Building Email Newsletters to Sell Sponsorships with Justin Moore

I’m Igor Kheifets, and this is the list building lifestyle. The podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my bestselling book, the list building lifestyle confessions of an email millionaire at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus a $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle.

00:52

Welcome back to the list building lifestyle. I’m your host Igor Kheifets, and today I’m hosting Justin Moore. Justin is the creator wizard. And he’s a sponsorship coach and a co-founder of the Creator wizard, a school and a community that teaches you how to find and negotiate your dream brand deals so that you stop leaving 1000s of dollars on the table. Along with his wife April, he has been a full-time creator for over eight years. It all started when his wife started a YouTube channel for fun. When she gained traction and was getting brand deals. She asked him to take care of the business side of things and figure out the contracts and so on. Later, they started a family YouTube channel and we’ve been vlogging daily for years. He personally made over $4 million working with brands, he landed over 500 brand deals. He also ran an influencer marketing agency for over seven years that helped other creators earn an additional $3 million.

01:50

Justin’s mission is to enable creators big and small to lead 1 million paid brand partnerships by 2030 to talk about a very specific big, hairy, audacious goal. So, Justin, welcome to the list building lifestyle. Thanks for having me, man. I’m stoked to be here. Yeah, so I mean, your specialty is brand deals. Can you walk us through how that works? Sure. So, you know, for those of you who are listening, who have either never done a brand deal or a sponsorship, I think a lot of let’s talk about words first, like vocabulary, which is like brand deal. Like that doesn’t sound like something someone with a newsletter would do. That sounds like something a YouTuber would do or an Instagram influencer or something like that. But for So, sake of conversation, we kind of think of them interchangeably, whether it’s a brand deal or sponsorships, basically, a brand wants to compensate you to get you to talk about them on whatever platform you’re on doesn’t have to be a newsletter, it could be anything. And the key realization here is that you hold the keys to the kingdom, right, you have developed some sort of audience whom you influence, right, you make a product recommendation or a service recommendation. And they trust you, they listen to you. And so, they go on to buy the thing or sign up for the product or something based on your recommendation. And so, a brand deal or a sponsorship is just that. So, you know, oftentimes, and that there’s other ways in which you can be sponsored and do work for brands that don’t involve talking about you talking about them to your audience, and we’ll get into that. But in its purest form, it’s like you are people, a brand is compensating you, for you to essentially serve as the conduit for them to access a pool of prospective customers. Well, yeah, I mean, on this show, we’re familiar with the concept of affiliate marketing, we do it quite a bit here. So, it’s, it’s kind of sort of like that, but from what I understand, it’s not necessarily about the commission you’re gonna get, it’s more about kind of like what they used to do back in the in the good old days on TV, where it’s a sponsorship fee is it is like paid up front is given to us in the form of merchandise like what how does that work? So, there’s three major compensation structures that most creators and influencers think of and so the affiliate model is definitely one of them. That is, that is a pay per for per for pay per performance model, typically, right? You’re not being compensated unless someone takes an action, right, whether it’s trial, signup, or a paid signup, whatever it is, then you have OPT, you have what’s called hybrid compensation, where there may actually be some sort of flat base retainer portion. So maybe you’re making 1000-2000 bucks to actually create the content, but then you’re getting some sort of sweetener on the back end, which is like a, you know, commission or some sort of kicker. And then there’s the flat compensation model where it’s not dependent upon your performance at all. And this brand is actually just giving you a flat amount, you know, 500 bucks, 1000 bucks, 10,000 bucks, whatever it is, for the privilege of essentially talking about them. And I think that it’s really important to realize that there is a non-there’s, there’s a couple things that are non-trivial. Number one, is the work to actually create the content. 

05:05

So, you all may be familiar with affiliate models, obviously, but to be able and in its purest form, it’s like you write one sentence and you just hyperlink something and it’s like, here’s my affiliate link, right? And you disclose that, obviously. But you could take it to another extreme where what if you don’t have a newsletter, what if you are a YouTuber Instagram or whatever, like, in order to plug the affiliate link, you have to generate some sort of content, whether it’s a short, you know, Tik Tok video or a YouTube video or whatever. And the work required to do that is not trivial. It’s not like, you know, that actually takes time. You have to edit the video, you have to edit the photo, you have to edit the real, whatever it is. And so that amount of work, oftentimes, if you’re only being compensated by an affiliate scheme, is trivializing the work required for you to actually generate that asset. 

05:39

And so, part of this part of why I am a much bigger fan of more of a hybrid or a flat fee, flat base fee approach, especially if you have a sizable audience, but you need to capture that value somehow, of being of creating that content, right. And I think that that’s a really, the other really important thing to realize is that, it’s not just about the sales that you generate, for example, if the brand, you know, would find value in taking that piece of content that you generated, talking about them, and repurposing it, right, putting it on their website, putting it on their social channels, maybe running paid ads with it, that’s a really, really valuable asset. And so that’s another thing that you need to be charging for, like the privilege of using your name and likeness, as a creator, as an influencer, as someone who has developed a following. They need to be compensating you for so, getting the privilege to do that. So, there’s a lot of different, you know, compensation structures that you consider, but those are the three main ones. 

06:41

You know, I really, this is one of the reasons why I have I’ve never really gotten out of the internet

business arena, because what I love about online business is that you can always make money in several different ways simultaneously. So, what I mean by that is just like the example you’re sharing right now, it’s three different compensation models, and they can all be occurring at the same time, or maybe even be combined, you can be getting paid both a fee up front and performance bonus or performance commission. So, this is one of the beauties of doing business online in general, because you just end up building multiple streams of income, even though you’re working on a single project. And I absolutely love it. Now, let’s shift gears a little bit. And I’m just I’m just curious, I don’t remember if I already asked you that, like before the show. If I did, please forgive me. But I’m just genuinely curious, what is it like to work with your wife as business partners, and be careful? Because she might be listening to this episode? I hope she listens to the episode. Cuz she’s, she is my, my, my best friend, has been my business partner for over a decade. 

