How this niche podcaster works with billion dollar brands
When Paul Jamison started his lawn care business, he had no idea that it would turn into a podcast with hundreds of thousands of listeners and brands eager to buy ad space — but that’s exactly what happened.
Paul is the voice and creator of the Green Industry Podcast, which covers the ins and outs of the lawn care and landscaping industry. These days, he can boast that he works with some of the most recognizable home improvement and lawn care brands in the world, such as Lowe’s and John Deere.
While you could call him a pro now, that’s not at all how things started out. The very first time Paul took a call from a brand that wanted to sponsor him, he first had to…find a shirt.
It was 2019, about a year after Paul had launched the podcast. A brand had reached out to have a call about a potential deal and that day, Paul happened to be with friends by the pool.
“I thought my phone was going to ring at three o'clock with my first sponsor. So I'm sitting there, in my bathing suit, and I was telling my buddy, ‘yeah, dude, I got a sponsor,’” he recalls.
“I thought I was all that and a bag of chips.”
Three o’clock came and went with no call. Worried it was actually a scam, he checked his email and realized it was supposed to be a video conference call. He scrambled to find a shirt and hopped on. He was late, but he still managed to land his first deal for $1,000.
“I just couldn't comprehend someone paying to be on my podcast,” he says.
“I was so happy — I was doing cartwheels and backflips. That was the first time I made money like that as a creator.”
He didn’t know much about negotiating deals when he took that call and offered several packages for mid-roll ads. The brand ended up picking his biggest offer.
That was the first clue that he was in a stronger position to negotiate than he realized, but it would take a few years and a lot of calls with Creator Wizard to realize just how much money he was leaving on the table.
From the lawns of Atlanta to the airwaves
Paul launched his lawn care business in Atlanta in 2011. The first few years, he says, were difficult. He even ended up working nights at a restaurant to make ends meet. But by 2017, things had turned around and Paul was growing his client base and making a profit.
In 2018, he got the idea for his podcast because he wanted to share the story of his struggles starting out and how he was growing it into a sustainable small business.
“I just started cranking out podcast episodes, sharing my stories and my real-life experiences as a lawn care business operator and owner,” he says.
The Green Industry Podcast quickly became popular, cracking the top 100 in the business and entrepreneurship category. Paul realized even people who worked in different industries were tuning in to hear his tips as a business owner.
From there, he added Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook to his portfolio, and suddenly he had a small media empire on his hands. He traveled to events and trade shows and interviewed lawn care industry leaders for the show. Soon, people were even recognizing him out in the world and asking for pictures and autographs.
Yet, despite that massive success, it wasn’t translating into money.
“We'd get all these views, all these downloads, all these likes, all these pictures and autographs. But there's no money. What are we doing wrong?”
But a lightbulb moment was coming.
The tools to succeed
In those early deals, Paul worked out a less-than-ideal formula to figure out what to charge brands for sponsorships. He’d simply talk to friends and other creators and do a quick calculation. He figured if he had 5% of a friend’s audience, he should be charging 5% of what they were able to make.
It was a race to the bottom, and no one was winning.
That all changed when Paul heard Creator Wizard founder Justin Moore on the Think Media podcast.
“It was like a divine moment, so to speak,” says Paul. Here was Justin answering all the questions Paul had been asking his friends, but with real answers.
Paul immediately started following Justin and watching his livestreams, and soon decided that a consultation call with Justin would absolutely be worth it.
“I felt like I was leaving more money on the table than what I had to pay him. If he can help me retrieve some of that money, it was going to be worth it,” he says.
And it was worth it. In their first call, it became crystal clear that Paul had been setting his prices too low, and that was a problem. Once you’ve set a low price precedent with a brand, it’s hard to come back and command higher fees.
“I screwed things up with some of my favorite brands by offering my services for so cheap, and with a lot of deliverables,” says Paul.
“But thankfully, with all the new brand [deal flow] since working with Justin, we've been able to set some really good price precedence and healthy win-win sponsorships.”
