Jay Acunzo had spent years inside companies like Google and HubSpot, alongside building his own speaking & consulting practice.

But sponsorships?

He thought they were for other creators.

"I always kind of wrote off sponsorship as for other types of creators," Jay admitted. "People who dance on TikTok. Massive, mainstream famous podcasts."

In Jay's world, brands were clients. You hired him to speak at your marketing all-hands, or you engaged him as a consultant. The idea of weaving sponsorships into his work as a creator had simply never clicked.

But that changed when he crossed paths with Justin Moore from Creator Wizard. 

And since then, he not only added a new revenue stream but completely restructured how he thought about his creative output.

The Problem with Jay’s Old Approach

Before meeting Justin Moore, Jay wasn't starting from zero when it came to brand work.

He was already running a high-end advisory business helping experts and business leaders turn their expertise into a signature idea, and then build the IP, speaking platform, and public presence around it.

Brands did show up… but it was always messy.

"The sponsorships that I had were always cobbled together and reactive," he said. "It was a really intricate arrangement to work through one kind of sponsored project."

Usually, the deals were structured around him acting as front-facing talent (e.g. hosting branded podcasts, or producing original documentary series) with traditional ad reads tacked on almost as an afterthought. 

"[Sponsorships] became somewhere between a little nuisance that detracted from my real client services business... and actually detrimental to my business."

No, the brands weren’t bad. 

But the way he structured the deals meant every sponsorship pulled him further from the work and business he loved. 

A Different Way to Think About Sponsorships, The Creator Wizard Way

Jay came to know Justin through a mutual connection, Jay Clouse, and started absorbing the ideas in Sponsor Magnet and the broader Creator Wizard framework.

"So much of the world of sponsorship on both sides, the brand and the creator, [usually] turns into a transaction," Jay explained. "What Sponsor Magnet is fundamentally about is collaboration."

He pointed to what Justin calls “the collaboration paradox”:

Creators tend to collaborate closely on the creative side of partnerships, but default to a transactional mindset the moment money enters the conversation (rate sheets, ad packages, fixed inventory, etc).

But for Jay, the Creator Wizard approach flipped that. 

Instead of leading with what a brand could buy, Jay started building proposals around what a brand wanted to achieve.

"When you have three different people that look the same with a similar size audience, and two of them are saying 'here's all the stuff you get for this fee'... and one of them is saying 'here are the goals we're going to knock down and the achievements we're going to have to grow your business', they're going to want to invest in that one. And invest more."

The Mailchimp Deal: Testing the New Model

Jay's first significant test of this goal-driven approach came when Mailchimp's agency reached out to him directly. But his first instinct was skepticism.

Simple branded posts and social content felt like exactly the kind of work he'd been trying to move away from. 

But Justin's guidance helped Jay see a different, and more aligned, path. 

Rather than doing generic content work for Mailchimp, what if the partnership were built around something Jay would have wanted to create anyway?

The answer turned out to be a series where Jay coached three B2B marketers and entrepreneurs on camera, walking them through his methodology for becoming stronger speakers and storytellers (all under the Mailchimp banner).

It was the kind of work he'd normally charge advisory clients for. Except now it would be filmed, published publicly, and sponsored. 

"It could drive client leads. It would be published publicly in a way that client engagements are not. And Mailchimp was able to say, 'look at the time spent on this branded project, look at the messaging, these are the ideas we want to uphold as a brand,’” Jay said.

This Mailchimp deal landed well into the 5-figure range. 

More importantly, it proved that sponsorships didn’t have to compete with his business.

They could amplify it.

The Wistia Deal: Bigger, Better, and Built to Last

If Mailchimp was proof of concept, Wistia was where the whole approach clicked into place (and delivered results way bigger than either side expected).

Jay had worked with Wistia years earlier in a much looser capacity, but since then, the relationship had gone quiet for 3 or 4 years. 

Then one day, Jay noticed them running a show called Fix My Setup: A series where Wistia’s team would visit people's home offices and upgrade their camera and lighting rigs. Their approach wasn’t a sponsored one, but it did give Jay an idea. 

So Jay did what any good advisor would do:

He found a way in that…wasn't a pitch.

Step 1: Warm the relationship first

Rather than pitching immediately, Jay reached out to ask if he could be featured on the show. He never even asked about money or a formal deal. 

"I'm not going to cold pitch them something financial," he explained. "Let's do something where we just show up publicly together for free."

Wistia said yes. 

So the show's team came to Jay's office, upgraded his setup (the same one in his content today), and from there, the relationship was reignited.