07:52

And I love this question, because I think that there’s a lot more partners like, you know, spouse partnerships in business on the internet, especially, I think, these days than ever. And it’s not something that people talk about a lot, I think in terms of, like, the unique challenges and opportunities that come with, like, you know, being married to your business partner, basically. Right. And so, I’ll start by saying that my wife and I first got together when we were basically, we were both college students, right. So, we were not doing this. We were we you know, and when we graduated, we had kind of entry level jobs. My wife was a preschool teacher, I went into medical devices, I was an engineer by background. And so, we were just kind of at the very beginning of our careers. And so, we were kind of living paycheck to paycheck, honestly, like, we really had a budget and we were like, you know, analyzing it and all this stuff, too.

08:34

And so, we were really, we were basically we were not making lots and lots of money is the point, right? And so, we very much grew this from the ground, like from the ground floor like this, you know, our social media, you know, your business. It very much was like, again, like you said in the intro, it wasn’t me at first it was her she was the one who started her first Youtube channel. I just came in because she needed help. You know, I was kind of behind the scenes, then I eventually, you know, got in front of the camera, I started making cameos. Then we made channels together and all this stuff, too. And so, it grew very, very naturally and organically. But I’ll tell you, man, like it was, it was definitely a struggle early on to understand what our strengths were because especially when I quit my job, so my wife quit her job, her preschool teaching job first in 2012. I kept my job crucially, like we still had the, you know, the nine to five incomes, the medical benefits, all this stuff. And it took several years for us to develop a plan for me to be able to quit and like oh, now it’s scary because all the eggs are in one basket. Now we’re doing this together. So, it’s like the stakes are higher. But like I remember a funny story here is like, I remember when I initially quit my full-time job. I felt like I needed to justify the fact that I had quit and now I’m going to be so much more involved in the creative stuff. So, whereas before she would be used to going into work, she would set up the camera all by herself, set up the lights, film it, edit it, do the whole thing.

10:10

And then when I quit, I was home now. And I was like, I’m like busting in here and be like, Alright, let’s put the camera here, let’s put lights here. Like, she was like, What the hell are you doing? Like I don’t need, I don’t want or need your help with this stuff. And so, it’s like, it’s those types of things that happen when you start working together, you kind of start butting heads on that stuff. And so, it took a little while for us to kind of settle into our strengths. Her strength is definitely the creative stuff. And my strengths are definitely the business because she hates you know, all the business behind the scenes stuff. And so, and I love it. And so, I think the learning lesson is like, as we’ve been there, that’s some of the challenges. But then the other side of it is that there’s so many pros, I get to spend, like, so much time with my soulmate with a woman I love, we get to go on these amazing trips, because we don’t have you know, when anytime we want, like if there’s opportunities, we’re able to pick up and go, obviously, we have kids now and so we’ve taken them a lot, you know, and so it’s like, you know, there’s a lot of opportunities. If you don’t like being around your partner, I think it would be hard. But that’s why I think it’s really important to pick the right partner because, like, I actually think it’s amazing. I love spending time with her and I love you know, there is obviously a blend, you know, there’s like a blur between our personal and our work life, of course, but I love it. I think it’s awesome. That’s amazing, man, that is amazing. I remember I had a buddy back in Israel when the US lived in Israel. And he actually warned me to never do business with your wife, because then you’re going to bed with a business partner and not a wife. So, he kind of did not like that dynamic, I guess. But they were like, they seemed like a very cool, good duel. Like she had strengths. And he had different strengths. He was more like a personable kind of the business that was all about excursions. And so, he had to deal with people face to face. And he was really great at them. And he had a great conversation, and a really, really cool guy. And she was more like a behind-the-scenes person, you know, accounting, you know, administrative stuff and things like that. But they’re still married, they’re still making the work two kids, two beautiful kids growing up at this point.

12:08

You know, they’ve done well for themselves. And you’re definitely, like, I now know, at least like 15 couples like that, that do business they do well. Knock on wood. So yeah, that behind-the-scenes is absolutely incredible. So now that your business has evolved, and you’re obviously your business is much bigger than it used to be, then both of you are full time. Probably a team now. I mean, it seems like you’ve grown tremendously. You’ve worked with so many creators as well. So, what does that day to day look like now?

12:47

Yeah, so let’s talk about what didn’t work first, because I don’t think people like flex, like, like they flex the wins. And like, look how much money I’m making every month. But no one ever talks about what didn’t work and what failed. And so, the first attempt that I made to diversify our income was in 2015. So, what was happening was everything was going really well on YouTube. Like we were making, you know, at the height of our YouTube, we were making, like 25k a month, which was just on ads, like not even including sponsorship, it was just AdSense. So it was pretty dope, right? And, and so we were like, this is awesome. But this can’t continue forever. There’s no way that like, people are gonna watch us at the same amounts that they are now forever, right? It’s gonna go down, the views are gonna go down or like something’s gonna happen, right? So, in my brain, I’m always thinking, okay, what can we do to diversify this right? And so, we had, by this time, done tons of sponsorships, and had a pretty good track record in terms of like, repeat clients and all this stuff, too. And again, remember I was in, I was in product management and medical devices. So like project management, this is kind of my day job. And so, I was like, I’m pretty good at this stuff, like hitting deadlines, like ensuring I’m adhering to what the brand is looking for, and all this stuff. And so, I was like, what if I took this knowledge of like, what we’ve learned doing this and got deals for other creators, that would be the business idea. It was like, okay, I’m gonna start an agency. I’m going to be the liaison, the campaign manager, essentially. So that’s what I did. I went to the brands that we had just worked with personally. 

