How a Keynote Speaker Landed a Brand Deal Seen by 1M+ People

Jay Akunso doesn't dance on TikTok. He doesn't have a viral podcast. He doesn't even really call himself a YouTuber, a podcaster or a newsletter writer. He is a B2B consultant who gives keynote speeches to marketing teams.

By every traditional definition, he is not an influencer. And yet one of his sponsors just put his face on a page seen by over a million people right next to the login button. Here's how it happened in Jay's own words. I run a what I would call a high-end advisory business where I work with experts, entrepreneurs, creators, business leaders who have a lot of competence and expertise in their space.

And what they're seeking now is more resonance in the market and with their audience. And what that turns into is me working with them on two main areas of development. So one is turning their expertise into one signature idea that I call a premise. and then all the IP that they want to own, basically the packaged, commercialized, scalable version of their expertise.

So that could be frameworks, stories, branded terminology, things like that. If you sucked out all the genius from a best-selling, big-concept business book, all you'd be left with is the IP. It's that scalable, repeatable version of someone's expertise that allows them to monetize and grow an audience around it. So I work with them on premise and IP development, and then I work with them on their public speaking.

So that's signature speech development, speaker success systems, their speaker business or platform. Some of my clients charge a fee. Some of them are speaking for lead gen, some for both. And so for many years, I was a professional keynote speaker, and that's how I arrived to this advisory business.

Most of my content is written. where I write on my newsletter. So I'm a bit of an atypical creator. I'm not like very channel focused.

You know, you can't call me a YouTuber. You can't call me a podcaster. You can't call me a newsletter writer. I am, I'm writing, creating everywhere.

I'm a consultant. I'm a coach. And I'm an author and a speaker primarily. So the main channels that drive my personal platform are giving talks at conferences, hosting my own webinars, giving webinar presentations, you know, among people community groups and other virtual events.

So that's a big driver is public speaking. And then my newsletter is probably kind of 1B. If public speaking is 1A, my newsletter is 1B. You know, and maybe, you know, off my platform, I mentioned speaking, I think LinkedIn is probably the other one.

Like that's where I have the largest following and the most traction. I've just gotten to know Justin over the years and I've sought his advice and he's kind of pointed me to his book and his methods. And, you know, he's really rewired how I think about sponsorship. So everything that Justin was saying about sponsorships really mapped to my sensibilities and my values were treating it much more like a partnership and not just inventory that you sponsor.

Right. Inventory with a logo, inventory with a hashtag branded thing. And so that really messed with me because I came through the world of B2B where I'm not going to be a fashion brand is not going to sponsor me, nor should they. But I've always worked in B2B for companies like Google and HubSpot.

And so when I became an independent creator, I always kind of wrote off sponsorship as like for other types of creators, people who dance on TikTok, people who have massive mainstream famous podcasts. That's that's the world of sponsorship. For me, brands were clients. Brands were like, you're going to hire me to give a speech at your marketing all hands.

You're going to, you know, work with someone like me as a service provider to consult you or create some kind of collaborative front facing project. It had never really occurred to me to try and work through like the sponsorship mechanism or for Justin the sponsorship wheel and make it like a real revenue engine in a different way until I came across his ideas. The sponsorships that I had, they were always cobbled together and reactive. So, you know, I've worked with brands that, let's call them mid-market and scaling, like challenger type brands that serve marketers and entrepreneurs in the business world.

And they would want to create some kind of like original series with me. They would see me as a speaker. So that makes me a natural show host. They would listen to my podcast.

For many, many years, I ran a podcast called Unthinkable, which was very different than most business podcasts. They were attracted to that. And so it was always like a really interesting. intricate arrangement to like work through one kind of like sponsored project where I would be paid basically as front facing talent and maybe like a producer or creative director for a brand new show that they wanted to build.

