not really that exciting to a lot of brands, especially if you've never worked with them before, because they probably want to get at least one engagement under their belt to see what it's like working with you.
[00:24:45.440 --> 00:24:48.160] Because what happens if they get into it and you're a nightmare, right?
[00:24:48.160 --> 00:24:52.960] You're not professional, you're not communicative, they've had, they've been burned before, so they don't want to do that.
[00:24:52.960 --> 00:24:58.400] And so the better thing to do is to tie your packages to the brand's goals.
[00:24:58.400 --> 00:25:04.640] So one thing that I encourage you to do on an on a discovery call with the brand is actually ask them, hey, what does success look like to you?
[00:25:04.640 --> 00:25:05.760] What would a win be like?
[00:25:05.760 --> 00:25:07.600] And they're going to say a lot of different things, probably.
[00:25:07.600 --> 00:25:15.360] They're going to say awareness, or hey, we want to get your content to repurpose it for ads, or oh, we want to drive sales or app downloads or whatever.
[00:25:15.360 --> 00:25:18.000] And so what you do in your proposal is you say, okay, good.
[00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:20.720] Package one is the awareness package.
[00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:23.040] That's where I'm going to do the podcast insertions.
[00:25:23.040 --> 00:25:25.520] I'm going to do the dynamic back catalog thing.
[00:25:25.520 --> 00:25:27.120] And then package two, hey, guess what?
[00:25:27.120 --> 00:25:28.400] That doesn't include any of those things.
[00:25:28.400 --> 00:25:29.920] Package two is the repurposing goal.
[00:25:29.920 --> 00:25:35.040] So in that package, I'm going to give you five 30-second videos that I don't even post anywhere.
[00:25:35.040 --> 00:25:36.560] You're going to leverage my name and likeness.
[00:25:36.560 --> 00:25:39.520] I'm going to make ads for you because you said you needed that.
[00:25:39.520 --> 00:25:40.800] You wanted ads to repurpose.
[00:25:40.800 --> 00:25:43.440] And then package three, that's the conversion package.
[00:25:43.440 --> 00:25:45.280] That's where I'm going to do the newsletter blasts.
[00:25:45.280 --> 00:25:50.720] I'm going to do the Instagram stories with a link sticker on every frame to drive people to the trial thing.
[00:25:50.720 --> 00:25:52.320] And then guess what package four is, Nick?
[00:25:52.320 --> 00:25:53.440] What's package four?
[00:25:53.440 --> 00:25:54.400] That includes everything.
[00:25:54.400 --> 00:25:57.600] And that's the only way for the brand to accomplish all of their objectives.
[00:25:57.600 --> 00:25:58.000] Got it.
[00:25:58.000 --> 00:25:58.720] All of the above.
[00:25:59.040 --> 00:26:00.560] Sorry, there's four copies here.
[00:26:00.560 --> 00:26:00.960] Okay.
[00:26:00.960 --> 00:26:01.840] This is really cool.
[00:26:01.840 --> 00:26:06.000] Is there an advantage to saying, like, look, I want to be a content creator.
[00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:07.040] Like, that's what I love.
[00:26:07.040 --> 00:26:09.200] I don't want to be a salesperson.
[00:26:09.200 --> 00:26:14.080] I like working with an influencer agency, working through a network.
[00:26:14.080 --> 00:26:16.800] Obviously, I'm going to give up a percentage to do that.
[00:26:16.760 --> 00:26:19.760] Go ahead, you know, speak about the pros and cons here.
[00:26:19.760 --> 00:26:24.400] Man, so I could say firsthand from experience, I've been a part of networks.
[00:26:24.400 --> 00:26:26.880] I've had, we've had management in the past and so on.
[00:26:26.880 --> 00:26:34.040] And we kind of have a bit of PTSD from that whole experience, mainly because the financial incentives are misaligned.
[00:26:29.840 --> 00:26:35.400] So let me share a quick example.
[00:26:35.720 --> 00:26:40.840] So when I ran my agency, again, to clarify, we were more like an advertising agency.
[00:26:40.840 --> 00:26:44.040] We were not directly managing or exclusively representing creators.
[00:26:44.040 --> 00:26:45.240] Our clients were the brands.
[00:26:45.240 --> 00:26:50.040] And so when the brands hired us, we would then go after any creator who seemed like they would be a good fit for that.
[00:26:50.040 --> 00:26:56.920] And so what would happen is we would reach out to a creator and we would look at their bio on social media or their blog or whatever, and it would be their manager's email address.
[00:26:56.920 --> 00:27:03.720] And we say, okay, we reach out to them and say, hey, our client is interested in hiring your, your client to do this campaign.
[00:27:03.720 --> 00:27:10.520] And the very first thing that the manager would say, Nick, would be, oh, yeah, she's probably interested, but do you need more people?
[00:27:10.520 --> 00:27:14.360] Because I have 19 other people on my roster and, oh, here's all their rates.
[00:27:14.360 --> 00:27:15.880] Do you like any of them too?
[00:27:15.880 --> 00:27:16.440] Okay.
[00:27:16.440 --> 00:27:24.920] And so a less scrupulous brand or one without ethics would say, oh, yeah, well, actually, I like those three other people and they're cheaper and better.
[00:27:24.920 --> 00:27:26.120] So let me just work with them.
[00:27:26.120 --> 00:27:29.000] Because does that manager care where their 20% comes from?
[00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:33.800] If the only way in which they're being compensated is the percentage of the deal, there's no retainer.
[00:27:33.800 --> 00:27:34.840] They don't care.
[00:27:34.840 --> 00:27:37.480] And so that's one small example that I can share.
[00:27:37.480 --> 00:27:44.040] The other just anecdote that I could, I could share, dude, is that we've known a lot of people over the last 15 years being creators.
[00:27:44.040 --> 00:27:51.640] And almost without exception, the people who delegated this stuff, the people who, you know, I don't want to deal with the business stuff.
[00:27:51.640 --> 00:27:53.400] I just want to be a creator and all that.
[00:27:53.400 --> 00:27:56.840] They are either no longer creators or they've really struggled.
[00:27:56.840 --> 00:27:59.320] And the people that have decided that like, this is my business.
[00:27:59.320 --> 00:28:02.280] There's no one who's ever going to care about this as much as I do.
[00:28:02.280 --> 00:28:03.240] I'm going to learn this stuff.
[00:28:03.240 --> 00:28:08.360] I'm going to understand what do partners and brands find valuable about working with me.
[00:28:08.360 --> 00:28:11.240] Those are the ones that are still doing really well and thriving.
[00:28:11.240 --> 00:28:17.920] And so I'm a big proponent of this idea that like you need to take true ownership over these assets that you're creating.
[00:28:17.920 --> 00:28:18.400] Okay.
[00:28:14.840 --> 00:28:19.600] Yeah, that's fair.
[00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:24.320] If you want to play in this business and treat it like a business, you're going to have to learn how to do the business side.
[00:28:24.640 --> 00:28:26.880] Where do you see creators screwing this up?
[00:28:26.880 --> 00:28:32.000] Say they got their first yes and they've been given this $5,000 opportunity.
[00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:33.280] Where does it fall through the cracks?
[00:28:33.280 --> 00:28:36.960] Where do they screw it up from getting that brand ever to call them back again?
[00:28:36.960 --> 00:28:40.080] Man, so really during the execution phase of the deal, right?
[00:28:40.080 --> 00:28:45.040] Yeah, you may have gotten the deal across the finish line in terms of signing the contract and the negotiation and all that.
[00:28:45.040 --> 00:28:57.920] But like if you are not communicative, if you go off the rails in terms of they approved one thing and you just kind of called an audible while you were creating the content and then you send it back to them and they're like, this isn't anything like what we had in mind.
[00:28:57.920 --> 00:29:03.680] And then you give them a bunch of flack and saying like, yeah, well, you should trust me because I'm the creator and I have the creative vision and trust me and all that.
[00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:10.640] And if you're just kind of a nightmare to deal with, that is the time where they decide either, hey, this person's amazing or wow, this was a nightmare.
[00:29:10.640 --> 00:29:11.920] We're never hiring them again.
[00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:13.680] So that's, that's one piece.
[00:29:13.680 --> 00:29:26.160] The other piece, I think, comes towards the end of the partnership, Nick, where maybe let's say they did execute it successfully and then they posted the content, they invoiced the brand, the brand paid them.
[00:29:26.160 --> 00:29:30.080] And then the big mistake that they make is that they never reach out to the brand again.
[00:29:30.080 --> 00:29:37.440] They just make an assumption that like, well, if the brand was happy, if they like me, they'll reach out and ask to collaborate with me again.
[00:29:37.440 --> 00:29:37.680] Yeah.
[00:29:37.680 --> 00:29:38.240] Okay.
[00:29:38.560 --> 00:29:40.000] And that's not the case at all.
[00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:49.520] The onus is on you to put together what I call a post-campaign report where you're sharing not just the quantitative data of how the campaign went, but the qualitative data.
[00:29:49.520 --> 00:29:50.720] You know, you have a podcast, right?
[00:29:50.720 --> 00:30:01.720] So you understand that, like, oftentimes you may be getting private feedback about that episode or, you know, a sponsorship you might do that's not on a public-facing social media platform.
[00:29:59.600 --> 00:30:10.040] So, yeah, on YouTube, there's public-facing comments, but like if I do a newsletter integration, oftentimes I'll get replies to that being like, oh, yeah, I tried that software six months ago, sucks.
[00:30:10.040 --> 00:30:15.000] Or like, I tried, you know, I tried that food, you know, a year ago and it's terrible for XYZ reason.
[00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:16.680] Is the brand seeing that feedback?
[00:30:16.680 --> 00:30:17.560] No, they're not.
[00:30:17.560 --> 00:30:26.440] And so it's your job to send that to them, even if it's negative or neutral feedback and saying, hey, there seems to be a perception in the market that your brand sucks for the following reasons.
[00:30:26.440 --> 00:30:32.920] And if you're not allowing the brand to say, oh, well, actually, we have, we completely reformulated our product three months ago.
[00:30:32.920 --> 00:30:34.200] It seems like people don't know that.
[00:30:34.520 --> 00:30:35.080] Great.
[00:30:35.080 --> 00:30:37.000] There's the focus of the next integration.
[00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:42.280] And so it takes a lot of humility and low ego, I think, to actually come to the brand and be like, hey, how'd it go?
[00:30:42.280 --> 00:30:42.600] Right.
[00:30:42.600 --> 00:30:43.560] Do we drive any sales?
[00:30:43.560 --> 00:30:45.800] I think a lot of people are terrified of asking that question.
[00:30:45.800 --> 00:30:46.440] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:30:46.440 --> 00:30:50.360] You're like worried to be like, yeah, actually, it really, really underperformed.
[00:30:50.360 --> 00:30:51.880] And you're like, right.
[00:30:51.880 --> 00:30:57.560] Well, and what I, my perspective is like, Nelson Mandela has this great quote, which is like, I never lose.
[00:30:57.560 --> 00:30:59.240] I either win or I learn.
[00:30:59.240 --> 00:30:59.640] Yeah.
[00:30:59.640 --> 00:31:04.280] Because if you ask that question, the brand, if they say it went great, great, pitch them on the next deal.
[00:31:04.280 --> 00:31:07.080] But if they say, well, it went okay, great.
[00:31:07.080 --> 00:31:08.680] We can learn something from this.
[00:31:08.680 --> 00:31:14.440] And, you know, then you, you can help them understand how you can serve them in a next pulse of content.
[00:31:14.440 --> 00:31:15.080] Got it.
[00:31:15.080 --> 00:31:24.520] And this would be a great point to ask you, if you're listening, if you have used any of the brands that have sponsored the sign hustle show in the past, I would love to hear from you.
[00:31:24.520 --> 00:31:33.640] We did a kind of a fun creative campaign with OpenPhone over the summer where we made an extended commercial with an interview with the co-founder, and I got some feedback.
[00:31:33.640 --> 00:31:35.800] I was like, wow, that was kind of cool.
[00:31:35.800 --> 00:31:38.120] It didn't even sound like an ad anymore.
[00:31:38.120 --> 00:31:45.840] It was like, shoot, maybe we should do more of that and made sure to pass that along to, in my case, the broker and then on to the brand from there.
[00:31:45.840 --> 00:31:47.600] But very, very cool stuff.
[00:31:47.600 --> 00:31:49.840] Sponsor Magnet is the new book.
[00:31:44.760 --> 00:31:55.680] SponsorMagnet.com is where to go to grab your copy and unlock the free bonuses that come with it.
[00:31:55.760 --> 00:31:58.480] Got a nice endorsement from Pat Flynn on that page.
[00:31:58.480 --> 00:32:07.040] We're going to be right back with Justin for his business idea donation for Side Hustle Show listeners coming up right after this.
[00:32:07.360 --> 00:32:10.080] I'm excited to partner with OpenPhone for this episode.
[00:32:10.080 --> 00:32:19.520] OpenPhone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communication for both calls and texts, all in one easy-to-use centralized hub.
[00:32:19.520 --> 00:32:24.400] But before OpenPhone was sponsoring podcasts, they took a more guerrilla marketing approach.
[00:32:24.560 --> 00:32:26.000] You probably don't remember this.
[00:32:26.000 --> 00:32:33.280] This is a while back, but when we just started OpenPhone, one of the ways that we got our first customers is through Facebook groups.
[00:32:33.280 --> 00:32:36.240] And I joined a bunch of Facebook groups, including yours.
[00:32:36.400 --> 00:32:51.200] Thank you for not kicking me out, but I posted a couple of times and I actually remember seeing there were some of your listeners and folks in your community interested in solving the problem we solve, which is not using your personal phone number for work.
[00:32:51.200 --> 00:32:54.960] And those posts got us some of our first customers.
[00:32:54.960 --> 00:32:55.760] So thank you.
[00:32:55.760 --> 00:32:57.360] It's a full circle moment.
[00:32:57.360 --> 00:32:58.400] Oh, that's super fun.
[00:32:58.400 --> 00:32:59.120] Very cool.
[00:32:59.120 --> 00:33:01.360] That's Doreena, the co-founder of OpenPhone.
[00:33:01.360 --> 00:33:03.600] And sure enough, her posts are still there.
[00:33:03.600 --> 00:33:09.760] OpenPhone is offering Side Hustle Show listeners 20% off your first six months at openphone.com/slash sidehustle.
[00:33:09.760 --> 00:33:15.120] That's O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E, openphone.com/slash sidehustle.
[00:33:15.120 --> 00:33:20.160] And if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge.
[00:33:20.160 --> 00:33:31.400] You know, when you're shopping online and you see that little purple shop pay button at checkout, that's a sign that the store you're on is one of the millions of businesses powered by our partner, Shopify.
[00:33:31.400 --> 00:33:34.920] Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business.
[00:33:29.680 --> 00:33:37.160] For starters, you don't even have to start from scratch.
[00:33:37.240 --> 00:33:45.560] They've got hundreds of beautiful, ready-to-go, proven-to-convert templates that you can adapt to your brand's style without needing to know how to code.
[00:33:45.560 --> 00:33:53.720] You can tackle all your most important tasks in one place, from managing your inventory to tracking payments to analytics and more.
[00:33:53.720 --> 00:34:01.240] Plus, Shopify helps you make sales with built-in marketing and email tools to go out and find new customers and keep the ones you've got.
[00:34:01.240 --> 00:34:06.120] If you want to see less carts being abandoned, it's time to head over to Shopify.
[00:34:06.120 --> 00:34:12.680] Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/slash sidehustle.
[00:34:12.680 --> 00:34:16.040] Go to shopify.com/slash sidehustle.
[00:34:16.040 --> 00:34:19.720] Shopify.com/slash sidehustle.
[00:34:21.320 --> 00:34:29.400] All right, we're back with Justin Moore from sponsormagnet.com, and we're here for round two, which is the business idea donation round.
[00:34:29.400 --> 00:34:32.600] This is something you might start yourself if you had more hours in the day.
[00:34:32.600 --> 00:34:35.400] This is something you think Side Hustle show listeners could run with.
[00:34:35.400 --> 00:34:36.520] What have you got for us?
[00:34:36.520 --> 00:34:37.400] Dude, all right.
[00:34:37.400 --> 00:34:41.480] So, I have got a brand name for you for this business idea, okay?
[00:34:41.480 --> 00:34:44.040] It is called Trend Sync.
[00:34:44.040 --> 00:34:46.440] Let me clarify my problem here, okay?
