Today, we’re exploring the world of partnerships versus sponsorships with the fabulous Stephanie Thompson. The key takeaway? Partnerships are better at growing your show. Forget just pocketing cash for a shout-out; we’re talking about meaningful connections that can actually grow your audience.

Stephanie explains how she snagged partners before she even had a following—zero downloads, folks! So, if you’ve been thinking about how to take your podcast game to the next level, this chat is for you. Grab your earphones and get ready to learn how to team up with brands that vibe with your message!

Want Another Story of Someone Who Got a Sponsor Before Launching?

Check out The Riches are in the Niches With Harry Duran episode 767

Takeaways:

• Partnerships are more about shared goals and values compared to one-off sponsorships.
• Monetization through partnerships can grow your audience, not just your pocketbook.
• It's all about the fit; the right audience and brand alignment are crucial for success.
• Don't promote brands you don't believe in; integrity is key in partnerships.
• Transparency with analytics and feedback helps maintain healthy brand relationships.
• Educate your partners about your audience to foster better collaboration and understanding.
• Stephanie did a "trial run" on her courses - BEFORE she launched.

Links referenced in this episode:

• podcastexpertlab.com
• schoolofpodcasting.com
• profitfromyourpodcast.com
• castahead.net
• beyondbourbonstreet.com
• Profit From Your Podcast Book
• The Day My Vagina Broke Book

Mentioned in this episode:

Help When You Don't Know Where To Start

I get it. I talk to people looking to launch or grow their podcast. "“There’s too much gear/software — I don’t know what I need.” Microphones, mixers, hosting platforms, editing software — it’s easy to get lost. Analysis paralysis kicks in fast. I help podcasters. I've been doing it 20 years. Let me help. Dave Jackson schoolofpodcasting.com/join

School of Podcasting

Podcast Expert Lab

7-step podcast partnership success: This course pays for itself after just ONE partnership. Imagine getting paid to talk about what you love with brands that align with your audience. Complete this on-demand course at your own pace, using short, bite-sized videos and actionable tasks to boost your podcast growth and income. You don’t need to be famous—you just need the drive to grow and the strategy to earn!

Podcast Expoert Lab

Question of the Month: Where Do You Get Ideas For Your Podcast?

I saw this in a Facebook Group and thought it would be a question for all of us to chime in on. "What do you use... "How do you ... ...come up with ideas for your podcast? I need your answer by 4/25/25 Go to www.schoolofpodcasting.com/question

Question of the Month

Man, it seems just like yesterday when the late, great friend of mine, Lee Silverstein of the we have Cancer podcast was talking about how he grew his audience. And he said what he was looking for wasn't so much sponsorship, but someone who shared his message and wanted to help amplify it.

And so that's what we're talking about today. Now, this can lead to monetization, but it's also a great way to just grow your audience.

So we're talking with Stephanie Thompson of podcastexpertlab.com, not about sponsorship, about partnerships. And there is a difference. Hit it, ladies. The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson.

My website is schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code listener when you sign up for either a monthly or yearly subscription. And yeah, I know if you're a person that's like, look, I'm just doing this for fun. I'm not thinking about making any kind of money.

We still talk about partnerships today, and that can be a way to really grow your audience. Now the interesting thing, just an ever so slight spoiler here.

Stephanie Thompson does a podcast called the Lowdown with Brave Mama, and it's about female stuff. So just a little heads up just for today. If this word makes you nervous, you know the password is the jj.

Yeah, that word is going to come up today and some people really freak out. It is a body part. You know, just think of it. Like I said, thumb. But anyway, so she has a tremendous story.

What was interesting is I've never met Stephanie before, but she's quite lovely. She is, right? And. And I have no idea what accent that is. She's Australian, but that was just. I just call it bad.

And she's amazing and she has a story. But when I first met her, I'm like, hey, just for the record, like, my audience isn't going to care about your story.

We want to know about how to grow our audience and some of us want to know how to monetize, etc. Etc. And she was cool with that. And then as we talked, what was really cool, and you'll hear me point this out, we mentioned her show.

We mentioned that she has a very female specific show.

And this creates what's called a brain gap, where your brain is kind of going, wait, they keep Talking about something but not really talking about it. Now I want to know what they're not talking about because they keep skipping that part. And so you'll hear me pull that in.