Step 2: Pitch a concept that serves both sides

Jay knew Wistia had been investing heavily in content around webinars. 

And as a professional public speaking coach, he saw an obvious overlap. Webinars are a form of public speaking, and almost no one was teaching people how to deliver them well.

Knowing this, Jay reached out to their VP of Marketing with a pitch: 

Fix My Setup meets coaching. Send Jay to work with clients and influencers, film the process, and publish it as a branded series called Fix My Webinar.

"I was thinking about the Mailchimp deal," he said. "It would showcase what I do. I could drive client leads through that. And it's also a sponsor arrangement.”

Step 3: Run a proper discovery call, then build goal-based packages

The brand was immediately intrigued.

A call then followed with Wistia's director of content, VP of brand, and several other teammates. Jay came in to listen, gather their goals, and identify gaps in their content library.

Then he went back and built three packages tied to those specific goals, with the most comprehensive option being a multi-webinar series. Each session would be accompanied by a downloadable resource and supported by promo video shoots.

Just like with Mailchimp, the brand (Wistia) chose the biggest package.

Step 4: Don't forget the licensing

Most creators invoice for the work and hand it over. 

But as Jay learned in Sponsor Magnet, that's leaving significant money on the table. Content has ongoing value, and ongoing use should come with an ongoing fee.

So he built in a 6-month licensing window and explained it clearly in the proposal, knowing from experience that most B2B brands assume they own content in perpetuity once they've paid for it.

After Wistia's director of content reviewed the proposal, he came back with one small, very welcome request:

"Can you make the licensing term 18 months?"

Jay hadn't even asked for it! The brand extended it themselves, which meant the proposal had done exactly what it was supposed to do.

"So literally, he [the director of content] just said 'here's an additional wad of cash' that I wasn't going to be able to claim before without having the proposal structured the Creator Wizard way," Jay said.

"I actually got paid thousands upon thousands of dollars more because I learned how to do this."

The (Mind-Blowing) Results

What followed was, by any measure, a smash hit.

The series ran 4 webinars, each with its own downloadable resource and supported by promo shoots in and around Boston (some of which, to Jay and Wistia's surprise, went viral in their own right).

When the data came in after the 3rd webinar, Wistia shared the results with Jay:

• The webinars delivered 2X the average attendee totals compared to all other Wistia-run webinars that year

• The series placed second out of 55 webinars in new contacts added to Wistia's database (behind only their single biggest annual marketing initiative, the State of Video report)

• 20% of all registrants came directly from Jay's audience via tracked links

• Post-webinar follow-up emails generated a 71% open rate and 25% click-through rate (well above Wistia's benchmarks)

• Wistia placed a banner featuring Jay's promo video on their customer login page (a page visited by millions of users)

The promo videos themselves drew enthusiastic responses from Wistia's target audience of marketers.

"People were liking it, loving it, sharing it, talking about it," Jay said. "People were saying, 'These are the types of webinar promos I have never seen before.'"

More significantly, before the engagement had even concluded, Wistia came back to ask what they could do together next.

"It went from 'here's a specific project we're going to work with Jay on' to 'how do we just keep working with Jay?'" he said.

"That's every creator's dream. Where you have that seat at the table and they're not here for your inventory, your audience, or even a specific idea. They're here for you."

4 Things Jay Did Differently

Looking back, Jay pointed to four specific decisions he learned from Justin and Creator Wizard that his earlier sponsorship attempts never had:

1. Drop the rate sheet entirely

"I tell people, don't send rate sheets. Are you bananas?" Jay said. 

Rate sheets lead with price, which is the last thing a brand should be thinking about when evaluating a partnership. A goal-based proposal establishes the value first, whereas the price is almost an afterthought.

2. Warm the relationship before you pitch

The Wistia deal started with Jay asking for nothing, just the chance to be featured on a show he admired. That goodwill, and the rekindled trust it created, made every subsequent conversation easier.

3. Structure deals to harmonize with your core work

This was Jay's biggest fear going into the Wistia engagement, that it would pull him away from the core business he'd built.

But it never happened. 

The webinar content he created for Wistia was the same material he teaches clients, the brand got the output they needed, his audience got genuinely useful education, and his advisory practice got visibility.

"To watch a webinar in this series is to know what I do as a consultant and coach," Jay said, "it felt harmonized."

4. Quote a number that makes you slightly uncomfortable

Jay credited his background in B2B sales with a healthy dose of self-awareness here. Like most creators and entrepreneurs, his instinct is to undercut (to quote a number that feels "fair" rather than what the work is actually worth).