[00:34:46.440 --> 00:35:05.960] Which is that I constantly feel like there are things happening out there in the world on the internet: memes, trending sounds, holidays that are coming up, you know, things that are relevant globally or like on the internet that I would love to be able to plan for in my business from a content perspective.
[00:35:05.960 --> 00:35:11.800] But I'm just so busy working on the business all the time that I constantly feel like I'm behind.
[00:35:11.800 --> 00:35:36.080] And so, the business idea that I would love someone to create and I would become a customer of it day one is some sort of web app where I can insert maybe my website URL or my LinkedIn profile or a social media profile or something, have it analyze my industry, my brand voice, my target customer or audience, and give me an entire content plan to generate a content strategy for me.
[00:35:36.080 --> 00:35:47.680] And so, it'll, it'll help me think of, you know, what are the upcoming industry events and holidays and awareness days that I need to leverage if there's a trending sound on TikTok that I should quickly make a sound about to insert myself into the narrative for.
[00:35:47.840 --> 00:35:54.240] I kind of imagine this to be like my extremely online assistant that I just don't have time to consume all this content.
[00:35:54.240 --> 00:35:54.880] Yeah.
[00:35:54.880 --> 00:35:59.440] And I think it could be pretty easy to create something like this with AI, I think.
[00:35:59.440 --> 00:36:07.840] And I think this could help eliminate like a lot of hours and could potentially save me from hiring a VA or an employee or whatever to do something like this.
[00:36:07.840 --> 00:36:09.520] So, yeah, hit me up, please.
[00:36:09.520 --> 00:36:10.880] Like, sell me on this.
[00:36:10.880 --> 00:36:12.000] I'm a fan of this.
[00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:15.840] The example that comes to mind is like the cold play his cam from this summer.
[00:36:15.840 --> 00:36:16.400] Yes.
[00:36:16.400 --> 00:36:19.760] Where I started seeing the memes before I even knew what it was.
[00:36:19.760 --> 00:36:23.120] I was like, why is everybody just like, you know, this dude hugging this woman?
[00:36:23.120 --> 00:36:24.720] I was like, why is this going?
[00:36:24.720 --> 00:36:25.840] Why is it showing up in my feet?
[00:36:25.840 --> 00:36:26.800] I didn't even want to know what it was.
[00:36:26.800 --> 00:36:28.480] And then my wife was very into it.
[00:36:29.040 --> 00:36:29.840] Showed me all about it.
[00:36:29.840 --> 00:36:30.400] It was great.
[00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:38.160] But something like that to keep a pulse on what's going on and then bonus points, if it can kind of give you the easy answer on like, okay, this is going viral.
[00:36:38.160 --> 00:36:39.680] This is what people are talking about.
[00:36:39.680 --> 00:36:41.760] But how do I make it about side hustle stuff?
[00:36:41.760 --> 00:36:43.680] Or how do I make it about getting brand deals?
[00:36:43.680 --> 00:36:44.080] Exactly.
[00:36:44.080 --> 00:36:50.160] It's one thing to capture the trend or to be aware of the trend, but it's another thing to like, okay, what do I actually do about it?
[00:36:50.160 --> 00:36:50.720] 100%.
[00:36:50.720 --> 00:36:56.640] Imagine if I could get like some sort of daily or weekly email digest with, like, here's the top five things that are going viral or trending right now.
[00:36:56.640 --> 00:36:58.320] And here's the ideas quick here.
[00:36:58.320 --> 00:37:02.280] Here's a script of like how you can make a quick short form piece of content that's relevant for this or something.
[00:37:02.280 --> 00:37:03.880] Like, oh my God, I would kill for that.
[00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:04.040] Yeah.
[00:37:04.200 --> 00:37:09.720] For a time, Ryan Gray from Med School HQ was doing really well with this stuff on Instagram.
[00:37:09.720 --> 00:37:16.360] Like, I don't know if he had somebody on his team, but they would like create these memes and just pivot it to being about kids going to med school and did really well with that.
[00:37:16.520 --> 00:37:18.600] What do you think is the first step here?
[00:37:18.600 --> 00:37:27.880] Is it to create a listening agent is probably not that hard to tap into Google Trend or, you know, some what's going viral on different platforms.
[00:37:27.880 --> 00:37:29.960] I feel like that is feasible.
[00:37:29.960 --> 00:37:34.920] And then creating a profile based on your own body of work and your brand voice, like also probably feasible.
[00:37:34.920 --> 00:37:36.920] And then in the marrying of those two.
[00:37:36.920 --> 00:37:39.480] I think it's a connecting of pipes, so to speak.
[00:37:39.480 --> 00:37:47.000] I think there's tools out there, like you said, AI listening agents, a combination of that with perplexity and chat or Claude or something.
[00:37:47.160 --> 00:37:58.840] You'd probably want to be thoughtful about what data you would need, like I said, to actually build a robust profile of the user, like the website, the LinkedIn, the social media, and so on, or maybe feed documents to it or something.
[00:37:58.840 --> 00:38:07.320] Because I think you're right, that would be the really critical piece here is like giving some sort of specific recommendation of how to capitalize on the viral trend or meme or whatever.
[00:38:07.320 --> 00:38:13.320] And so probably the first step for me would be like figuring out what are all the sources that I would need to actually figure out if something is going viral.
[00:38:13.320 --> 00:38:18.920] Like maybe it's Google Trends or maybe it's Perplexity or maybe it's some other sources.
[00:38:18.920 --> 00:38:25.640] But like you said, I think it would just need to be someone who has a bit of time and technical sophistication to understand how to connect all this stuff.
[00:38:25.640 --> 00:38:29.160] Yeah, we did, well, we've done a couple episodes with Pete McPherson this year.
[00:38:29.160 --> 00:38:31.080] One on vibe coding, essentially.
[00:38:31.080 --> 00:38:35.240] Like, how do we turn that from idea to app that potentially people could pay for?
[00:38:35.240 --> 00:38:36.680] And I think that would be worth a listen.
[00:38:36.680 --> 00:38:38.200] We can link that up in the show notes.
[00:38:38.200 --> 00:38:41.400] And then we did this whole episode on kind of just brainstorming different ideas.
[00:38:41.400 --> 00:38:43.240] Wouldn't it be nice if such and such thing existed?
[00:38:43.240 --> 00:38:48.640] And so this, it's squarely in that category: this is a personal pain point of mine.
[00:38:44.840 --> 00:38:50.560] And now we can turn that into reality.
[00:38:50.720 --> 00:38:54.240] So if anybody goes out and builds this, absolutely.
[00:38:54.240 --> 00:38:54.880] Let me know.
[00:38:54.880 --> 00:38:58.880] Let Justin know, and we'll try and plug it on an upcoming episode for sure.
[00:38:58.880 --> 00:39:02.000] That is the business idea donation Trend Sync.
[00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:02.880] He's even got a name for it.
[00:39:02.880 --> 00:39:06.960] Hopefully, you got patent pending domain registration, everything, and we'll go from there.
[00:39:06.960 --> 00:39:11.600] But something to connect the internet zeitgeist with your order, with your industry, with your business.
[00:39:11.600 --> 00:39:12.480] So very cool.
[00:39:12.480 --> 00:39:15.200] Let's move on to round three, which is the triple threat.
[00:39:15.200 --> 00:39:19.600] And we're going to start off with a marketing tactic that is working for you right now.
[00:39:19.600 --> 00:39:23.200] It's going to be related to the Creator Wizard coaching business.
[00:39:23.200 --> 00:39:24.800] It could be related to the book.
[00:39:24.800 --> 00:39:26.080] What comes to mind here?
[00:39:26.080 --> 00:39:26.480] Yeah.
[00:39:26.480 --> 00:39:34.480] So something that is a nascent and pretty exciting development for us is what I'm calling our challenge strategy.
[00:39:34.480 --> 00:39:42.000] So our coaching business, as you mentioned, is kind of the main kind of signature offer for our business, but it's a larger price point.
[00:39:42.160 --> 00:39:46.640] It's basically three grand a year for the group support or 10 grand a year for private support.
[00:39:46.640 --> 00:39:53.680] And so basically, we will support you with your pitches, your pricing, your negotiations, your package, proposals, all that, but we do not take a cut.
[00:39:53.680 --> 00:39:56.240] So that's very different than like a manager or an agent.
[00:39:56.240 --> 00:39:59.040] Like we help you land those deals and you keep 100% of that revenue.
[00:39:59.040 --> 00:40:07.040] But because it is, you know, a steeper investment for that, we've had to think of creative ways to excite and entice people to learn more about the program.
[00:40:07.040 --> 00:40:12.720] And so something that we did just last month was something that I called the 10K brand deal challenge.
[00:40:12.720 --> 00:40:17.920] And so we basically ran a seven-day boot camp that was like live.
[00:40:17.920 --> 00:40:20.000] It was virtual, but it was live.
[00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:22.960] And so we would do, I would do live instruction.
[00:40:22.960 --> 00:40:26.400] It was all about how to craft compelling outreach to brands.
[00:40:26.400 --> 00:40:36.840] And so we talked a lot about some of the things that we discussed in the call today, but really it was helping people overcome a lot of the mental blocks with like, oh, I have imposter syndrome or I don't know what to say or I don't know who to send it to.
[00:40:36.840 --> 00:40:38.040] A lot of stuff we talked about today.
[00:40:38.040 --> 00:40:42.280] And then at the end of that challenge, we invited people to join the coaching program if they wanted to.
[00:40:42.280 --> 00:40:48.520] And so the way that the economics worked out is we spent about, this is the first time I'd ever done this, but we spent about $15,000 on ads.
[00:40:48.520 --> 00:40:49.640] It was a paid challenge.
[00:40:49.640 --> 00:40:51.480] So it was $97.
[00:40:51.480 --> 00:41:00.600] There was $197 VIP kind of upsell like tier where I did a private QA after the teaching session on each day.
[00:41:00.600 --> 00:41:09.880] And so between the running of the ads and the revenue that we collected from the registrations, on day one of the challenge, we were about $1,800 in the red.
[00:41:09.880 --> 00:41:14.440] So we collected about $15K and then we made about $13.5K on registrations.
[00:41:14.440 --> 00:41:15.320] Just up front.
[00:41:15.320 --> 00:41:15.560] Yeah.
[00:41:15.560 --> 00:41:17.960] Basically, day one, we were in the hole a bit.
[00:41:17.960 --> 00:41:23.320] And so at the end of the challenge, and then there was like a seven-day sales window for the coaching enrollment, six people had enrolled.
[00:41:23.400 --> 00:41:25.400] We had kind of like a promo price for coaching.
[00:41:25.400 --> 00:41:26.600] It was $500 off.
[00:41:26.600 --> 00:41:29.000] And then we had a three-day downsell to my course.
[00:41:29.000 --> 00:41:33.320] And so all in all, it was like a pretty awesome model, like to get people excited.
[00:41:33.320 --> 00:41:38.280] So we had 79 paid registrations and we had six people enrolled.
[00:41:38.280 --> 00:41:43.240] So it was a 7.5% basically conversion rate or enrollment rate from the challenge.
[00:41:43.240 --> 00:41:45.160] Six people at 2,500.
[00:41:45.320 --> 00:41:46.280] And it's recurring, right?
[00:41:46.280 --> 00:41:47.560] So it's a membership model.
[00:41:47.560 --> 00:41:47.880] Yeah.
[00:41:47.880 --> 00:41:48.040] Yeah.
[00:41:48.040 --> 00:41:50.280] I mean, this was like the first time that we tested something like this.
[00:41:50.280 --> 00:41:53.880] And I'm pretty excited about what this might mean.
[00:41:53.880 --> 00:42:03.400] There was a lot of learnings from it, though, which was that we were expecting that the vast majority of the people who came in from the challenge wouldn't know who I was because we were running cold ads basically.
[00:42:03.400 --> 00:42:07.880] But interestingly, about 75% of people had already read my book.
[00:42:07.880 --> 00:42:08.280] Really?
[00:42:08.280 --> 00:42:10.280] So it was like, not that cold.
[00:42:10.280 --> 00:42:10.440] Yeah.
[00:42:10.440 --> 00:42:11.560] So they weren't cold at all.
[00:42:11.560 --> 00:42:16.640] This has led us to think, well, maybe it doesn't actually make sense to run paid ads straight to the registration page.
[00:42:16.960 --> 00:42:29.440] Maybe instead we should do some sort of book funnel for paid ads, like driving people to the audiobook or the e-book version or straight to my newsletter potentially, and then nurture them for over a longer time period on joining the challenge.
[00:42:29.440 --> 00:42:37.200] So our acquisition costs for people to join those other two funnels will be a lot less than getting someone to join a $97 challenge straight off an ad, right?
[00:42:37.200 --> 00:42:38.000] So I don't know.
[00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:40.880] I'm pretty excited about what this, and this is something we're going to do regularly.
[00:42:40.880 --> 00:42:42.720] We're doing another one in mid-September.
[00:42:42.720 --> 00:42:44.000] So yeah, I don't know.
[00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:46.320] I don't know if it's going to scale, but so far, so good.
[00:42:46.320 --> 00:42:48.240] No, this is really, really interesting.
[00:42:48.240 --> 00:43:08.240] And it's like, I think this is applicable to anybody who has kind of a consulting or kind of a done with you, done/slash for you type of service where, or a coaching type of business, where it's like getting a lower ticket initial buy-in, get people like and getting people excited, delivering consistent content and value.
[00:43:08.240 --> 00:43:13.280] And then saying, like, look, if you want to continue to work with us, these are the results that we've delivered for people.
[00:43:13.280 --> 00:43:18.080] And this is what it's going to be in terms of investment to do this over the course of the next year.
[00:43:18.080 --> 00:43:22.480] And it sounds like you ended up more than doubling your initial ad cost investment.
[00:43:22.480 --> 00:43:26.400] I think the critical thing about designing a challenge like this, Nick, is helping people understand.
[00:43:26.400 --> 00:43:32.320] Like what often happened is that people would reach out to these brands and then they'd get a response and they'd be like, oh, the brand wants to hop on a call.
[00:43:32.320 --> 00:43:32.880] What do I do?
[00:43:32.880 --> 00:43:34.320] Oh, yeah, what do I say?
[00:43:34.320 --> 00:43:34.560] Right.
[00:43:34.560 --> 00:43:37.520] And so, and it's like, well, this is a perfect reason to join the coaching program.
[00:43:37.520 --> 00:43:38.960] We'll help prep you for the call.
[00:43:38.960 --> 00:43:39.280] Right.
[00:43:39.280 --> 00:43:49.120] And so I think that designing some sort of education where it is obvious to your challenge participants why they would want to take the next step is a big part of it.
[00:43:49.120 --> 00:43:51.920] And you were doing these live, like, hey, seven o'clock every night.
[00:43:51.920 --> 00:43:54.560] We're going to jump on and we're going to talk through this for an hour.
[00:43:54.720 --> 00:43:55.280] Exactly.
[00:43:55.280 --> 00:43:55.600] Okay.
[00:43:55.600 --> 00:43:55.840] Yeah.
[00:43:55.840 --> 00:43:56.880] This is really, really cool.
[00:43:56.880 --> 00:44:00.840] And so were the ads just the week prior, like leading up to that.
[00:44:00.840 --> 00:44:03.000] Hey, we're going to, everybody's going to start on Sunday.
[00:44:03.000 --> 00:44:05.000] So it's not pre-recorded.
[00:43:59.840 --> 00:44:07.240] It's just, we're all going to go through this together.
[00:44:07.240 --> 00:44:07.960] Yep, exactly.
[00:44:07.960 --> 00:44:11.160] The $10,000 brand deal challenge.
[00:44:11.160 --> 00:44:13.800] And now you're going to have success stories coming out of that.
[00:44:13.880 --> 00:44:17.160] So it becomes a self-fulfilling thing.
[00:44:17.160 --> 00:44:17.720] I hope so.
[00:44:17.880 --> 00:44:18.520] That's the hope.
[00:44:18.520 --> 00:44:19.720] Fingers crossed.
[00:44:19.720 --> 00:44:21.720] Yeah, it was 100% meta ads.
[00:44:21.720 --> 00:44:21.960] Yep.
[00:44:22.680 --> 00:44:26.280] We did a little bit of Google ads as well, but mostly meta.
[00:44:26.280 --> 00:44:30.440] Did you upload your customer list or invite your existing email list?
[00:44:30.440 --> 00:44:32.280] I did definitely invite my list.
