Imagine waking up every morning to help creators maximize their potential. It's a powerful purpose and one that creator and entrepreneur, Justin Moore, holds dearly.
In this episode Danny talks to a brand deal wizard, Justin Moore. Justin is a creator, entrepreneur and teacher whose mission in life is to help creators secure 1M brand deals by 2032. Powerful!
It all started when he and his wife stumbled upon the power of creating videos. They've done it all together—daily vlogged, built large followings across all social media platforms and set up weekly live shopping streams. This experience gave Justin a look into the creator industry that many don't get to see.
Recently, he built two courses: 1) Brand Deal Wizard and 2) Gifted to Paid. Each serves a different purpose for creators. At the end of the day, these courses help creators realize how to maximize their potential. Funny enough, being a successful creator requires strong negotiation and sales skills. Justin is the man that brings clarity to a blurry reality. Want to learn more? Sign up for his newsletter!
It's safe to say Justin is a creator, not an influencer. He cares for his audience and takes the craft of storytelling very seriously.
Check out Justin on all socials—YouTube, Instagram and Twitter
Danny Desatnik
Hey, I'm Danny Desatnik and this is a podcast All about creators, but not just any creators, I'm talking about captivating storytellers, masterful videographers and generational writers.
Each conversation explores the impact the true impact creators have on the people around them, it could be their friends, it could be their family, it could be the audience, and it could just be the wider world.
What you'll find is not only astonishing, but so inspiring, so welcome to season two, and what you'll notice is a couple changes from season one first is the music.
I wanted something that almost matched the energy that I like to bring to this podcast and this new track does exactly that.
It is fantastic.
The second thing is the structure, I was listening to a hidden Hillier smith talk a couple of days ago, that's Logan paul's editor, and he talks about how quite often when you're trying to get a great story across, you need to what he calls Kill your Darlings, meaning the scenes or the conversation to the elements that you love, but might actually not be so important to progressing the full story of the full production and last season I would record for an hour And I think I killed a lot of darlings because a lot of the time I brought the conversation down to 30 or 35 minutes.
But some of the conversations were just so phenomenal and gripping that I kind of hated that I had to take out some of this time.
So this year I'm gonna try something different.
I'm gonna let the conversation dictate how long I record for maybe some weeks it's 35 minutes, maybe other weeks.
It's 45 minutes.
But at the end of the day, if it's a great conversation that is purposeful and there's new information and there's unique perspectives.
That's not something I want you guys to miss out on.
And finally, I'm going to try and bring a little of my own sauce before end, after the episode.
Before the episode, I'm going to bring one thing that I've found over the past week related to the creator space or creators that I'm really interested in and for 10 to 15 seconds, just explain why maybe it's something that will be curiosity for you guys.
And after each episode, I'm just going to recap one of my favorite quotes.
I think quotes are some of the most powerful things that we can keep around us.
They are north stars.
They're great reminders.
That's like the coffee in the morning or the ticker.
The alarm that you put on your phone to remind you to stay productive.
The one thing this week that I've been thinking about a lot is this idea of companies buying the rights to Youtube creators catalog.
So jealous Mack just announced a $500 million fund.
There's a company spotter that does this.
And essentially they're saying, hey, creator give me all your adsense related to a certain amount of videos in your catalog for X number of years and in return, we'll give you a lump sum payment today.
The most exciting thing about that is if a creator needs a lot of money today in order to take that next step or take on a massive project that they've always wanted to do.
And yes, there's brand deals, but the amount of money that they may be able to get from a lump sum related to their content could be life changing.
So watch out for that.
Let's get to this week's episode.
I'm speaking with Justin moore now.
I'm not going to give a whole intro on Justin moore, but I'm gonna tell you three things about him.
One he is a what he likes to call and rightfully so a brand deal wizard.
He's been in this space for so long as a creator and now helping other creators.
I really understand how to be a creator, the business side of a creator, what you have to look out for.
The second thing is his purpose.
He's on a mission to help creators get a total of one million brand deals by 2032 and what a mission that you don't hear people doing that often.
Justin Moore
And the third thing is this guy is just such a nice dude.
Danny Desatnik
We had such a fun conversation, a lot of smiles, a lot of laughs, but also a lot of nuggets that made me think where this space is going to go, you'll hear as I always do, I use the word interesting way too much.
But anyway, let's get to the good stuff.
Here's my conversation with Justin moore.
Why did you want to become a creator and when did that happen man?
Justin Moore
If it wasn't for my wife april, I would not be where I am today.
I mean she truly is the creative genius behind all of this.
I was in medical devices before this man, like I was had no conception.
Like I essentially, when my wife, when we got together, my wife had never watched a Youtube video.
She didn't even, she thought it was just cat videos, like literally and When I first I was no, this is really cool, like people are uploading videos on here.
This was like 2008, 2000 and seven timeframe, right?
Like early days and then she started, watching some of the early beauty gurus, like Michelle Fawn and like others and she had a real sincere interest for cosmetics and makeup and things like that and she didn't know anyone in her life was like into that kind of thing.
So she started watching those videos and I just kept saying like you would be so great at this.
Like I'm telling you like you, you can do this and it took me I think a good year of me kind of like trying to like gently push her into, trying it.
And sure enough like she, uploaded her first, we shot our first video with our webcam.
I literally had I don't know, it's probably like a, like a 4 80 webcam or even happier than that.
And then we edit it and literally Windows movie maker.
I remember this and it was so funny.
You can go back and look at some of the first videos on the channel.
And so it was very much in the early days I had nothing to do with it.
I was she was just making videos in the early days and then brands started to knock.
It was first it was like free products hey, we'll send you this free product.
And she was like stoked right?
It was like free products like this is awesome, right?
And then you know the first brand that reached out and was hey, we're actually gonna we're going to pay you to like talk about us.
She was just what is happening?
Because she was a preschool teacher.
And again, I was like in medical devices.