And then as a sweetener, I would say, okay, well, I also have these owned projects of mine where I can, you can sponsor them. And it would be the classic like ad reads on the podcast or, you know, a CTA and a logo in my newsletter. Kind of like an afterthought was the sponsorship stuff. And where I got into trouble with that was I started booking these projects and it became this like somewhere between a little nuisance that detracted from my real client services business.

because it was like nice revenue, but a lot to navigate. Somewhere between that and actually detrimental to my business, despite the glossy nature of working with a brand on a public-facing project like a documentary or a podcast. Like, it wasn't what I get into the business of doing. And so where I think the main value of Sponsor Magnet and Creator Wizard to me was showing me how to work with a brand collaboratively, but also in step with what I'm already doing and what I'm already selling.

I'm happy to give you examples of what that means, but like rather than it be this lazy, let's slap a logo on it approach. And also rather than it be this like massive endeavor where it feels like I'm pulled away from my other business. Now it feels much more like harmonized with the things that I would be doing anyway or the skills and competencies and topics. It's very on the nose for my current advisory business, the way I approach it now.

Two years ago, I was approached by an agency that represented MailChimp. And MailChimp wanted to partner with more creators. And I'd seen them doing it. And it was the model that I don't really believe in and want to pursue, which is kind of like simple branded posts and branded videos native to the social feed.

Yeah. And that always felt like that kind of area of like the danger area for me that would pull me away or feel like a nuisance and I didn't want to do it. It's also B2B. So like those things reward massive audiences, but B2B sales, like actual revenue growth, you don't need a massive follower count.

So it felt like kind of caught between worlds. And so I'd seen what MailChimp was doing, never thought to reach out to them. Their agency reached out to me. And when I talked to Justin and he pointed me towards the sponsor wheel and sponsor magnet related themes and all that stuff, what what he proposed was really smart, which is like find a way to basically stack together like marketing I'd want to be doing anyway.

So when I ship publicly alongside MailChimp, it's sending signal to the market. about what I sell as a business owner. My advisory service is for speakers, right? So like figure out how you can layer together a project that like combines MailChimp and you in a way that harmonizes to your business.

I'm doing a bad job explaining this, I'm sorry. So basically what ended up happening was, you know, I had a sales call with them. And I got all the information about what they're looking for, what works, what doesn't with them, what their problems and challenges were. I did the Justin thing, which is like, here's a goal.

Here's a package for that goal. Here's a goal. Here's a package for that goal. Here's the biggest package at the end of it all.

And they were like very casual about it. They're like, we want that one. And I was like, oh, OK, great. This is awesome.

Because that package was to film me coaching three B2B voices for. marketers, entrepreneurs, business owners, that we would pre-select and agree on, coaching them on camera through my methods to become stronger speakers and storytellers. So here was this project that kind of claimed some time for booked clients that I would have wanted to book anyway. And now it's like earmarked for a Mailchimp project.

And also it'll be published publicly in a way that client engagements are not. So it'll also be really good marketing for my core business. And then MailChimp was able to say, look at all the time spent with this branded project, NJ, look at the messaging around it. These are the ideas we want to uphold as a brand.

And we're attracting like really premium decision maker type people. It all started with Wistie and I have had smaller sponsor agreements before where, for example, they're in Boston. I'm in Boston. I've gotten to know them as a result.

And they were struggling many years ago to figure out what was the message behind a documentary series that they were building, which was called 110100, which was all about. It was really clever series. The constraints around creativity. They made the same ad.

with an agency partner for $100, for $10,000, and for $100,000. And what did the budget do to change the production of the ad? So this amazing concept for a series. But they were really struggling with telling the story of that series you know, how do you message it in a trailer?

What's on the landing page? Like, what is the premise that we're trying to own here? And premise development is my specialty. So I partnered up with them as if they were a client to figure that out.

And then I kind of turned into, well, why don't, this is a great relationship. Why don't you sponsor some of the projects I have, where it looks more like the classic sponsor deal, you know, for a low dollar figure, put your logo on stuff that I built. Right. So we've had, I had that kind of relationship, like a formal relationship before, but it was the model of sponsorship that I no longer want to pursue.