14:17

And I said, hey, we just love working with you. Did you also know that we also have these? Are you also looking to work with other creators? And so that’s what I did. I went out and I reached out to a bunch of our friends who are also creators, and I said, hey, can I put you on a deck? That was literally like, I’m not gonna manage you, but what if I could bring your business and they’re like, Sure, bring the business right. And so that’s what I did. And so early like deals that was how I made it work. It was just from our personal Rolodex essentially, and ran that agency for seven years and right around COVID So everything was going great. It was like okay, this is gonna diversify our personal family income, you know, got the agency income now. And I worked so hard to build that business man. I had multiple full-time employees at one time, you know, we were doing like these half a million dollar deals where we were working across, you know, lots of creators. And so, I was doing the thing, right, it seemed cool. It seemed awesome, right.

15:13

And when COVID happened, everything crashed and burned.

15:18

There were a lot of like factors. In fact, I have a whole YouTube video all around why the agency failed, but had to lay off all my employees, you know, had $100,000 of debt that I had built up for various reasons. Yeah, because it was so lay off essentially what happened is like it was it’s a complicated story, but like, build a bunch of custom tooling, software tooling, oh, to like, you know, to, you know, we had all these other influencer agencies who are raising all this VC. And they have all these, like, custom dashboards to let you search for creators and use AI and like other stuff, and I was like, oh, shit, we gotta like, you know, sorry, for my French, I don’t know if we can curse on here. But like, you know, like, you know, it’s like, it’s like, oh, I gotta compete with that, to be able to differentiate ourselves. Right, you know, spent, you know, 50 dropped 50 G’s like developing the DAS software dashboard. Hired a big time, VP of sales to, you know, try to go after some of these much higher ticket clients. So, you know, a lot of these mistakes that, of course, in retrospect, it was like, oh, man, like, terrible. But like, again, we had a pipeline, we had a pretty robust pipeline of deals that we were relying on, who’s going to pay down the debt, all this stuff, right. But then, of course, COVID happened, right. And so basically, what happened is like, I had to let everyone go, and then I ran the agency myself for like, two years to pay off the debt to like, try to like, get this thing.

16:43

And so like, once I finally paid off the debt, it was like, okay, like, clearly this agency didn’t work. But So, you know, what, I actually have a pretty unique perspective now, because I’ve been a creator for so many years doing deals, but never I’ve also been behind the scenes I’ve seen, I’ve been in like the boardroom, with these, you know, ad agencies and these big brands, and there, they’re thrown around, you know, half a million dollar budgets, million dollar budgets, hey, we want to work with like, 100 creators, 500 creators, like what’s the platform strategy? You know, how can we best, you know, strategize for this campaign? And that’s a very different conversation. And so, I thought to myself, like, I should just make some YouTube videos around, like, what the mistakes that I see creators making, because remember, we ran the agency, we were on the receiving end of all this communication with influencers, organizing these campaigns, 1000s and 1000s of touch points. And so, I was like, man, so many creators are not professional. They are not communicative. They don’t understand that this is a business transaction. They don’t take it seriously. Like, this is a problem, right? And so and so I was just like, let me make some YouTube videos, right, how to pitch a brand, how to negotiate, how to be professional, like, all these things. And that was it, Igor, I didn’t think it was going to be my next business. I was like, let me just kind of scratch this creative itch right now. Every time I heard, yeah, yeah, literally, dude, I was like, I was like, let me just do this. This will be fun. And what do you think happened? Like, people? I love this video. Can you make another one about this topic? They would DM me Hey, can you? I don’t have a manager, but I’m negotiating this deal right now. Can you help me? I was like, oh, do you have a course? Can you coach me?” I was like, What the hell, this is so weird. And so that was the early days of starting to talk about this. I think people were just so starved for this knowledge, because there’s not a lot out there on this topic. And so that’s how the creator was born. Now, that’s amazing. It’s just, it’s one of these stories where, you know, you don’t become successful through trying to do something. It’s something you discover along the way of trying to achieve a goal that ends up making you successful. It’s so crazy. 

18:47

Because in my journey, I was on my way to wanting to become this big shot affiliate. But it’s the traffic strategy I discovered along the way that ended up that I ended up making a business out of it, really going big on it, starting an agency just like you developing my own software and a lot of that stuff. And it’s really, really crazy, because at one point, I used to listen a lot to Evan pagan, you know, when he was really active in the game industry. So, he’s David, he goes by David DeAngelo in a different niche in the dating niche. He started W dating, built it to 10 million a year, and then started teaching business. And he had programs like ignition guru mastermind, a bunch of so he’s a really smart thinker, really unique personality.

19:35

And so, in one of his seminars, he once mentioned something like, what’s going to happen if you’re not going to become successful by following a dream or following your goal or from whatever. It’s something that you discover along the way that will make you successful. It’s so deep I mean; you can’t appreciate it until you actually go through this yourself. It’s very frustrating.

20:00

Getting actually because, like, it’d be so much better to just shortcut right to the thing. But it’s mean; not a satisfying answer when you tell someone like how do I think of a business idea? Or how do I become successful or whatever, it’s just like, well, you’ve got to just have this very long and circuitous path of a bunch of failures, and maybe a few successes. But it’s not until you really do this for a while, yeah, it’s not until you’re in this for a while that you can, like, look back on it with 2020 vision and be like, oh, yeah, that’s actually interesting. That’s something that I can make a business around. And so yeah, it’s you’re totally right. That it’s mean; sometimes it’s, it’s, it’s very difficult to be super intentional about what you ultimately do. But this is also what Napoleon Hill or, you know, similar authors would talk about when they talk about persistence, perseverance, it’s that it’s not just about trying the same thing over and over again, it’s not just about so I was actually, you know, when I, when I record the podcasts, actually do them like, and try to batch them in the same day, so I can get them all out of the way. 