I was getting my M. B.
A. I was in business school at the time, you know when that happened, she was just what do I do?
And I was oh here I am like in business school, I can like read this contract type of thing, right?
Little did I know what I was getting myself into and like early days, influencer marketing and no one had any idea what to charge, no one had any idea what a contract should look what the terms are that you should be considering with respect to your pricing and all this stuff.
And so I, we just kind of like kicked down the door to the space and try to like crash our way through this because we had no idea.
Danny Desatnik
It's so funny.
You talk about, you look back at your initial videos and you know the camera that you used and the quality and how you edited it.
I'm actually trying to start a Youtube channel right now and I released my first video last week and when I rewatched it back, the first thing in my mind was I was how am I going to see this in a year and I think it's so great now, but how am I going to see this in a year?
And I feel so embarrassed by this video?
It must be crazy to see the transformation that you've gone through what is now common knowledge for you both On the business side.
On the creative side, that back then seems so common knowledge.
It was like ignorance is bliss I guess.
Justin Moore
Well, I think it's funny because we've been over a decade now on Youtube and we're on other platforms and stuff too, but like we still consider ourselves Youtubers because that's how we started, just like long form video, but just kind of a funny anecdote, like we daily vlog for over three years, didn't miss a day.
So like over 1000 videos, something like that.
And so it's I, I know the grind like we were ogi Youtubers in that regard, right?
I recently started creating content for other creators to help educate them to be more business savvy with respect to sponsorships and that type of stuff.
And I got back really seriously into like actually making okay, I'm gonna sit down on this video.
I'm going to teach something that's gonna be 10 tips.
It's going to be, it's just different than vlogging.
It's a different format, right?
You play planning, scripting all this stuff, right?
Thumbnail strategy, title, strategy, etcetera.
So I hired Patti Galloway.
If you know him, he's like a genius guru, Legend guy.
Who has an amazing channel of his own.
But I was let me, let me if I'm gonna do this.
Like seriously, let me hire Patti get him to like look in the, in the, the guts of my youtube channel analytics and stuff and make some recommendations.
And the video that he was like basically looked at this was like six months ago roughly.
I was pretty proud of.
I was wow, this is a good video.
I like this, right?
And then he goes in there and just like do this, do this change this, change this?
And I was very humbling, right?
But but then I haven't talked about it in six months and Yesterday or two days ago I just released my recent video called how I lost $24,000 on a sponsorship fail and patty did this drive by comment?
Like I haven't talked to him, he made left this comment.
He said, it is so incredible to see the transformation that this video is from the first one.
I looked at the pacing, the delivery, the story, the thumbnail, the title is incredible and I was just like it's just so validating.
It's like I was, I told him I was this is going to keep me going for the next 100 videos, right?
Because it's just like with someone that you respect so much and you you really are putting in the hard work and trying to improve yourself.
That's why I think it's so critical as a creator, he made this comment which I think I want to mention this and for everyone to hear because I think it's really critical is that he said and he was looking at our content and this is just more generally for a lot of creators is that creators who are seeing a slow decline in their performance and in the, the analytics of their content who have been around for a long time.
One of the reasons why is because they're still making content that worked in 2018 and they don't understand why like why is this not working?
And so much has changed with respect to what the platforms prioritize everyone likes to talk about the algorithm, but it's really about consumers viewing behavior, right?
This big shift to short form content on Tiktok and Youtube shorts etcetera.
And just like even for long form content on Youtube, people are prioritizing different things.
They're watching different things even on your own channel.
Right?
So, that was that really resonated with me because I was you know what, if you want to be doing this, for a living and actually make your income doing this.
You have to be a student of the process.
Danny Desatnik
It's super interesting, but also quite challenging to live in a world where we are driven by these platforms and these platforms are driven by an algorithm and those algorithms are driven by a profit based agenda.
A lot of the time, it reminds me a lot of the music industry where if you look at the length of a song, pre Spotify and then the length of a song now it is vastly shorter coming back to you.
I think it's cool to hear that there's that awareness, right?
It's not, I did so well then you've done so many things you and your wife have had seen, have seen a ton of success in various different areas.
But the fact that you still maintain that today and you're teaching people about that mentality, there's the walk and the talk, I appreciate that.
Justin Moore
And I think it's very easy to get demoralized I think because it's just why aren't, people get frustrated?
Like why isn't the platform serving my content to the people who said that they wanted to follow me, right?
It's this tension because it's like the platform is really just trying to keep people on the platform for the longest possible time to maximize, watch time and maximize advertising, monetize able inventory for advertising revenue and stuff.
So it's a very interesting tension.
It is the other drum I beat, which I think is really critical is like owning your audience right?
Having an email list.
We've been on, we've been creators for a really long time and I just started like an email list like maybe a year ago.
And so I have about 2200 creators on it and I send sponsorship opportunities every single week to them.
And so it's just it's been even that has been discovering myself in the written word has been a really cool thing because it's like I love writing, but I've never had really an outlet to do that.
And so having a newsletter is just another, as any creator, I feel like you always want to have that ability to just like reach your audience, whether it's for, having that intimate connection with them or promoting something directly to them, whether it's, courses or merchandise or whatever it is, I think that's so critical.
Danny Desatnik
Well, I've been thinking about a ton and I'm not going to go down this tangent because we've got a lot of other great stuff to talk about.
But it's this idea of world building or universe building, You have your content plus you have your following which lives on these platforms.
And then here comes the course, which we're going to get into.
But here comes this email newsletter to and there's so many different doors that can lead into the world of Justin moore, you're just opening up more doors, more doors mean more people, more eyeballs, more eyeballs, hopefully greater success.
But I kind of want to get to this idea of building courses because you and I could 100% talk for 2.5 hours and hit every revenue stream that you have and maybe that's part two, part three, part four, but talk to me about the idea of a course.
Let's go to the beginning.
What made you think I want to start a course And what were the first couple of things that were most important to you when starting that course?