[00:44:32.280 --> 00:44:35.720] I did like a whole sequence on my email list to join the challenge and so on.
[00:44:35.720 --> 00:44:39.080] That 15K wasn't just from people who came from ads.
[00:44:39.080 --> 00:44:39.480] Okay.
[00:44:39.480 --> 00:44:41.960] But I was retargeting, you know, based on my lists.
[00:44:41.960 --> 00:44:42.360] Got it.
[00:44:42.360 --> 00:44:42.600] Yeah.
[00:44:42.600 --> 00:44:53.400] It's trying to build that initial audience and people in the creator economy world, fans of people who use Kit or like, you know, there's different ways to slice and dice that audience, but I like this really cool challenge thing.
[00:44:53.400 --> 00:44:57.880] And we've seen people doing free challenges before, and here's a unique twist on that.
[00:44:57.880 --> 00:45:06.280] Okay, let's get some buy-in up front, weed out the tire kickers and get people to put a little bit of money in and almost make it self-liquidating on the very start.
[00:45:06.280 --> 00:45:09.800] And then everything that you sell down the road becomes gravy.
[00:45:09.800 --> 00:45:12.600] Can I share a quick anecdote about that free thing?
[00:45:12.600 --> 00:45:13.160] Yeah.
[00:45:13.160 --> 00:45:21.560] Because we had considered making it free and we actually did a promotion with another partner where we offered free enrollment to their members.
[00:45:21.560 --> 00:45:29.560] And so we had about 25 people come in for free and basically no one engaged and joined in the challenge who got it for free.
[00:45:29.560 --> 00:45:34.520] And so I think this was like a signal to us that it does make sense to keep this as a paid thing.
[00:45:34.520 --> 00:45:37.800] I think it goes back to the old adage, like, you just pay attention to what you pay for.
[00:45:37.800 --> 00:45:40.600] Yeah, I don't know who first said it, but people who pay, pay attention.
[00:45:40.600 --> 00:45:43.240] It's something that's come up for sure on the show.
[00:45:43.240 --> 00:45:43.800] So, I love that.
[00:45:43.800 --> 00:45:47.040] That's the challenge: marketing as the marketing tactic.
[00:45:47.040 --> 00:45:51.040] How about a new or new to you tool that you're living right now?
[00:45:44.520 --> 00:45:51.280] All right.
[00:45:51.440 --> 00:45:52.880] So, it's called Whisperflow.
[00:45:52.880 --> 00:45:53.680] Have you heard of this?
[00:45:53.680 --> 00:45:54.080] No.
[00:45:54.080 --> 00:45:54.320] Okay.
[00:45:54.320 --> 00:46:03.440] So, Whisperflow is an app that you install either on your computer or your phone, and there's this little icon on the bottom, and you click it and you just talk into it.
[00:46:03.440 --> 00:46:04.240] You dictate.
[00:46:04.240 --> 00:46:11.840] So, whatever active window you're in, whether it's a chat window, an email window, or whatever, you just dictate into it and it formats it perfectly.
[00:46:11.840 --> 00:46:13.040] And you don't have to type anything.
[00:46:13.040 --> 00:46:13.520] Okay, okay.
[00:46:13.520 --> 00:46:15.040] No, I have, I have heard of this.
[00:46:15.040 --> 00:46:15.680] Yeah.
[00:46:15.680 --> 00:46:20.880] So, man, this has saved me so much time because I'm just like naturally, it's like way easier for me to talk things out.
[00:46:20.880 --> 00:46:24.640] But the challenge with voice to text for me in the past has always been the formatting sucks.
[00:46:24.640 --> 00:46:28.560] But Whisperflow is like super, super accurate and it's super lightweight.
[00:46:28.560 --> 00:46:29.360] Interesting.
[00:46:29.360 --> 00:46:32.160] And what's like a common use case for you?
[00:46:32.160 --> 00:46:41.760] Anytime you're typing anything anywhere in an email, in a chat box, like filling out a YouTube description box, whatever, you just like talk into it and then it pastes it right into there.
[00:46:41.760 --> 00:46:42.320] It's amazing.
[00:46:42.320 --> 00:46:43.040] That's super interesting.
[00:46:43.120 --> 00:46:48.880] I'm the person who, despite hosting a podcast for 12 years, like needs to see it written down.
[00:46:48.880 --> 00:46:52.240] And like, that's my form of thinking rather than just speaking.
[00:46:52.240 --> 00:46:59.120] So I don't know if I would be the target user for something like this, but I've heard more and more people typing interface.
[00:46:59.120 --> 00:47:00.000] It's a dinosaur.
[00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:00.880] It's going extinct.
[00:47:00.880 --> 00:47:04.240] You know, more and more people are just going to be using voice to do everything.
[00:47:04.240 --> 00:47:04.560] Yep.
[00:47:04.560 --> 00:47:04.800] All right.
[00:47:04.800 --> 00:47:05.520] Whisper flow.
[00:47:05.520 --> 00:47:10.320] We'll link that up in show notes if you are a talker more than a typer.
[00:47:10.320 --> 00:47:14.400] And your favorite book other than your own from the last 12 months.
[00:47:14.400 --> 00:47:16.480] I brought it here just so I could show you.
[00:47:16.480 --> 00:47:17.040] Okay.
[00:47:17.040 --> 00:47:21.360] This book is called Double Your Profits in Six Months or Less by Bob Pfeiffer.
[00:47:21.360 --> 00:47:21.920] That's a new one.
[00:47:21.920 --> 00:47:22.960] New title for me.
[00:47:22.960 --> 00:47:24.320] This book, it's an old book.
[00:47:24.320 --> 00:47:26.640] I think it's like 40 or 50 years old or something.
[00:47:26.640 --> 00:47:27.120] Okay.
[00:47:27.120 --> 00:47:28.400] This is a newer cover, though.
[00:47:28.400 --> 00:47:33.240] But basically, this guy was a consultant to Fortune 100 companies.
[00:47:33.240 --> 00:47:34.280] It's such a fast read.
[00:47:29.680 --> 00:47:35.400] I read this in like a couple hours.
[00:47:35.560 --> 00:47:41.320] The subtitle is 78 Ways to Cut Costs, Increase Sales, and Dramatically Improve Your Bottom Line.
[00:47:41.320 --> 00:47:41.640] Wow.
[00:47:41.640 --> 00:47:46.440] And so the book is separated into two sections: which is how to cut costs and how to make more money.
[00:47:46.440 --> 00:47:49.560] Each little step is like three pages or two pages.
[00:47:49.560 --> 00:47:52.840] And it's just so succinct and it's no BS.
[00:47:52.840 --> 00:47:54.440] And I'll give you one tangible example.
[00:47:54.440 --> 00:47:57.400] There was a section in here about consultants.
[00:47:57.400 --> 00:48:00.280] And basically, it was like, Do you really need consultants?
[00:48:00.280 --> 00:48:01.400] Written by a consultant.
[00:48:01.400 --> 00:48:02.840] Do you really need that coach?
[00:48:02.840 --> 00:48:08.200] Do you really need that person that you're paying $1,000 a month to to do that like task or whatever?
[00:48:08.200 --> 00:48:16.440] And right in my head, I was thinking, right now, it's more a want than a need for me because there was like a couple engagements that I was doing.
[00:48:16.440 --> 00:48:21.320] And the real pain point for me was like, I'm just feeling way too stressed out now with my team.
[00:48:21.320 --> 00:48:22.600] And so we made the decision.
[00:48:22.600 --> 00:

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Prompt 5: Context Setup

You are an expert data extractor tasked with analyzing a podcast transcript. 
I will provide you with part 2 of 2 from a podcast transcript. 
I will then ask you to extract different types of information from this content in subsequent messages. Please confirm you have received and understood the transcript content.

Transcript section:
7:21.360] This book is called Double Your Profits in Six Months or Less by Bob Pfeiffer.
[00:47:21.360 --> 00:47:21.920] That's a new one.
[00:47:21.920 --> 00:47:22.960] New title for me.
[00:47:22.960 --> 00:47:24.320] This book, it's an old book.
[00:47:24.320 --> 00:47:26.640] I think it's like 40 or 50 years old or something.
[00:47:26.640 --> 00:47:27.120] Okay.
[00:47:27.120 --> 00:47:28.400] This is a newer cover, though.
[00:47:28.400 --> 00:47:33.240] But basically, this guy was a consultant to Fortune 100 companies.
[00:47:33.240 --> 00:47:34.280] It's such a fast read.
[00:47:29.680 --> 00:47:35.400] I read this in like a couple hours.
[00:47:35.560 --> 00:47:41.320] The subtitle is 78 Ways to Cut Costs, Increase Sales, and Dramatically Improve Your Bottom Line.
[00:47:41.320 --> 00:47:41.640] Wow.
[00:47:41.640 --> 00:47:46.440] And so the book is separated into two sections: which is how to cut costs and how to make more money.
[00:47:46.440 --> 00:47:49.560] Each little step is like three pages or two pages.
[00:47:49.560 --> 00:47:52.840] And it's just so succinct and it's no BS.
[00:47:52.840 --> 00:47:54.440] And I'll give you one tangible example.
[00:47:54.440 --> 00:47:57.400] There was a section in here about consultants.
[00:47:57.400 --> 00:48:00.280] And basically, it was like, Do you really need consultants?
[00:48:00.280 --> 00:48:01.400] Written by a consultant.
[00:48:01.400 --> 00:48:02.840] Do you really need that coach?
[00:48:02.840 --> 00:48:08.200] Do you really need that person that you're paying $1,000 a month to to do that like task or whatever?
[00:48:08.200 --> 00:48:16.440] And right in my head, I was thinking, right now, it's more a want than a need for me because there was like a couple engagements that I was doing.
[00:48:16.440 --> 00:48:21.320] And the real pain point for me was like, I'm just feeling way too stressed out now with my team.
[00:48:21.320 --> 00:48:22.600] And so we made the decision.
[00:48:22.600 --> 00:48:26.280] I was like, we really need to hire another like VA or another assistant.
[00:48:26.280 --> 00:48:32.840] And so right there, I just picked up the phone and I ended those consulting agreements with some of these other people because it was month to month.
[00:48:32.840 --> 00:48:36.840] And I was able to take back several thousand dollars that I'm now going to be allocating towards an assistant.
[00:48:36.840 --> 00:48:40.680] It's a really great, succinct read to help you just like do a double take.
[00:48:40.680 --> 00:48:42.040] Like, do I really need to do this?
[00:48:42.040 --> 00:48:43.240] So, really, really helpful.
[00:48:43.240 --> 00:48:43.640] All right.
[00:48:43.640 --> 00:48:47.320] Double your profits in six months, Bob Pfeiffer.
[00:48:47.320 --> 00:48:52.680] A new title that has never been recommended before in the history of Side Hustle Show.
[00:48:52.680 --> 00:48:55.000] So thanks for bringing something new to the table.
[00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:55.800] Very cool.
[00:48:55.800 --> 00:48:56.840] What's next for you?
[00:48:56.840 --> 00:49:00.600] You got the book, you got the coaching business, you've run in these successful challenges.
[00:49:00.600 --> 00:49:02.760] What's got you excited for the rest of this year?
[00:49:02.760 --> 00:49:06.760] Well, I just launched my brand new sponsor magnet podcast.
[00:49:06.760 --> 00:49:08.040] Oh, two days ago.
[00:49:08.040 --> 00:49:09.400] You heard it here first.
[00:49:09.400 --> 00:49:10.600] Yeah, you heard it here first.
[00:49:10.600 --> 00:49:16.320] My very first episode was with Nier Ayal, if you're familiar with his books, Hooked and Indistractible.
[00:49:16.320 --> 00:49:16.640] Yep.
[00:49:16.640 --> 00:49:18.320] So I talked with him.
[00:49:14.520 --> 00:49:20.400] He was a sponsorship skeptic.
[00:49:20.560 --> 00:49:24.560] He's someone who's sold a million copies of books and has never done a single sponsorship.
[00:49:24.560 --> 00:49:31.280] And so we were actually in person together and we talked through all of his limiting beliefs around why, why should he even consider doing sponsorships?
[00:49:31.280 --> 00:49:36.800] And so yeah, I'm really excited to just have a forum to have these conversations because there's no other podcast dedicated to this topic.
[00:49:36.800 --> 00:49:42.720] And so the podcast and then also my in-person event called Sponsor Games happening again in March 2026.
[00:49:42.720 --> 00:49:44.720] So very excited for both of those two things.
[00:49:44.720 --> 00:49:46.320] Sponsor games like Hunger Games?
[00:49:46.320 --> 00:49:52.960] Well, basically what I've done is I've turned my eight-step sponsorship wheel framework into eight games that you play to actually master these concepts.
[00:49:52.960 --> 00:50:01.120] So the pitch game and the negotiate game, where you're actually doing real role-playing live, like with me on stage, where I'm pretending to be a brand and I say one thing and you have to respond.
[00:50:01.120 --> 00:50:01.600] Oh my gosh.
[00:50:01.600 --> 00:50:02.080] Yes.
[00:50:02.080 --> 00:50:02.480] Yeah.
[00:50:02.480 --> 00:50:07.440] I have found that like doing these types of activities where you're practicing is the way to learn.
[00:50:07.440 --> 00:50:07.760] Yeah.
[00:50:07.760 --> 00:50:14.720] There's a lot of benefit in those mock interviews, the role-playing and trying to figure, yeah, the brand said they want to do a discovery call.
[00:50:14.720 --> 00:50:15.200] What do I say?
[00:50:15.200 --> 00:50:15.520] Right.
[00:50:15.520 --> 00:50:21.440] Oh, well, if I'm prepared for that, I'm much more likely to actually present myself in a way that makes sense and lands that deal.
[00:50:21.440 --> 00:50:22.160] Well, that's awesome.
[00:50:22.160 --> 00:50:25.120] So the new podcast, the sponsor magnet podcast, absolutely.
[00:50:25.120 --> 00:50:25.840] We'll link that up.
[00:50:25.840 --> 00:50:27.760] Go check that out in the show notes there.
[00:50:27.760 --> 00:50:30.240] The sponsor games coming up if you want to get more.
[00:50:30.240 --> 00:50:35.200] But actually, definitely check out the sponsor magnet book, sponsormagnet.com.
[00:50:35.200 --> 00:50:36.240] This is soup tonight.
[00:50:36.240 --> 00:50:40.240] Like this is really, really in-depth on everything you need to get started.
[00:50:40.240 --> 00:50:41.520] Really well done on that.
[00:50:41.520 --> 00:50:42.640] I know it's selling really well.
[00:50:42.640 --> 00:50:44.960] And I know we'll continue to do that.
[00:50:44.960 --> 00:50:47.120] Also, creatorwizard.com.
[00:50:47.120 --> 00:50:49.920] I want to plug the like sponsor audit tool.
[00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:52.240] It's just kind of a cool, unique positioning.
[00:50:52.240 --> 00:50:53.760] So that's at creatorwizard.com.
[00:50:53.760 --> 00:50:55.200] We'll link that up as well.
[00:50:55.200 --> 00:50:57.800] I appreciate you tuning in to the side hustle Show.
[00:50:57.800 --> 00:51:03.400] Whether it's your first time listening or your 694th or whatever episode we're on, appreciate you.
[00:51:03.720 --> 00:51:09.240] If you are newer to the show, you can create a personalized playlist at hustle.show.
[00:51:09.240 --> 00:51:18.280] You can get a custom curated list of our greatest hits episodes based on your answers, and it'll spit back out that playlist that you can add to your device.
[00:51:18.280 --> 00:51:20.840] Go learn what works and go make some more money.
[00:51:20.840 --> 00:51:23.160] Again, hustle.show for that.
[00:51:23.160 --> 00:51:25.640] Big thanks to Justin for sharing his insight.
[00:51:25.640 --> 00:51:27.560] Thanks to our sponsors.
[00:51:27.560 --> 00:51:28.840] Did a whole episode on sponsors.
[00:51:28.840 --> 00:51:31.560] Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
[00:51:31.560 --> 00:51:38.120] SidehustleNation.com slash deals is where to go to find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
[00:51:38.120 --> 00:51:40.920] Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show.
[00:51:40.920 --> 00:51:43.080] It really does make a difference.
[00:51:43.080 --> 00:51:44.120] That is it for me.
[00:51:44.120 --> 00:51:46.040] Thank you so much for tuning in.
[00:51:46.040 --> 00:51:49.720] If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.