21:15

So, I was actually early today, I was speaking to Alex Pitoni. And we were talking about how this one guy basically had this strategy that he was using to make money. And then over the years, as it often happens with online money-making strategies, it becomes a game of diminishing returns. So, in order to keep making the same amount of money, you actually have to keep the workload going up, right. So, she was talking about how he was complaining that he has to work harder these days to make the same money he used to make five or seven years ago. And this is the wrong way to think about things. Instead, you constantly have to almost reinvent yourself. And one of these reinventions ends up really propelling you forward. Like even if you’re successful before you get this crazy jump, when you’re able to be mentally agile, and not get super attached to something that you used to work, but doesn’t work anymore.

22:01

I have a concrete story around that exact, exact example, which is that my wife and I, about three years ago, almost three years ago now started doing Amazon live. So live commerce. And, you know, this is, like life. So, Commerce has been gigantic in Asia for a long time. And when Amazon approached us about the opportunity to try out this new Amazon live stream stuff that they were doing, we were unsure of whether Okay, well, this seems like it’s going to be a big-time commitment.

22:40

Cuz essentially what they were offering was they were going to compensate us to do a certain number of live streams a month because they wanted to get more, you know, we were pretty prominent creators. And so, they wanted to get, you know, other creators on there to attract more people and all this stuff, too. Right. And so, it was gonna be quite a bit of commitment. And again, like, yes, we’ve been on social media for a while, we’ve been on YouTube and stuff. But live streaming was kind of a new, a new game for us, like, yeah, we’ve done live streams on Instagram and all that stuff, too. But this was going to require a much more sophisticated setup. We were going to need multiple cameras, we wanted to do it right, right. And so, we want to use multiple cameras and learn how to use things like live streaming software, obs and all this stuff, right? And yet, we were so busy. And we were looking at each other like, are we really going to do this? Are we really going to spend this much time learning this new thing? We’ve been in the game for over a decade. And yet we were like, no, this, this could be a thing. It may not be a big thing now. But what we were thinking was like, wow, the potential to do sponsorships with this format is amazing. And if the brands start to, you know, catch up and realize like the power of live commerce, what if we get really good at this thing now for the next like year, and then when everyone catches up, and it becomes super obvious that live commerce is where you need to start advertising, we’re going to be at the forefront of that as experts. And so that’s what we did, we now saw where the ball was going, not where it was at the moment. And so, we you know, fast forward, Amazon, like it, you know, we were Amazon Associates for a long time. And it always represented, you know, a single digit percentage of our revenue streams on a monthly yearly basis. But it went from single digit percentage to like 30% of our income in the span of like, a year. I mean, because we started making that amount of money like you know, like doing so, doing sponsorships, all this stuff. Right. And so, it just goes to show you just like what you said is like this was not even on our radar, and then all of a sudden it becomes this like, you know, gargantuan force. We started getting interviewed for news articles. Oh, you’re doing what Amazon librarian says, it’s a really interesting thing that if you have your pulse on like, what could be around the corner? It can lead to great things. There’s another hint for success here. And I hope you don’t mind me using you almost like a case study in the lab. Yeah, of course. This is incredible, everyone heard the same. Success is when preparation meets opportunity.

25:00

So, bing, bing, you know, you have invested all this time, effort, energy years into creating content doing all this stuff. And an opportunity comes up such as Amazon life, and you’re ready for it, and you grab it. Right? Oftentimes, I see people actually refuse to go into opportunities, who refuse to grab opportunities are really timid, they’re really scared, they actually hold onto things from the past so much, their hands are tied over there, you know, like, they can’t use these hands to go forward.

25:32

And it’s all done out of fear. And it seems like you and your wife are very well, you guys are like fearless, you just go for it, you know, just you’re not afraid to experiment and be like, okay, let’s give it a shot, see what happens. And before you know, it starts showing results. So, you double down on it. And you scale, it seems like a, I think, I think it’s like a, you know, if you look at, you know, I would say maybe like, eight years ago, or nine years ago, maybe 95% of our income was YouTube, AdSense, like, the glue was like all most of our buckets, most of our eggs were in that that basket.

26:15

And now, our YouTube, AdSense is like 2% of our revenue. So, like, if you look at that massive swings, there’s a couple of factors obviously, like, obviously, the amount of content has proliferated, the number of you know, percentage of your views that can be monetized has gone down, you know, our viewership has gone down. But then again, like there’s been so much more interest in sponsorships, so much more ability to monetize coaches, courses, coaching courses, you know, affiliates, like we’ve been able to diversify with a lot of different revenue streams, but like, if we would have just like, clung to the past of like, YouTube, YouTube ads, like, we’re making all this money, let’s just keep doing it. Like we’d be in we’d be, we wouldn’t be here, like we would have had to go back and go yet, quote, unquote, normal jobs, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it’s like, like, in this new economy, in the quote, unquote, creator economy, like, it’s just not enough to just like, rest on your laurels, the social platforms, change their algorithms every two weeks, there’s no, you just cannot, like rely on these income streams, and just So, assume that they’re gonna go away. Like, just assume they’re gonna go away. And you know, spend most of your time trying to figure out like, you know, what else you can do to insulate your business from these types of uncertainties. And you’re always going to be fine, as long as you’re constantly on the lookout to figure out how you can evolve. I think it’s even more important now, as we enter the age of generative AI. Yeah, that’s a good point. And I’m happy you mentioned that social media is shaky, and that it can be pulled, you know, obviously, you felt it where, you know, things go really well. And then very quickly, they go downhill, just because the rules of the game change, right? So just the whole landscape changes. Which brings me to something that I love to talk about, obviously, on the show, titled the listicle in lifestyle, you know, email, I feel is that one of the few things that I can actually go and rely on again, and again and again.