Justin Moore
Sure.
So like I said, we've been creators for over a decade have never really directly monetize our influence.
And when I say directly, I mean never sold anything really directly to our followers.
Like most creators indirectly monetize their influence.
So sponsorships and Youtube ad revenue and things like that where there never having to actually make the ask to their followers.
Hey, directly support me, I think, Patreon has, has really destigmatize this type of idea, where it's just hey, I want to like directly contribute to the, helping this amazing person make more content.
And so we actually had a failed attempt at making a kind of exclusive, exclusive content play early on in the days of Youtube and we were ridiculed like we were basically like sell out it really did not go over well.
And so it was like a major lesson for us.
It's it was a combination of wasn't really what our followers wanted, but also just timing wise, people weren't are, people weren't used to that idea of hey, I'm gonna pay this creator when I'm used to like watching it for free on Youtube.
Right?
So, so that's like a big, a big mentality thing, right?
It's, it's much more commonplace today.
So that's one thing, The second thing is that when I started creating content to help other creators with sponsorships, I did not have any idea that I was going to like create a course, it was more like I need this content to exist because it did not exist, right?
Because I have been directly privately helping out my friends and people in my network with negotiations because I have also run an influencer marketing agency for over six years.
And so I've been on the other side of the fence of like helping these brands decide okay, who, which influencers are going to select?
So it's just like a totally different process mentally.
And so I was just you know what I need to like people are making so many mistakes, I just need to like make this content and like get it out in the world and then I'll get that out of my system, right?
So I really didn't plan much beyond that.
And so I pumped out I don't know, maybe 20 or 30 videos, all the, like big stuff, right?
Exclusivity usage rights, whitelisting, like negotiating, like pricing like all the all this stuff that I was these videos need to exist, right?
And then once I did that, people started making requests and I was okay, like I guess I'll just keep doing this thing right?
And then people started demanding me, people started out, you know offering to pay me, but I was just wow, this is interesting, like I guess this is a gap, right?
And so basically my logic going into this was just like I had an idea that like maybe I could monetize this thing at some point down the line, but I really was not part of the road map.
And so basically what I did when I was okay, you know what, I'm gonna like product eyes this, I mean like my knowledge, my expertise, I think I have something here about how my wife and I have been able to maintain a full time income as creators for over eight years, especially largely from sponsorships.
I think I have some sort of framework and methodology here.
And so what I did was not actually make the course, initially it was I was let me do one on one coaching first, so let me actually directly work and prove this methodology out before I try and like impact hundreds of people because that's a terrible idea.
You don't want to like teach a bunch of stuff to people who that's not going to actually get them the transformation that you're hoping for.
And so that's what I did, I did 11 on, one on one coaching.
I got some incredible case studies and transforming, testimonials from people and then everything has developed from their other courses and like workshops and potentially launching a membership community, all this stuff, so it's just been very organic process candidly, as you were saying all of this right away, there was one name that just stood out to me, have you heard of sal khan?
Danny Desatnik
The Khan Academy?
Justin Moore
Of course, yes, absolutely.
Danny Desatnik
Your story is very similar to his, his is I think he had a niece that needed help across the world, right, with Math, that's how it started and more people got onto it.
But the interesting thing that I took away from what you were saying is how, you were ridiculed for trying to sell products directly yet courses, there's such a strong level of value, especially if it integrates with what your content and who you are as a person and as a creator, it almost feels like this was bound to happen, it almost feels like you were bound to be successful in it because all the pieces were in place and it was just so purposeful.
Justin Moore
It's funny because I actually was just driving with my wife in the car the other day and I told her I turned to her and I said, I feel like I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing right now, Like I'm it's like I've never literally, never in my life have I felt like that before, I've always felt like there was just something else for me, like a next chapter or something and like I've always wanted to be a teacher, I've always wanted to help people and literally do.
I got I got a testimonial from a Tiktok creator a couple like last week and she said in the testimonial, I can send it to you.
It's really crazy.
She said prior to taking your course, I was making $1400 to $2000 a month.
That was like roughly what I was making within two weeks of doing your course, I was making 33.
I mean I had signed $30,000 of deals and now I'm making 40 to $50,000 a month.
Seems a little hard to believe like how could you go from like charging that?
Like making that to like literally 20 X in your income, 30 X in your income overnight.
But it's like that is the level that is the gap in knowledge and expertise that exists in the creator economy.
And that is my I have a mission To help creators big and small land one million sponsorships by 2032.
Danny Desatnik
Tell me about that mission because through this podcast, interviewing a bunch of different creators, a bunch of different supporters of the space, there's a whole range, some people just love it for the creative aspects, Some love it for an element of getting them to a point in their life where they can do whatever they want.
Some have like yourself and like some others, I can think of someone who I interviewed, her name is Maddie johnson, She runs an account called Living With Pickles.
Also everything, there is a purpose to what she's doing and when I saw that on your site, I was man, that is so powerful, what a cool mission to be on and you genuinely care there.
Justin Moore
There was this, there was this inflection point that I experienced going through the process of creating the chorus and working with so many creators over the last year and a half and helping them achieve that.
There is this aha moment that I see in people's eyes when they get their either their first paying deal.
So I have a separate course called Gifted to paid, where I help you transition from getting a bunch of free product offers from brands.
And then how do you, how do you actually transform those into paid partnerships?
So that's the, that's the one inflection point where it's like that milestone is huge.
It's wow, I can actually make money from this, right?
So that's one thing and it's, I get goose bumps every time I get a DM from someone oh my God, I watched your Youtube video and I finally, like with someone in my livestream today said they just got on €1000 brand deal, That was the first one.
And they were everyone in the chat was because this has been someone who's been watching for six months, right?
And so it's like that moment, it's just like I live for that.
And so it's like that's the moment and then the other moment, which is for creators who have been doing partnerships, but it's like they go from charging $1000 opposed to $10,000 post, right?