[00:51:49.720 --> 00:51:55.240] So fire off that text message, that Instagram DM saying, hey, I think you should check this out.
[00:51:55.240 --> 00:51:58.280] Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen.
[00:51:58.280 --> 00:52:01.160] And I'll catch you in the next edition of The Side Hustle Show.
[00:52:01.160 --> 00:52:01.960] Hustle on.

Prompt 6: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 7: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 8: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

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[00:00:57.440 --> 00:01:00.000] That's policygenius.com.
[00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:02.480] And now, onto the show.
[00:01:02.800 --> 00:01:06.000] This is your path to $1,000 plus brand deals.
[00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:08.160] Even you've got a small audience.
[00:01:08.160 --> 00:01:14.960] This is how to get your piece of the $480 billion, billion with a B dollar creator economy pie.
[00:01:14.960 --> 00:01:22.640] And to help school us on this is the author of Sponsor Magnet, which you can find at sponsormagnet.com, Justin Moore.
[00:01:22.640 --> 00:01:24.160] Welcome to the Side Hustle Show.
[00:01:24.320 --> 00:01:26.240] Dude, Nick, I'm so thrilled to be here, man.
[00:01:26.240 --> 00:01:27.360] I am pumped for this one.
[00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:28.000] Stick around.
[00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:39.120] We're covering what brands really care about, how to reach the right decision makers, and how to maximize your earning power, not just with one-off campaigns, but with long-term partnerships.
[00:01:39.120 --> 00:01:40.160] And that's just round one.
[00:01:40.160 --> 00:01:46.880] We've got three rounds with Justin today, including his business idea donation for Side Hustle Nation and the triple threat.
[00:01:46.880 --> 00:01:51.040] But first, just want to get a sense of what's possible in this world.
[00:01:51.040 --> 00:01:53.760] You've got dozens and dozens of people that you've worked with.
[00:01:53.760 --> 00:01:59.920] Is there anything that really stands out to you in terms of like a really small audience-sized creator who landed somewhere?
[00:02:01.080 --> 00:02:02.120] Yeah, 100%.
[00:02:02.120 --> 00:02:03.400] So I have a coaching client.
[00:02:03.400 --> 00:02:04.120] Her name is Dr.
[00:02:04.120 --> 00:02:10.200] Alex, and she has a podcast called Digital Pathology Place.
[00:02:10.200 --> 00:02:10.680] Okay.
[00:02:10.680 --> 00:02:18.760] She's a veterinarian, like a physician, and her podcast on average gets hundreds of listens, not tens of thousands.
[00:02:18.760 --> 00:02:21.240] And her YouTube videos, same, you know?
[00:02:21.240 --> 00:02:21.800] Okay.
[00:02:21.800 --> 00:02:31.960] And she is absolutely crushing it with brand partnerships, Nick, because if you think about who is in her audience, it's the lab techs.
[00:02:31.960 --> 00:02:35.400] It's the people who work in the C-suite at the hospitals.
[00:02:35.400 --> 00:02:38.760] It's the people who work at the biopharmaceutical companies.
[00:02:38.760 --> 00:02:47.080] And if you're over here, medical device company XYZ, and you're sitting here thinking, how am I going to spend this $20 million marketing budget?
[00:02:47.080 --> 00:02:48.200] That's what they're thinking, right?
[00:02:48.200 --> 00:02:55.640] They're thinking, okay, well, maybe we could continue buying ads in that prehistoric trade magazine that sits in the doctor's office.
[00:02:55.640 --> 00:02:57.080] Yeah, I was going to say trade magazines.
[00:02:57.080 --> 00:02:57.480] Sure.
[00:02:57.480 --> 00:02:57.720] Right.
[00:02:57.720 --> 00:03:00.280] That whoever knows if anyone reads those.
[00:03:00.280 --> 00:03:03.560] Maybe trying to run like pay-per-click ads on Google.
[00:03:03.560 --> 00:03:07.560] It's heavily regulated, so they may not even be able to run ads on Meta.
[00:03:07.560 --> 00:03:08.680] You know, who knows?
[00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:11.400] Or maybe they could roll out the red carpet for someone like Dr.
[00:03:11.400 --> 00:03:11.960] Alex.
[00:03:11.960 --> 00:03:20.200] They could say, all of the people, even though it's a small audience, all the people who are in this kind of niche community, these are the people that we want to get in front of.
[00:03:20.200 --> 00:03:22.120] So let's fly her out to our factory.
[00:03:22.440 --> 00:03:27.720] Let's pay her to come and speak on stage on our behalf at an upcoming trade industry event.
[00:03:28.200 --> 00:03:36.920] And so she has her business funded by tons of these niche medical healthcare players because of who she represents.
[00:03:36.920 --> 00:03:43.320] And so, again, like she's not, she does not have hundreds of thousands of followers, but brand partnerships has become a huge part of her business.
[00:03:43.320 --> 00:03:46.560] Does it need to be a B2B type of play?
[00:03:46.640 --> 00:03:50.000] I mean, we've seen some examples on the show in the past.
[00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:52.800] Brian Orr comes to mind from the HVAC school.
[00:03:52.800 --> 00:03:58.640] Like, we're going to create a podcast for HVAC technicians and help them train, you know, how to be better at their job.
[00:03:58.640 --> 00:03:59.840] Killer business.
[00:03:59.840 --> 00:04:07.280] And Harry Duran comes to mind with the vertical farming podcast, where it's like, we're going to talk to founders and CEOs of vertical farming companies.
[00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:10.320] And it's like so niche-specific.
[00:04:10.400 --> 00:04:17.120] It's like, like you said, if you want to spend this ad dollars, we're the only game in town or we're one of the only new media games in town.
[00:04:17.120 --> 00:04:22.960] But do you see it's almost got to be kind of in that micro-niche B2B type of market?
[00:04:22.960 --> 00:04:24.880] I wouldn't say B2B necessarily.
[00:04:25.440 --> 00:04:32.960] It definitely helps because there's a lot of businesses who are seeing the light in terms of the value of working with creators and entrepreneurs in this capacity.
[00:04:32.960 --> 00:04:36.160] But I do think having some sort of niche helps.
[00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:38.800] However, what I would say though is that let's say you are small.
[00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:42.720] Let's say you have sub a thousand followers or listeners or subscribers or whatever.
[00:04:42.720 --> 00:04:46.000] What you pitch to the brand has to change though.
[00:04:46.000 --> 00:05:00.160] So if you come to them and you say, you know, oh, I would love to talk about your, you know, your brand or your product on my YouTube channel or my podcast or my newsletter or something, and they go take a look at it and you're getting an average of 100 views per video or listens or whatever.
[00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:00.560] Yeah.
[00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:02.160] Not really going to move the needle for them.
[00:05:02.160 --> 00:05:03.440] Let's just be real here.
[00:05:03.440 --> 00:05:03.920] Right.
[00:05:03.920 --> 00:05:08.320] And so how about instead, if we approach the pitch a little bit differently?
[00:05:08.320 --> 00:05:14.240] So what I would do is I would say, okay, let me go and do a holistic analysis of this brand's social presence.
[00:05:14.240 --> 00:05:17.760] Let me see, are they posting on social media at all?
[00:05:17.760 --> 00:05:20.080] Or do they have a podcast for their brand?
[00:05:20.080 --> 00:05:21.680] Do they have a YouTube channel for their brand?
[00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:23.040] Are they sending, do they have a blog?
[00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:24.400] Are they sending out a newsletter?
[00:05:24.400 --> 00:05:27.440] If they are posting on some of these platforms, is it good content?
[00:05:27.440 --> 00:05:29.040] Is it consistent content?
[00:05:29.040 --> 00:05:32.360] And then I would reach out to them and I would say, hey, listen, love your brand.
[00:05:32.360 --> 00:05:35.800] However, I think you could be telling your brand story in a much more compelling way.
[00:05:35.800 --> 00:05:38.680] I would love to create content on autopilot for you.
[00:05:38.680 --> 00:05:40.920] I'll send you five, 10 videos a month.
[00:05:40.920 --> 00:05:43.080] I'll do, you know, I'll stand up your podcast.
[00:05:43.080 --> 00:05:43.880] I'll be the host.
[00:05:43.880 --> 00:05:45.400] I'll interview people on your marketing team.
[00:05:45.400 --> 00:05:46.520] I'll interview my friends.
[00:05:46.520 --> 00:05:48.600] It's turnkey, $7,500 a month.
[00:05:48.600 --> 00:05:49.320] What do you think?
[00:05:49.320 --> 00:05:52.680] And yeah, syndicating that content on my platforms could be part of it.
[00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:57.560] But also you're saying, hey, go take a look at my platform because it serves as my portfolio.
[00:05:57.560 --> 00:06:01.560] Even though I might have a thousand followers, like I know what I'm doing when it comes to creating content.
[00:06:01.560 --> 00:06:05.800] And so again, as you grow, depending on your size, what you pitch has to change.
[00:06:05.800 --> 00:06:06.120] Okay.
[00:06:06.120 --> 00:06:16.440] So this is where it blends from being a UGC partner, being a marketing consultant, so to speak, or content creator versus we're buying impressions from you.
[00:06:16.760 --> 00:06:20.920] If you don't have a lot of impressions to sell, you got to get a little more creative on the other side.
[00:06:20.920 --> 00:06:25.480] And we had a woman on the show who was, the brands didn't care about the size of her following.
[00:06:25.640 --> 00:06:27.720] They wanted the content to post on their own channels.
[00:06:27.720 --> 00:06:32.040] And it was like sometimes two, 300 bucks, sometimes a thousand bucks a video.
[00:06:32.040 --> 00:06:32.280] Yep.
[00:06:32.280 --> 00:06:37.320] It's like she got really good at creating these hooky little short clips.
[00:06:37.320 --> 00:06:43.320] It was like the hourly rate from some of that, if you can put that together, was like, oh my gosh, this is fantastic.
[00:06:43.320 --> 00:06:44.200] 100%.
[00:06:44.200 --> 00:06:59.640] And if you can start getting really creative about negotiating those types of deals for UGC or user-generated content is you may determine once you get pretty good is like, hey, instead of paying me a flat rate or paying me a thousand bucks or whatever it's going to be, pay me a percentage of your ad spend.
[00:06:59.640 --> 00:07:05.640] Meaning, like if this asset starts performing really well and converting very well, the more money you spend, the more money I make.
[00:07:05.640 --> 00:07:11.960] So, there's really creative ways that you can start thinking about setting up compensation with these types of arrangements.
[00:07:11.960 --> 00:07:17.200] Yeah, this is one of the, I mean, especially UGC is one of the biggest shifts that we've seen in this space.
[00:07:17.520 --> 00:07:23.200] It's been almost 10 years since the last time we did a dedicated episode about landing sponsorships, landing brand deals.
[00:07:23.200 --> 00:07:25.680] I mean, what are some of the other big shifts you've seen here?
[00:07:25.680 --> 00:07:29.200] There absolutely has been a gargantuan shift to short-form content.
[00:07:29.200 --> 00:07:40.000] I mean, you know, when we started out back in 2009, we had a blog, we had a YouTube channel, and brands were just starting to dip their toes into the idea about, you know, paying someone to like talk about them in a YouTube video.
[00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:44.400] And long-form content, podcasts, and so on was like, that was really the kind of standard.
[00:07:44.400 --> 00:07:46.640] And then obviously it sponsored blogs and so on too.
[00:07:46.640 --> 00:08:03.200] But over the last for sure, 18 to 24 months, a lot of brands have shifted a much bigger percentage of the marketing pie over to short form content, whether that's Instagram reels, TikTok, YouTube shorts, and so on.
[00:08:03.200 --> 00:08:08.320] One of the reasons, Nick, is because of the increased repurposability of those assets.
[00:08:08.320 --> 00:08:17.680] So when you sponsor a blogger or a newsletter operator or a YouTuber or something, like that content, that integration, let's say that sponsorship goes live on the brand on that person's platform.
[00:08:17.680 --> 00:08:22.240] And then for a lot of them, it kind of disappears into the ether, especially with like newsletters and all that.
[00:08:22.240 --> 00:08:26.560] Yeah, some YouTube can have more of an evergreen shelf life.
[00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:27.200] Okay.
[00:08:27.200 --> 00:08:40.080] But if you think about a 30-second video or a 60-second video that someone might create, oftentimes the brands are negotiating for the rights to put that content elsewhere, maybe on their website, on their social media, to run paid advertising with it.
[00:08:40.080 --> 00:08:53.440] And so now the ROI or the ROAS, the return on ad spend that they're thinking when they pay you 2,500 bucks or whatever, or 10 grand, it starts becoming like, okay, I understand why I need to pay this creator to secure those rights.
[00:08:53.440 --> 00:08:55.040] So there's a lot of different reasons.
[00:08:55.040 --> 00:09:00.600] And of course, like, there's a lot more mind share around people consuming content in that format.
[00:09:00.600 --> 00:09:02.520] And so that's been a big shift.
[00:09:02.520 --> 00:09:02.920] Got it.
[00:08:59.680 --> 00:09:06.360] So that's something to have in your back pocket as you're approaching brands.
[00:09:06.440 --> 00:09:09.240] Hey, it's not just something that's going to live on my channel.
[00:09:09.240 --> 00:09:16.440] If you want the reusage rights, the recycling, the licensing rights to this content, absolutely, you can have it.
[00:09:16.440 --> 00:09:20.920] But there's a step up in the pricing tier in that case.
[00:09:20.920 --> 00:09:22.280] So talk me through.
[00:09:22.280 --> 00:09:23.480] I'm a new creator.
[00:09:23.480 --> 00:09:25.240] I don't have a huge following.
[00:09:25.480 --> 00:09:26.600] I'll let you pick the niche.
[00:09:26.600 --> 00:09:29.320] It could be the veterinarian thing or something else.
[00:09:29.320 --> 00:09:36.120] But like, okay, I think this is going to be a viable path to monetize to finding the decision makers to get my first deal here.
[00:09:36.120 --> 00:09:36.440] Yeah.
[00:09:36.440 --> 00:09:41.240] So I think the first and most important thing to realize from, if I'm saying, where do I even start?
[00:09:41.240 --> 00:09:43.160] It's like, first go and find.
[00:09:43.160 --> 00:09:46.280] Are there other brands sponsoring other people in your niche?
[00:09:46.280 --> 00:09:47.160] That's the easiest way.
[00:09:47.160 --> 00:09:48.200] That's the lowest hanging fruit.
[00:09:48.200 --> 00:09:52.920] Is like, maybe there's other creators, other newsletters, other, you know, YouTubers that you follow or whatever.
[00:09:52.920 --> 00:09:56.440] And just start acknowledging, okay, let me go back and look at their last 10 videos.
[00:09:56.440 --> 00:09:57.640] Like, were any of those sponsored?
[00:09:57.640 --> 00:10:04.360] You can even search on people's YouTube channels for hashtags, like hashtag sponsored, the word sponsored, sponsoring, partnering.
[00:10:04.360 --> 00:10:07.880] You can start to see like, okay, wow, this person was sponsored by that.
[00:10:07.880 --> 00:10:09.640] And that's the best place to start.
[00:10:09.640 --> 00:10:10.600] So that's a good sign.
[00:10:10.600 --> 00:10:16.040] If that company is in alignment with you, they have budget, they have a track record of making that kind of investment.
[00:10:16.040 --> 00:10:16.600] Exactly.
[00:10:16.600 --> 00:10:19.480] And they already see the value in partnering with creators.
[00:10:19.480 --> 00:10:22.760] A lot of times people will go to a brand that has never worked with a single creator.
[00:10:22.760 --> 00:10:24.760] And it's just a, it's a, it's a harder sell.
[00:10:24.760 --> 00:10:26.760] The edge, the sales cycle's longer.
[00:10:26.760 --> 00:10:30.440] You're going to probably get frustrated because you're having lots of conversations that don't lead anywhere.
[00:10:30.440 --> 00:10:33.720] And so I would say start there for brands that already really kind of understand.
[00:10:33.720 --> 00:10:41.880] The second step, and it's a really critical one, Nick, is realizing that whether you like the brand or not is kind of irrelevant.
[00:10:41.880 --> 00:10:43.280] It's kind of table stakes.
[00:10:43.280 --> 00:10:45.280] Because at the end of the day, it's not about you.
[00:10:45.520 --> 00:10:48.640] It's about will this sponsor serve your audience?
[00:10:48.640 --> 00:10:55.360] Because really what brands care about is, hey, does your audience represent a pool of future prospective customers of us?