But notice I didn't lead with her story. I brought it in later, because now she's given us value, and we're like, well, who is this person, and where did you get this information from?

So, again, normally, I would advise my clients don't explain how the sausage is made, but this is a podcast about podcasting, and you're kind of interested on how the sausage is made.

And what's cool is today we're going to talk with Stephanie, and then next week, I'm bringing on my buddy Ray from around the layout, who also has been working on partnerships, finding people, and he has. He will admit he does a show about model trains. And so that is a niche, you know, audience, and he's absolutely crushing it.

Where I always say, I expect, you know, 3% of your audience know. Ray's. Ray is the poster child of engaged audience.

So the next couple weeks, we're going to talk about partnering with outside sources to grow your audience. Today we are lucky enough to be talking with Stephanie Thompson from podcast expert lab dot com. And it goes a little something like this.

We bumped into each other on Facebook, and she said, have you ever kind of talked about, instead of getting sponsors, getting a partner that's a brand? And I went, hmm, I don't know that I've ever really touched about that a lot. So, Stephanie, thanks for coming on the show.

This is amazing. Thank you so much for having me. It's a real honor.

Because it sounds easy, but then you're like, okay, how do you do that? And you go, I'm not really sure that's right.

And then when you are scared and you do nothing, we often freeze. Right? So to not give you the full story, but, yes, you're right. The back is against the wall. Two kids under two.

What happened was after I released my book, I realized I thought I had changed childbirth. I was like, here we go. I fixed everything. Much to the realization of most authors, you realize that that's just the seed.

That's the seed of change that you have planted. And in fact, the conversations had to start, hence the podcast.

But production, editing, recording all the things, all the moving pieces was very overwhelming. So I thought, great, I'll get a producer. Then you find out how much a producer costs.

And it's like, whoa, we don't have those funds right now, so what else are you going to do? I didn't want to crowdfund. That didn't feel right. And so then I thought about, okay, our audience, who is going to be listening to this?

What types of brands could potentially help us with growth and monetization? And then we kind of did a bit of a backward map from there. First off, actually, one caveat is here. I was not born knowing how to do this.

I actually went and did a course for 12 weeks with a coach to help me learn how to do this. I think that's a really important point.

And I'm sorry. It's either. It was either Mikey or Marky left a review.

Thanks for everyone who's been leaving reviews, but he said, I hate when Dave interrupts his own interviews, but this is important. She got a coach. And I keep telling people, why do you need a coach? Because you need a coach. Avoid those common pitfalls. Get a coach.

She taught me all about branding and marketing.

It's not my wheelhouse, but what I learned from her was then how to pitch your brand, how to approach a brand, to want to work with you when you haven't even launched yet. Like, zero downloads.

What was your background?

My background's in education and leadership.

Okay.

And had gone through all of that. But then when I had my daughter, when she was born, I was left with a disability. I couldn't go back to my profession.

So I hence wrote a book about my birth, then started the podcast and was reinventing myself at the same time, but didn't really know I was doing that. I was just trying to make childbirth better. So what happened to me doesn't happen to my girl when she's at that age. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So what's the first step? You said you had to kind of backwards engineer this.

Was this just a matter of walking around your house and looking for products that you were using or how do you go about finding the right product?

You are a partnership pro, Dave. Exactly. That is exactly where I would recommend anyone listening right now. Because here's the thing.

Most of us, our podcast is really an extension of who we are and what we like and what we buy. And what brands we trust often isn't extended to our audience. And they also have that alignment. So you're correct.

For example, our first podcast is around women's pelvic health. So I thought, what do I already buy? What do I already trust? What would help my audience to know about?

And the first one was period underpants because of the injury and things like that. For many reasons that are very female pelvic floor orientated. Not probably for this show right now, but it made sense.

Sense for me to reach out to a brand who already has that product and then talk about it on our podcast. It had an amazing alignment when I pitched the CEO because I am brave mama for a reason. I had nothing to lose.

And so I thought, right, I'm going to find the CEO, I'm going to talk to her about what our vision is. And she loved it.

It was something so different that she had never seen before compared to other creators who were saying, hey, sponsor my Instagram post for X amount of dollars, that type of thing. The pitch itself was structured in a way that I said, hey, this is something that's happened to me. This is why I need your product.

The people who I'm going to be speaking to over here could also benefit from knowing about your product. Can we start a conversation? It's that simple.