And it's like that other inflection point where it's just like you realize, wow, like what I'm doing is extremely valuable to brands and to other people that I'm partnering with.
And so like those two, those are the two highs that I chase is though when I get people to experience those and so it's like the mission behind helping people achieve a million sponsorships in the next 10 years.
It's bigger than me.
It's not just about I don't care if you take my courses or work and watch my video.
I don't care like I have, I'm going to be basically be creating if you see this, led ticker behind my, my left shoulder here.
Those of you watching on the pod, just imagine this like it is going to be alive counter live of the amount of sponsorships that were at, so as a community is gonna be a leaderboard, there's going to be a whole community around this, everyone cheering each other on basically being able to monetize your influence and be able to help you pursue your passion, right?
I call it Passion Freedom, right?
It's like I wrote an email to my newsletter about this recently where it's so many people did not get into this to be like business people, right?
They got into it for the love of the craft, but they realized quickly that to be able to pursue the craft, they need to be able to have a certain level of time and financial freedom to do so.
And so that's where I come in is like helping you have a business mindset around, especially sponsorships because that plays up a big, a big chunk of a lot of creators revenue mix, helping you transform that so you can go back to what you love most, which is creating content.
Danny Desatnik
Okay, well, I'm, I don't know when that millions coming, I'm there whatever party or sponsorship you need, I don't know if I'll still be working at hashtag pay, but if I still am, we're supplying sweaters, were supplying brand deal, whatever the hell it is.
That sounds so excited.
Do you think, do you think about that often?
Like what you're going to do with that million?
Justin Moore
So it's funny, so that is where the mission came from.
I'm part of a course creator mastermind.
I actually joined it recently.
I paid $10,000 to be part of this mastermind.
It was I dropped $10,000 on my credit card to be part of this mastermind, but it was it's, going back to the whole idea of surrounding your learning, surrounding yourself with other people who are like at the place you want to be at and one of the exercises of this group was we had a person come in and amazing, basically, he, he taught us all called, it's called the visioning process, where it's like the, you think, what is the north star of your business and its and you do not write your mission as though like it's something you're going to be dreaming of at one point in the future.
It is no, you pick a literally a date in the future and you designed it all around as if it's already happened.
So it's I thought to myself what, what do I want, like what do I want to accomplish in the next five years or 10 years?
And it's just I'm now envisioning like once you pick that date and you start like actually envisioning what it would take for that to happen, everything falls into place because it's just okay, wow, now, if I want to actually make that happen, that's 100,000 sponsorships per year or if we're being, I've really thought about this, okay, if we're really being serious, it's probably not, I'm probably not gonna hit 100,000 the first year, Maybe not in the first two years, but it's going to start to accelerate once more people start to talk about it, right?
You have to start getting processes in place.
This is not just Justin anymore, This is a company, this is other people, this is maybe other creators coming in teaching other courses about growth strategies, right?
Because that directly correlates the sponsorship, so it's just like all of a sudden everything is so, so much more clarified.
And the other billion thing about doing this is that it helps you realize that maybe the business model that you thought you wanted as a creator really isn't right?
Because if I want to be making a certain amount of money, if I want this other goal and you're thinking I'm gonna be teaching 1000 people a year in my courses, that's not gonna make it, that's not gonna, you're not gonna be able to make that happen.
So it's just, it's a brilliant.
I think I encourage all creators, even if you don't have a course to start thinking about what your North star is, because it's gonna help unlock a lot of blocks that you may be experiencing.
Danny Desatnik
Do a creator named rob lawless or robbed 10-K friends, I don't oh man, I'm connecting you to and you guys are gonna have such a killer conversation.
His, his mission since 2017 Was to meet 10,000 people for an hour each.
Oh my gosh!
And he's at like close to 5K right now.
He came on the pot.
He was actually my the last episode of 2021 and also just so purposeful.
Like his whole thing is, you don't know what you don't know.
So by meeting more people are going to start to learn what you don't know and that's going to help shape perception, whereas for you, obviously it's a little bit different because it's specific to what you love.
But man just powerful listening to this dude, it's just exciting, I appreciate that so much man and to your point like about meeting different people like I am all the time Twitter for the win, man, that's how we met, right?
Justin Moore
And it's like I have connected with so many people, like I'm speaking at a conference that's going to be attended by like 25,000 creators next week.
And one of the things I did prior to, to doing the conferences I went through and IDM every other speaker and I said it's so nice to meet you, I'm so excited to be sharing the stage with you.
I just wanted to introduce myself, I can't wait to hear you speak, that's it, right?
And like all these other, these are people who like really would literally have no direct connection with me really like there's one person who's like an online cpr instructor teaching, he has of course about that.
There's one person, like just all very eclectic types of things, but it's like awesome.
They have these amazing businesses and it's just like my whole goal is I want to learn from you.
Like you're, you're amazing.
I don't care how many followers you have.
I don't know if I'm bigger or smaller and I don't give a crap, right?
I DM someone who had 450,000 followers on instagram.
I have 2500 on my instagram and he responded within five minutes.
He said email me, we exchanged like 15 emails yet last night all about this stuff.
So it's just you gotta shoot your shot.
Like I am come from a place of service and like wanting to help people and it's just like people, you just, you, the worst that someone can say if you reach out, wanting to connect is no or they don't respond and then you're no worse off.
Danny Desatnik
I'm sure this is a conversation you have with creators through your course or just in general all the time.
Right?
It's just shoot your shot.
Come with either a bit of value.
Obviously depending where you are in terms of how many followers you have, like the message may change, but I think again, it's just a, it's so simple, but shoot your shot, you don't know what's going to happen if there's unlimited upside and there's unless you're, there's zero downtime, to be honest, like what I have found, we had actually a whole session about this in my course last cohort, all about confidence because what I have found is that it's not enough to actually teach people frameworks and teach people hey, this is what you say when you reach out to a brand, like the, the engineer in me, like I was an engineer trained and like that, I think I'm like objective and it's oh, I'll give it to you and you'll do it right?
