Sponsorships can feel like a mystery, but Justin Moore, Sponsorship Coach and author of Sponsor Magnet, is here to break it down. With our very own Bree Noble, this episode dives into the actionable steps musicians can take to become a sponsorship magnet. Justin shares how understanding what brands truly want—whether it’s awareness, content, or conversions—can open doors for partnerships. Whether you’re a musician looking to secure gear, funds, or both, this conversation uncovers the strategies and creative thinking needed to succeed. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from a sponsorship expert and elevate your music career.

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Turning Passion Into Profit: How To Become A Sponsorship Magnet With Justin Moore

In this episode, I am here with my friend Justin Moore. I’m so excited because Justin is a mentor of mine. I was excited that he was willing to come on the show to talk to you about sponsorships. Sponsorships are one of those things where you see some musicians out there doing it but you’re wondering how they found those sponsorships. It feels like this black box that you can’t understand.

Justin has so many years of experience with that but he’s also a musician. I was so excited to have him come on here because he has that context of being a musician while he’s not out there gigging musician. He can understand where we are coming from as musicians. I want him to start with a little bit of his backstory around being a musician and then we can get into all the nitty-gritty about getting sponsorships.

Introducing Justin Moore

First of all, thank you so much for having me here. I’m excited to be here, Bree. I bet a bunch of people clicked on this episode because they saw, “Justin Moore. Isn’t that the country singer Justin Moore, that famous guy?” To clear the record here, he stole my name. I’m pretty sure I’m older than him. I had it first. For any of those of you who are disappointed within the first 45 seconds of this episode, please stick around. I’m the better Justin Moore. No.

I started playing music when I was very young. I started playing piano when I was maybe 6 or 7. In my whole childhood up until almost before I went to college, I was sure that I was going to be a professional musician like a concert pianist. That was what I wanted to do. I’ve written hundreds of composition songs. I started playing other instruments like guitar. I was in a metalcore band in high school. I’ve been classically trained in opera. Music has always been a big part of my life.

You classically trained in opera? I don’t think I knew that.

Yeah, I am. It’s pretty wild.

I used to work in an opera company.

I didn’t know that.

I was the Director of Finance at an opera company. I was doing kind of stuff.

That’s wild. It’s funny. You mentioned you’re the Director of Finance there. I feel like so many musicians can identify with this. It’s like this yin and yang to their personality where they have this big passion for being a musician, playing, gigging, and all that stuff but you have to have the job to pay rent, your mortgage, and things like that. I’ve known so many musicians over the years who have figured out a way to work somehow in the industry where it’s a 9:00 to 5:00 job but it’s not a musician, even though it’s related to music.

It could be around all cool creatives.

There’s something to that. Long story short, I didn’t end up becoming a professional musician. I’m sorry. Instead, I went to school for engineering, of all things, and went into medical devices and through this very circuitous path. My wife, who started a YouTube channel in 2009, went down this whole new path in life where we started creating content on the internet essentially and have been doing that full-time for years. Sponsorships were one of our primary revenue streams throughout that time. It’s been a wild ride but I’m excited to dig into it.

I’m curious though. Did you go to school in engineering because you wanted to or you felt like that’s the practical thing to do? “I would love to go in music but I can’t justify it.”

I applied to a bunch of engineering colleges and I also applied to the UC Santa Barbara School of Music, where I got into everything. This was what happened. We’re going to spill a little bit of tea here. I had a blowout with my dad. Bless my heart, my dad’s one of my best friends. He always wanted what was best for me. He said, “If you go to school and get your engineering degree and you want to go back to school and get your music degree, I will support you or that. I’ll help you with that.” I was like, “Fine.” I did it and then never went back to school for music. Maybe that was the plan all along. I don’t know.

I’ll be totally honest with you, Bree. Whenever I would listen to my old music, I would get wistful and a bit sad. I would think about the path that I didn’t take. At some point, my life shifted and I found new joys and paths in my life of things that I also enjoyed just as much as music. I no longer think back on it sadly. When I play, it’s something that I enjoy.

I have heard you say, “I am getting back into music but doing it for my enjoyment.” That’s no pressure. I work with so many artists who it’s their second act. They have a full corporate career. They raise their kids and then do the music. Who knows? Maybe in the next few years, you’ll be ready to do music again.

We moved from California to Minnesota. I have a piano that’s like a family heirloom. It’s hundreds of years old. I got it tuned for the first time in five years. I sat down and was playing. It sounded so good because it was tuned. It’s a feeling that pulls me to sit back down and bang out some songs again.

Writing “Sponsor Magnet”

Let’s get into sponsorships because that’s why I invited you here. I also know that you released your book. I have experience with releasing a book. Probably not as on a bigger scale as you but in 2019, I released my Musician’s Profit Path book. It was quite an endeavor. I wanted to ask you, how did that go? How did the whole book writing, releasing, editing, and craziness go?

Let me distill it into one sentence, which was it was the hardest creative act I’ve ever done. This is coming from someone who has released thousands of YouTube videos, social media posts over the years, newsletters, and blog posts. It’s something about sitting down and needing to unify all of the concepts, frameworks, and everything that I wanted to be. When I started thinking about this next chapter of our life, I started thinking that maybe this is existential. What do I want in the next chapter of my life? What do I want that to look like? What is my legacy going to be?

No one’s going to remember that cool YouTube video I posted and these blog posts I made one time but in this complete distillation of everything that I believe around sponsorships if I could hand that to someone and say, “Here you go, $15, $20, read it. This is everything I know,” I felt so pulled and drawn to that, even though it was so difficult to sit down. Honestly, what I did was have a writing block every morning for two hours.

