Twenty-two sponsorships. One month. That's not a typo.

Logan — a Wizard's Guild member and Sponsor Games alum — hit Prime Day last year and watched his inbox detonate. Every brand he'd ever worked with wanted promotion at the exact same time. So he said yes. To all of them. And then barely survived to tell me about it.

"It's been a lot," he said, with the kind of exhausted calm that only comes from someone who has genuinely been through it.

Here's the thing — I don't say this to brag on Logan's behalf. I say it because there's a real lesson buried inside what sounds like a "nice problem to have." Because it is a nice problem. It's also a completely unsustainable one if you don't address it.

When "Inbound" Becomes a Trap

Most creators spend years trying to get to a place where brands are sliding into their DMs constantly. And Logan got there. He built strong long-term relationships, delivered results, and became the guy every brand in his niche wanted during peak season.

But that same success created a prison.

"I don't want to deny any of these brands I've worked with in the past," he told me. "They're all trying to work with me at the exact same time. But I like working with all of them."

What would you do? You've got relationships you've spent years building. You've got brands that trust you. And now they all want you during the same four-week window. Saying no feels like betrayal. Saying yes means working twice as hard for a month and burning out the second it's over.

Logan's been doing this for three years in a row. And every year, he tells himself it won't happen again. And every year, it does.

The Pricing Conversation Nobody Wants to Have

The obvious answer — raise your rates — is harder than it sounds when half your deals are long-term partnerships with established packages.

"Increasing prices feels a little bit difficult because I have kind of long-term partnerships with them," Logan explained. "I don't want to like spike it out of nowhere."

That's a real tension. I get it. But fast-forward five years: do you want to still be taking 22 deals in a month because you were afraid to have one uncomfortable conversation?

Here's what I keep coming back to: the discomfort of that conversation is a one-time cost. The discomfort of burning out every Prime Day and Black Friday is a recurring one.

Logan's short-term plan is smart — deny new brands during peak season, protect existing relationships, and cut his workload roughly in half. But long-term, the math has to change.

The Play Nobody Else Is Running

This is where it gets genuinely interesting.

Logan has been experimenting with a model most creators haven't even thought about: instead of taking a flat fee from brands, he's having them fund ad spend behind his own content, with his affiliate link attached.

He tried it with one brand during Prime Day. They gave him $1,000 to run ads behind his existing content. He generated over $10,000 in sales for them — a 10x ROI. And he pocketed a couple thousand in affiliate commissions on top.

"So that kind of triggered my thoughts of like how do I scale this," he said. "Have them give me $10,000 next Prime Day and have 10 brands do that."

There it is.

Instead of burning himself out executing 22 deliverables, he's thinking about a world where brands put budget into content that's already performing, he earns affiliate commission on the back end, and his actual production workload shrinks dramatically. That's a fundamentally different business model. And it came entirely from his own experimentation — not a playbook anyone handed him.

The VA Question (And the Weird Feeling That Comes With It)

One thing we've talked about a lot inside Wizard's Guild is the question of when to get help managing partnerships. Logan pulled the trigger on two virtual assistants who now handle most of his brand email communication — trained on my content and Sponsor Magnet.

The result? He went from spending two to three hours a day in his inbox to maybe twenty minutes.

But he also said something I think a lot of creators feel and never say out loud: it's a little weird having someone else know exactly what your business is making.

"They're seeing all of my emails. Every time a brand pays me or every time Amazon pays me — they really know probably fully what my business is doing."

Totally normal feeling. And also? That's just how real businesses work. You pay people less than you make, they help you scale, and eventually the discomfort fades. Logan's gotten there. Most creators haven't even started.

The Only Metric That Actually Matters

When I asked Logan what advice he'd give to a creator who looks at his situation and thinks I want that, he didn't talk about tactics. He didn't mention pricing strategy or ad spend models.

He said: "Just try to make them feel like I'm the best partner they've ever worked with. That's my number one goal in every partnership."

That's it. That's the whole thing.

Add one or two great relationships every year. Make every brand feel like they won. Repeat. Over a few years, you have a roster of partners who fight to work with you — even during seasons when you're already slammed.

It's not complicated. It's just hard. And most creators won't do it because they're too focused on the transaction to think about the relationship.

Screw what's normal. Strive to be abnormal.

If you want to build the kind of sponsorship business Logan has — where brands are coming to you — grab a copy of Sponsor Magnet and start treating every deal like it's the beginning of a five-year partnership. Because it probably is.

Are you in a season right now where you're overwhelmed by inbound, or are you still grinding to get that first wave of interest?