Justin Moore
But it's much more complicated than that.
Like a lot of it comes down to like fear of rejection.
People, actually sending something what that would mean for their own self image and self confidence and imposter syndrome, they probably already have imposter syndrome being putting themselves out there on social media, right?
So it's like getting rejected from a brand or not hearing back.
It's there's a lot of like psychological stuff related to that.
And so it was very fascinating to hear other that's one of the things I love about doing the course is that it's not just, it's cohort, it's live right?
It's, it's not oh you like go and you consume it in the isolation and it's like lots of other creators on the call the Q.
And A sessions are incredible.
And so it's people share, wow, like this is, this was the block for me or I finally got over, I finally made my first pitch because I was so concerned about, brands just like ghosting me or not responding or the worst, the worst one for a lot of people was wow, the brand actually responded, what the heck do I do now?
Right.
So, you think that would be a good thing, but like that there's a lot of fear associated with some of these things.
So very, very, very fascinating.
Danny Desatnik
Shoot your shot with the hot girl.
You're she's never gonna, it's never going to turn around and say, let's go on a date and then you're just frozen in time because you haven't thought that far makes it makes a ton of sense.
But it also hearing you talk about all this, the fact that you've always enjoyed teaching your wife was a preschool teacher or potentially still is.
And there's this element now of really enjoying seeing that transformation.
It sounds like you're running the new age school for these creators are these creatives to make something out of their life.
And it's wild to take a step back and be well, this could genuinely be a school.
Justin Moore
It's funny, like I i in the on the biography section of the about me section of my blog.
I recently actually added that word I said, what is creator talking about creator wizard.
And it's, it's a school and community to help you find and negotiate your dream sponsorship so that you stop leaving thousands on the table.
And like I, I didn't set out to like start a school I've even thought of what would it mean to like get accredited, to have some sort of certification or like some sort of degree program or something, Because it's even if you, if you look at any recent studies that have said, oh, 75% of kids or gen z or whatever want to be creators, even if a very small fraction of that turns out to be the case, that's a lot of people write much more than our creators today.
Right?
So that's a whole other generation of people actually creating content, but also audiences.
Right?
So, I'm still figuring out what that, how I fit into that.
But as an anecdote to that, we, when our kids were born, I have a four year old and a seven year old liam and Jacob and we set up college funds for them when they, it's called the 5 29 account in the US.
And you basically can put money in their tax deferred.
So you don't actually pay taxes as long as when you actually use the money, it goes to like an educational expense.
But we actually stopped, we contributed every time we did a sponsorship that like they were in it or something.
We like put money away and so it's like there's a lot of money in there now, but we actually recently stopped contributing it to that and put it into a normal, money market account into like Fidelity account or whatever.
Because our logic was what is college going to look like in 11 years when our oldest son goes to like graduates high school, maybe he's not going to go to U C L. A.
Which is my well actually he can't go to school.
He has to go to Berkeley because I don't want him to leave the Bay Area where I am.
No, but for real, I would be okay with saying hey, if you want, you can go to college or you can start a business or you can maybe you want to be a creator and I don't, I don't know what you want to do is things are going to look a lot different in a decade.
And so I think that just speaks to like the how quickly things are changing for the next generation.
Danny Desatnik
There's creator now.
Zack and Zack Almodovar kate Ward and Iraq's course also where it's I think their tagline or their description is film school reimagined and to your point, it's very interesting thinking about, okay, well everyone has been given a platform to showcase whatever it is they want, whether it's very technical, math science or something more spiritual or just hilarious, whatever it may be, but there is now a platform again to showcase who you are, build your skills and it's almost like an all you can eat menu.
Hey, I wanted to I want to learn about being a creator wizard.
I want to learn about running my own business or writing my own book.
I'm sure there's a creator that talks about self publishing on and on that, to your point.
It is so cool.
And that's what that's one element of the creator space I'm fascinated with is it's just it's decentralized school because you're monetizing incredible knowledge and all these people are as accredited maybe and maybe not science and some other fields, but wild to think where this is all going to go.
Justin Moore
The interesting part also that I've learned is that not every creator wants to be an educator, not everyone wants to actually teach, teach the next generation of D I. Y creators or something like that.
So it's been that's also been another interesting thing to me as I've seen this explosion of like cohort based courses and just, lots of investment capital going into creator economy startups and things like that right now, just this all this space being built out very quickly.
I think it's going to be very interesting to see because candidly, a lot of these startups that are, cropping up right now to serve the creator economy, I think they're going to, they're going to be in for a rude awakening to be completely honest because the main reason I think is a lot of them, like we talked about earlier is this whole indirect versus direct monetization angle.
It's like there's still like creators, there's a lot of craters are still very uncomfortable having sales conversations with their followers, they're just not.
And so like a lot of these are all about oh, monetizing your Lincoln bio and like have, give me 10 bucks to give you a shout out of like all the stuff like obviously cameo, there's been success in this space.
I think a lot of these companies are underestimating the trepidation that a lot of these creators have to actually say hey, pay me to their followers, it's so much easier to like just take a sponsorship or get Youtube adsense and things like that too.
So that's 11 thing that was unexpected I would say because I am comfortable having those conversations but a lot of people aren't and so it's just I'm just going to be very curious to see if there is like enough demand to sustain all the startups that are cropping up to your point, where is this all going?
Danny Desatnik
Are you writing a hype wave or you truly understanding the people that you're trying to serve and what they really need, but you've figured out a model that works, you're doing incredibly well.
So we don't have to talk about what potentially could go wrong.
Give me an overview of the course, let's say I'm a creator and I want to come in, I hear about this course, what can I expect?
What am I, what am I going to learn?
And essentially it's like how do you sell it?
Justin Moore
Sure.
So, the first and foremost, I think the most important thing is that there is a requirement that you have already done at least one paid brand partnership to participate.