That was it. So nothing about. Because you didn't have an audience right at this point?

Correct. There were zero downloads. And this is the kicker that I have discovered time and time again on repeat.

For people who do not have a podcast yet and who have not launched, it is much easier to communicate your value and the trajectory of your show where you're planning for it to go with a marketing department over like, this is the first question they ask you. What are the downloads? And when you can't answer that as a. Well, we haven't launched yet, but we've got this, this, this and this.

The conversation changes. Dave.

Interesting. And so what is the this, this, this and this when you. Because to me I know there's.

You could, you know, I'm going to mention you in the podcast, but what are the other things that you include when you're talking about your reach?

Okay, so then this is the second part of learning how to get partner ready. The first one is to work out what brands would align with you.

Like you said, walk through your house and see the things that you already know, like and trust. The second thing is to do a bit of an asset audit. And by that I mean I had a book that was published. I was an established author.

We had a teeny tiny audience on instagram that was just starting, but they were highly engaged. So the content that we were putting out to that small audience, there was so many likes, comments, shares on that.

That's really valuable because the brand knows my authority and my ability to talk to my audience where they want to take action. It was there. So even though it was under 300 people, it's considered teeny tiny. We also had a private Facebook group.

So away from the public eye, considering our topic, Women's pelvic health, only people who experience this condition can be in that group. Again, they are highly engaged women looking. They are searching for brands and products to help them with their condition.

So me being the conduit to connect them to those brands, it made sense.

Yeah. It's not about having this giant mountain of people. It's about having the right people that they're looking for.

Because when you have that group and you say, oh, by the way, here they are, and I've got hundreds of them, you know, is there a number in terms of audience size that's just too tiny or is. If you have the right product and the right fit, it's, you know, hey, we. Like, in your case, you had no audience. Your number was zero.

So is it really all just about the fit? Or if somebody comes over and says, Well, I have 10 downloads per episode. Is there a time when you go, you might be a little early.

Oh, I love that you said that. Because that's exactly what has happened. People have said, I've got. I'm getting about 10, 10 downloads per episode. Then we say, okay, that's great.

But what else do you have? Do you have a private Facebook community? Do you have a Discord channel? Do you have a Slack channel?

Do you have an audience somewhere else outside your New Beginning podcast that you can tell a beautiful story to a brand of like, hey, we've been hanging out over here for quite some time. I think a lot of creators have free Facebook groups. And then now we're starting the podcast and some of those people will double up. That's fine.

But when we tell a brand the level of reach, it's mainly through how. Like, do you have a book? Do you have private Facebook group? I keep coming back to that. Do you have a way to communicate directly with an email list?

The email list is one of the biggest things.

So if you are one of those people who have 10 people in your community right now, just make sure you have the ability to communicate directly to them. That is outside an algorithm on social media. And the best way to do that is through an email list.

Yeah, we've hit that nail a couple times the last couple of weeks of the show.

It's like, hey, nothing wrong with social media, but I think especially with a partner people do they get a little more excited if you have a bigger email list versus a bigger, you know, Instagram following?

I think brands are understanding that the power of partnerships over influencer marketing. Influencer marketing has feels like it's being done to death quite a lot.

Sometimes it still works, but when you work in partnership, the brand they more so want to know not just the number of people in your email list, but what are the open rates, who's opening the emails, what links are they clicking on. And when you have an email list, you get that amazing statistic in the background that you can say 43% of my people open my emails.

This amount of people click on that amount of links. So you have the ability to really talk to them besides the podcast in their ear, but in their inbox.

All your brands, Dave, want that they spend a lot of money trying to reach those exact same people in that exact same way.

Yeah. You have actual proof of engagement. It's like, here's what's going on. So you went from the conversation with the CEO, what happened next?

How did that, how did this come about?

I still have this screenshot because she cc'd me. She passed me on obviously to her VP who then reached out to me and said, hey, let's jump on a call.

But I saw in this, in the email chain the CEO said, you must connect with this girl. It's awesome.

I've kept that because that to me shows something so simple and just stood out as being different rather than an entire email script of this is me, this is me. This is me, me, me, me, me. It's like I love what you do. This is how it helps me. Do you want to chat? That simple.

The VP and I then had a phone conversation first about and that's when I was able to explain to her where we're planning to take the show, what, what our structure was going to be, who the guests that we were having on and included an invitation for the CEO of that brand to come and talk. We ended up doing three partnerships with that same brand. So that long term repeated partnerships was amazing. And that's what I'm.