Like if people show up in that capacity on my platform, again, it's the sweetener, right? It's the like slap a logo on it is not the thing. It is the value add at the end of a package like selection of line items. And so, you know, I knew I wanted to work with them again.

You know, it was at the time I reached out to them last year. It had been about three years, four years since that arrangement. And I saw them doing a series that was not branded called Fix My Setup, which is they would go into different people's offices and fix their virtual camera setups because they're a video software and video marketing company. And, you know, really good branding, really good show, not sponsored.

Yeah. And so I reached out to them and my first sort of decision was, could I be featured on the show? Hey, we have a relationship. Let's warm up this relationship again.

And I'm not going to cold pitch them something financial. Let's do something that we just show up publicly together for free. And so they said yes. They came to my home office.

They set up the, you know, the new lighting and camera and stuff that you're seeing now. And so we had a great time of it. And I was able to then sort of like reignite relationships there. Yeah.

And then I pitched them after that, probably three or four months later, on they really wanted to own and start marketing themes relating to webinars. And I'm a public speaker and a public speaking advisor. And so that's perfect because webinars are a form of public speaking. And that's the area that they don't teach.

They teach the technical side, the marketing side, the revenue side. But it's really hard for people to give good webinars. And so I reached out to their VP of marketing and I said, hey, random idea. Like had a great time with Fix My Setup.

And it's been awesome watching you guys talk about webinars. I imagine one of the hardest parts is most webinars are so excruciatingly bad. And that's why they're not succeeding. And that's why they're churning off of Wistia or not buying Wistia.

What if we did Fix My Webinar? You did Fix My Setup. What if we did Fix My Webinar? You send me...

virtually or maybe in person to a bunch of people's offices, VIP clients, influencers in our space, you name it. And we'll go through their actual materials and their presentations. And like I do with my clients, I'll fix it. And so I was kind of thinking about the MailChimp deal like this would be similar.

It would showcase what I do. I could drive client leads and sales through that. It's also a sponsor arrangement. And we kind of went back and forth a little bit.

And it was like, hey, you know, that's a pretty intense thing. It sounds creative. I'm not so sure. But why don't we have a call?

And so on that call, what came out with a couple of their teammates, the director of content, the VP of brand, and then a couple other folks on the marketing team, what came out was like they really like this conversation. opportunity to educate folks around being a better host of a webinar, not just getting people to the landing page to sign up, but like actually delivering it, that wasn't really well covered in their content inventory. And so what if I would partner up with them and teach that somehow?

And so they shared all these goals they had around marketing the ideas of webinar growth and using webinars in your marketing as a brand and why they wanted people on the Wistia platform and they et cetera. And so I went back and said, okay, here's the different goals I heard from you. And here are the different packages. And once again, I was like, and here's the media as possible one.

What if we did multiple webinars about webinars that have this arc to it in an original series and each webinar would come with an original resource that they could download and use if they attended the webinar and we could promote it online with kind of like discreet, you know, promos that we shoot because they're a video company. So you got to do video promo. And once again, just like with MailChimp, they're like the largest one. We'll take that.

Didn't surprise me because I'd been through the rodeo once or twice now. But what was really interesting was the new wrinkle here, which was definitely creator wizard inspired, was Wistia dropped really casually in our sales call. Yeah, we're trying to partner up with new creators, new B2B voices. This is kind of a new thing for us.

We used to sponsor a lot of events, and we still do some of that, but we really want to get into sponsoring and working with creators and doing influencer partnerships and things like that, and we're kind of new to it. And so I sort of went back, and when I was thinking through the proposal, I said, hey guys, I'm going to explain in this proposal... more about like why I'm putting these things in here. And I was just talking through it like Justin might, because I wanted to say like, part of my value is I'm a perfect guinea pig as you push forward towards more creator partnerships.

And so I think they saw that additional like meta level value of like, not only is Jay's idea and platform and audience all great for us, but he's going to be a really good guinea pig because we're trying to figure out creative partnerships. And he's kind of willing to work collaboratively with us And like explain why he's doing these things. So an example of that is I explained in a dedicated slide why in the proposal they were going to see a production cost and a licensing fee for the content I'd create with them.

