She has less than 10,000 subscribers on YouTube. Her podcast gets a couple hundred downloads an episode. And on a LinkedIn livestream with fewer than 100 viewers, she sold a $250,000 piece of medical equipment.

Her name is Dr. Alex. She runs a podcast called Digital Pathology Place. And she is proof of something I've been trying to beat into creators' heads for years: follower count is not the flex you think it is.

I was recently a guest on the Smart Passive Income podcast with Pat Flynn and Liz Wilcox, and this Dr. Alex story came up when Pat asked me the question I get asked constantly — what's actually working right now for landing brand deals? Here's the thing: most creators think sponsorships are reserved for people with a million followers. They're not. They're reserved for people who understand what a brand actually wants. Those are two very different games.

The Follower Count Myth That's Costing You Deals

Dr. Alex's audience isn't big. It's dense. C-suite decision-makers. Biopharma executives. Heads of R&D who show up on her show to talk shop. Medical device companies and biopharmaceutical brands roll out the red carpet for her at trade shows because there is nowhere else to reach that audience at that concentration.

I told Pat and Liz about another student of ours, Wojciech, who runs The Fire Science Show. There are maybe 5,000 people on earth who care deeply about the science of fire. He's the guy for all of them. He landed a sponsorship deal that outpaced his day job because when a brand needs that specific audience, there's a spot on his podcast or nothing.

You don't need reach. You need to be the only option for someone.

Why Brands Actually Want to Work With You

Most creators think there's one reason a brand sponsors you: they want you to talk about them. That's the caricature. It's wrong, and believing it is what keeps you underpricing yourself.

I call it the ARC framework, and it's the single most useful mental model I can hand you:

Awareness — they've got a launch, a new feature, a market expansion, and they need eyeballs on it.

Repurposing — they want content. Full stop. Footage, quotes, soundbites they can chop up and run as paid ads on their own channels. You might never even air the video for it to be worth their money.

Conversion — sales, clicks, leads, trial signups. Something attributable.

Here's what trips people up: they assume it's always conversion. If you come from email marketing or direct response, of course you think that — conversion is the whole game over there. But most brand deals aren't optimizing for a sale. They're optimizing for something else entirely, and if you don't ask which one, you're negotiating blind.

So ask. Straight up: "What would success look like to you? What are you trying to accomplish?" Liz told a story on the episode about an email service provider that approached her wanting a YouTube video. She assumed they wanted a review. Wrong. They wanted a roundup — them included alongside competitors — because their actual goal was just to be in the conversation. Different ask entirely once she knew the real goal.

Your job isn't to say yes or no to the brief they hand you. Your job is triage. A brand walks in with a symptom — "we want a YouTube video" — and you diagnose the actual ailment underneath it.

Even Free Mentions Are a Foot in the Door

Creators tell me all the time: "If I'm already talking about a brand for free, why would they ever pay me?" Backwards logic. Brands running campaigns need very specific things said — soundbites they can cut for paid ads, a seasonal promo, a coupon code tied to a launch. You're not saying that stuff organically. Ever.

I heard about an affiliate manager who had a $10,000 campaign budget and went straight to their existing affiliate pool first — the people already championing them for free — because those people were already bought in. Being an unpaid fan isn't a reason a brand won't pay you. It's the reason they will.

Start tagging brands you actually use. Publicly. Consistently. That's not a favor to them — it's you building the case for why you should be first in line when the budget shows up.

How I Turned My Own Book Into a Sponsor Asset

I'm about to hit 10,000 copies sold of Sponsor Magnet, and because I hybrid-published it through Lulu, every copy is print-on-demand — which means I can create custom versions in whatever quantity I want.

So I started pitching category-exclusive brand sponsors on custom editions. A Kit-branded edition with their logo on the cover and a foreword from Nathan Barry about building an email list to upsell your sponsors. Five hundred copies to hand out at their own conference, in their own swag bags.

Liz's reaction on the call was priceless — she compared it to Jerry Jones turning stadium sponsorship into a league-wide standard. I'll take the comparison. The point isn't the specific tactic, it's the mindset: you're only limited by your own creativity. Nobody told me books could be sponsored. I decided they could be.

Same instinct showed up with Sponsor Games, my in-person event. Our year-one presenting sponsor, Lulu, hired a coffee cart that laser-etched their logo into the foam on every cup. Wildly Instagrammable — people were photographing their coffee. When we debriefed after year one, the first thing Lulu asked for was to become the exclusive foam sponsor for year two. I had no idea that was even a category. You genuinely do not know what a sponsor cares about until you sit down and ask them.

The Post-Campaign Report Is Actually a Pitch

Want to know the single highest-leverage habit for turning one-off sponsorships into long-term deals? Send a post-campaign report.

Out of every 20 people a brand works with on a campaign, maybe two will actually submit their invoices, their tax paperwork, and a real recap without being chased for it. Be one of the two. But don't stop at metrics — include the qualitative stuff too. The DMs. The replies. The negative feedback nobody else is surfacing for them, because it isn't showing up in public comments where the brand can see it.

That negative feedback is a gift, not a risk. Liz shared on the episode that she got paid $300–400 just to hop on a call and give a brand candid feedback on their platform — and they thanked her for it. Brands are desperate for market research they can't get anywhere else. Handing it to them is how you become indispensable instead of interchangeable.

And here's the part people miss: the critical thing about a post-campaign report is that it's your pitch for the next campaign, embedded inside it. You're not asking for renewal. You're demonstrating, with evidence, why renewal is obvious. So when that brand walks into their next budget meeting, someone says "let's just hire her again — she already has an idea for the holiday campaign," and the decision makes itself.

Nurture Like the Miner Who Doesn't Quit

There's an image I keep coming back to: two miners chiseling underground. One gives up right before he hits the vein — there's a tiny sliver of rock left between him and a wall of gold and diamonds, and he walks away. The other keeps going.

A client of ours followed up with a brand four times with zero response. Fourth email, the brand finally replied: sorry, been buried, kid was sick, let's move forward. They landed the deal.

If a brand doesn't respond, that's not a verdict on you. It's not "no." It's "not yet." Set the goal for yourself: can you email a brand three or four times without hearing back and not take it personally? On the other side of 25 nos is a guaranteed yes — as long as you don't stop swinging the pickaxe before you get there.

Sometimes You Just Take the Shot

Pat told a story on the episode about filming a video in Tampa for his Pokémon brand, Deep Pocket Monsters. On a whim, he reached out to the Tampa Bay tourism board — who'd never worked with an influencer that way — and pitched filming a city-wide challenge video. Low five figures, free hotel, free meals, and a video that performed so well they invited him back onstage at his own event.

He tried the same pitch in Seattle. Hard no. Didn't matter — because now he had a proven case study. "Here's what we did in Tampa. Here's the views. Here's the comments." That's currency for the next city.

Screw what's normal. Strive to be abnormal. Ask the question nobody else in your position thinks to ask, because the worst answer you'll get is one you already have without asking.

What would you do if a brand told you no three times in a row — keep going, or take it as a sign?

If any of this hit home, my book Sponsor Magnet goes a lot deeper into frameworks like ARC and exactly how to pitch, price, and retain sponsors — it's the resource that started this whole conversation with Pat in the first place. And if you want it to be a lot less trial-and-error, that's what Wizard's Guild is for — hands-on coaching to help you land and grow brand deals instead of guessing your way through them.