28:11

And, you know, whether I use social media to drive traffic or not, you know, at the end of the day, my first goal, initial goal is to always put them on my list. Yeah, 100%. I mean, a quick story around that. When my wife and I were kind of in the YouTube heyday, one of the pieces of the types of content that really people really followed us for was relationship advice. So, we would do these q&a videos, we would talk about our relationships and our views on these, and they would get hundreds of 1000s of views, right? Like this. This was like, this was like, what people were really interested in. And we had a company approach us saying, hey, seems like people really follow you for relationship advice. We should make a relationship membership, like a course membership type thing, exclusive content, lessons, homework, all this stuff. And we were like, Yeah, this sounds awesome. Let’s do it. Right. And so, we had no experience with like, premium content at this time. So again, this was like 2013. And so, we made all the mistakes in the book, we went into a vacuum. We didn’t tell anyone that we were doing this, we spent six months on it. And then you know, and yes, we did start to grow a list. But once we released it, ha Tada we’ve got this like membership or whatever we got absolutely roasted dude. Like we all you sell out. Like this was a long con, like all this stuff, right? And we had honestly the purest of intentions. We thought like, we really want to help people, like, you know, better communication, all this stuff, right? And we did, you know, help people. We definitely had some people but we ultimately shut it down. And among the learning lessons was like, don’t keep your audience in the dark, like bring them along for the ride, obviously. But then the other main learning lesson was like, We, throughout the course of this, we did start an email list to kind of, you know, start talking about this program. And very easily Dude, we got, like 30,000 email subscribers in like two weeks. 

30:05

It was crazy dude. It was like, it was like, go watch. If you want this exclusive video, we’re about to make sign up for the newsletter. And it was like, that’s the volume of what it was like back then for us. And once we shut down the program, we stopped sending to the list, right? Because we’re like, okay, well, what do we have to say to them anymore? Right? And so, we for literally six, seven years didn’t send this list of 30,000 people. And so, once we finally said, okay, well, we should probably start up this list again. We ran a reengagement campaign, and we said, hey, you know, haven’t heard from us in a while? Do you want to, like continue hearing from us, like opt back in here? And of the 30,000 people on that list? 1000 opted back in. And it was just like a dagger to the heart, because it was like, what if we had nurtured that over the last decade? Like, where would we have been? Right? And so, what when that happened, and when I started doing the Creator, wizard stuff, I was like, I’m never going to make that mistake again. Right. And so, from the beginning, having getting people off of social media for every call to action that I make in every YouTube video, and every Instagram post, and every tick tock is, join my newsletter, join my newsletter, join my newsletter. Anytime I’m on a podcast, you’ll see at the very end, when I plug my stuff. That’s the only thing I say, I don’t say my social handles. I don’t say anything. Oh, you can find me here. No, my newsletter creatorwizard.com/join I’ll just do a shameless plug right now. It’s creatowizard.com/join That’s it. That’s the only place you can find me if you want to find anything, my videos, anything my newsletter, right. And, and that has literally been my conscious tactic throughout the last three years as I built this business. And you know, I’ve now grown the list to, you know, over 30,000 creators now. So, it’s been it’s been, it’s been a strategy that’s worked. Do this is I mean, I, I thought I had it bad with some of my list attempts early on. And but my No, like in the couple of 1000 range, losing List of 30,000 people.

31:48

And again, the only reason you lost that is because you just didn’t make the list. That’s like the only reason anyone can lose. Listen, just don’t engage in it. It’s so crazy. It’s like it’s one of those things you don’t use. You don’t. So, use it, you lose it. That’s not absolutely right. Yeah, correct. Crazy. Oh, I just yeah, it still hurts. Like, I’m still hurting. I could see I yeah, I could see you’re So, hurting on my behalf. And I appreciate that. 

32:16

Because imagine how we felt. I can’t, I just can’t, because a list of 30,000 people, I mean, even So, if you really sucked at monetizing, and you only got 30 cents per subscriber per month. I mean, even at that, several years, it’s just okay, well, yeah, you learn your lesson, you build your brand new. Good, very, very good. So, what would you say? Looking back on your entire journey up until this point.

32:51

If you could go back in time and meet yourself just before he quit your day job, and kind of have a quick 92nd conversation with yourself. What would be the three things that you tell yourself? Man, I mean, it would 100% be to take list building more seriously, like, like that would have been one of the first things because back in the day, monetizing through our own revenue streams, like So, products that we can own, were not even on our radar. I mean, like, yeah, maybe merch, you know, shirts and all this stuff. But like, it was never really on our radar to like, oh, maybe one day, there’s other stuff that we may want to provide coach coaching courses, digital products, you know, this type of stuff. Info Products is essentially, the only way in which we were monetizing was what I call indirectly, right, where AdSense and sponsorships. Those are those two main giant buckets that a lot of creators, that’s the only thing they do. And you want to know why you’re, it’s because they’re terrified of having a sales conversation with their audience. They just don’t want to ask them for money at all. Yeah, and this is a plight of a lot of creators because and this is the youtubers tick talkers Instagramers. A lot of them because they built large social followings. They haven’t had the need to have a sales conversation but it takes me kind of sitting them down and realizing and telling them like, look, you’re actually not serving your audience by Instagram not offering some of these other things. Yeah, you’re serving them with sponsorships telling them about products and stuff that they may not have heard of. And that’s great. But like, there’s other things that you could potentially offer them directly that also solve their problems. Right. And so, the I This is oftentimes when people in fact, I’ve just had a public coaching call that I released with a creator who was experiencing the challenges that they actually had. They were struggling with whether to even do sponsorships because they had their own digital products and courses and stuff like that. They’re like, well, if I talk about sponsors, it’s going to take away from my stuff like I’m not gonna be able to plug my stuff. Why would I do that? I bet