And the reason that I set that requirement is because it is more of an intermediate to advanced level course about how you can start charging a lot more money for your, for your sponsorships.
And the reason I did that is because I wanted to ensure that there was, I didn't want to be oh you have to have like 10,000 followers or something like that.
There's That's ambiguous because you could have 2000 followers and still be working with a lot of brands because you have amazing content, etc.
So it's that felt silly to me, but it's I feel, I felt like having done at least having some experience under your belt, working with brands will help prepare you for the fire hose of information that's about to happen to you, right?
Because I literally, people will and that's honestly something I'm working on is like people will like get like I'll finish and get into the Q&A section.
It's just like shell shocked because it's like so much information, but it's like the and so essentially it's, it's a four week live course taught over zoom and first week is all about pitching strategy.
So it's all about how, how you can craft compelling pitches, how you can understand who actually contacted brands because that's very complicated.
Like for six years running an agency, I was schooled in that over many years.
It's the marketing manager at a very large brand is not the person handling paid influencer activations, but if it's a 30 person company, it probably is.
Right?
So this is all these little subtleties like that.
So that's week one week two is all about pricing and negotiation strategy.
The hot topic, everyone wants to know what, what should I charge.
Like it's very difficult.
I know hashtag page has a lot of great tools to help people you know understand of course, that was for real man, this is, this is the hashtag paint pot, I've got to give us a shout out, truly like there's a lot of it's just very hard sometimes to understand your worth as a creator.
So I thought I have like calculators in the course and things like that to talking about, price anchoring and packages and just all that stuff.
Week three is all about execution.
A lot of creatures don't think about this, which is just oh, that's like just when you take the photo, you make the video, it's like that's easy, right?
But actually this portion of the partnership is will actually largely determine whether they decide to hire you again or not.
And so talk all about best practices, content delivery, how you actually deliver the content things to check ahead of time, all about the influencer briefing, adhering, making sure that the brand is providing all the information that you need and that kind of thing.
And then week four is all about nurturing.
So once you've actually completed the deal, how can you follow up in non annoying ways?
Delivering value rather than just being hey, I want to check in, do you see it?
Do you have any opportunities for me?
No, that's not how you follow up, There's all these, there's a whole litany of other things that you should be doing to stay top of mind for the brand and so, and the reason I want to like real quickly hone in on this point, which is a big error that a lot of creators make, which is that when they reach out to brands, talking about a partnership, they get very frustrated because the brand says, hey, so great to meet you if they respond, hey, so great to meet you, but we're not, we don't have any paid campaigns right now, that's like a common refrain, right?
And I want to tell all creators listening why that is, brands and agencies have budgets, budgets that they plan out months, quarters, sometimes up to a year in advance.
Okay.
And so when you're reaching out on february 22nd or with some random date, they likely have allocated all the budget for Q one and maybe even que tu at that point, okay.
When the brand decides to run a paid, influencer activation, maybe they will have 1 to 2 weeks of recruitment period where they're actually actively looking for creators to run that campaign.
Okay.
And so the chances of you reaching out during that active recruitment phase are very low, unless it's a brand that's doing ongoing sustained influence for promotion.
I know a lot of, brands on the hashtag paid platform probably are because, they see the value, but a lot of brands still, it's we're going to run this one campaign in Q two, that's gonna be the whole campaign that we do for 2022.
And so it's really important to have that mindset where it's just like when you're reaching out to brands and pitching them, the goal is not to like land a paying partnership, right, then it's to establish the relationship so that when they are ready to recruit, influencers then you're top of mind.
And so I wanted to like put that out there because it's very important to shift your mindset from one of short term to long term.
Danny Desatnik
And I think even more importantly, you should have this talk with marketers and with these brands.
What's so interesting and I feel like I keep using the word interesting, I had to find a different, maybe I can put this through like some audio filter and it'll give me like a synonym because I keep saying interesting is I piloted an event at Hashtag paid, I called it meet the creators and it was essentially speed dating between creators and marketers outside of a campaign deliverable context.
So just let's get to know each other, let's ask questions and I can't tell you the difference in communication and how marketers were oh wow, I didn't realize that and then info that they learned from a creator or all the ideas that the creator gave me were amazing.
I'm saying to myself like hang on, this doesn't make sense, Like the whole process is you find the creator you want to work with you guys go back and forth and come up with the idea like why was there this element of elation that wasn't seen in the campaign deliverable context and it's exactly your point is they're so focused on, I need to see this result in two weeks for this campaign done so they don't want to think about oh how do we stretch the bounds or how do we do something that's maybe different.
And now I'm kind of interested out of those four elements that you talked about that your course offers, your course covers?
Which element do you see creators get the most excited or like the most value from?
I get they probably get value from the whole thing but what's the element where they're all like very wide eyed.
Justin Moore
So I have made an attempt and I have done this, this will be my fifth cohort coming up.
So I've got a lot of experience under my belt on this now.
And I try to inject one aha moment into every to at least like to each week right?
Where it's just like whoa, like eyes wide open type idea what has been, I think the biggest eyes wide open experience is actually walking through real negotiations that my wife and I have done other creators have done, I actually I'm very transparent like I, I think that the only way a lot of people learn is like hearing stories right, I can talk about frameworks and methodologies until I'm blue in the face, but when I share real stories of real brands and like this is actually what happened.
So one example is like we had a deal come in and the brand initially wanted to offer, a certain amount and then when I, when I walked through the entire thing and when you get to the actual amount that they paid, people are just like absolutely blown away because it's just like really, really what it's about is like being a detective because when a you, a lot of creators think that oh when a brand reaches out and asks how much you charge for one instagram post, they just spit back out the number and they don't ask any questions, they don't qualify the opportunity whatsoever.
The biggest and most important takeaway that anyone listening can take away from this is that the number one thing you should ask a brand is, what is the goal of this campaign?