That's then I think I communicated that to the vp. First off, I'm not here for a quick money grab.

I want to integrate your brand into what we're doing because it makes so much sense to, to the people who we're talking to.

So I know a lot of people are going to be like, hey, David, it sounds like she's just negotiating like a sponsorship. So what's the difference between a sponsorship and a partnership?

Yeah, you know what, I really love that question. Because after doing this for so many years now, I feel like those two words used interchangeably, I see them as totally separate.

We would define a sponsorship as generally a one way transaction and a one off. So a brand pays you $1,000 for an Instagram post, you post it and that's it, it's finished. If it's successful, they may ask you to do another one.

If it's not successful, you'll never hear from them again. That's, that's, you know, the lowdown of it.

With a partnership, you have the ability to integrate the brand with your audience in multiple different ways.

For example, like I mentioned, that second brand partnership we did, it didn't have anything to do with the podcast, but that brand CEO wrote a message in the foreword of my book for the next reprint. So once it had sold out, we needed to reprint again, needed the funding to do that.

So she was able to insert a message about why we're working together and how important it is to team up for women in women's pelvic health education. That again, made sense.

So that helped that brand get their message out to the right people who will be reading that book, who will need to use their brand. One thing I want to add here. As the years have gone on, Dave, I have learned so much about how brand partnerships need to be of equal value.

Meaning you need to be able to get, as the creator what it is that you need and provide the brand with what it is that they need. Which is why there's not one set template that's going to work for every podcaster. Right.

Because, Dave, what you need for your podcast could be totally different for what I need for my podcast and community. And our audiences are different as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Because that's always the next question. Well, how much do I charge?

And there is, because the more niche it is, the more you can probably charge depending on. I mean, there's so many variables there. There is no set thing. So what do you tell somebody that's like, well, how much do I charge?

Because like you said, it really depends on the person and the product. So you just pull out a dart board and throw a dart and like, all right, that's where we're starting.

When you start. Yeah, that's what happened. That's exactly what I did when I started. I pitched it.

I think my first pitch was around $20,000, and we got less than half than that. But that's part of the negotiation process. Here's what I'll say.

What I have learned since, and I think it's really valuable as a creator, work out what it is that you actually need first.

Because when you go into a conversation blind and you're kind of just throwing numbers out there, when there's any chance for a confusion or an unknown, it's an easy no. The brand goes, nope, we don't have budget for it. But I didn't even tell you how much I needed. Don't make it hard. Make it really easy.

And I think when you show up to a conversation with a brand knowing, okay, I need $5,000 for the season production, I need $2,000 for marketing, I need this and this. When you come in saying, okay, I'm looking for.

I know I need $10,000, you don't have to share that number with them, but that's just what's in your head. Then in the conversation negotiation, you say, I can. This is what I can do for you.

I can do this, I can do that, I can all the things that you can do in that asset audit.

Then you say to the brand, if I was going to put together some packages for you that make sense for this partnership, what type of, you know, brackets am I working towards? 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 or 5,000, 10,000? You kind of asking them to share with you what their budget is, because that way then you would go and go away.

And if they say, oh, around about, you know, X. Okay, I'm going to use a real word example, rather than trying to pull the numbers out.

A conversation we had last week, she said to me, and this is where it gets a bit tricky. The brand. I'm in a conversation with the brand, and she says, like, something medium to smallish. And I was like, what does that mean?

I'm like, okay, what does that mean exactly? So I'm thinking five, $10,000. And I said, so your medium to small would be. And she said, oh, anywhere between 25 and 40. Great.

Okay, there you go. That'll put a smile on your face.

Because we all go into these conversations as indie creators thinking 5 and $10,000 is actually quite a lot. Right.

When we're talking about sponsorship for CPM and you're going to get $30 a month, when you make that jump to thousands and five figures, it feels like a lot. But the more you do this and the more you rinse and repeat this and the more conversations you have with the bigger brands. There you go.

They're small to medium. Their floor was 20 and the ceiling was up to 45. That's how you structure the conversation.

I guess the question then is, how did you get to the CEO?

The strategies that I've worked out, how to do this, I think it goes back to the place of how do you connect with the CEO when there's so many gatekeepers ahead of them? 100%. One of the strategies is you can go to. I mean, right.

