"All right. I just got in a fist fight with this dude in the lobby of the hotel."

That's how I kicked off my conversation with Patrick, right outside VidSummit.

Nobody threw a punch. But we definitely went at it.

Patrick is a talent manager. He's managed creators his whole career, including some of the biggest in the country. I'm the guy who's done 550+ brand deals, made over $5M, and runs a 0% cut policy. I don't take a piece of what my clients earn. Ever.

So you can probably guess where this was headed.

The question we were fighting about is one you've probably asked yourself: should you hire a manager for your brand deals?

The Manager Who Didn't Care Where His 20% Came From

Here's the thing. Before I coached creators, I ran an ad agency. I was the guy on the brand side reaching out to creators with real money for real partnerships.

And one experience stuck with me.

I'd email a creator about a deal. Their manager would reply. Something like: "Yeah, I think my talent would be interested. But we've also got 19 other people on our roster. Here are their rates, their names, and their channels. Want to work with any of them instead?"

Read that again. You hired someone to sell you. And the second a brand shows up, they're shopping your opportunity to everyone else on their list.

Why? Because they didn't care where their 20% came from.

I asked Patrick for his real-time reaction. He didn't defend it.

"There's obviously a lack of transparency between the creator and their team," he said. "And there's obviously some values missing."

His point was simple. If you actually care about the person whose career you're responsible for, you take care of them first. Period. And he made a great observation: if that manager had to work out of a shared inbox the creator could see, he'd never have the courage to send that email.

That's the test. Would your manager say it if you were cc'd?

Management vs. a Glorified Inbox Responder

I hear this from creators all the time. "I'd love someone looking after my whole career."

Then they talk to a manager and hear, "Come back when you're bigger."

So which is it? I pushed Patrick on this.

His answer was more honest than I expected. A manager working on commission can't sign everyone. They'd never make a living. You can't expect someone to work commission-only when you're just starting out.

But here's what I noticed. Patrick doesn't start with your follower count. He starts with one question:

"What is your dream? What do you want to accomplish?"

If your ambition doesn't match his, it's not a fit. Same if your ego is bigger than your respect for the team. He's dropped talent who were rude to his people. "See you later."

To Patrick, management is like marriage. It's long term. And sponsorships are only one piece of it.

"As a creator, you own an audience," he told me. "The question is, how do we truly build a business around that audience? There's so much that can be done outside of sponsorships."

Ventures. Events. Products. Syndicating your content to new platforms. Getting renewals instead of one-offs.

That's the line between a real manager and someone who just answers your inbound emails. One builds a business with you. The other forwards rate cards.

So be honest. Which one are you actually looking for?

Why You're Not Getting Renewals

This is where Patrick and I agreed 100%.

A lot of creators want it both ways. They don't want to commit to anyone. But they're happy to let ten different people pitch them.

So what happens? One agency quotes a brand $10K. Another quotes $15K. A third says they "represent" you to the same client.

Picture that from the brand's side. Twenty agencies, twenty different numbers, all claiming you. You look disorganized at best. Shady at worst.

Then you wonder why nobody renews.

Patrick put it bluntly: nobody gets renewals through that kind of representation. It's all one-offs. Nobody owns the relationship, so nobody provides the customer service that makes a brand want to come back.

His team builds custom decks for every brand pitch. Intentional. Curated. That takes real time and resources, which is exactly why they mostly work with bigger creators.

You don't need an agency to fix this, by the way. You need one consistent price, one point of contact, and service so good the brand would feel dumb not to renew. That's a big chunk of what I teach in Sponsor Magnet.

"Sign With Us and We'll Get You Access"

So why not just hire a salesperson yourself?

Patrick's case against it was mostly about economics. A new hire probably doesn't have the relationships. They build everything from scratch. You front a salary and pay commission. If they're not great, you hire again. And again. Plus you're managing them, dealing with turnover, and carrying the legal liability.

Fair. But then he brought up the pitch every agency makes: sign with us and we'll get you access to brands.

This is where I pushed back hard.