Okay, because there's three main brand campaign goal types that every brand is gonna want to accomplish.
The first one is a conversion focus campaign.
They want to drive sales, they want to drive clicks, they want to drive app, downloads something very specific.
Okay, the next one is content repurposing where the brand actually wants to take your content, they don't even really care that you posted on your platform, they want to put it on their instagram or they want to use it for paid ads or whatever, right?
And then the last campaign goal type is brand awareness.
This is where the metrics are squishy ist, right?
They want to drive views, they want to drive impressions, they want to drive engagement, they wanna drive comments, right?
It is absolutely critical that you understand what goal the brand is trying to accomplish because your proposal should change.
What happens when they say, oh well actually we're most excited about getting a bunch of great content from you that we can use.
Well then you come back to them and you say, hey, well, I know you said you just wanted like one instagram video, but I can actually make you five and yes, the investment is gonna be, four times as much money or five times as much money, but here's why that's valuable, right?
And so it's just how can you possibly craft a compelling pitch unless you know what they're trying to accomplish brands, you might, you might think they want, you might think they, you know what they want, but oftentimes you don't, so a lot of it comes down to like actually being interested in seeing the brand win and you can like make so much more money up selling these types of deals for yourself, being the marketer on that side.
Danny Desatnik
It's funny how when a creator comes to us and says, hey, I want to create content for hashtag page platform.
The question I always ask is for sure, cool, what ideas do you have?
And sometimes if they come back and they're oh well I see that you guys are doing this and so this is what I'm gonna do this and this, this in my mind, I'm not running into my VP of marketing and like we have to do this now.
Like I don't care the budget it's going to take, we have to do this now.
So to your point, super, super valuable that again, they realize that you can be the catalyst to unlock ridiculous amounts of budget because you're the creative like you're the director.
Justin Moore
Yeah.
And and the other thing too that I really need everyone to hear, there's a lot of things, I really need everyone here, but this one too, so they can hear all of them by signing up for your course.
That's true.
Yes.
It's called brand deal wizard.
If you want to find out more information, just go to brand deal wizard dot com.
But that's, that's aside from point, what I want, what I want to everyone to really here is that this concept of a, of a sponsorship pipeline.
This is something I've been thinking about a lot more lately and teaching my course, which is that oftentimes creators will get into the situation where they'll be Oh crap, I don't know how I'm gonna pay my bills in 30 days, right?
And what I need you to hear is that is too late Because let's talk about how long sponsorships can take two bring to fruition and start to finish.
So let's say that you're pitching a brand.
Alright, okay, you pitch that you go out, you do some pitches, maybe it takes three weeks to hear back.
Okay, you get that, you hook them, you start talking about creative ideas.
What you can actually do with them takes two more weeks.
They've got to get approval.
Okay, that's five weeks down the drain right there.
Right then they say, okay, we actually want to see a concept from you that we can approve.
Okay, so they get that you get the concept and then they approve that it takes a week then they say, okay, green light, you got the green light to shoot or maybe they got it takes 1 to 2 weeks for them to ship the product to forget about that.
Right then, green light on the shoot.
Okay.
You shoot, it takes another week, you deliver the draft content for them to review, right?
That takes a week or two.
Actually three weeks now because legal has their hands in it.
Right, okay.
Three weeks are gone.
What are we at now?
I don't even know two months, 2.5 months.
Okay then, too long then they give you feedback on the draft, right, another week or two, you gotta revise it really resubmit it another approval round.
Okay then they finally assuming that's the final round of review then you're good to post but they actually don't want you to post for another two weeks because they wanted to, align with some other marketing stuff that's going up for their brand.
Okay then once you post it, you have to wait 60 to 90 days, 30 60 90 days to get paid.
So this is, 56 months sometimes not always, but 56 months.
This is like that scenario outlined is very common, especially with big brands, right?
56 months.
They actually get that money to hit your bank account.
And so that's what I teach is like how you can smooth out the lumpiness of your income with sponsorships because you need to have brands and agencies at every point of that process happening at different times, right?
So that everything is hitting when you needed to hit, you always have some money hitting in your bank account from a brand that you, nurtured four months ago.
So it's very difficult for creators to like understand this what's called, It really is like a sales pipeline.
Like how you can apply that for yourself as a creator and it's, it really unlocks a lot when you can start thinking about it that way.
Danny Desatnik
Okay, I'm gonna put you on the spot because two things 1 you said people learn best when they, when we tell stories, which is so true and to you said that you are an open book, I can imagine that there is a situation where you got blindsided by something like this.
Was there an instance in your mind that you can think of when you didn't have this deal pipeline figured out and you got smacked in the face because of the realities that come with this long process.
Justin Moore
100% right, when Covid hit, I mean that was like a really scary time for us both from my agency and for us personally as creators because we had contracts that were signed and like they had clauses basically would cover acts of God or pandemics and things like this too.
And they pulled the deals and so we had tens of thousands of dollars worth of deals kind of pulled from our plate for both the agency and us personally.
And there was a good, we're very fortunate because it was, it was a good like three weeks to a month of like really freaking out.
But then interestingly, things actually really started to take off because what happened, the olympics were canceled, big conglomerates that we're investing a billion dollars in the olympics had to reallocate their advertising dollars somehow a lot of that started flowing into this into the influencer space.
And so we were not just that, but that's an example of like brands started to have to like think on their feet and be how are we gonna, you started seeing all this campaign messaging of oh the new normal, and like this is etcetera, right?
Everyone had to pull their spots where they were hugging each other, eating stuff in public, like all this stuff, right?
But if you laugh like that actually happened right, right?
You remember all that?
And so it's like a lot of those dollars were re allocated and so we had a we were very fortunate, we had a very good year that year.
But it was very scary because we had, we did have other revenue streams and affiliates and other things like that.
But I mean for sure like we that was one of the crystallizing moments that started making me think more about this stuff because I hadn't up to that day that I hadn't really thought oh I have a framework for like getting sponsorships that wasn't I wasn't like thinking about that at night.