You click on the people tab and you see you can actually search for the marketing department or whoever you look. To be honest, I wouldn't recommend you reach out to the CEO these days. Okay, I was naive. I was probably very desperate. I probably was very brave.

You know, I was scared and did it anyway. Honestly, I wouldn't recommend anyone to do that now unless it's a startup with one to two people in it.

Otherwise, where you really want to be starting those connections and conversations is in within the marketing department. So you would click on people, you'd click on marketing, then you would see who's and even what. Now we have people with the brand partnership title.

That's who you would connect with. If you put a LinkedIn request and it hasn't been answered, you can absolutely take that person's name and use an app, like, for example, Hunter IO.

You can put in their name, and it can give you a very close match to what their email address is more than likely to be. And you can do a cold email outreach.

Nice. Couple more things I want to ask about.

The first one we have to do, especially for all the females that are listening, is we've created a huge brain gap where we've mentioned your show, but we haven't really mentioned your show. So first of all, tell us the title of your book, because I love it.

Thank you. And I love that you're brave enough to say it, because quite often I don't say it. It's called the day my vagina broke.

What they don't tell you about childbirth?

And it had to be that eye catching and out there, because if I'd said the day my pelvic floor broke, no one would pick it up, then there would be no changing childbirth. I was an educated woman who did all the right things leading up to childbirth, all the private education classes, all the things.

And what happened to me is really common. And it blindsided me because I had no idea. So the injury that I live with now is called a pelvic organ prolapse. And here you go.

I'm glad you're sitting down, Dave, but one in two women globally will have some experience of a pelvic organ prolapse within their lifetime. But yet no one talks about it. I didn't even know what the word was. I was like a pro. What? What are you saying?

And so with the amount of women that it affects, I was like, wow, we really have to start these conversations. Hence the podcast, the Lowdown with Brave Mama.

Brave Mama is me, because I had to be really brave to talk about this and my body publicly to the world. This is not who I was 10 years ago, before my daughter was born. I was very conservative. I was a leader. I was an executive.

We wouldn't even mention the word vagina in public or in private, actually, until all of this happened. So that's where it all began.

Yeah. When I saw the title of your book, I go, okay, you win to me. I always talk about the importance of titles for episodes.

And I was like, like you just said, I'm a guy. I see that title. I'm at least picking up the book and flipping through it, reading the back cover. I'm like, wait, what? That can break?

What's going on? Holy cow. And we mentioned that you're with the podcast expert, lab.com.

so tell us a little bit about how I'm assuming you are helping people to partner with brands. So tell us a little bit about your service.

The evolution came, and I'm going to use that word organically, because I was doing it myself and I was consistently doing it on repeat. I had. I did it for the whole three seasons that we had had episodes very successfully.

Then people started reaching out to me, saying, how are you working with such and such? And how did you work with such and such? And I was like, oh, here it is. And because I'm an educator, I just give it away. I'm happy to share it.

I'm happy to let other people have success because I Don't feel it should be a secret. This is just what I've worked out. Give it a try. Then they were having great success with it, going, holy smokes.

Like, even someone did the same course as me that I originally did. I ended up working for her. She's like, I can't do it like you do it. But then when I taught her how to do it, from my perspective, she's now doing it.

Within that group of people, they were asking the same questions over and over. So we did a live course. We taught 14 people how to do it. And I was like, I love this because Steph gets to be the teacher again.

But sitting down, I'm in my. I'm in my happy place.

So then Pod Expert Lab is just a brand new little baby, because now my coach is teaching me, you need to charge people how based on the outcome that you're giving everyone for free. And so this is why we said, okay, Podcast Expert Lab. Because in a lab, you learn, you break, you make, you iterate, you change.

Like, there is no one perfect way to do anything. But if you're willing to give it a go and see how it works and what does it work, you're going to have a lot greater success.

While there's no one way. Are there mistakes that you see over and over that you're like, oh, no, they're doing that again that we can avoid?

Yes. I'll tell you my number one mistake, and I'll never do it again. I did it once.

An inbound request came to me from a product and they asked me to try it and then talk about it with my audience. I very naively said, yes. I signed contracts, I was paid. But then the product didn't work, Dave. It didn't work for me.

And so I then tried to talk to them and say, I can't. I can't talk about this. I'm not going to lie to. I'm very protective of the women who are in our space.