35:00

Either make the money myself, right? And I say like, no, no, no, no, you’re missing the boat here. It has to be the audience first, it has to be the customer first, you can serve them with both your products and sponsorships and affiliates. Right? Because there’s lots of stuff that you’re not going to sell, there’s lots of stuff that you’re not going to make, because it’s just not in the vertical, you’d never make that product, let’s just and so your job is to go out there and figure out I need to like forge some jayvees with some of these other course creators or other services or other sponsors or whatever. Because I’m never going to make that software tool, I’m never going to make that course or whatever. And so, like it actually takes you and then being like, hey, guess what? Audience I’m so excited. Check this thing out here too. Because, you know, I talk about this a lot of like psychographic serving, like you need to actually understand like, what is going on in your audience’s life? If they, you know, ask them what jobs do they have? What’s keeping them up at night? Are they married? Do they have kids, like, you know, like starting to get some really enriched data on, like, what is going on? Because your audience is not a monolith. They’re not as you may think that they’re one type of consumer or one type of purchaser. But until you do this type of surveying, you’ll start to realize, oh, wow, actually, there’s, there’s some other brands that I could potentially pick a pitch to get in front of my audience, because I could help them in a way I didn’t realize. Yeah, I agree with you. The big point for me personally, and I guess it’s advice that I have, because I see the same issue with people who build email lists, and they refuse to pitch is that oftentimes creators and, and list owners, I’m not sure if listeners are content creators, or whether it’s like they are 100% newsletter operator as a creator, I think so.

36:40

So nearly all creators believe that the idea of selling or pitching and the idea of building a relationship are actually mutually exclusive. And I think that’s the biggest misconception you can make over the years. In the last 10 years, I’ve been pitching in every email, I don’t think I’ve sent out an email or I didn’t have something that I was pitching, whether it’s someone else’s as an affiliate or my own. But with that their relationship is there. And I’m not sure why. I guess it’s so, the way people get brought up, and they get conditioned that selling is bad or that salespeople are best, when in reality, we’re selling something all the time, whether it’s product, whether it’s ideas, whether it’s ourselves to other people, I mean, I had to sell you on this podcast is for you to get on the podcast. So

37:30

I mean, at the end of the day, whether you like it or not, you’re selling something. And I think it’s just such a big mistake to not pitch your audience, especially, especially if you’ve got good stuff. Because the best analogy for this that I’ve ever heard was, I don’t recall who delivered it.

37:49

But basically, imagine that you’ve got a neighbor, and your neighbor has cancer, and you just happen to have a machine or an injection that has a 75% chance of curing their cancer. Now, how hard Will you try? And will you work to get their attention? To show them this device machine Injection, whatever. Like, if, if they’ve tried chemo didn’t work, if they tried something else didn’t work? Would you go and aggressively market to them? Yeah, you probably would. You probably would. In fact, what I don’t understand is why people miss the whole, like, it happens to them, but they don’t see it, where they themselves either get on social media, or get into their inbox, and they buy stuff. And it’s not like that stuff just appears there. Someone’s sending an email, someone’s posting a video or post, somebody’s linking to a product. And we all go and we buy. So why are we so timid and afraid to do it ourselves to just pitch?

39:00

I think I think it’s a couple of reasons. So, there’s those two things there. The first is like if you actually think about it, you’re totally right, when it comes to the upbringing thing, because I think that colors a lot of the reason why people are the way they are and hesitant about this type of stuff. But I think I’m trying to remember. I think it was Daniel Priestley, who gave this example another kind of story that illustrates this point slightly differently, which is like imagining you are a coffee shop owner, right? And you have what you’re selling is a cup of coffee, right? And there is someone coming in off the street and they want a cup of coffee, okay? What they don’t want and what they have is they don’t have the cup of coffee, but what they do have is money, right? And so, they come in and the business owner doesn’t want the coffee, they want the money. The consumer wants the coffee, they don’t want the money. So, they exchange these two things right here. Here’s a cup of coffee, here’s the money. Both people are happy. 