[00:10:55.360 --> 00:10:56.960] We don't care that you like the product.
[00:10:56.960 --> 00:10:59.040] We care is your audience interested in it.
[00:10:59.040 --> 00:11:06.560] And so what I advocate for in my book sponsor magnet is like, let's actually start a proactive dialogue with my audience to learn more about them.
[00:11:06.560 --> 00:11:09.520] I want to learn what's, you know, going on in their lives.
[00:11:09.520 --> 00:11:10.640] What's keeping them up at night?
[00:11:10.640 --> 00:11:12.160] What problems do they have?
[00:11:12.160 --> 00:11:13.440] A lot of people get fixated.
[00:11:13.440 --> 00:11:17.200] Oh, I'm in this like veterinary niche or I'm in this DIY quilting niche or whatever.
[00:11:17.200 --> 00:11:21.680] I guess the only brands I can work with are like fabric brands or yarn brands or something.
[00:11:21.680 --> 00:11:25.040] When in reality, let's pull that example for the thread.
[00:11:25.040 --> 00:11:26.640] Sorry, I did not mean to make that pun.
[00:11:26.640 --> 00:11:28.400] Let's pull that thread for a second.
[00:11:28.400 --> 00:11:46.000] If you start asking questions of that community, I don't know, for example, maybe you realize you send out a Google Form survey in your next newsletter or you put out a poll on your YouTube community tab or something and you realize that, wow, I didn't realize 50% of my audience, they homeschool their homeschooling families and they're really into DIY and crafting and all that.
[00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:50.480] That represents a very specific type of psychographic of consumer.
[00:11:50.480 --> 00:11:54.960] Maybe I should pitch a brand like ABC Mouse, which helps kids read.
[00:11:54.960 --> 00:12:00.640] I bet you could probably think of a pretty creative way to integrate a brand like that into your DIY and quilting niche.
[00:12:00.640 --> 00:12:04.480] And so again, it comes back to like understanding your audience.
[00:12:04.480 --> 00:12:09.040] And also you should be asking, like, are there any brands and tools and products that you're using and loving right now?
[00:12:09.040 --> 00:12:11.760] What if 30% of them say one brand in particular?
[00:12:11.760 --> 00:12:18.640] Well, you better go take that data and go pitch the brand and be like, hey, I've got this huge cohort of my audience that is interested in using your product.
[00:12:18.640 --> 00:12:20.560] I would love to expose my full audience to you.
[00:12:20.560 --> 00:12:20.880] Got it.
[00:12:20.880 --> 00:12:29.440] It was biting my tongue a little bit because it's like, well, if you're the face of the brand, or if you're the face of your own personal brand and your content, it's like, you got to be at least comfortable.
[00:12:29.520 --> 00:12:33.560] You know, ideally, you're a user, you're an advocate, you're a fan of this company that you're pitching.
[00:12:33.720 --> 00:12:37.560] It's like, because you don't want to become just a pitch person for whatever random thing.
[00:12:37.720 --> 00:12:39.320] Like, I wouldn't recommend this.
[00:12:39.320 --> 00:12:40.680] Oh, oh, 100%.
[00:12:40.680 --> 00:12:50.520] So, what I meant is that, of course, you have to be a tool that you would recommend, but really, that's not what you should be leading with in your pitch because the brand doesn't care that you like it.
[00:12:50.760 --> 00:12:54.360] You need to illustrate to them: does your audience have existing affinity?
[00:12:54.520 --> 00:12:55.480] That's really what I meant.
[00:12:55.480 --> 00:12:56.200] Got it.
[00:12:56.200 --> 00:13:14.040] Okay, so step one: kind of creating this list or this spreadsheet of potential partners, the companies and services that you use, the companies that you see sponsoring other creators in the space, and maybe the companies that your audience is already into if you do a little survey.
[00:13:14.040 --> 00:13:23.560] More with Justin in just a moment, including how to get in touch with the actual decision makers at these brands and what to put in your pitch coming up right after this.
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[00:14:24.400 --> 00:14:26.800] Years ago, this is probably 2009.
[00:14:26.800 --> 00:14:36.000] I'm sitting in this conference in Santa Barbara, and the presenter asks this question: Are you working on your business or are you working in your business?
[00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:43.760] I saw myself as this full-time entrepreneur, but it was this moment of clarity that, no, I was still very much working in the business day to day.
[00:14:43.760 --> 00:14:47.120] So when I got back home, that's when I made my first full-time hire.
[00:14:47.120 --> 00:14:57.200] It was the first in a long series and an ongoing series of steps in trying to take control by being okay of letting go of certain tasks.
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[00:15:40.400 --> 00:15:46.320] What I did early on, and this is kind of embarrassing, but like, this was my genius idea.
[00:15:46.320 --> 00:16:01.960] I was going to comb the archives of Entrepreneurs on Fire, like the last 50 episodes or something that John did, and itemize out all those sponsors and identify the top 10, 25, whatever, like the ones that I liked, the companies that I liked, the companies that I used.
[00:16:02.280 --> 00:16:03.720] Hey, they're sponsoring this show.
[00:16:03.720 --> 00:16:06.040] They would be a great sponsor for the side hustle show.
[00:16:06.040 --> 00:16:17.080] And beyond that, it's like we went through a handful of those and then, you know, scroll down the website and look for something that says partnerships or work with us or media.
[00:16:17.400 --> 00:16:23.160] It was like, that's kind of where the trail went cold in trying to find the decision makers.
[00:16:23.160 --> 00:16:30.600] And sometimes it would come back and be like, well, we work through an agency or let me forward your email.
[00:16:31.400 --> 00:16:36.440] It was really difficult to actually connect with somebody who had the buying authority.
[00:16:36.440 --> 00:16:36.760] Right.
[00:16:36.760 --> 00:16:37.080] Yeah.
[00:16:37.080 --> 00:16:39.080] That is a very big challenge for sure.
[00:16:39.080 --> 00:16:44.200] And you can also convince yourself that pitching doesn't work if that's the extent of what you do.
[00:16:44.200 --> 00:16:48.520] And by the way, I just want to like empathize with you for a second there because that's exactly what we did when we started, right?
[00:16:48.520 --> 00:16:51.880] It's just, you know, because you're not, you don't go to school for this type of thing, right?
[00:16:51.880 --> 00:16:54.680] Like that seems like an intuitive way to do some sleuthing.
[00:16:54.680 --> 00:17:06.040] But I have this magic search terminology that I share in the book that really helps you triangulate these decision makers at these brands, but it depends on the size of the brand.
[00:17:06.040 --> 00:17:14.840] So what I mean by that is that if you are targeting a small mom and pop shop, let's say less than 15 employees, probably there's only one marketing person who works there, right?
[00:17:14.840 --> 00:17:19.160] The director of marketing, the social media manager, if there is even a marketing person, right?
[00:17:19.160 --> 00:17:24.760] And so of course you need to change the type of person, like job titles that you're searching for.
[00:17:24.760 --> 00:17:31.400] As brands get larger, let's say 16 to 100 employees, they start having a hierarchy in their marketing team.
[00:17:31.400 --> 00:17:37.000] So maybe they now have a marketing manager, they have a coordinator, maybe they have some directors there.
[00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:43.640] And so a big part of what I teach is like learning to start studying, let's say, the LinkedIn profiles of some of these roles.
[00:17:43.640 --> 00:17:53.680] So going back to what I mentioned in terms of the magic search terminology, it's brand name, job title, and then the word LinkedIn in your favorite search, you know, let's say Google.
[00:17:53.680 --> 00:18:00.880] And so the reason I recommend this is that I have found that Google is a much better tool to surface the different jobs.
[00:18:00.880 --> 00:18:05.600] Of course, you can invest in LinkedIn Sales Navigator and so on, but like that's like 600 bucks or whatever it is.
[00:18:05.600 --> 00:18:06.080] Yeah.
[00:18:06.080 --> 00:18:11.200] And so what I found is that you can actually find all these search results of like these people in these marketing teams.
[00:18:11.200 --> 00:18:17.760] And so the first one that I would, I would recommend trying at, let's say, a medium-sized brand would be the job title would be influencer marketing manager.
[00:18:17.760 --> 00:18:29.680] Dude, it's so much easier to find the decision makers these days than it was like 10 years ago because pretty much any, every, especially consumer brand has either an influencer marketing manager, a partnerships marketing manager, an affiliate marketing manager.
[00:18:29.680 --> 00:18:34.800] And so those are like the best place to start, I've found, especially if they're doing these types of activities.
[00:18:34.800 --> 00:18:35.280] Got it.
[00:18:35.280 --> 00:18:41.840] And I think that influencer marketing manager was the same role that our UGC guest, Megan, talked about looking for.
[00:18:41.840 --> 00:18:50.080] And sometimes it was just DMing the brands on Instagram, especially if they found what looked like other UGC content in that brand's feed.
[00:18:50.080 --> 00:18:51.920] Hey, you know, I'm a UGC creator.
[00:18:51.920 --> 00:18:53.920] It's like it was, it was a more natural leading.
[00:18:53.920 --> 00:18:57.360] Would you mind putting me in touch with the influencer marketing manager?
[00:18:57.600 --> 00:19:11.680] The tricky part, though, I'll just put a caution here about DMing brands on social media is that especially as brands get larger, the chances that the person managing the social handle, that they have any sort of decision-making power for paid partnerships is like really low.
[00:19:12.080 --> 00:19:17.120] Normally those people are like community managers and, you know, they're in the DMs with people who are, let's say, it's Chipotle.
[00:19:17.120 --> 00:19:20.560] They're complaining, someone's complaining about a lukewarm burrito and they're like, here's a $5 coupon.
[00:19:20.560 --> 00:19:20.720] Right.
[00:19:20.720 --> 00:19:24.720] They're not the like, oh, here, yeah, talk to us about this like Q4 holiday campaign.
[00:19:24.720 --> 00:19:25.280] Yeah.
[00:19:25.280 --> 00:19:36.680] And so I really would recommend going to the effort of using tools like LinkedIn to triangulate who's actually the decision maker and then using other tools like hunter.io or Apollo or whatever to actually find their email addresses.
[00:19:36.680 --> 00:19:37.240] Okay.
[00:19:37.240 --> 00:19:39.960] So then comes, well, what do I send this person?
[00:19:39.960 --> 00:19:41.160] I'm coming in out of the blue.
[00:19:41.160 --> 00:19:42.200] I'm coming in cold.
[00:19:42.200 --> 00:19:44.840] How do I stand out from everybody else who's doing the same thing?
[00:19:44.840 --> 00:19:45.000] Yeah.
[00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:48.520] So I have a pitching methodology that I teach in the book called the rope method.
[00:19:48.520 --> 00:19:50.120] So it's R-O-P-E.
[00:19:50.120 --> 00:19:57.160] So what I teach is that your pitch has to be relevant to a campaign that the brand is either currently running or has run in the past.
[00:19:57.160 --> 00:20:06.360] 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 affinity for their brand.
[00:20:06.360 --> 00:20:08.920] Like we were talking about earlier, your audience, not you.
[00:20:08.920 --> 00:20:12.920] P stands for proof, so you can show how you've helped other brands achieve results.
[00:20:12.920 --> 00:20:17.160] And E stands for easy to execute when the brand says that they're interested.
[00:20:17.160 --> 00:20:18.280] Like what did you have in mind?
[00:20:18.280 --> 00:20:18.680] Got it.
[00:20:19.000 --> 00:20:20.280] What if you don't have any proof yet?
[00:20:20.280 --> 00:20:22.120] If you're like early on.
[00:20:22.120 --> 00:20:27.320] Well, if you don't have any proof, the next best thing would be if you have affiliate performance.
[00:20:27.320 --> 00:20:31.960] So maybe you're an Amazon associate or maybe you're part of another brand's affiliate program.
[00:20:31.960 --> 00:20:36.040] That can absolutely serve as proof that you actually are influential.
[00:20:36.040 --> 00:20:48.600] But if you, even, even if you don't have that, even if you have no affiliate performance, the whole idea of why a brand would want to hire you is that when you say to your audience, like, hey, go do this thing that people actually take action.
[00:20:48.600 --> 00:20:58.360] So if you've told them to sign up for a webinar before or you've told them to go check out this thing at this store and you have DMs or you have email replies of people saying like, hey, Nick, thanks so much for telling me about that.
[00:20:58.360 --> 00:20:59.640] I went and did the thing.
[00:20:59.640 --> 00:21:01.720] That can absolutely serve as proof as well.
[00:21:01.720 --> 00:21:02.280] Got it.
[00:21:02.280 --> 00:21:05.000] One example that stands out is Chris from All the Hacks.
[00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:10.040] He said something like 25% of his audience had used his Viori coupon code.
[00:21:10.040 --> 00:21:11.240] It was like a huge percent.
[00:21:11.240 --> 00:21:13.560] And it was obviously the people who answered the survey.
[00:21:13.560 --> 00:21:18.240] So it was maybe a little bit biased, you know, by the people who were engaged enough to take action and do the survey.
[00:21:18.320 --> 00:21:23.120] But it was like, that's really powerful ammunition to take to the next brand and say, yes, these people take action.
[00:21:23.120 --> 00:21:23.600] Totally.
[00:21:23.600 --> 00:21:23.760] Okay.
[00:21:23.760 --> 00:21:25.680] And then the E was ease of execution.
[00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:30.800] Yeah, the E is easy to execute, meaning like we're going to pitch them something very concrete.
[00:21:30.800 --> 00:21:33.680] We're going to say, I'm going to do three YouTube integrations for you.
[00:21:33.680 --> 00:21:39.200] I'm going to have you, I'm going to insert your mid-roll ad into the back catalog of my podcast for 15 days.
[00:21:39.200 --> 00:21:41.680] I can turn around the first integration in the next 10 days.
[00:21:41.680 --> 00:21:44.320] I'll grant you usage rides through the, through the end of the year.
[00:21:44.320 --> 00:21:49.520] So it's something very, very concrete versus, hey, would love to figure out a way to collaborate.
[00:21:49.520 --> 00:21:50.080] Oh, okay.
[00:21:50.080 --> 00:21:50.400] Okay.
[00:21:50.400 --> 00:21:54.800] So making it an easy yes versus here's three packages to choose from.
[00:21:54.960 --> 00:22:00.000] Just like, no, no, no, let's start with something simple, but they can be like, sure, yes, sign here.
[00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.640] Well, the likelihood of them saying yes, sure, where do I sign is super unlikely.
[00:22:04.640 --> 00:22:11.760] So the point of having that, those bullets of like, here's what I can do for you is more about giving them something tangible to react to.
[00:22:11.760 --> 00:22:12.240] Okay.
[00:22:12.240 --> 00:22:20.240] So I am a fan of ultimately later down the line after you've had an initial discovery call with them providing packages like you mentioned.
[00:22:20.240 --> 00:22:25.120] But for the initial trying to get your foot in the door, it's much more about pitching them something succinct.
[00:22:25.120 --> 00:22:25.600] Got it.
[00:22:25.600 --> 00:22:25.920] Okay.
[00:22:25.920 --> 00:22:26.640] Very good.
[00:22:26.640 --> 00:22:30.640] So that is, don't expect somebody to be like, yes, where do we sign?
[00:22:30.640 --> 00:22:31.360] Right out of the gate.
[00:22:31.360 --> 00:22:31.680] Right.
[00:22:31.680 --> 00:22:39.280] But typically the next step is going to lead to this discovery call and try and craft a more detailed proposal, you know, small, medium, and large type of thing.
[00:22:39.280 --> 00:22:43.280] Like any strategies on structuring those packages?
[00:22:43.280 --> 00:22:43.680] Yeah.
[00:22:43.680 --> 00:22:53.120] Well, the first advice is don't just provide one package because a lot of people do that, especially if a brand comes inbound and says, hey, how much do you charge Nick for a podcast ad read or something?
[00:22:53.120 --> 00:22:56.160] And what a lot of people do is they just spit back one number.
[00:22:56.160 --> 00:22:58.880] They say, 500 or whatever the number is, right?
[00:22:58.880 --> 00:22:59.280] Yeah.
[00:22:59.280 --> 00:23:05.000] And so absolutely don't do that because now you've just encouraged the brand to evaluate you 100% on price.
[00:23:05.160 --> 00:23:11.640] There's no other levers that you've given them to, and so they put you into a giant spreadsheet and there's 10 other podcasters that they reached out to.