I've sat on the brand side. When I'm running a campaign, I care about one thing: finding the perfect-fit creator to reach the audience I want. I almost never call an agency and say, "Show me your roster, I'll take five." I cherry-pick talent from everywhere.

So I asked him straight up. Do you actually have examples?

He did. His argument: the industry is wildly fragmented. One big consumer company might use twenty different agencies across twenty brands. Some deals only happen through specific platforms. Some brands won't answer a creator who emails them directly.

His team has one person whose entire job is building relationships with the agencies running campaigns. They send their roster's inventory to those partners constantly.

"How can a creator manage relationships with 100 different people?" he asked.

That's a real answer. For the type of creator he works with, it holds up.

But notice the condition he kept coming back to: a management company has to pay for itself. If it doesn't, it's not an asset. It's a liability.

If You're a B2B Creator, Read This Twice

Patrick's core business is long-form YouTube. Media-first creators. One of his clients is basically a modern Mythbusters who wants to act, launch CPG products, and build brands.

That's not who most of my clients are.

More than half the creators in Wizard's Guild are subject matter experts. Think the top data science creator on LinkedIn. And B2B influencer marketing is exploding.

Here's the thing about B2B. That whole world of shipping inventory to agency shortlists? It barely exists there right now. There's less fragmentation. And the brands, niche but often huge, increasingly want to work directly with creators.

So for a lot of our clients, paying someone a cut to sit in the middle just hasn't made sense.

What they do need is what Patrick described: professionalism. Clear communication. Great service. Most creators are bad at that, frankly. It's one of the reasons I wrote the book.

Patrick actually agreed. For a creator like that data scientist, he said, management probably isn't the answer. Learning to sell sponsorships yourself is.

His framing was smart: low volume, very large ticket size, long-term relationships. Almost a different industry.

"Maybe the word is not sponsorship," he said. "It's just partnership."

The Integration Nobody Skipped

Seven years ago, the 60-to-90-second YouTube integration was the deal. It's how YouTubers made the lion's share of their money outside AdSense.

Not anymore. Short form ate a huge chunk of brand budgets. For the creators I work with, the winning deal is now a holistic sale across their newsletter, their in-person event, and every other surface they own.

If you're a one-trick pony on one platform, you're going to have a hard time.

Patrick agreed, but he wasn't ready to bury long-form integrations. And honestly, neither am I. Evergreen media that keeps getting found is hard to beat.

The catch is doing it right. Not "Hey guys, let me tell you about our sponsor" followed by 60 seconds of everyone hitting skip.

Here's how his team did it with ZipRecruiter.

That Mythbusters-style client built a series around testing the most dangerous jobs. People are there to watch the dangerous jobs. ZipRecruiter lives inside that bit, the coolest part of the video. If you skip it, you skip the thing you came for.

The result? Retention didn't even dip.

There it is. When the brand is the best part of the video, nobody reaches for the skip button. And those videos keep earning views, and keep paying off for the brand, for a long time.

"99% of Creators Shouldn't Hire a Manager"

Before we wrapped, I hit him with my hottest take.

"If I say 99% of creators should not hire a manager, what's your reaction?"

He didn't flinch.

"Maybe for most of the managers out there, that makes a lot of sense, honestly."

Then he pushed back. Plenty of huge creators and artists will tell you their management was a big part of their success. And a few bad actors shouldn't ruin the reputation of the good ones.

I respect that. We agree on more than we disagree on.

But here's where I land. Most creators don't need someone to take 20% for answering emails. You need to know your numbers, protect your price, communicate like a pro, and build relationships that renew. That's learnable. My clients learn it every week inside Wizard's Guild, and we get in a room to sharpen it together at Sponsor Games.

If you do hire someone, hold them to Patrick's own standard. Aligned incentives. Full transparency. A plan for your business, not just your inbox. And they have to pay for themselves.

Screw what's normal. Strive to be abnormal.

If you want more of these conversations in your inbox, grab the free sponsorship newsletter.

Now, what would you do? If a manager offered to take over your brand deals tomorrow, could you name exactly what they'd do that you can't?