An Interview with Justin Moore: the Sponsorship Whisperer
This week, we dove into the world of creator sponsorships with Justin Moore, founder of Creator Wizard. A YouTube-born creator of 15 years, Justin now helps creators negotiate the best sponsorship deals.
His goal is to help creators big and small land 1,000,000 paid sponsorships by 2032. Today, he's well underway with 30,000 creators in his community. We talked about Justin’s own growth as a creator, lessons from failed journeys, and ways for creators to use video and more.
🤚 The interview transcript has been edited and shortened for clarity.
Table of Contents
- Justin Moore, a sponsorship coach
- The problem with sponsorship deals
- Using videos as a creator
- Marketing to creators
- Advice to first-time creators
- Working with brands
- The future of the creator economy
Louise: You are what we now call a sponsorship coach. Ten or even five years ago your job didn’t exist yet. Tell me more about what you do.
Most people still don't understand what a sponsorship coach is. People think that I will get them partnerships for a percentage. This is the biggest misconception.
For most creators, partnerships start organically. A brand will knock on the door. More often than not, they will offer a creator free products in return for posting. Surprisingly, most people are stoked with this at first.
Soon, creators realize they’re getting the short end of the stick. That they should probably be compensated. Creators wake up one day and realize they bring a lot to the table. They know they have a valuable audience that the brand wants to target.
As a sponsorship coach, I teach people how to advocate for themselves, how to negotiate, how to price their deals, and how to scope their worth and their value. Depending on what the brand is asking for.
The big difference is that I do not take a percentage of sponsorship deals. Most of my content is free. Besides my courses, I publish tons of stuff for free. My mission is to educate the next generation of creators, not take a percentage of their deals.
I've flipped this model on its head and it's been a fun ride.
Louise: How did you first identify the problem of sponsorship deals?
My wife and I have been creators for almost 15 years. When we started, we didn't have mentors in the industry. It was so much like the Wild West in the early days. We made every mistake in the book.
I also worked for an agency for seven years, bringing brand partnerships to creators. I had tons of interactions with creators. I was shocked at their lack of professionalism and communication among creators. Then I realized many of the creators had never had a ‘real’ job. Yet, there’s a level of professionalism you need when negotiating with brands.
At the time there wasn't any formal education to learn to advocate for yourself as a creator. All of this made for the perfect storm. That's when I decided to start educating the next generation of creators.
Louise: You aren’t just a creator yourself but work closely with creators as part of your product. Tell us about your journey as a creator to where you are today educating fellow creators.
In 2009, my wife and I were on YouTube. Our relationship Q&A's started doing pretty well. By 2013-2014, our 'What You Want to Know Wednesdays' got hundreds of thousands of views. A company approached us to create a monthly membership for relationship guidance. We put in months of work before sharing the content with our audience.
When we launched, our followers labelled us as 'sellouts'. We still managed to help some people, but it wasn't the wild success we hoped for. We decided to start a newsletter, gathering 30,000 subscribers quickly.
As time went on, though, we neglected it. Years later, we re-engaged the list and asked people to opt in or out. Out of 30,000 subscribers, only 1,000 remained.
This was one experience that shaped my approach to Creator Wizard. Now, I nurture the heck out of my community. I make sure to have a direct line with my audience before launching anything.