[00:23:11.640 --> 00:23:21.240] And if your number that you gave is just too high, based on the, this is what I did when I ran my agency is that there would be this larger budget that we had to work with 20 people, right?
[00:23:21.240 --> 00:23:27.160] So we have 200 grand or whatever, and we were charged by the brand, which is our client, to do this campaign.
[00:23:27.160 --> 00:23:28.920] And so everyone charges differently.
[00:23:28.920 --> 00:23:38.680] So there was this Tetrising exercise that we had to do where we would just see, okay, everyone, we went and we kind of kicked the tires on everyone, figured out their rates, and like, here's the people that we can ultimately move forward with.
[00:23:38.680 --> 00:23:42.920] And then these people who just like charge too much, like we just have to delete their rows and say we can't work with them, right?
[00:23:42.920 --> 00:23:43.400] Yeah.
[00:23:43.400 --> 00:23:49.400] So the first shift is realizing, okay, let's go from only give them one number to giving them at least three different packages.
[00:23:49.400 --> 00:23:57.880] So you say, hey, here's several different ways that I can, that you can collaborate with me so that there's at least one package that they can move forward with you at.
[00:23:57.880 --> 00:24:08.520] I talk about like if you've ever seen the movie Moneyball, I talk about this a lot, which is that like you don't need to be the MVP and have every package be like this knockout 20 grand type thing.
[00:24:08.520 --> 00:24:12.280] Like you can build a really robust business kind of hitting singles and doubles all day long.
[00:24:12.280 --> 00:24:14.840] And in fact, that's really what my wife and I have done for our career.
[00:24:14.840 --> 00:24:17.960] And so that's the first shift is like going from one number to three packages.
[00:24:17.960 --> 00:24:27.960] And then there's this kind of more complex shift, which I think is worth mentioning, is realizing that if you are providing multiple packages, don't make the variance between those packages quantity.
[00:24:27.960 --> 00:24:33.080] This is what most people do: they say, okay, package one is one post, package two is two posts, package three is three posts.
[00:24:33.080 --> 00:24:36.200] And if you pick package three, I'll give you a 10% discount or something, right?
[00:24:36.200 --> 00:24:36.760] Okay, okay.
[00:24:37.000 --> 00:24:45.200] It's not really that exciting to a lot of brands, especially if you've never worked with them before, because they probably want to get at least one engagement under their belt to see what it's like working with you.
[00:24:45.440 --> 00:24:48.160] Because what happens if they get into it and you're a nightmare, right?
[00:24:48.160 --> 00:24:52.960] You're not professional, you're not communicative, they've had, they've been burned before, so they don't want to do that.
[00:24:52.960 --> 00:24:58.400] And so the better thing to do is to tie your packages to the brand's goals.
[00:24:58.400 --> 00:25:04.640] So one thing that I encourage you to do on an on a discovery call with the brand is actually ask them, hey, what does success look like to you?
[00:25:04.640 --> 00:25:05.760] What would a win be like?
[00:25:05.760 --> 00:25:07.600] And they're going to say a lot of different things, probably.
[00:25:07.600 --> 00:25:15.360] They're going to say awareness, or hey, we want to get your content to repurpose it for ads, or oh, we want to drive sales or app downloads or whatever.
[00:25:15.360 --> 00:25:18.000] And so what you do in your proposal is you say, okay, good.
[00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:20.720] Package one is the awareness package.
[00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:23.040] That's where I'm going to do the podcast insertions.
[00:25:23.040 --> 00:25:25.520] I'm going to do the dynamic back catalog thing.
[00:25:25.520 --> 00:25:27.120] And then package two, hey, guess what?
[00:25:27.120 --> 00:25:28.400] That doesn't include any of those things.
[00:25:28.400 --> 00:25:29.920] Package two is the repurposing goal.
[00:25:29.920 --> 00:25:35.040] So in that package, I'm going to give you five 30-second videos that I don't even post anywhere.
[00:25:35.040 --> 00:25:36.560] You're going to leverage my name and likeness.
[00:25:36.560 --> 00:25:39.520] I'm going to make ads for you because you said you needed that.
[00:25:39.520 --> 00:25:40.800] You wanted ads to repurpose.
[00:25:40.800 --> 00:25:43.440] And then package three, that's the conversion package.
[00:25:43.440 --> 00:25:45.280] That's where I'm going to do the newsletter blasts.
[00:25:45.280 --> 00:25:50.720] I'm going to do the Instagram stories with a link sticker on every frame to drive people to the trial thing.
[00:25:50.720 --> 00:25:52.320] And then guess what package four is, Nick?
[00:25:52.320 --> 00:25:53.440] What's package four?
[00:25:53.440 --> 00:25:54.400] That includes everything.
[00:25:54.400 --> 00:25:57.600] And that's the only way for the brand to accomplish all of their objectives.
[00:25:57.600 --> 00:25:58.000] Got it.
[00:25:58.000 --> 00:25:58.720] All of the above.
[00:25:59.040 --> 00:26:00.560] Sorry, there's four copies here.
[00:26:00.560 --> 00:26:00.960] Okay.
[00:26:00.960 --> 00:26:01.840] This is really cool.
[00:26:01.840 --> 00:26:06.000] Is there an advantage to saying, like, look, I want to be a content creator.
[00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:07.040] Like, that's what I love.
[00:26:07.040 --> 00:26:09.200] I don't want to be a salesperson.
[00:26:09.200 --> 00:26:14.080] I like working with an influencer agency, working through a network.
[00:26:14.080 --> 00:26:16.800] Obviously, I'm going to give up a percentage to do that.
[00:26:16.760 --> 00:26:19.760] Go ahead, you know, speak about the pros and cons here.
[00:26:19.760 --> 00:26:24.400] Man, so I could say firsthand from experience, I've been a part of networks.
[00:26:24.400 --> 00:26:26.880] I've had, we've had management in the past and so on.
[00:26:26.880 --> 00:26:34.040] And we kind of have a bit of PTSD from that whole experience, mainly because the financial incentives are misaligned.
[00:26:29.840 --> 00:26:35.400] So let me share a quick example.
[00:26:35.720 --> 00:26:40.840] So when I ran my agency, again, to clarify, we were more like an advertising agency.
[00:26:40.840 --> 00:26:44.040] We were not directly managing or exclusively representing creators.
[00:26:44.040 --> 00:26:45.240] Our clients were the brands.
[00:26:45.240 --> 00:26:50.040] And so when the brands hired us, we would then go after any creator who seemed like they would be a good fit for that.
[00:26:50.040 --> 00:26:56.920] And so what would happen is we would reach out to a creator and we would look at their bio on social media or their blog or whatever, and it would be their manager's email address.
[00:26:56.920 --> 00:27:03.720] And we say, okay, we reach out to them and say, hey, our client is interested in hiring your, your client to do this campaign.
[00:27:03.720 --> 00:27:10.520] And the very first thing that the manager would say, Nick, would be, oh, yeah, she's probably interested, but do you need more people?
[00:27:10.520 --> 00:27:14.360] Because I have 19 other people on my roster and, oh, here's all their rates.
[00:27:14.360 --> 00:27:15.880] Do you like any of them too?
[00:27:15.880 --> 00:27:16.440] Okay.
[00:27:16.440 --> 00:27:24.920] And so a less scrupulous brand or one without ethics would say, oh, yeah, well, actually, I like those three other people and they're cheaper and better.
[00:27:24.920 --> 00:27:26.120] So let me just work with them.
[00:27:26.120 --> 00:27:29.000] Because does that manager care where their 20% comes from?
[00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:33.800] If the only way in which they're being compensated is the percentage of the deal, there's no retainer.
[00:27:33.800 --> 00:27:34.840] They don't care.
[00:27:34.840 --> 00:27:37.480] And so that's one small example that I can share.
[00:27:37.480 --> 00:27:44.040] The other just anecdote that I could, I could share, dude, is that we've known a lot of people over the last 15 years being creators.
[00:27:44.040 --> 00:27:51.640] And almost without exception, the people who delegated this stuff, the people who, you know, I don't want to deal with the business stuff.
[00:27:51.640 --> 00:27:53.400] I just want to be a creator and all that.
[00:27:53.400 --> 00:27:56.840] They are either no longer creators or they've really struggled.
[00:27:56.840 --> 00:27:59.320] And the people that have decided that like, this is my business.
[00:27:59.320 --> 00:28:02.280] There's no one who's ever going to care about this as much as I do.
[00:28:02.280 --> 00:28:03.240] I'm going to learn this stuff.
[00:28:03.240 --> 00:28:08.360] I'm going to understand what do partners and brands find valuable about working with me.
[00:28:08.360 --> 00:28:11.240] Those are the ones that are still doing really well and thriving.
[00:28:11.240 --> 00:28:17.920] And so I'm a big proponent of this idea that like you need to take true ownership over these assets that you're creating.
[00:28:17.920 --> 00:28:18.400] Okay.
[00:28:14.840 --> 00:28:19.600] Yeah, that's fair.
[00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:24.320] If you want to play in this business and treat it like a business, you're going to have to learn how to do the business side.
[00:28:24.640 --> 00:28:26.880] Where do you see creators screwing this up?
[00:28:26.880 --> 00:28:32.000] Say they got their first yes and they've been given this $5,000 opportunity.
[00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:33.280] Where does it fall through the cracks?
[00:28:33.280 --> 00:28:36.960] Where do they screw it up from getting that brand ever to call them back again?
[00:28:36.960 --> 00:28:40.080] Man, so really during the execution phase of the deal, right?
[00:28:40.080 --> 00:28:45.040] Yeah, you may have gotten the deal across the finish line in terms of signing the contract and the negotiation and all that.
[00:28:45.040 --> 00:28:57.920] But like if you are not communicative, if you go off the rails in terms of they approved one thing and you just kind of called an audible while you were creating the content and then you send it back to them and they're like, this isn't anything like what we had in mind.
[00:28:57.920 --> 00:29:03.680] And then you give them a bunch of flack and saying like, yeah, well, you should trust me because I'm the creator and I have the creative vision and trust me and all that.
[00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:10.640] And if you're just kind of a nightmare to deal with, that is the time where they decide either, hey, this person's amazing or wow, this was a nightmare.
[00:29:10.640 --> 00:29:11.920] We're never hiring them again.
[00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:13.680] So that's, that's one piece.
[00:29:13.680 --> 00:29:26.160] The other piece, I think, comes towards the end of the partnership, Nick, where maybe let's say they did execute it successfully and then they posted the content, they invoiced the brand, the brand paid them.
[00:29:26.160 --> 00:29:30.080] And then the big mistake that they make is that they never reach out to the brand again.
[00:29:30.080 --> 00:29:37.440] They just make an assumption that like, well, if the brand was happy, if they like me, they'll reach out and ask to collaborate with me again.
[00:29:37.440 --> 00:29:37.680] Yeah.
[00:29:37.680 --> 00:29:38.240] Okay.
[00:29:38.560 --> 00:29:40.000] And that's not the case at all.
[00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:49.520] The onus is on you to put together what I call a post-campaign report where you're sharing not just the quantitative data of how the campaign went, but the qualitative data.
[00:29:49.520 --> 00:29:50.720] You know, you have a podcast, right?
[00:29:50.720 --> 00:30:01.720] So you understand that, like, oftentimes you may be getting private feedback about that episode or, you know, a sponsorship you might do that's not on a public-facing social media platform.
[00:29:59.600 --> 00:30:10.040] So, yeah, on YouTube, there's public-facing comments, but like if I do a newsletter integration, oftentimes I'll get replies to that being like, oh, yeah, I tried that software six months ago, sucks.
[00:30:10.040 --> 00:30:15.000] Or like, I tried, you know, I tried that food, you know, a year ago and it's terrible for XYZ reason.
[00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:16.680] Is the brand seeing that feedback?
[00:30:16.680 --> 00:30:17.560] No, they're not.
[00:30:17.560 --> 00:30:26.440] And so it's your job to send that to them, even if it's negative or neutral feedback and saying, hey, there seems to be a perception in the market that your brand sucks for the following reasons.
[00:30:26.440 --> 00:30:32.920] And if you're not allowing the brand to say, oh, well, actually, we have, we completely reformulated our product three months ago.
[00:30:32.920 --> 00:30:34.200] It seems like people don't know that.
[00:30:34.520 --> 00:30:35.080] Great.
[00:30:35.080 --> 00:30:37.000] There's the focus of the next integration.
[00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:42.280] And so it takes a lot of humility and low ego, I think, to actually come to the brand and be like, hey, how'd it go?
[00:30:42.280 --> 00:30:42.600] Right.
[00:30:42.600 --> 00:30:43.560] Do we drive any sales?
[00:30:43.560 --> 00:30:45.800] I think a lot of people are terrified of asking that question.
[00:30:45.800 --> 00:30:46.440] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:30:46.440 --> 00:30:50.360] You're like worried to be like, yeah, actually, it really, really underperformed.
[00:30:50.360 --> 00:30:51.880] And you're like, right.
[00:30:51.880 --> 00:30:57.560] Well, and what I, my perspective is like, Nelson Mandela has this great quote, which is like, I never lose.
[00:30:57.560 --> 00:30:59.240] I either win or I learn.
[00:30:59.240 --> 00:30:59.640] Yeah.
[00:30:59.640 --> 00:31:04.280] Because if you ask that question, the brand, if they say it went great, great, pitch them on the next deal.
[00:31:04.280 --> 00:31:07.080] But if they say, well, it went okay, great.
[00:31:07.080 --> 00:31:08.680] We can learn something from this.
[00:31:08.680 --> 00:31:14.440] And, you know, then you, you can help them understand how you can serve them in a next pulse of content.
[00:31:14.440 --> 00:31:15.080] Got it.
[00:31:15.080 --> 00:31:24.520] And this would be a great point to ask you, if you're listening, if you have used any of the brands that have sponsored the sign hustle show in the past, I would love to hear from you.
[00:31:24.520 --> 00:31:33.640] We did a kind of a fun creative campaign with OpenPhone over the summer where we made an extended commercial with an interview with the co-founder, and I got some feedback.
[00:31:33.640 --> 00:31:35.800] I was like, wow, that was kind of cool.
[00:31:35.800 --> 00:31:38.120] It didn't even sound like an ad anymore.
[00:31:38.120 --> 00:31:45.840] It was like, shoot, maybe we should do more of that and made sure to pass that along to, in my case, the broker and then on to the brand from there.
[00:31:45.840 --> 00:31:47.600] But very, very cool stuff.
[00:31:47.600 --> 00:31:49.840] Sponsor Magnet is the new book.
[00:31:44.760 --> 00:31:55.680] SponsorMagnet.com is where to go to grab your copy and unlock the free bonuses that come with it.
[00:31:55.760 --> 00:31:58.480] Got a nice endorsement from Pat Flynn on that page.
[00:31:58.480 --> 00:32:07.040] We're going to be right back with Justin for his business idea donation for Side Hustle Show listeners coming up right after this.
[00:32:07.360 --> 00:32:10.080] I'm excited to partner with OpenPhone for this episode.
[00:32:10.080 --> 00:32:19.520] OpenPhone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communication for both calls and texts, all in one easy-to-use centralized hub.
[00:32:19.520 --> 00:32:24.400] But before OpenPhone was sponsoring podcasts, they took a more guerrilla marketing approach.
[00:32:24.560 --> 00:32:26.000] You probably don't remember this.
[00:32:26.000 --> 00:32:33.280] This is a while back, but when we just started OpenPhone, one of the ways that we got our first customers is through Facebook groups.
[00:32:33.280 --> 00:32:36.240] And I joined a bunch of Facebook groups, including yours.
[00:32:36.400 --> 00:32:51.200] Thank you for not kicking me out, but I posted a couple of times and I actually remember seeing there were some of your listeners and folks in your community interested in solving the problem we solve, which is not using your personal phone number for work.
[00:32:51.200 --> 00:32:54.960] And those posts got us some of our first customers.
[00:32:54.960 --> 00:32:55.760] So thank you.
[00:32:55.760 --> 00:32:57.360] It's a full circle moment.
[00:32:57.360 --> 00:32:58.400] Oh, that's super fun.
[00:32:58.400 --> 00:32:59.120] Very cool.
[00:32:59.120 --> 00:33:01.360] That's Doreena, the co-founder of OpenPhone.
[00:33:01.360 --> 00:33:03.600] And sure enough, her posts are still there.
[00:33:03.600 --> 00:33:09.760] OpenPhone is offering Side Hustle Show listeners 20% off your first six months at openphone.com/slash sidehustle.