Because I know from past interactions with them and just being in B2B, most of those brands in B2B don't understand the licensing part. They just expect I pay a creator to make this stuff for me and then it's mine and I can use it forever and ever and maybe put some ad budget behind it. And what I learned through Sponsor Magnet was absolutely not. Right.

Like there is no perpetuity unless that's built in somehow. And even then that's dangerous. So you need a licensing fee. And the kind of I'll end this part of the story here by saying when I proposed that I had a 12 month, excuse me, a six month licensing kind of arrangement.

I broke it down per month and I said, it's this upfront cost for the production and the promotion. And then it's this six month. I broke it down on a per month basis, but I capped it at six months licensing fee. And the director of content very casually said like, we want to go with that package, but do me a favor, Jay, can you make that 18 months?

So literally he just said, here's an additional wad of cash that like, I wasn't going to be able to claim before without having the proposal structured, you know, the creator wizard way. So like, it was immediately like, oh, wow, I actually got paid in this case, thousands upon thousands of dollars more because I learned how to do this. Real quickly, that licensing lesson that Jay just described, the idea that a brand doesn't automatically own your content forever just because they paid for it, is one of the exact pillars that we help you negotiate inside Wizards Guild, our sponsorship coaching program.

See, most creators leave money on the table because they don't know usage rights are even negotiable. Jay didn't either until he learned to price it separately, and it turned into thousands of extra dollars he wouldn't have asked for otherwise. So if you'd like to see if you qualify for a free sponsorship strategy session with my team, click the link below or go to wizardsguild.com slash qualify.

One, this is what I tell to speakers who charge a fee to give keynotes. This is what I charge to consultants and coaches who have questions about how to build that business as they see me build mine. We are bad at quoting a fee that we are actually worth. So we tend to undercut ourselves and ask for less.

And I was told early on in my speaking career, if you're not quoting a fee that makes you slightly uncomfortable to say, you're not quoting enough. You should always be at least slightly uncomfortable with the number coming out of your mouth or that you're sending through a proposal. And so I know firsthand that like as someone who could be sponsored or work in a sponsorship capacity with a brand, that my tendency is probably to lower my gaze and lower my price. And so I'm not surprised that like they're elevating it a little bit, these brands, because I'm probably not quoting as much as I should and I'm trying to get better at that.

But the other reason is these proposals that I'm creating are like clear articulations of... of goal-driven work together, not how much stuff I will create with your logo on it, which is a total rewiring for how most people pitch them and most interact with them. So when they see three different people that look the same with a similar size audience, and they could sponsor any of them, and two of them are saying, here's all the stuff you get for this fee. And one of them, me, I'm saying, here are the goals we're going to knock down and the achievements we're going to have to grow your business that's going to be They're going to want to invest in that one and also invest more.

I think in general, we as entrepreneurs are just so close to the work that we lose sight of the perception the work has because we see how the sausage is made. And also just as as human beings, you know, with with rare exceptions, even though entrepreneurs have a healthy dose of positive self delusion, let's say. I think when it comes to selling stuff, you know, most of us don't necessarily come from a sales background. I come from a marketing background.

And so I'm much closer to it than a lot of creators are. And I'm much more comfortable, I think, with the sales and marketing portions of the work. But even then, you're like, you're trying to quote something that feels fair to you. But when you're so close to it, it's probably a little bit less.

Like, you're trying to make yourself... feel not exposed or you're trying to make sure that they say yes to the quote instead of you're at the last mile and they are interested if they really truly want to work with you and if they would truly be a good partner with you let them come back and say hey we love all this jay and we love you we can't do it for that and then you say no problem let me take a little bit out of the Let me drop the price by a little bit. And now I'm in your rank, right?

So they see where you could go with it. And then they come back into what's reasonable for their budget. That's healthier than you undercutting yourself. And you quote it and they're like, yeah, that sounds great.