Together, they also identified and addressed one of Paul’s weaknesses — emails with brands. Paul simply didn’t know the lingo used to negotiate these deals, but Justin went through his inbox and helped Paul respond to brands with confidence and expertise. Paul was then able to use those communications like templates to talk to brands on his own.
Also vital to Paul was Creator Wizard’s Sponsorship Wheel. This is Justin’s eight-step process for working with any brand. It walks creators through the process from pitching, to negotiating, to creating the deliverables, to analyzing successes and failures to nurture an ongoing relationship with brands.
These are the tools that set Paul up for success, but it was only the beginning of his relationship with Creator Wizard.
A coach in your pocket
Paul is with Justin for the long haul. He’s had two dozen or so one-on-one coaching calls, has taken all of Creator Wizard’s courses, and is part of the Wizard’s Guild program.
With that ongoing relationship, Paul says Justin is his “coach in the pocket,” always there to help him navigate new terrain and new deals. It means that every time a new brand reaches out, or Paul has a question, he knows he has help just a call away.
“It's just good to have somebody who's more well-versed in the sponsorship world double-check an email before I send it out to the brand,” Paul says.
“I love the continuous work with Justin and his team. I probably have the record for the most coaching calls with Justin.”
Paul says the return on investment in working with Justin has absolutely paid off — he’s working with his dream brands and commanding more money per deal than ever before.
It’s even having a ripple effect — Paul keeps referring fellow creators to Justin because, in his words, “the rising tide raises all ships.” When everyone is charging what they’re worth, everyone wins.
It also begs the question — why choose a coaching service like Creator Wizard over a sponsorship manager? For Paul, it’s an easy choice.
“Managers ultimately don't have your best interest in mind,” he says.
The motivation for a manager is to get their cut of each deal, not to make the best deals possible for the creator. Ultimately they’re building up their own brand and reputation — not yours. In working with Creator Wizard, Paul maintains complete control over his brand and his business. Justin is just there to help him along the way.
“What's helpful about Justin and his team is they give me the tools to represent myself. I'm able to talk to these brands and ultimately send out my proposals. They put me in the best position to win and to earn more money,” Paul says.
Working with brands, not for them
One of the most transformational strategies Paul has learned from working with Creator Wizard is how to approach his relationship with brands. He’s no longer simply receiving instructions and following through, he’s presenting himself as a partner.
His goal is now to understand the brands he’s working with — their marketing objectives, the audience they want to reach, and the best product he can offer for their goals. He knows that there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. Sometimes the brand’s goal is to promote a trade show, sell a product, or reach a new audience. He now knows how to provide packages that can achieve those goals.
He also has the confidence that he can give brands the best value for their money and outperform other marketing options like ad campaigns. He also learned from Justin to follow up all his campaigns with a report that shows the impact he generated, which leads to new deals with those brands.
“A lot of these brands that I worked with in 2022, when I started working with Justin, we [collaborated] again this year. And we're already talking about working again in 2024,” he says.
Part of the reason is that Paul now understands the power of his niche. Lawn care and landscaping may sound like it would bring limited opportunities, but the opposite is true. Paul has cultivated an audience with a lucrative focus who have a deep trust in Paul’s expertise. And that has immense value.
“It's very eye-opening to me to see the power you have when you have a niche and the way you can convert your audience into customers of these companies. They see that and they're willing to pay me for that,” Paul says.
A thriving business on all fronts
Paul still runs his lawn care and landscaping business in Atlanta, the difference now is that he’s not the guy pushing the lawnmower.
He still does landscaping when he has time, but “I've been enjoying the air conditioning for once in my life.”
Far from that first call when he was scrambling for a shirt, these days Paul is landing deals with major brands worth tens of thousands of dollars. He’s living the dream of running multiple businesses including a successful podcast that more than pays the bills.
“I've been a creator — broke and busted — and I've been a creator making money. When you get to do what you love and you get to make a lot of money doing it, it's exhilarating. It's so much fun.”
Learn more about how Creator Wizard can help you here.