[00:33:09.760 --> 00:33:15.120] That's O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E, openphone.com/slash sidehustle.
[00:33:15.120 --> 00:33:20.160] And if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge.
[00:33:20.160 --> 00:33:31.400] You know, when you're shopping online and you see that little purple shop pay button at checkout, that's a sign that the store you're on is one of the millions of businesses powered by our partner, Shopify.
[00:33:31.400 --> 00:33:34.920] Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business.
[00:33:29.680 --> 00:33:37.160] For starters, you don't even have to start from scratch.
[00:33:37.240 --> 00:33:45.560] They've got hundreds of beautiful, ready-to-go, proven-to-convert templates that you can adapt to your brand's style without needing to know how to code.
[00:33:45.560 --> 00:33:53.720] You can tackle all your most important tasks in one place, from managing your inventory to tracking payments to analytics and more.
[00:33:53.720 --> 00:34:01.240] Plus, Shopify helps you make sales with built-in marketing and email tools to go out and find new customers and keep the ones you've got.
[00:34:01.240 --> 00:34:06.120] If you want to see less carts being abandoned, it's time to head over to Shopify.
[00:34:06.120 --> 00:34:12.680] Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/slash sidehustle.
[00:34:12.680 --> 00:34:16.040] Go to shopify.com/slash sidehustle.
[00:34:16.040 --> 00:34:19.720] Shopify.com/slash sidehustle.
[00:34:21.320 --> 00:34:29.400] All right, we're back with Justin Moore from sponsormagnet.com, and we're here for round two, which is the business idea donation round.
[00:34:29.400 --> 00:34:32.600] This is something you might start yourself if you had more hours in the day.
[00:34:32.600 --> 00:34:35.400] This is something you think Side Hustle show listeners could run with.
[00:34:35.400 --> 00:34:36.520] What have you got for us?
[00:34:36.520 --> 00:34:37.400] Dude, all right.
[00:34:37.400 --> 00:34:41.480] So, I have got a brand name for you for this business idea, okay?
[00:34:41.480 --> 00:34:44.040] It is called Trend Sync.
[00:34:44.040 --> 00:34:46.440] Let me clarify my problem here, okay?
[00:34:46.440 --> 00:35:05.960] Which is that I constantly feel like there are things happening out there in the world on the internet: memes, trending sounds, holidays that are coming up, you know, things that are relevant globally or like on the internet that I would love to be able to plan for in my business from a content perspective.
[00:35:05.960 --> 00:35:11.800] But I'm just so busy working on the business all the time that I constantly feel like I'm behind.
[00:35:11.800 --> 00:35:36.080] And so, the business idea that I would love someone to create and I would become a customer of it day one is some sort of web app where I can insert maybe my website URL or my LinkedIn profile or a social media profile or something, have it analyze my industry, my brand voice, my target customer or audience, and give me an entire content plan to generate a content strategy for me.
[00:35:36.080 --> 00:35:47.680] And so, it'll, it'll help me think of, you know, what are the upcoming industry events and holidays and awareness days that I need to leverage if there's a trending sound on TikTok that I should quickly make a sound about to insert myself into the narrative for.
[00:35:47.840 --> 00:35:54.240] I kind of imagine this to be like my extremely online assistant that I just don't have time to consume all this content.
[00:35:54.240 --> 00:35:54.880] Yeah.
[00:35:54.880 --> 00:35:59.440] And I think it could be pretty easy to create something like this with AI, I think.
[00:35:59.440 --> 00:36:07.840] And I think this could help eliminate like a lot of hours and could potentially save me from hiring a VA or an employee or whatever to do something like this.
[00:36:07.840 --> 00:36:09.520] So, yeah, hit me up, please.
[00:36:09.520 --> 00:36:10.880] Like, sell me on this.
[00:36:10.880 --> 00:36:12.000] I'm a fan of this.
[00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:15.840] The example that comes to mind is like the cold play his cam from this summer.
[00:36:15.840 --> 00:36:16.400] Yes.
[00:36:16.400 --> 00:36:19.760] Where I started seeing the memes before I even knew what it was.
[00:36:19.760 --> 00:36:23.120] I was like, why is everybody just like, you know, this dude hugging this woman?
[00:36:23.120 --> 00:36:24.720] I was like, why is this going?
[00:36:24.720 --> 00:36:25.840] Why is it showing up in my feet?
[00:36:25.840 --> 00:36:26.800] I didn't even want to know what it was.
[00:36:26.800 --> 00:36:28.480] And then my wife was very into it.
[00:36:29.040 --> 00:36:29.840] Showed me all about it.
[00:36:29.840 --> 00:36:30.400] It was great.
[00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:38.160] But something like that to keep a pulse on what's going on and then bonus points, if it can kind of give you the easy answer on like, okay, this is going viral.
[00:36:38.160 --> 00:36:39.680] This is what people are talking about.
[00:36:39.680 --> 00:36:41.760] But how do I make it about side hustle stuff?
[00:36:41.760 --> 00:36:43.680] Or how do I make it about getting brand deals?
[00:36:43.680 --> 00:36:44.080] Exactly.
[00:36:44.080 --> 00:36:50.160] It's one thing to capture the trend or to be aware of the trend, but it's another thing to like, okay, what do I actually do about it?
[00:36:50.160 --> 00:36:50.720] 100%.
[00:36:50.720 --> 00:36:56.640] Imagine if I could get like some sort of daily or weekly email digest with, like, here's the top five things that are going viral or trending right now.
[00:36:56.640 --> 00:36:58.320] And here's the ideas quick here.
[00:36:58.320 --> 00:37:02.280] Here's a script of like how you can make a quick short form piece of content that's relevant for this or something.
[00:37:02.280 --> 00:37:03.880] Like, oh my God, I would kill for that.
[00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:04.040] Yeah.
[00:37:04.200 --> 00:37:09.720] For a time, Ryan Gray from Med School HQ was doing really well with this stuff on Instagram.
[00:37:09.720 --> 00:37:16.360] Like, I don't know if he had somebody on his team, but they would like create these memes and just pivot it to being about kids going to med school and did really well with that.
[00:37:16.520 --> 00:37:18.600] What do you think is the first step here?
[00:37:18.600 --> 00:37:27.880] Is it to create a listening agent is probably not that hard to tap into Google Trend or, you know, some what's going viral on different platforms.
[00:37:27.880 --> 00:37:29.960] I feel like that is feasible.
[00:37:29.960 --> 00:37:34.920] And then creating a profile based on your own body of work and your brand voice, like also probably feasible.
[00:37:34.920 --> 00:37:36.920] And then in the marrying of those two.
[00:37:36.920 --> 00:37:39.480] I think it's a connecting of pipes, so to speak.
[00:37:39.480 --> 00:37:47.000] I think there's tools out there, like you said, AI listening agents, a combination of that with perplexity and chat or Claude or something.
[00:37:47.160 --> 00:37:58.840] You'd probably want to be thoughtful about what data you would need, like I said, to actually build a robust profile of the user, like the website, the LinkedIn, the social media, and so on, or maybe feed documents to it or something.
[00:37:58.840 --> 00:38:07.320] Because I think you're right, that would be the really critical piece here is like giving some sort of specific recommendation of how to capitalize on the viral trend or meme or whatever.
[00:38:07.320 --> 00:38:13.320] And so probably the first step for me would be like figuring out what are all the sources that I would need to actually figure out if something is going viral.
[00:38:13.320 --> 00:38:18.920] Like maybe it's Google Trends or maybe it's Perplexity or maybe it's some other sources.
[00:38:18.920 --> 00:38:25.640] But like you said, I think it would just need to be someone who has a bit of time and technical sophistication to understand how to connect all this stuff.
[00:38:25.640 --> 00:38:29.160] Yeah, we did, well, we've done a couple episodes with Pete McPherson this year.
[00:38:29.160 --> 00:38:31.080] One on vibe coding, essentially.
[00:38:31.080 --> 00:38:35.240] Like, how do we turn that from idea to app that potentially people could pay for?
[00:38:35.240 --> 00:38:36.680] And I think that would be worth a listen.
[00:38:36.680 --> 00:38:38.200] We can link that up in the show notes.
[00:38:38.200 --> 00:38:41.400] And then we did this whole episode on kind of just brainstorming different ideas.
[00:38:41.400 --> 00:38:43.240] Wouldn't it be nice if such and such thing existed?
[00:38:43.240 --> 00:38:48.640] And so this, it's squarely in that category: this is a personal pain point of mine.
[00:38:44.840 --> 00:38:50.560] And now we can turn that into reality.
[00:38:50.720 --> 00:38:54.240] So if anybody goes out and builds this, absolutely.
[00:38:54.240 --> 00:38:54.880] Let me know.
[00:38:54.880 --> 00:38:58.880] Let Justin know, and we'll try and plug it on an upcoming episode for sure.
[00:38:58.880 --> 00:39:02.000] That is the business idea donation Trend Sync.
[00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:02.880] He's even got a name for it.
[00:39:02.880 --> 00:39:06.960] Hopefully, you got patent pending domain registration, everything, and we'll go from there.
[00:39:06.960 --> 00:39:11.600] But something to connect the internet zeitgeist with your order, with your industry, with your business.
[00:39:11.600 --> 00:39:12.480] So very cool.
[00:39:12.480 --> 00:39:15.200] Let's move on to round three, which is the triple threat.
[00:39:15.200 --> 00:39:19.600] And we're going to start off with a marketing tactic that is working for you right now.
[00:39:19.600 --> 00:39:23.200] It's going to be related to the Creator Wizard coaching business.
[00:39:23.200 --> 00:39:24.800] It could be related to the book.
[00:39:24.800 --> 00:39:26.080] What comes to mind here?
[00:39:26.080 --> 00:39:26.480] Yeah.
[00:39:26.480 --> 00:39:34.480] So something that is a nascent and pretty exciting development for us is what I'm calling our challenge strategy.
[00:39:34.480 --> 00:39:42.000] So our coaching business, as you mentioned, is kind of the main kind of signature offer for our business, but it's a larger price point.
[00:39:42.160 --> 00:39:46.640] It's basically three grand a year for the group support or 10 grand a year for private support.
[00:39:46.640 --> 00:39:53.680] And so basically, we will support you with your pitches, your pricing, your negotiations, your package, proposals, all that, but we do not take a cut.
[00:39:53.680 --> 00:39:56.240] So that's very different than like a manager or an agent.
[00:39:56.240 --> 00:39:59.040] Like we help you land those deals and you keep 100% of that revenue.
[00:39:59.040 --> 00:40:07.040] But because it is, you know, a steeper investment for that, we've had to think of creative ways to excite and entice people to learn more about the program.
[00:40:07.040 --> 00:40:12.720] And so something that we did just last month was something that I called the 10K brand deal challenge.
[00:40:12.720 --> 00:40:17.920] And so we basically ran a seven-day boot camp that was like live.
[00:40:17.920 --> 00:40:20.000] It was virtual, but it was live.
[00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:22.960] And so we would do, I would do live instruction.
[00:40:22.960 --> 00:40:26.400] It was all about how to craft compelling outreach to brands.
[00:40:26.400 --> 00:40:36.840] And so we talked a lot about some of the things that we discussed in the call today, but really it was helping people overcome a lot of the mental blocks with like, oh, I have imposter syndrome or I don't know what to say or I don't know who to send it to.
[00:40:36.840 --> 00:40:38.040] A lot of stuff we talked about today.
[00:40:38.040 --> 00:40:42.280] And then at the end of that challenge, we invited people to join the coaching program if they wanted to.
[00:40:42.280 --> 00:40:48.520] And so the way that the economics worked out is we spent about, this is the first time I'd ever done this, but we spent about $15,000 on ads.
[00:40:48.520 --> 00:40:49.640] It was a paid challenge.
[00:40:49.640 --> 00:40:51.480] So it was $97.
[00:40:51.480 --> 00:41:00.600] There was $197 VIP kind of upsell like tier where I did a private QA after the teaching session on each day.
[00:41:00.600 --> 00:41:09.880] And so between the running of the ads and the revenue that we collected from the registrations, on day one of the challenge, we were about $1,800 in the red.
[00:41:09.880 --> 00:41:14.440] So we collected about $15K and then we made about $13.5K on registrations.
[00:41:14.440 --> 00:41:15.320] Just up front.
[00:41:15.320 --> 00:41:15.560] Yeah.
[00:41:15.560 --> 00:41:17.960] Basically, day one, we were in the hole a bit.
[00:41:17.960 --> 00:41:23.320] And so at the end of the challenge, and then there was like a seven-day sales window for the coaching enrollment, six people had enrolled.
[00:41:23.400 --> 00:41:25.400] We had kind of like a promo price for coaching.
[00:41:25.400 --> 00:41:26.600] It was $500 off.
[00:41:26.600 --> 00:41:29.000] And then we had a three-day downsell to my course.
[00:41:29.000 --> 00:41:33.320] And so all in all, it was like a pretty awesome model, like to get people excited.
[00:41:33.320 --> 00:41:38.280] So we had 79 paid registrations and we had six people enrolled.
[00:41:38.280 --> 00:41:43.240] So it was a 7.5% basically conversion rate or enrollment rate from the challenge.
[00:41:43.240 --> 00:41:45.160] Six people at 2,500.
[00:41:45.320 --> 00:41:46.280] And it's recurring, right?
[00:41:46.280 --> 00:41:47.560] So it's a membership model.
[00:41:47.560 --> 00:41:47.880] Yeah.
[00:41:47.880 --> 00:41:48.040] Yeah.
[00:41:48.040 --> 00:41:50.280] I mean, this was like the first time that we tested something like this.
[00:41:50.280 --> 00:41:53.880] And I'm pretty excited about what this might mean.
[00:41:53.880 --> 00:42:03.400] There was a lot of learnings from it, though, which was that we were expecting that the vast majority of the people who came in from the challenge wouldn't know who I was because we were running cold ads basically.
[00:42:03.400 --> 00:42:07.880] But interestingly, about 75% of people had already read my book.
[00:42:07.880 --> 00:42:08.280] Really?
[00:42:08.280 --> 00:42:10.280] So it was like, not that cold.
[00:42:10.280 --> 00:42:10.440] Yeah.
[00:42:10.440 --> 00:42:11.560] So they weren't cold at all.
[00:42:11.560 --> 00:42:16.640] This has led us to think, well, maybe it doesn't actually make sense to run paid ads straight to the registration page.
[00:42:16.960 --> 00:42:29.440] Maybe instead we should do some sort of book funnel for paid ads, like driving people to the audiobook or the e-book version or straight to my newsletter potentially, and then nurture them for over a longer time period on joining the challenge.
[00:42:29.440 --> 00:42:37.200] So our acquisition costs for people to join those other two funnels will be a lot less than getting someone to join a $97 challenge straight off an ad, right?
[00:42:37.200 --> 00:42:38.000] So I don't know.
[00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:40.880] I'm pretty excited about what this, and this is something we're going to do regularly.
[00:42:40.880 --> 00:42:42.720] We're doing another one in mid-September.
[00:42:42.720 --> 00:42:44.000] So yeah, I don't know.
[00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:46.320] I don't know if it's going to scale, but so far, so good.
[00:42:46.320 --> 00:42:48.240] No, this is really, really interesting.
[00:42:48.240 --> 00:43:08.240] And it's like, I think this is applicable to anybody who has kind of a consulting or kind of a done with you, done/slash for you type of service where, or a coaching type of business, where it's like getting a lower ticket initial buy-in, get people like and getting people excited, delivering consistent content and value.
[00:43:08.240 --> 00:43:13.280] And then saying, like, look, if you want to continue to work with us, these are the results that we've delivered for people.
[00:43:13.280 --> 00:43:18.080] And this is what it's going to be in terms of investment to do this over the course of the next year.
[00:43:18.080 --> 00:43:22.480] And it sounds like you ended up more than doubling your initial ad cost investment.
[00:43:22.480 --> 00:43:26.400] I think the critical thing about designing a challenge like this, Nick, is helping people understand.
[00:43:26.400 --> 00:43:32.320] Like what often happened is that people would reach out to these brands and then they'd get a response and they'd be like, oh, the brand wants to hop on a call.
[00:43:32.320 --> 00:43:32.880] What do I do?
[00:43:32.880 --> 00:43:34.320] Oh, yeah, what do I say?
[00:43:34.320 --> 00:43:34.560] Right.