And you're like, ah, damn it. I should have gone higher. Like they had no friction at all. You want a little bit of friction at the price point, right?

Because they already see, they should already see the value. Where we get into trouble is we don't know our own value. And also, frankly, we lead too soon with like a rate sheet or something. Right.

Which like we should never send. I'm now I'm telling people like, don't send rate sheets. Are you bananas? What do you do?

Like, no, you want to send this proposal that you have the value clearly laid out. You have an emerging, if not established relationship with trust with them. And later, the last part of the consideration is the price, not what you lead. with the elimination of my rate sheet is something i took from sponsor magnet and creator wizard more broadly and some of the dangers in sending a rate sheet without having that relationship and the proposals that are goal-based like that's definitely from creator wizard um the other stuff like i'm just used to quoting packages and selling things to b2b right like to do a brand that's the world i came out of and that's the world that i still sell into in many ways not my advisory services but my public speaking You know, those are organizations who have events or team kickoffs that I need to, I'm going to speak at.

So I'm used to the B2B negotiations and I'm used to most people start with, can I have this? And you have to get good at saying like, absolutely. Why don't we jump on a call so I can explain to you some of the value in the way I work? But mostly I want to get more information from them and ask them questions.

And I tell them this and then I'll come back with something very custom for you. And that's something I picked up on, you know, selling keynotes that serves me well as in a sponsorship interaction. The Wistia agreement, the first one, it went so well that they asked me for before this engagement ran its course, they asked me for what we could do next together. They basically went from like, here's a specific thing to, Jay, we just want to work with you more.

Like, what would that look like? You know, it's everybody's dream to have like, they had specific needs with specific goals and they still do. We're still going to work that way. But it went from like, here's a project that we're going to work with Jay on to how do we just keep working with Jay?

And I feel like that's every creator's dream where you have like that seat at the table and that desire. They're not here for your inventory or your audience or even a specific idea for a project. They're here for you. So two things.

I think it's the vibes and the results. It's I'm incredibly values aligned with them. They have a very quirky personality and brand style. They are, again, are a video software company.

So they appreciate somebody who can show up well and naturally on camera. So I think we could get beyond compared to a lot of other B2B. creators. We could get beyond some of the like retakes and reshoots for videos because like I'm that's where I live.

I'm really good as a speaker. I'm really trained as a speaker. So we could focus on frankly shenanigans like part of the word that came up. And again, this is everyone's dream.

The word that came up a lot with the team was like we're excited for more shenanigans. Where we went to the viral Boston City Hall cop slide. There was this viral video where a cop fell down the slide. And it's in a children's playground, but it's a dangerous metal slide.

It's terrible. And that went viral. And there's all these craters and teenagers that walk by and still take photos and go down it. All right, let's do our little remix on that.

And so we went, I was game for that. We went down into Boston City Hall and, you know, we did this thing with it. It was a crash test dummy, not me. But I went to the top and filmed a couple of videos.

Like I was doing silly things. We did like a whiteboarding session where it was like a beautiful mind where I was going crazy, trying to think about things and looking out the window really, you know, like, you know, sadly. And I am game for the same kind of shenanigans that their team is game for, for their in-house content. And that was really huge for them.

And it was easy. I think I'm very easy to work with and I pride myself on that from a speaker standpoint and a client advisory standpoint. So I carry that over here where it's like I bring ideas. I bring process.

I am organized. I am responsive. I also make sure that like this is a huge brand of like, you know, earning lots of money and they have lots of stakeholders and they have less. So if nothing else, let me be easy to work with and values align with them.

So that was huge. And the results have been pretty insane for this program, which I'm happy to talk about. So we did a series of four webinars. Every webinar came with a package.

So the package was, so in addition to the webinar itself, like each hour long session, I created a downloadable resource for each And then we earmarked a set number of hours in the package for promo shoots. So I'd go to their office or we'd run around Boston having shenanigans where we would shoot promos for the upcoming webinars. So in a series of four webinars, that was like two shoot days allotted in the package. The first shoot date, we shot promos for the first two webinars.