Absolutely.

It got a little bit uneasy, uncomfortable. Eventually we got to a point where I said, I can say this about me and how I did try it, but then I won't say the outcome. We were okay with that.

But obviously I said to myself, from this moment on, I will only ever work with a brand that I purchase myself. I already have tried it. I Already love it. Not just like it. I love it. And I know my audience will benefit.

And in fact, what we teach now is forget about the brand, forget about you for a minute. It has to be your audience centric first. What is it that your audience needs to know more about? If you don't know that answer, ask them.

They'll tell you.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We all start with no audience and integrity. And so the key is to grow the audience without losing your integrity. So that's absolutely perfect.

It sounds like you had them, you know, basically partner for a season. So now season two comes up. Is it easier or harder to get the same partner, or is it just a given that you're going to get a new partner?

If you can set this up where you're having established an amazing connection and relationship with the person at the brand, the likelihood of a repeated partnership for season two is, is much higher.

When I did it myself, Dave, I thought my audience would get brand fatigue and they would want to know about something else, which is why I chose to work with multiple other brands afterwards. But in fact, now knowing it probably is more beneficial for the brand to be consistent, to be working with the same audience.

Until you notice there's a drop off if people are not signing up to their email, if they're not using the discount code or whatever it is you're offering, if you're no longer converting, then it's time to pull back or reassess what you're doing with them. Because remember, the brand has to win as well.

Yeah. Is that something? When the campaign is over, season one is over, do you sit down and compare notes and say, okay, what do we send you?

And what kind of tools are used to measure all that?

Amazing. I love that you honestly know more about partnerships than you think. This is really important and this is how.

I mean, I've taken screenshots of this as well. Just recently, one of the brands said, we've never received anything like this.

I can't tell you how much this is going to help me in my conversation with my bean counters, because they're not used to it. We take all of the analytics from the partnership, meaning how many downloads.

I mean, I hate even saying that now, but how many downloads per episode? Because everyone's used to asking that question. So you give it to them and that is you give it to them, good, bad or indifferent.

You have to be transparent. If that episode only got 50 downloads, tell them and that's okay. You've got to own it.

You would then talk about if you, for example, did an awareness on Instagram what the interactions were, you can get all of that from your Instagram. Obviously you're sending out emails to your community. What was the open rate? What was the click through rate?

You put that all together in a no more than five page Canva document. Canva's beautiful. It actually has things like this already designed for you and you just drop in screenshots.

What's really important are the human connection. So there are all the numbers. That's great. If someone has left a comment that says, wow, I didn't even know about this.

Like I've got one of those where it said, I am a midwife and I didn't even know that this foundation even existed. This wow. Yeah. This foundation needs to. Their key people are midwives and medical people.

You screenshot that and that's what you put into that document. So they say, wow, this was impactful. We reached people, they now know about us.

Nice.

I was going to say. And at the end, what you do on the last deck is that you preempt working with them again for next season. We've thoroughly enjoyed working with you.

We look forward to next season. Let's hop on a conversation to see what that could look like and how we can pivot and continually improve it to make it even better for next season.

So let's say it didn't perform as well as you had hoped. You thought it was going to be a home run, but you know, Instead of scoring 100, you scored an 82. Still pretty good. Not the home run, but.

So is that a case where you come in and say, all right, well, last season we charged you X amount. Do you ever drop your price?

Oh, no, never. If anything, you would increase it incrementally or have it status quo.

What you would do in that instance is say, this is where I understand we didn't quite hit the mark, but here are my ideas on how we do it next time. Also open to your ideas on what you think we could do next time too.

Yeah, there you go. Because if you do that, you're devaluing your audience. That's the thing you have to remember.

It's like, no, no, no, I've got the people you're looking for and somehow we didn't get less of them. So I'm not gonna drop my price there.

It's just when it comes to marketing, there's the right audience and then even the pitch, you know, maybe the way we're explaining the product. I remember once I Had a sponsor and it was for a microphone. And the copy they sent came from an engineer.

And I was talking about the something Di ninian magnet in the. And I was like, I go, this is not gonna resonate with my audience. I just need to say it sounds good and I love the clarity and the bass.

I go, that makes sense to my audience, how it was built. They could care less. They just care about what it sounds like.

So a lot of times, if something didn't quite work the way you wanted it to, it's the pitch, it's the audience.