40:07

And I think some people don’t realize that like they’re there’s lots of people out there who are happy to part with their money in exchange for a solution. Right? It’s not like you’re taking, it’s not like an unbalanced transaction here, like you are providing a service or something to someone, and they’re very happily giving you their money. And I think it’s like, there’s this machination related to marketing or sales, because somehow, it’s like, you’re pushing someone, something on someone and they don’t want it. But then like, the majority of the time, that’s not how it is. It’s like, they’re, they’re desperate, they’re hungry for this solution. And it takes you realizing that you need to get in front of them to tell you that you have this offer for them. And so, I think I think a lot of it comes down to just getting comfortable with just having a simple sales conversation. Yeah, and, you know, it’s funny. So, you’re absolutely spot on when you say that people are afraid to kind of push stuff on other people. But the reality is that you can really push something on someone else on the internet or on the screen of their, you know, device, because if they don’t like it, they just shut you off. Maybe So, the fear Igor comes from not believing in what you’re selling, I think that might be it is like, you know, if you like I know 100 With 100% certainty, that if you take my course, you’re gonna make more money on sponsorships, like I and I, and I literally have a 30 day like money, no questions asked money back guarantee, you could go through the whole thing. I don’t care, like, here’s your money back, if it didn’t help you, here’s your money, right. And it’s like, I can make those guarantees, I can say with my chest puffed out that I know with certainty that you will, because I have all this track record showing of all these people I’ve helped. And so, it’s like, if you don’t have that level of comfort, whether it’s your own product, or you’re selling someone else’s product, if you’re not comfortable with what you’re selling, that’s a problem, find something else to sell. And that’s and I think your problems will be solved, if you like Believe in your core, that this thing that you’re selling is worthwhile. Yeah. And I would like to add to that, that, I think, not having the confidence in the product you sell, is also telling you about not having confidence in themselves. Because I’ve seen it both ways. I’ve seen people sell a really good product, but have very low self-confidence. And I’ve seen people sell a shitty product with a really high self-confidence. And I can tell you that self-confidence was the defining factor. I’ve seen low self-confidence people struggling to sell a really good thing. And high self-confidence people sell bad things or low-quality things with great success.

42:28

Yeah, yeah, maybe that’s the high confidence of people selling crappy products. Gotta watch out for them. But that’s like I just described half the industry. Anyway, Yeah. Moving on. Moving on. We’re coming on time. 

42:46

I’ve really enjoyed this. And I’m actually just on a personal note, I look forward to a point in time in the development of the industry, where more watch opportunities for sponsorships will be available for list builders. Because it seems right now it’s more for the physical product side of things. For some to me, it seems like that might be a misconception I might need to go through your course. But there’s just a couple of people now in the game where it’s you. It’s Scott, old Ford, it’s a couple of other people who are really pushing the message about newsletters where newsletters are now becoming a legitimate medium where you can go and build your list. Because, you know, I was just interviewing another guy. His name is Dylan Bridger, who’s building his list with newsletters. He’s actually going to use content newsletters and pay them as sponsorship fee to place his lead magnet into the thing. And Dylan watches as I’ve worked. He’s done some copywriting for me. So, I’m good friends with Dylan. Okay, so there you go. Yeah. So yeah, I’m excited to see the industry wake up to the opportunity that is presented with content newsletters, because to me, there’s nothing better as far as a subscriber on my list than somebody who was already a subscriber on someone else’s list in the same category or niche. So, I really look forward to that. Now, although I know you’ve already done the shameless plug. Here’s another opportunity. So, if somebody wants to work with you, somebody wants to learn more about how they can get more sponsorships. Maybe they are a sponsor, they want to get in front of more audiences. Maybe they just liked the sound of your voice. Where can they go to find out more about what you do? Well, my voice is pretty sultry so if you if that’s the reason you want to join the newsletter I totally understand Yeah, creatorwizard.com/join I share videos you know, articles all around this this philosophy around sponsorship strategy, but probably the main reason you want to join is because I literally send you paid sponsorship opportunities for free. There’s a brand saying we have money, we want to pay you to talk about our brand, click here and apply. I send that to you on a silver platter so it’s just creatorwizard.com/join Also, if you want to hack, my fun, not Funnel Hacking, but if you want to see the sponsors that are spawned.

45:00

Cheering for me to do a little meta research. I’m making $15,000 a month on sponsorships, Igor. And you know, this is relatively low lift. These are not physical products. These are creative economy companies who are trying to get in front of other creators. That’s one of the reasons that they’re sponsoring me. And so, this is a sponsorship switch for my own business. I mean, it’s very meta. I’m a sponsorship coach, but I have sponsorships. I didn’t turn that on until less than a year ago. So, like, this could be a very, very significant revenue stream that people should not ignore. Yeah, creatorwizard.com/join. And you didn’t know this, but I’m gonna break out the sound effects for that one. Oh, I love it. I need one.

45:40

I got a road caster. I have a road caster, which has all these sound effects here. Yeah. And so, then once you join the list, and you make a bunch of money, I’m gonna give you a price. What can I do?

45:54

Desperately? Yeah, dude, get the road caster. They have some other ones too. They are like the stream deck. Yeah, but I’m a road caster fan. Okay, I wrote down road caster. I’m not sure what that means. But I look into it. Yes. I’ve always dreamed of having my affiliate link, I’ll send you my affiliate link. Because I’m in desperate need of a touch. I now have to settle for text message alerts that notify me of sales. But I really wanted one of these ching so. Yes, it’s really accurate. By the way, before I wrap up, this is a lesson that I learned from Dan Kennedy, who I consider to be my all time, you know, mentor, although I never got to speak to him personally, never got to interview him on a podcast, and never went to any of his events. But he’s definitely a big influence on my life. And he mentioned something really cool. He said, everything is conditioning.

46:43

If you think about it for a second, everything you say everything you do everything that happens to you every so which way you respond to events in your life, is conditioning and actually notice that based on how myself and my wife communicate to our kids, because, you know, the way we respond to their actions and the way we respond to their words.

47:07

You gotta be careful. It’s like sometimes my daughter will approach and be like, hey, Dad, can you buy me this used iPhone? The hey answer, I’m like, No. And you know, she started concluding that is why because it’s too expensive. And I was really, really careful about, you know, saying yes, because obviously, it’s not too expensive. But also like if you condition them and themselves things are too expensive, then they don’t go for it. Don’t even ask the question, which is how I grew up, like things that were too expensive. I didn’t even bother imagining myself owning them. So, it’s like, no, it’s not because it’s too expensive, it’s because I don’t think it’s a wise decision. And then we go into discussion, why? What is a good decision? And then we can even explore, you know, what can she do to earn the money to go get it if she really wants it. So, and I had to do a lot of not training, you can’t really train my wife. She refuses, as he refers to any kind of coaching, any kind of training, any kind of spiritual work, but you know, nothing. But I basically had to set boundaries, and say, you know, this is extremely important. I want you to be paying careful attention to what you’re saying out loud, because everything you’re going to say, as their mother is conditioning. So, you better be careful with your word choice and the wages to respond to different things.