The second shoot date, we shot for the last two webinars. And some of the promos absolutely blew up. Like to the point that they were like, we need to put Jay on camera more for our social feeds. Like that's part of what brought them back to the table was the audience's reaction and like the passionate response to all of this.

To the point where people in their market, they target marketers and business owners. And people were like... These are the types of webinar promos I have never seen before. I can't believe this is a promotion video for the webinar.

This is like people were liking it, loving it, sharing it, talking about it. And because they are also marketers, they know what we're doing, right? They're like, this is it. We were showcasing, like we can do this as an industry.

We can show this much personality. We can have this much fun. So there was this really deep appreciation of in the marketing industry of like how we promoted these webinars with these like discreetly valuable social videos. It felt great.

It felt I felt a little bit sheepish about it because I was like I kept redirecting credit because if I posted it native to my feeds, people would be like, Jay, this is incredible. This video is so great. And I felt this immediate need. And I think I think Wistia appreciated this to be like, oh, that was all Carlo.

That was all like, you know, like I wanted to make sure that they knew I didn't go on my own and shoot this and edit this. Right. Like I know this is something in Hollywood productions that actors talk about. It's like it's the cast and the crew and the directors.

You know, there's so much more that goes into making this great. So I was like, I felt amazing. But I also felt like I have to shift some of the credit to my sponsor partner here. because they had great ideas in the room, great ideas on the shoot.

They edited this together. Like they are incredible partners, truly partners. Where they, what they were lacking was, you know, some of my ideas and IP, they were lacking in, or wanted to add to the mix, my creative ideas and direction, and then my on-camera abilities. But they have a team of in-house editors.

So I like far be it from me to say like, yeah, I did it all. Cause they had a huge role to play. So in the agreement itself, there is written language about how many native posts and things. So every webinar, I posted two promotional videos across my channels natively to social media, and I would engage in those comments.

I would also engage in the comments of the Wistia posts. So if their CEO or who has the most followers at the company or their brand handles would post, I would engage. And then I had every webinar got its own dedicated content. graphic in my newsletter as a CTA.

And then we used some tracking links to know what came from Jay's social, what came from Jay's newsletter. And one of the responses that I got, there was a summary of the results from one of their marketers that they sent me. One of the responses was, Jay's audience showed up. As in like, You know, we promoted it to them and they were responsive to it.

And so they were pretty excited about that. It is a pretty foundational thing. It's kind of an overriding thing and it's going to sound flippant, but it really did rewire how I think about this, which is so much of the world of sponsorship on both sides, the brand and the creator, turns into a transaction. Yeah.

And so what Sponsor Magnet is fundamentally about is collaboration, right? Like we, Justin has said it before, full disclosure, I worked with him a little bit on some of his speaking. So like, I know these ideas intimately, but you know, he said before, we always collaborate on the creative side and not the revenue side. And we need to carry forward our collaborative mindset.

So he calls this the collaboration paradox, where it's like we create together and monetize alone. And that's a mistake. And so what this has shown me is, you know, every time... And now I'm getting inbounded from other like B2B voices, speakers, authors, entrepreneurs with a platform, and they're asking me about sponsorship.

And they're like, so can you look at my rate card? And I'm immediately like, no, that's a transaction mindset. That's like, I have an audience with inventory. Here's what I charge to access it all.

Yeah. And I'm like, you want to treat this much more like a partnership, much more like a relationship. Frankly, selling client services, whether it's a keynote or advisory or in my past iterations of my business, like being a hired host on a branded podcast or docuseries, all of that really equipped me to know what to do in a marketing and selling capacity when it's a relationship. But then you hear the word sponsor.

And that usually falls away and it devolves into a transaction. So if anything, it just reignited things that felt familiar with other things I've sold, but like in a new way for sponsorship. Every year, Wistia creates a state of video report for marketers and they invest a ton of their team's time and a ton of budget, both in sponsor dollars, but also just their own like ads that they run and sponsorships of events and things like that. Um, it's their far and away their single biggest marketing expense every single year is the state of video report and all things to promote it.