And then in some cases, you also have to look at their sales page because if you sent a bunch of traffic over there and the sales, you know, they only had one button that said buy now, but you had to scroll down for an hour and a half to see it. Maybe we need to move that button up a little bit. So. And go ahead.

This is exactly why when you show up as a brand partner, not an expert, but as someone who knows what they're doing, saying giving little tips like that in the negotiation phase is really important. Before everything's locked in after the fact, it's hard to change that copy. On that microphone.

In the negotiation phase, it is easier to say, oh, I love that copy. Thank you very much. I'm going to record it for you. So you record what they say. Here's what I'm thinking.

My audience would probably resonate with most. And then ultimately, you have to have the final say in the contract.

It says, with Dave having final sign off, but you give them both of those samples and then when they hear it back, they're like, hmm, actually Dave's does sound so much better. Then if they decide to still go with their own and it doesn't go well, you're like, hey, well, I tried to tell you, maybe we could try it my way.

Now that's it.

And that's the sign of a partnership versus, you know, like you said, the one time kind of sponsorship. Any other examples that you can think of?

Yeah, I mean, I love the learning examples. And this is the part where sometimes creators, the hardest part is the educating the brand.

So we worked with a lady, a partnership, they have an app and the brand who they wanted to work with. It was a perfect fit market, fit everything. The person in the marketing department was so hell bent on talking about the Facebook ad return.

Well, we get $2 for every dollar spent. That's great. When they launched their campaign, they 3X'd their their investment within 24 hours.

But he still couldn't see the value of the partnership and wanted more and more and more and more and then didn't wanna pay more and more and more and more. So my advice to them was, okay, what is it do you think he really wants? He needs to prove to their CEO that this is valuable.

And he also wants to repurpose your content. That costs money. If he was to go and hire a marketing department to create this for him, it would be so.

But part of the conversations were educating him. Sometimes Davey can't do that when there is ego in the way. But what you can do is take a little bit of control back.

So he was saying, we want these 10 items, but we only want to pay this amount of money now. And we went back and said, instead of reducing that amount of money, we said, okay, you can have five of them.

This, this, and this for this amount, or you can have all 10 for this amount and made it higher. You just need to know your worth. And this is that arbitrary number. Like, how much do you charge? How much am I worth?

As an indie creator, your very first partnership will be your baseline. Where you go from there will incrementally always be more because you understand your worth.

I think in that instance, sometimes you can't always feel like it's an equal exchange. He was never in it to be equal. He was in it to make the biggest bang for his buck, and that was it.

When you understand that he's not here to support your growth, they're not the right partner and you wouldn't work with them.

Again, yeah, that's same. Going back to that same theme, you're all about getting the right people in your audience.

You also have to have the right partner because like you said, it's a win win. And in that case, do you run into that when you're negotiating that, like, who does own the content?

Because you're the producer and the host and everything else, are they allowed to take it and cut it up and splice it up and put it on their social. Or how does that whole part of the partnership work?

Okay, this is a great question, actually. This is part of that. It goes back to our creating packages. So initially, people would think, all right, I've got to create two packages.

One will be a host red ad for 10 episodes and package two would be host red ad for 20 episodes, and it would be an Instagram one Instagram post and three Instagram posts. So they're just making the package bigger based on the amount. That's not how it Works.

Package one is you get the host red ad, you get the Instagram post and that's it. In package two, you get the host red ad, the Instagram posts and you get to repurpose that content within the negotiation phase.

Is that for in perpetuity? Is it for six months? Is it. Can you use it for Facebook ads? Like all of that part is highly valuable.

Is it going to live on their website for a period of time? That's what makes package a 5,000 increase to 10,000 in depending on what they are actually going to be able to do with that content.

And also, is it exclusive? Are you exclusively going to be working with this brand alone or this type of product for a period of time? That costs more too?

That's some great insights because it's one of the things you just don't think about and you don't want to kind of go, oh, ooh, we didn't talk about that. So yeah. So to learn more, just go over to podcastexpertlab.com they've got some courses over there. They've got.

If you're on LinkedIn, it's the podcast profit playbook. You can sign up for their newsletter over there. Stephanie, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you, Dave. It's been an honor and I really hope people get a lot of value from it.

And I'll have links to everything out@schoolofpodcasting.com 976. Couple things that we hit on there, the importance of newsletters. This is something that I've been talking about the last couple weeks.