It was it was more just like when I sat down and thought like why is it that we've been able to be full time careers for eight years and like made so much money on sponsorship, there's like a reason, it's got to be a reason our viewership numbers On, let's say YouTube for example, are the lowest they've ever been by far.
Like the, probably the height of our YouTube viewership was like seven years ago when we were pregnant or something when you're having like our kids, right?
But it's like we have literally made, we made $700,000 last year.
Like we were very I talked about that on, on Twitter, like through sponsorships, amazon live affiliates my courses, all this stuff and I'm not saying that to flex but it's more to like be you don't have to like be at the height of your influence and getting crazy numbers to make money if you're smart about your business as a creator, it comes to a conversation that I have with a lot of people at work every single day and it's this idea that people like to say that influence from marketing and this world of influencer marketing, creative marketing, it's legitimate now, but from this conversation and listening to someone who's in the trenches every single day teaching this, also receiving it.
Danny Desatnik
Like you're playing both sides batman and Robin every day, there's so much left to go.
This seems massive, but to your point if 10% of creators run more legitimate operations, I'm not saying that what they're doing now isn't great, but again, like taking it to this level that you're helping these creators see brands will start to realize we truly are working with brands, we're not just working with the human, this excites me, but this also gets me frustrated.
Like people are oh, $22 million billion dollars, which is not, but it's, I think it's like 10 $9 billion in influencer marketing spend, where is this going to go do that has so, so, so much potential to just keep rising people like yourself helping creators get to that point of real business legitimacy.
Justin Moore
The the funny thing is that, everyone thinks especially in this space that it's just like so saturated and oh, like every brand does influencer marketing, but I'm constantly getting messages from creators basically saying what do I do?
This brand has never worked with influencers before and I'm like trying to educate them, I'm confused, how do I know it's frustrating, like how do I actually explain to them my value and all that stuff.
So it's like every single day there are thousands, tens of thousands of brands who are just starting to work with influencers, so there's so much opportunity out there just do not ever for a second, think that like you're too late, like if you're not too late, Trust me, there's like so much opportunity for you to come in and provide value to brands who have never worked with creators before.
Danny Desatnik
Crazy to hear how again, like you had this whole journey at every element of the journey, you're learning something new, it's legitimizing what you do, but because you play on both sides, that knowledge is being spread on both sides.
There's this overall mission to just be a greater creator and help more people be better creators.
The one question I guess I have is what Next?
What else can you do?
700K last year, all these different revenue streams all around a single, singular purpose, is there something more or is this just as fulfilling as it gets this?
Justin Moore
Is it man?
Like there is, I have learned over the years that making more and more money does not bring me happiness, like after a certain point, it was just like I'm happy, like I have everything I could ever want, I have a beautiful loving wife, amazing Children, family health, like I have nothing else.
And so it's like the dream is waking up each day feeling like I'm serving people and feeling fulfilled.
There's nothing more satisfying in life than that.
And and so it's like that's where my headspace is at.
And so it's like the mission of like helping, get a million helping folks land a million sponsorships is in service of that mission and so it's I like every day I wake up feeling blessed and it's just I don't, I don't think there is anything after that man.
Other than other than that, I would be.
It's actually funny you actually because I recently got an acquisition offer for creator wizard, which it was totally out of left field.
It was just we should join forces like your, your audience and your mission, like aligns with our mission.
And and so it was just it forced me to think about wow, like what would that mean if I wasn't doing creator wizard anymore?
Like at some point where it wasn't mine, it was like one day I might leave it or something.
I would be there for a year or two and then I would leave or something like that was just I could not envision that reality.
I was just I love what I do too much.
I don't want to like stop doing this.
I love helping people.
So it's just like the financial, like potential reward of.
That was not interesting to me at all.
Right.
And so it's, I don't know, it was an interesting moment.
Danny Desatnik
An acquisition.
That's a that's a whole different story.
Justin Moore
That's a whole different story.
Maybe that's a whole pot around that.
That's that's like very, very fascinating, This has been an illuminating conversation.
Danny Desatnik
Such a fun conversation.
No matter if a camera dropped off Midway.
Let's end off on this?
I know you got the new cohort coming up.
Justin Moore
I got it.
Danny Desatnik
What day does it start?
Where can people go plug your stuff?
Justin Moore
Yes, sir.
I appreciate it.
Okay, so wait list if you want, if you really wanted to get in.
So it's capped at 50 creators for the next enrollment.
So the next cohort.
So if you want to get on the waitlist, I do let folks in on the waitlist a day or two early.
So you, you heard it here first?
So brand deal wizard dot com is the wait list.
But if you have, if you're not ready for that, that's totally cool.
But I would love you to sign up for my newsletter because I share out sponsorship, paid sponsorship opportunities every single week in my newsletter is completely free.
So if you want to get paid sponsorship opportunities, there's about 2200 other creators on my newsletter right now.
It's a, it's a bunch of fun.
I share out, not just those, but like new videos and like news articles and all sorts of opportunities and stuff.
So you can just go to creator wizard dot com slash join.
I would love to have you there.
Danny Desatnik
Ah what a great episode.
You know the one thing that stuck in my mind, it actually wasn't a quote this time.
So maybe I'm breaking the rules, but it was a number one million brand deals by 2032.
What a powerful purpose.
Imagine waking up every morning and there is this grandiose school that you were driving towards for the next 5 to 10 years, you've set that goal because you really want to do it and it brings you that fulfillment.
I can't imagine anything more powerful if you like this episode.
I wonder if there's two things that you can do for me.
One rate and review it on apple podcasts, but the other side, drop a note and say, hey, I'm at d a t k e D dot Kaede on instagram on twitter.
It'd be awesome to know who you are, what you love about this space.
Hey, maybe one day you're coming on, we'll have a great week and we'll see you next week.