What they told me was the third of our four webinars. So this was reported after the third was delivered, delivered. The results from webinar four are still coming in. But after number three, which is kind of the most like completed recent webinar, that was the second most successful webinar.

The one we did together compared to their single biggest marketing expense in the last year. Our webinars delivered twice the average attendee totals of, if you look at all the Wistia run webinars, mine delivered twice the average for all of those. They ran 55 webinars in the last year. And again, mine was the second of all 55 in terms of new contacts added to their database.

And again, the first was their single biggest expense on the marketing team all year, the state of video, which is they release it in a big webinar. So that's why it's like webinar related. 20% of the registrants came from my audience. Like they could track it through the URLs that I shared.

And then the post-webinar follow-up emails, like when they send the replay and other resources, 71% email open rates, 25% click-through rates, which are just far and away above all industry averages, including Wistia's own. They saw so much success with this that they put a banner on their customer login page. So Wistia has hundreds of thousands of paying customers, which means probably like, you know, over a million individual users because these are business accounts, right?

Like there's multiple people per customer logging in. So there was probably over north of a million people are hitting these user login pages. And they saw so much traction and success with our series that right next to the login options, you know, Google and your email and all that was a giant banner with my one of the videos I shot promoting the next webinar and a link to sign up for it. Like, that's nuts.

It feels great because when it all works, this is the Allura sponsorship done the Creator Wizard way. When it all works, it does feel like magic. It's like the brand is happy. You are happy.

The audience is happy. Everybody's winning. People are getting good resources, good education, good tools, good services, whatever's being sold by the brand partner and given away in the educational sense. The brand is like...

like financially they're doing better like and myself too right like it's just like this massive like win-win-win scenario um and it kind of so it kind of feels like that venn diagram overlap becomes a circle and so that's a really wonderful way i use the word harmonizing it all like this feels harmonized to watch a webinar in this series is to know what i do as a consultant and coach And so you are better equipped to maybe hire me. It's to know what Wistia cares about and offers.

And so you're better equipped to sign up for a Wistia account, right? And it's also if you don't hire or pay either of us, you are better served as an attendee to these webinars. So it feels great. I mean, what's really fun about this is just how much of a smash hit it turned into.

Because you're always kind of like, you're never sure. You're like, I'm confident we could do something, but you're never quite sure. You know, they're saying that the phrase they use was like, we're getting the best of both worlds. They're like, we're seeing a lot of impressions, you know, kind of the awareness play, and we're seeing a high registration rate and passionate response.

So you get the kind of like affinity part of it, awareness and affinity or reach and resonance. Like when you bring both to the table, it's a pretty undeniable win. I felt great because I know that team really well. The thing I was most nervous about was a remnant from my past approaches to sponsorships was how pulled away from actually building my core business am I going to feel right?

Because unlike some creators, sponsorship is not the way I make money. But even then, if it is, you probably feel pulled away a little bit from like sharing your art and being fulfilled creatively. And at this point. I'm practiced enough with brands to know that there is an overhead, that there is admin, that there is back and forth, and you can price that in.

So I'm aware of it. But emotionally, it can feel very draining to work with an organization when you're a solopreneur. And so that was my biggest concern heading in, and it never really manifests. I think I priced it well.

I aligned it well to their goals. And it's also the material that feels like very exciting for me to talk about and pursue. Like I was I continue to be in the mode of storyteller and teacher and creative. And I never had to like be an unnecessary shill to be like, and by the way, Wistia is awesome.

And like, here's how I use Wistia. It was not like a sneak selling. campaign. It was straight up teaching an audience things that both sides, Wistia and I really care about.

And so the last remaining question was like, will I feel pulled away from the core work? No, because it's the same themes. It's the same IP that I usually teach. You know, it's me remixing and repurposing material that I've spoken about before.

Like it really felt harmonized. I actually recorded a public sponsorship coaching call with Jay, where I dig into how to land high paying brand deals as a B2B creator. So check out that episode right here.