We had Paul on. We talked about how it's so much better than social. I'll put links to those again.

Schoolofpodcasting.com 976 if you noticed when they were working on the Expert Lab, they did a focus group. Did you hear say that? Oh, yeah. We tried 14 people to see if it would work. That's a focus group before they launched.

So many people they launch and then they ask people for feedback. I'm like, look, people taste the food before they open the restaurant.

So it's sometimes hard to ask people for feedback, but get some feedback before you launch. And then the one that I was like, preach on, girl. Which is integrity. Do not promote something that you haven't used.

The only thing I've come close with is if I have a friend of mine, let's say Chris Stone from castahead.net, he says, man, those new sure little lapel things are good. I really trust Chris's opinion. So if he says they're good.

Cause Chris will also say they're also kind of expensive, but they have some really cool noise reduction. There are people I trust when it comes to their opinion.

Because if I had to buy everything that I talk about, well, we'll talk about that in a future episode. So I also have a bonus example now. She kept saying, really, you know more about this than you think you do?

Well, I wrote a book called Profit from youm Podcast. And while I do get that there is a difference between sponsorship and partnership, there's also a lot of things that are the same.

And so my buddy Mark Balagna over at Beyond Bourbon street links in the show notes, of course, schoolofpodcasting.com 976 and Mark did a cool thing for his show because it's about Bourbon street, which is in New Orleans or New Orleans or now. Then how you say that? And he went to a local hotel that wasn't like, you know, Marriott or whoever.

He wanted something with local flavor and said, look, I'm probably going to be bringing in two people for three days because if you're going to come see the city, you were going to stay for a weekend. And most people don't travel alone. What's the price on that? And they partnered keyword on a price.

And then they would meet every now and then and go, hey, is this still working for you? And then another trick he did was he was recommending a walking tour called Two Chicks Walking. I think that was. That was their name, by the way.

He's not, you know, and they came to him and said, hey, like, what you doing? Because you've, like, tripled our business. And he's like, oh, we should probably talk about a sponsorship then.

And so one of the things he did is he had a Facebook group. And today I really like Heartbeat, but you can use a Facebook group. But I just. I get nervous around Heartbeats.

If you go back and listen to that episode with Paul, what was it, 85,000 people he had in a Facebook group. And they just took it away, like, thanks, Facebook, and can I do any. No, there's no appeal. So I get a little nervous about Facebook groups.

But you can put your sponsor in the Facebook group. And that's what Mark did for Beyond Bourbon Street. And then he'd say, hey, you know, because it's almost time to renegotiate the contract.

And he'd go, anybody go on a two chicks walking tour recently? And they'd be like, that was the best thing ever. Thank you so much, Mark. And then he'd walk in and say, hey, it's time to renegotiate the contract.

So some bonus tips there from the book Profit from your podcast. You can find that@profitfromyourpodcast.com and of course that's available as an audiobook as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hey, if you're going to be at Podcast Movement Evolutions, not only am I going to be there manning the booth at PodPage, but on Tuesday, April 1st at 11am, I will be speaking on on the subject, does your podcast need to be on YouTube? Facts you need to know. And the fun part of that is I will be on the YouTube stage. So that's going to be awkward in some cases, but not really.

I'm presenting the pros and cons. And if you are in a place where you're like, I don't know how I would answer that and I'm not going to Podcast Movement.

Well, there is a place where you can go to get all your podcast questions answered and that's the school of Podcasting. Go out to school of podcasting.

Click on the join now button and get going with courses with an amazing community and of course, unlimited one on one consulting. I look forward to working with you. Use the coupon code listener. That's L, I S T E N E R. And if you're asking Dave, why do you spell that?

Because I can see what people have typed in for coupons and many times listnr is spelled very creatively. So just a gentle reminder. And one other gentle reminder. Thanks. Thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate it.

If you know somebody else that's thinking of starting a podcast or they got a podcast and they need to grow it, can you point them my way? You can either just share this episode, especially if they're looking to monetize, or just tell them to go over to school of Podcasting.

I do deeply appreciate that. And until next week, take care. God bless. Class is dismissed.

Leave me a review in Apple because while it doesn't help me get found, it is social proof. So that's about 15 calls to action. And if I was coaching myself, I'd say, yeah, do that again.

You just gave people 15 different things to do at the end of your show.

Someone.