atters far more than the size of it.

Stop Sending the One-Number Pitch

Here's what happens in 99% of sponsorship conversations:

Brand reaches out. Says they want to sponsor your podcast. Asks how much. Creator stammers, throws out a number, and either leaves money on the table or kills the deal. End of story.

The number one mindset shift I teach is this: before you quote any number, ask the brand what success looks like.

Because here's what most creators don't realize — brands have three completely different goals when they partner with creators, and your pricing has to change based on which one they have.

I call it the ARC framework:

Awareness — they want to spread the word. New product, new territory, new feature. Their boss isn't demanding a specific sales count. Their KPIs are downloads, impressions, engagement — squishy metrics that are hard to hold you accountable to. This means your negotiating leverage is high. You can charge significantly more.

Repurposing — they want your content to use elsewhere. In ads, on their website, in their email newsletter. Here's where most people miss a massive opportunity: if this is their goal, your audience reach barely matters. They're paying for the creative asset. You're essentially a production company in a box — you're the writer, camera crew, editor, talent, and organic distribution channel all in one. If they didn't hire you, they'd need to hire a production company, pay for talent, pay for editing, and then pay Facebook or Instagram to run the final result. Your audience is a bonus.

Conversion — they want sales, signups, downloads. They're doing CPA math before they contact you. If your average episode gets 10,000 downloads, 10% click through, 25% sign up for a free trial, 20% convert to paid at $100 LTV — their maximum is $5,000. And they don't want to pay the breakeven. This is the hardest negotiation, because you're fighting a spreadsheet.

If you have a rate card on your website, you're skipping this entire step. You're leaving a massive amount of money on the table by quoting the same number to a conversion-focused brand and an awareness-focused brand who would happily pay you two or three times more.

The Repurposing Pivot That Changes Everything

Let me make this concrete.

Say a brand reaches out and asks how much for ten podcast ad reads. You ask what success looks like. They say: "Honestly, once you record the ad read, we want to get the rights to run it as a video ad on Meta."

Your response is not: "Great, here's what ten ad reads cost."

Your response is: "Knowing that's your goal — I don't even need to post this on my podcast. Let me make you five 30-second videos with varied hooks and varied calls to action. You throw those into Meta's ads interface and see which one performs best. It's five times what I'd charge for a standard integration, but it's completely aligned with what you told me you actually want."

Now your pricing is detached from your audience size entirely. You're being paid for creative work — not reach. And you just made significantly more money without doing any additional research or relationship-building.

The Budget Question That Actually Works

Here's the other place most creators leave money on the table: the "what's your budget?" conversation.

If you ask a brand directly what their budget is, they'll stonewall. Because if they say $10,000, your proposal will be $10,000. They have no room to maneuver.

Instead, at the end of your discovery call, say this almost verbatim:

"This was really helpful. I'd love to put together a custom proposal for you. I usually do three to four packages to show you the different ways we could bring this to life. Do you have a sense of what I should set those tiers at from a budget feasibility perspective?"

Then stop talking. Lean into the silence.

About 75% of the time, they'll give you a range. Not because they're generous — because you gave them flexibility. They can say $5,000 to $15,000 and feel like they haven't committed to anything yet. And now you have exactly what you need to build something that fits their reality and stretches their imagination of what's possible.

The other 25% will still say they don't know. That's fine. Package one — your lowest option — has to be what I call your "heck yeah" number. The amount where if they pick it, you're genuinely excited, not resentful. Whatever that number is for you — $500, $5,000, $15,000 — that's your floor.

Always send packages. Even if the brand didn't ask for them. Here's why: they have no idea that you have a newsletter, a community, a social following, an email list, or any other properties beyond what they originally reached out about. Your packages educate them about your full ecosystem. They don't just upsell — they inform.

The DUE Rule: What Most People Never Negotiate

Beyond the base deal, there's a whole other category of value that most creators never charge for: the DUE rule. Deliverables, Usage Rights, Exclusivity.

Deliverables — exactly what you're creating. Ad reads, dedicated episodes, integrated videos, photos, written posts, in-person appearances. Get specific.

Usage rights — what the brand gets to do with your content beyond the original post. Can they run paid ads with it? Repost it on their social? Put it on product packaging? On a trade show booth? On a billboard? Usage rights can extend way beyond the internet, and most creators grant them without knowing they could charge for them. If a brand wants six months of rights to run ads with your content, that's not free. Standard guidance: license fees should be 15% of the base deal per 30-day period, and amplification rights (where they boost your content with their own ad spend) should be around 25% per 30-day period.

Exclusivity — are you agreeing not to work with any of their competitors for a set period? Understand the exact category they're defining as "competitor," because sometimes brands will try to make it extremely broad. Samsung makes phones and fridges — if you're doing a phone deal, you shouldn't be locked out of appliance sponsorships. Exclusivity clauses are negotiable. Everything is negotiable.

Why 99% of Creators Shouldn't Have a Manager

I'll say this directly because I've seen it play out too many times: most creators who delegate their sponsorship business to a manager, agent, or broker regret it eventually.

Here's why. When I ran my influencer marketing agency, I'd reach out to a creator through their manager. The manager would say "she's interested" — and then immediately pitch me fifteen other people on their roster. Sometimes I ended up working with someone other than who I originally wanted, because a cheaper alternative was right there.

Managers are incentivized by volume and commission. They don't care if the deal is right for you — they care about closing deals. If you say no to something, they send you fewer opportunities. Your interests and their incentives don't align.

More importantly: when you negotiate your own deals, you can make judgment calls in real time that a manager can't. If a brand asks for a quick voiceover change that wasn't in the contract, you can say "no problem, give me an hour" — because you're thinking about the lifetime value of the relationship, not protecting your cut. That kind of responsiveness builds long-term partnerships. A manager saying "$2,000 more for that revision" kills them.

The people I've watched thrive over 15 years building audiences are almost universally the ones who treated their business like a business. Who were the head of sales and business development, at least for long enough to understand how the economic engine of their work actually functions. You can hire help — but retain the knowledge and the relationships.

Start With the Positioning Before You Pitch Anything

One last thing worth saying: before you reach out to any brand, make sure a brand could figure out what you do, who you serve, and whether you'd be a good fit — just by landing on your website or your social profile.

When I ran the agency, this is what I was doing constantly: clicking around people's profiles, trying to determine if they'd be a good fit for a campaign. You'd be shocked how hard this is for most creators. No "work with us" page. No clear statement of who their audience is. No demographic information. Nothing.

Make it easy. Who do you serve? What transformation do you provide? What's the composition of your audience? If a brand can answer those questions in 30 seconds, you're ahead of 90% of your competition.

The full system — from building your positioning to pitching to negotiating to writing the post-campaign report that turns one deal into a long-term partnership — is in Sponsor Magnet.

And if you want ongoing coaching support while you work through real deals with real stakes, that's what Wizard's Guild is built for.

What's one thing about your audience that a brand in your niche would find genuinely valuable — and have you ever said it out loud in a pitch?