A veterinarian with a podcast about digital pathology gets 500 downloads an episode. On one of her live streams, with maybe 50 people watching, someone in the audience bought a $250,000 piece of medical equipment.

That's not a typo. That's my client, Dr. Alex.

I tell that story every chance I get because it wrecks the one belief that keeps more podcasters broke than anything else: the idea that you need a massive audience to make real money from sponsorships.

You don't. You need the right audience. And most of you already have one — you just don't know how to talk about it yet.

I got to unpack all of this recently with Adam on his show, and it turned into one of those conversations where I couldn't stop talking. So let's get into it.

The CPM Trap Is Keeping You Poor

Here's the thing about CPM. For every 1,000 downloads, if a brand offers you a $35 CPM, you make $35. Sounds fine until you realize only about 20% of podcasts even crack 1,000 downloads an episode.

So if you're sitting there with 300 downloads thinking sponsorships aren't for you, I get it. That math sucks. I'd be discouraged too.

But that math is only true if you're playing the volume game. And you shouldn't be.

Go back to Dr. Alex. She's not getting 10,000 downloads. She's getting a few hundred. But who's listening? C-suite execs at hospital systems. People at medical device companies. The exact humans who sign off on $50 million advertising budgets.

If you're a biopharma company staring down a menu of options — meta ads, a trade magazine nobody reads, a booth at a conference — and one option is "fly out the most trusted voice in this exact niche and put her in front of our R&D team," which one actually moves the needle?

That's the whole game. As long as you're not tripping over the CPM model, a small, deeply niche audience can be worth more than a massive general one. Learn how to actually position this in Sponsor Magnet.

It's Not About You. It's About Who You're Serving.

I want to kill an objection before it kills your interest in any of this. A lot of you are thinking: if I run an ad for a brand instead of my own coaching program or course, I'm leaving money on the table. Why give up that airtime?

Because it's not about maximizing your own revenue. It's about serving your audience — and it's honestly a little myopic to believe the only way you can help your audience is with the stuff you personally sell.

Survey your own audience sometime. Ask what's keeping them up at night. I promise you'll get answers that have nothing to do with your niche. Work-life balance. Anxiety. Money stress. You're not going to start a therapy practice to solve that. But you might partner with a company that already solves it.

I break this down into a framework I call PSA — Products, Sponsors, and Alliances.

Your Products are the things you sell directly — your coaching, your courses. Your Sponsors are the brands you partner with for things you'll never build yourself. And your Alliances are the people in your orbit — a friend who's a life coach, a marriage therapist — whose offers deserve airtime too, because it's still about serving your audience.

When you help someone through a rough season, they trust you more. And when they're finally ready to invest in your thing, that trust is what closes the deal.

What Would You Do? A Real Pitch, Built Live

I don't love theory without proof, so on the episode we actually built a sponsorship pitch in real time for Adam's own podcast. I use a framework from my book called the ROPE method: Relevant, Organic, Proof, Easy to execute.

Adam uses a tool called Kit for his email marketing. Obvious pitch, right? "I've used Kit for years, I love it, let's partner." Wrong. That's the pitch everybody sends. And everybody gets ignored.

So instead, I went to Kit's website. Found out they'd just opened a physical studio space in New York where customers can film their podcast for free. Then I built the pitch around that: "My audience is full of side-hustle podcasters who don't have a studio they're proud to show up in. Kit Studios solves that pain point directly."

That's the Relevant piece. Then you link an Organic episode you've already made that proves your audience cares about this exact thing. Then Proof — results you've driven for other brands. Then Easy to execute — a specific ask. Five integrations over two months, turnaround in 10 days, are you free Thursday at 10am?

That's a pitch a marketer actually responds to. "I've used your product for three years" is not a pitch. It's a compliment nobody asked for.

My Hot Take on the "Make Friends First" Strategy

Adam asked me about a strategy he'd used before — inviting someone from a brand onto your show first, making a connection, then asking for a warm intro to the marketing team.

Here's my hot take: it can work, but I think it trivializes the distribution channel you spent years building.

Think about the analogy. If a brand wants access to a pool of prospective customers through Meta ads, or a billboard, or a magazine ad, they pay for that privilege every single time. There's no free version.

Your podcast audience isn't cold traffic. It's people who've trusted you for months or years. Giving a brand free access to that — before any money changes hands — undersells everything you built. Build relationships with decision-makers on LinkedIn instead. Comment on their posts. DM them. Let the audience access stay something brands pay for.

And to be clear — if you do incorporate a sponsor into an episode, disclose it. Every time. Just say "this episode is sponsored by X" up top. The FTC has clear guidelines here, and your audience won't punish you for a sponsorship. They'll punish you for pretending it isn't one.

Screw the Rate Card

If there's one thing I want you to stop doing immediately, it's sending a media kit or a rate card the second a brand shows interest.

I get why you do it. It feels efficient. It also leaves thousands of dollars on the table and force-feeds the brand a package they never asked for. Maybe they don't want dynamic ad insertion. Maybe what they actually want is an interview with their CEO.

You don't get to know that unless you ask. Treat the first conversation like a doctor's intake exam. What are you launching? What's the business outcome you're chasing? What's keeping your team up at night?

Then — and only then — you come back with a custom proposal tied to what they actually told you they need. That's a completely different conversation than "here's package A, B, or C, pick one." And it's the difference between a $700 deal and a $70,000 one.

Stack Your Assets — But Don't Overextend

Adding a newsletter, a private community, or a social following on top of your podcast absolutely raises your ceiling. But I want to meet you where you're at. If you're still working a full-time job and running this as a side hustle, you don't need to add five new distribution channels overnight.

If you're going to add one thing, make it a newsletter. It's the single best way to stay connected to people who might actually buy something from you or a sponsor.

There's also something I call the name and likeness advantage. If Dr. Alex is an ambassador for a medical device company, that company can say "one of the most trusted voices in our industry stands behind us" from a trade show stage. That's worth far more than the actual ad placements — and it should be priced completely separately from your deliverables.

The Real Block Isn't Strategy. It's Worth.

Adam asked me to speak directly to the person who's been sitting on all of this, thinking their show about Pokémon cards or their favorite sports team is too small, too niche, too "just a hobby" to be worth real money.

I'll go somewhere deeper here. A lot of the hesitation around asking for real money — sending a counter, saying "no, this is the investment, take it or leave it" — traces back to how you grew up around money. If it was tight, or taboo to discuss, negotiating for real sums as an adult can feel like it shouldn't be allowed.

The good news: this is learnable. You do have a valuable distribution channel. Brands are not doing you a favor by sponsoring you — they need what you've built, and it's your job to communicate that value clearly. Not to get resentful when they lowball you. To make the case so well they can't lowball you in the first place.

Screw what's normal. Strive to be abnormal.

If any of this hit home — the pricing, the pitching, the mindset stuff — that's exactly what Sponsor Magnet walks you through step by step. And if you want to actually build these pitches live, get feedback, and walk away with real brand deal opportunities, that's what Sponsor Games was built for.

If you want more hands-on help turning this into a repeatable system in your business, that's exactly what we do inside Wizard's Guild.

So here's my question for you: what's the one belief that's been keeping you out of the sponsorship game — the audience size, the pricing conversation, or something you're not saying out loud yet?