48:30

So anyway, when we talk, the reason I wanted Raul Castro in the Chi Ching sound is because it’s just more conditioning that, hey, look, money’s coming in all the time. And it took me years to make so a shift from being somebody with a scarcity mindset that sitting there be like,

48:45

I know, I know. I know that money ain’t gonna come in today. I know I got lucky yesterday, but today, it’s over, you know, to shift my mindset to be one. Okay, I’m waking up today. Let’s see how much money’s gonna come in. It’s a totally different vibe. It’s not only a different approach to everything. You know, you say yes to opportunities, you need to take on challenges. You set bigger goals as a result. And I find it so important. And I feel that many children, myself included, get kind of shortchanged at the start of their life with just bad conditions. 100% Thank you for sharing that story, man. Because very, you know, I had parents growing up, my dad in particular, whenever he was very big on this, like, anytime I ever wanted to do something that was dangerous, or there was some risk involved or something like this, he never said no. But what he did was he made me sell it he made me basically say here’s what I’m going to need to see from you. For me to be able to say yes, and so for one example I remember is I was in high school and I had to interview a professional for someone that I wanted, like a career that I wanted to do and I had to find someone in the industry and interview them for it isn’t an essay basically. And I wanted to be a musician at the time. 

50:05

And isn’t so I was like oh my to go, I want to find a producer, like a music producer to try to interview to like, learn about it, whatever. And I found someone, but it required me to go by myself to San Francisco to the city. And I was like 14 or 15 at this time. And I went up to my dad and said, Dad, can I do this? Like I found someone who let me interview them all the stuff. And he said, Bring me the plan. And so, I went down, I had to print out there was no Google Maps at the time, I think it was like Mapquest or something. So I had like, print out, I had to get this, I had to, like draw a map of like how it was going to go out of BART, which is like the rapid transit system where I live in San Francisco area, I would like trace out the thing and like, figure out how I was going to be figured out the BART time, the train times, like all the stuff, I had to come in, like present a plan of like, when I was going to be home, how I was going to do it. Everything’s organized and presented, he looked there. He said, okay, you can do it. And so, it was like that was my upbringing. And I definitely carried that into like, new and older kids. I have not even considered that as an answer. Mm hmm. You know, I’m totally, please think, are your dads still alive? He is Yeah, please. Thank you. For me. I’m totally Yeah, take that on. Wow. I love that. No, absolutely. Yeah, it’s powerful. And it made me require it to make them have critical thinking, you know, it’s like, oh, okay, actually decision, I need to, I need to think a little bit more deeply about this thing that I want and the justification behind it, and why and how I’m going to do it. And so, I yeah, I really, I think I didn’t see it at the time. Right at the time. I was like, annoyed. I was like, Come on, just like yeah, right. But now.

51:29

Yeah. It was like, it’s funny. I was telling, you know, my dad, I was in Scouting my whole life. And my dad was my Scoutmaster. And I’m an Eagle Scout. And at that, like, I am now a leader for my own kids in scouting. And, like, it’s so much work, dude. Like, there’s meetings, and there’s parent committees and like, all this stuff, right. And I told my dad recently, like, you know, the last couple years,

51:55

I was like, thank you, I just didn’t realize how much work it was, like doing all this stuff for your kids growing up. And like, it took me 30 years, basically, to appreciate, like, all the things that we do for our kids, and hopefully later in life for our kids, they’ll thank us for the same you know, like, thanks that they’ll give us later in life. But yeah, it’s just like, you just have to commit to it. And thank you, you know, hopefully you’ll turn out to be good, good humans. Look, obviously we can’t predict but, you know, sometimes they become good humans, even in spite of their parents. So, I guess kind of like what I found, you know, very true. Very true. That’s a good, it’s a good my dad always actually on that point, my dad, I know, we’re like towards the end. We’re just bantering now, but like, my dad describes that as the pendulum where you can either choose to follow the saying, it’s like a swing back and forth between generations.

52:45

You can either choose to be like your parents, or you were abusive, or they weren’t. Or you can switch, choose to let it skip the generation and do the complete opposite of what your parents said. or grandparents or whatever. And that’s a choice. It’s a choice you have. It swung a beautiful, beautiful statement. Most people don’t recognize that right? They think it’s destiny. Know the choices you make today. Make your destiny tomorrow. Amazing. Amazing.

53:18

Amazing thing. You sure this got deep for swinging a list building podcast, don’t you think? Like, oh, I love having deep conversations with my rabbi. So, it’s all good. I was raised Jewish actually, too. That’s funny. Yeah, so yeah, these are the most fun conversations anyway. Yeah, sometimes I feel that the reason I decided that I wanted to make a lot of money is so I can have more time to just have these conversations. You know, just stay up with a friend for like, until 2am having an argument about some kind of deep meaning of life and stuff. Yeah. Anyway, creator wizard.com/join to find out more about you to work with you to get free sponsorship deals that you throw, apparently throw at people.

54:04

Thank you so much for sharing your story. It’s been so inspiring. And thank you for raising awareness for sponsorship deals in deal making. For more streams of income for diversification, and, you know, a truly inspiring journey that I’m glad we spend this hour together. Thank you, man. Absolutely, man, anyone listening, go out there, get that bag.

54:30

Thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle, get access to the previous episode’s transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also, remember to claim your free copy of my bestselling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package