[00:43:34.560 --> 00:43:37.520] And so, and it's like, well, this is a perfect reason to join the coaching program.
[00:43:37.520 --> 00:43:38.960] We'll help prep you for the call.
[00:43:38.960 --> 00:43:39.280] Right.
[00:43:39.280 --> 00:43:49.120] And so I think that designing some sort of education where it is obvious to your challenge participants why they would want to take the next step is a big part of it.
[00:43:49.120 --> 00:43:51.920] And you were doing these live, like, hey, seven o'clock every night.
[00:43:51.920 --> 00:43:54.560] We're going to jump on and we're going to talk through this for an hour.
[00:43:54.720 --> 00:43:55.280] Exactly.
[00:43:55.280 --> 00:43:55.600] Okay.
[00:43:55.600 --> 00:43:55.840] Yeah.
[00:43:55.840 --> 00:43:56.880] This is really, really cool.
[00:43:56.880 --> 00:44:00.840] And so were the ads just the week prior, like leading up to that.
[00:44:00.840 --> 00:44:03.000] Hey, we're going to, everybody's going to start on Sunday.
[00:44:03.000 --> 00:44:05.000] So it's not pre-recorded.
[00:43:59.840 --> 00:44:07.240] It's just, we're all going to go through this together.
[00:44:07.240 --> 00:44:07.960] Yep, exactly.
[00:44:07.960 --> 00:44:11.160] The $10,000 brand deal challenge.
[00:44:11.160 --> 00:44:13.800] And now you're going to have success stories coming out of that.
[00:44:13.880 --> 00:44:17.160] So it becomes a self-fulfilling thing.
[00:44:17.160 --> 00:44:17.720] I hope so.
[00:44:17.880 --> 00:44:18.520] That's the hope.
[00:44:18.520 --> 00:44:19.720] Fingers crossed.
[00:44:19.720 --> 00:44:21.720] Yeah, it was 100% meta ads.
[00:44:21.720 --> 00:44:21.960] Yep.
[00:44:22.680 --> 00:44:26.280] We did a little bit of Google ads as well, but mostly meta.
[00:44:26.280 --> 00:44:30.440] Did you upload your customer list or invite your existing email list?
[00:44:30.440 --> 00:44:32.280] I did definitely invite my list.
[00:44:32.280 --> 00:44:35.720] I did like a whole sequence on my email list to join the challenge and so on.
[00:44:35.720 --> 00:44:39.080] That 15K wasn't just from people who came from ads.
[00:44:39.080 --> 00:44:39.480] Okay.
[00:44:39.480 --> 00:44:41.960] But I was retargeting, you know, based on my lists.
[00:44:41.960 --> 00:44:42.360] Got it.
[00:44:42.360 --> 00:44:42.600] Yeah.
[00:44:42.600 --> 00:44:53.400] It's trying to build that initial audience and people in the creator economy world, fans of people who use Kit or like, you know, there's different ways to slice and dice that audience, but I like this really cool challenge thing.
[00:44:53.400 --> 00:44:57.880] And we've seen people doing free challenges before, and here's a unique twist on that.
[00:44:57.880 --> 00:45:06.280] Okay, let's get some buy-in up front, weed out the tire kickers and get people to put a little bit of money in and almost make it self-liquidating on the very start.
[00:45:06.280 --> 00:45:09.800] And then everything that you sell down the road becomes gravy.
[00:45:09.800 --> 00:45:12.600] Can I share a quick anecdote about that free thing?
[00:45:12.600 --> 00:45:13.160] Yeah.
[00:45:13.160 --> 00:45:21.560] Because we had considered making it free and we actually did a promotion with another partner where we offered free enrollment to their members.
[00:45:21.560 --> 00:45:29.560] And so we had about 25 people come in for free and basically no one engaged and joined in the challenge who got it for free.
[00:45:29.560 --> 00:45:34.520] And so I think this was like a signal to us that it does make sense to keep this as a paid thing.
[00:45:34.520 --> 00:45:37.800] I think it goes back to the old adage, like, you just pay attention to what you pay for.
[00:45:37.800 --> 00:45:40.600] Yeah, I don't know who first said it, but people who pay, pay attention.
[00:45:40.600 --> 00:45:43.240] It's something that's come up for sure on the show.
[00:45:43.240 --> 00:45:43.800] So, I love that.
[00:45:43.800 --> 00:45:47.040] That's the challenge: marketing as the marketing tactic.
[00:45:47.040 --> 00:45:51.040] How about a new or new to you tool that you're living right now?
[00:45:44.520 --> 00:45:51.280] All right.
[00:45:51.440 --> 00:45:52.880] So, it's called Whisperflow.
[00:45:52.880 --> 00:45:53.680] Have you heard of this?
[00:45:53.680 --> 00:45:54.080] No.
[00:45:54.080 --> 00:45:54.320] Okay.
[00:45:54.320 --> 00:46:03.440] So, Whisperflow is an app that you install either on your computer or your phone, and there's this little icon on the bottom, and you click it and you just talk into it.
[00:46:03.440 --> 00:46:04.240] You dictate.
[00:46:04.240 --> 00:46:11.840] So, whatever active window you're in, whether it's a chat window, an email window, or whatever, you just dictate into it and it formats it perfectly.
[00:46:11.840 --> 00:46:13.040] And you don't have to type anything.
[00:46:13.040 --> 00:46:13.520] Okay, okay.
[00:46:13.520 --> 00:46:15.040] No, I have, I have heard of this.
[00:46:15.040 --> 00:46:15.680] Yeah.
[00:46:15.680 --> 00:46:20.880] So, man, this has saved me so much time because I'm just like naturally, it's like way easier for me to talk things out.
[00:46:20.880 --> 00:46:24.640] But the challenge with voice to text for me in the past has always been the formatting sucks.
[00:46:24.640 --> 00:46:28.560] But Whisperflow is like super, super accurate and it's super lightweight.
[00:46:28.560 --> 00:46:29.360] Interesting.
[00:46:29.360 --> 00:46:32.160] And what's like a common use case for you?
[00:46:32.160 --> 00:46:41.760] Anytime you're typing anything anywhere in an email, in a chat box, like filling out a YouTube description box, whatever, you just like talk into it and then it pastes it right into there.
[00:46:41.760 --> 00:46:42.320] It's amazing.
[00:46:42.320 --> 00:46:43.040] That's super interesting.
[00:46:43.120 --> 00:46:48.880] I'm the person who, despite hosting a podcast for 12 years, like needs to see it written down.
[00:46:48.880 --> 00:46:52.240] And like, that's my form of thinking rather than just speaking.
[00:46:52.240 --> 00:46:59.120] So I don't know if I would be the target user for something like this, but I've heard more and more people typing interface.
[00:46:59.120 --> 00:47:00.000] It's a dinosaur.
[00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:00.880] It's going extinct.
[00:47:00.880 --> 00:47:04.240] You know, more and more people are just going to be using voice to do everything.
[00:47:04.240 --> 00:47:04.560] Yep.
[00:47:04.560 --> 00:47:04.800] All right.
[00:47:04.800 --> 00:47:05.520] Whisper flow.
[00:47:05.520 --> 00:47:10.320] We'll link that up in show notes if you are a talker more than a typer.
[00:47:10.320 --> 00:47:14.400] And your favorite book other than your own from the last 12 months.
[00:47:14.400 --> 00:47:16.480] I brought it here just so I could show you.
[00:47:16.480 --> 00:47:17.040] Okay.
[00:47:17.040 --> 00:47:21.360] This book is called Double Your Profits in Six Months or Less by Bob Pfeiffer.
[00:47:21.360 --> 00:47:21.920] That's a new one.
[00:47:21.920 --> 00:47:22.960] New title for me.
[00:47:22.960 --> 00:47:24.320] This book, it's an old book.
[00:47:24.320 --> 00:47:26.640] I think it's like 40 or 50 years old or something.
[00:47:26.640 --> 00:47:27.120] Okay.
[00:47:27.120 --> 00:47:28.400] This is a newer cover, though.
[00:47:28.400 --> 00:47:33.240] But basically, this guy was a consultant to Fortune 100 companies.
[00:47:33.240 --> 00:47:34.280] It's such a fast read.
[00:47:29.680 --> 00:47:35.400] I read this in like a couple hours.
[00:47:35.560 --> 00:47:41.320] The subtitle is 78 Ways to Cut Costs, Increase Sales, and Dramatically Improve Your Bottom Line.
[00:47:41.320 --> 00:47:41.640] Wow.
[00:47:41.640 --> 00:47:46.440] And so the book is separated into two sections: which is how to cut costs and how to make more money.
[00:47:46.440 --> 00:47:49.560] Each little step is like three pages or two pages.
[00:47:49.560 --> 00:47:52.840] And it's just so succinct and it's no BS.
[00:47:52.840 --> 00:47:54.440] And I'll give you one tangible example.
[00:47:54.440 --> 00:47:57.400] There was a section in here about consultants.
[00:47:57.400 --> 00:48:00.280] And basically, it was like, Do you really need consultants?
[00:48:00.280 --> 00:48:01.400] Written by a consultant.
[00:48:01.400 --> 00:48:02.840] Do you really need that coach?
[00:48:02.840 --> 00:48:08.200] Do you really need that person that you're paying $1,000 a month to to do that like task or whatever?
[00:48:08.200 --> 00:48:16.440] And right in my head, I was thinking, right now, it's more a want than a need for me because there was like a couple engagements that I was doing.
[00:48:16.440 --> 00:48:21.320] And the real pain point for me was like, I'm just feeling way too stressed out now with my team.
[00:48:21.320 --> 00:48:22.600] And so we made the decision.
[00:48:22.600 --> 00:48:26.280] I was like, we really need to hire another like VA or another assistant.
[00:48:26.280 --> 00:48:32.840] And so right there, I just picked up the phone and I ended those consulting agreements with some of these other people because it was month to month.
[00:48:32.840 --> 00:48:36.840] And I was able to take back several thousand dollars that I'm now going to be allocating towards an assistant.
[00:48:36.840 --> 00:48:40.680] It's a really great, succinct read to help you just like do a double take.
[00:48:40.680 --> 00:48:42.040] Like, do I really need to do this?
[00:48:42.040 --> 00:48:43.240] So, really, really helpful.
[00:48:43.240 --> 00:48:43.640] All right.
[00:48:43.640 --> 00:48:47.320] Double your profits in six months, Bob Pfeiffer.
[00:48:47.320 --> 00:48:52.680] A new title that has never been recommended before in the history of Side Hustle Show.
[00:48:52.680 --> 00:48:55.000] So thanks for bringing something new to the table.
[00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:55.800] Very cool.
[00:48:55.800 --> 00:48:56.840] What's next for you?
[00:48:56.840 --> 00:49:00.600] You got the book, you got the coaching business, you've run in these successful challenges.
[00:49:00.600 --> 00:49:02.760] What's got you excited for the rest of this year?
[00:49:02.760 --> 00:49:06.760] Well, I just launched my brand new sponsor magnet podcast.
[00:49:06.760 --> 00:49:08.040] Oh, two days ago.
[00:49:08.040 --> 00:49:09.400] You heard it here first.
[00:49:09.400 --> 00:49:10.600] Yeah, you heard it here first.
[00:49:10.600 --> 00:49:16.320] My very first episode was with Nier Ayal, if you're familiar with his books, Hooked and Indistractible.
[00:49:16.320 --> 00:49:16.640] Yep.
[00:49:16.640 --> 00:49:18.320] So I talked with him.
[00:49:14.520 --> 00:49:20.400] He was a sponsorship skeptic.
[00:49:20.560 --> 00:49:24.560] He's someone who's sold a million copies of books and has never done a single sponsorship.
[00:49:24.560 --> 00:49:31.280] And so we were actually in person together and we talked through all of his limiting beliefs around why, why should he even consider doing sponsorships?
[00:49:31.280 --> 00:49:36.800] And so yeah, I'm really excited to just have a forum to have these conversations because there's no other podcast dedicated to this topic.
[00:49:36.800 --> 00:49:42.720] And so the podcast and then also my in-person event called Sponsor Games happening again in March 2026.
[00:49:42.720 --> 00:49:44.720] So very excited for both of those two things.
[00:49:44.720 --> 00:49:46.320] Sponsor games like Hunger Games?
[00:49:46.320 --> 00:49:52.960] Well, basically what I've done is I've turned my eight-step sponsorship wheel framework into eight games that you play to actually master these concepts.
[00:49:52.960 --> 00:50:01.120] So the pitch game and the negotiate game, where you're actually doing real role-playing live, like with me on stage, where I'm pretending to be a brand and I say one thing and you have to respond.
[00:50:01.120 --> 00:50:01.600] Oh my gosh.
[00:50:01.600 --> 00:50:02.080] Yes.
[00:50:02.080 --> 00:50:02.480] Yeah.
[00:50:02.480 --> 00:50:07.440] I have found that like doing these types of activities where you're practicing is the way to learn.
[00:50:07.440 --> 00:50:07.760] Yeah.
[00:50:07.760 --> 00:50:14.720] There's a lot of benefit in those mock interviews, the role-playing and trying to figure, yeah, the brand said they want to do a discovery call.
[00:50:14.720 --> 00:50:15.200] What do I say?
[00:50:15.200 --> 00:50:15.520] Right.
[00:50:15.520 --> 00:50:21.440] Oh, well, if I'm prepared for that, I'm much more likely to actually present myself in a way that makes sense and lands that deal.
[00:50:21.440 --> 00:50:22.160] Well, that's awesome.
[00:50:22.160 --> 00:50:25.120] So the new podcast, the sponsor magnet podcast, absolutely.
[00:50:25.120 --> 00:50:25.840] We'll link that up.
[00:50:25.840 --> 00:50:27.760] Go check that out in the show notes there.
[00:50:27.760 --> 00:50:30.240] The sponsor games coming up if you want to get more.
[00:50:30.240 --> 00:50:35.200] But actually, definitely check out the sponsor magnet book, sponsormagnet.com.
[00:50:35.200 --> 00:50:36.240] This is soup tonight.
[00:50:36.240 --> 00:50:40.240] Like this is really, really in-depth on everything you need to get started.
[00:50:40.240 --> 00:50:41.520] Really well done on that.
[00:50:41.520 --> 00:50:42.640] I know it's selling really well.
[00:50:42.640 --> 00:50:44.960] And I know we'll continue to do that.
[00:50:44.960 --> 00:50:47.120] Also, creatorwizard.com.
[00:50:47.120 --> 00:50:49.920] I want to plug the like sponsor audit tool.
[00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:52.240] It's just kind of a cool, unique positioning.
[00:50:52.240 --> 00:50:53.760] So that's at creatorwizard.com.
[00:50:53.760 --> 00:50:55.200] We'll link that up as well.
[00:50:55.200 --> 00:50:57.800] I appreciate you tuning in to the side hustle Show.
[00:50:57.800 --> 00:51:03.400] Whether it's your first time listening or your 694th or whatever episode we're on, appreciate you.
[00:51:03.720 --> 00:51:09.240] If you are newer to the show, you can create a personalized playlist at hustle.show.
[00:51:09.240 --> 00:51:18.280] You can get a custom curated list of our greatest hits episodes based on your answers, and it'll spit back out that playlist that you can add to your device.
[00:51:18.280 --> 00:51:20.840] Go learn what works and go make some more money.
[00:51:20.840 --> 00:51:23.160] Again, hustle.show for that.
[00:51:23.160 --> 00:51:25.640] Big thanks to Justin for sharing his insight.
[00:51:25.640 --> 00:51:27.560] Thanks to our sponsors.
[00:51:27.560 --> 00:51:28.840] Did a whole episode on sponsors.
[00:51:28.840 --> 00:51:31.560] Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
[00:51:31.560 --> 00:51:38.120] SidehustleNation.com slash deals is where to go to find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
[00:51:38.120 --> 00:51:40.920] Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show.
[00:51:40.920 --> 00:51:43.080] It really does make a difference.
[00:51:43.080 --> 00:51:44.120] That is it for me.
[00:51:44.120 --> 00:51:46.040] Thank you so much for tuning in.
[00:51:46.040 --> 00:51:49.720] If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.
[00:51:49.720 --> 00:51:55.240] So fire off that text message, that Instagram DM saying, hey, I think you should check this out.
[00:51:55.240 --> 00:51:58.280] Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen.
[00:51:58.280 --> 00:52:01.160] And I'll catch you in the next edition of The Side Hustle Show.
[00:52:01.160 --> 00:52:01.960] Hustle on.