No matter what I was doing, I cleared out my calendar Monday through Friday. Even if I was staring at a cursor for an hour and a half and I couldn’t think of what to do, I sat there and went through it. You probably know Steven Pressfield with his great book The War of Art. It talks about this concept of resistance. A lot of musicians or people reading this can probably identify with this idea of feeling blocked and creatively stagnated. I had several of those moments throughout the book but I kept pushing through. Fast forward, here we are.

It’s relevant to musicians who are releasing even maybe their first album or an album that feels like their legacy. I remember when I was going to release my first professionally recorded album. My producer was like, “You need to do this for your legacy.” I was like, “That’s stressful. I have kids. I feel this is going to be like what they remember me for and my grandkids.” It has been that. I’m glad I did it. It’s the same thing with books. Artists can understand that kind of pressure, especially your first one. You’re feeling like you birthed another child.

It felt like that for sure. I got an email from my publisher. They’re shipping the first proof copy. I’m biting my nails. I don’t know. It’s going to be special.

I have this picture of myself holding them with the thing that says, “Proof copy,” across the front. Make sure you take a picture with that.

I am going to do that.

Let’s jump into sponsorships. You guys are going to need to go get this book called Sponsor Magnet. It’s going to be everywhere when this comes out. I’m assuming Amazon and all that stuff.

SponsorMagnet.com as well. There are some special bonuses if you buy it directly from the site FYI.

The Importance Of Sponsorships For Musicians

With sponsorships, I specifically asked you, is it different with musicians than regular sponsorships? This is a show. I have sponsorships for this and for my newsletter. We’re used to people sponsoring YouTube things and even events. There are always sponsors for events and musicians are used to seeing that at events. As a musician, how do you even start thinking, “I am a person worthy of someone sponsoring?”

Let’s go back to first principles, boil it down in its simplest form, and pretend we’re the brand and a sponsor. Let’s say Yamaha. I’m going to pick a random brand out there. A lot of musicians think about sponsorships as, “If I can get large enough to get on the radar of some of these instrument companies or brands who supply accessories to musicians, then these sponsors will reach out to me and they’ll want to emblazon their logo on our stage, instruments, bass drum or something.” That seems like the holy grail for musicians. Either they send us gear. First of all, let’s split some hairs because a lot of people think that sponsorships are free gear.

Musicians think that.

They think, “If Yamaha sponsors me, they’re going to send me a bunch of free gear,” but that’s it. That’s the entirety of the sponsorship. There’s no financial component. They’re not compensating me but a real sponsorship includes both of those things. It includes free products as part of the collaboration but also they’re paying you. Go back and think, “What is Yamaha trying to get out of this?” What most people think is awareness. One of the first things I talk about is that a lot of musicians think that the only thing a brand is getting out of this is awareness.

When you’re playing a show or you’re on social media and playing for TikTok or whatever it is, they see the brand’s logo in that content or on stage. That is an awareness thing. That person in the crowd may hopefully also be a musician and they think, “I’m going to go buy Yamaha a piece of equipment because I saw my favorite musician using it.” This is the thesis that most musicians think.

In reality, there are three different goals that brands have when they want to sponsor someone. The first is awareness. They do want to spread the word. If it’s a very prominent musician, then awareness can be a significant thing, especially if that person is maybe getting hundreds and thousands of people attending their shows or hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, or millions of people watching them on the internet. They’re performing and posting themselves and things like that. That could be valuable for sure.

There are two other objectives that brands often have that are often going to fly under the radar. The second is what I call content repurposing. Let’s say that Yamaha comes to you and says, “Bree, we want to sponsor you. As part of this, we know you’re going to make some podcasts, ad reads, and maybe some stuff on YouTube. When you post that YouTube video where you’re talking about Yamaha, we want to take that video and cut it down into a 30-second soundbite version where you’re talking about, ‘ Yamaha is awesome for the following reason, ABC. Guess what? There’s a black Friday sale. Use 20% percent for first the purchase.’”

They want to take that content and run it as an ad on Instagram, TikTok, or something like that. That is a very valuable thing for the brand as something for them to do as part of the partnership with you. The third goal that brands can oftentimes have is conversion. They’re hoping that if you say, “Go click the link below and use my promo code,” that person will buy the instrument. They’ll go to the website, click sale, take out their credit card, and buy it. It’s this awareness, repurposing, and conversion. It’s these three objectives.

If you’re a musician sitting here thinking, “How can I get a sponsor,” this is where you have to first start thinking, “If I’m going to go out there and pitch a brand, I’m not going to wait for them.” You can. You don’t have to wait for them. You can go out and reach out. Let’s say it’s a phone call that you get on with this small music equipment company. Your goal is to say, “What are your marketing objectives for 2025?” They’ll say, “We’re trying to do XYZ.”

“Great. I can help you do that in the following ways. Guess what? I’ve got a newsletter of 10,000 of my most engaged fans. I’ve got this social media. I’m playing this tour and I’m going to do XYZ.” Your job is essentially to understand what that brand is allocating marketing dollars for and then help them understand how sponsoring you will allow them to move the needle on that. It’s much more complex than plastering their logo on your instrument.

 

Musicians can’t wrap their minds around, “I’m going to approach this brand.” That’s maybe one of the first things. They’re like, “I’m this little old musician. They’re Yamaha. Why would they care about me?” How can we make them care?

One of the things I talk about in my book, Sponsor Magnet, is this first thing around, “I’m going to go after these giant national brands or the big titans of industry.” It’s a dream to get sponsored by them but be realistic that that may not be feasible at the very outset of your journey as a musician, realizing that there may be tier 2 or tier 3 type brands where they don’t have this giant sponsorship strategy where they’re working with the gigantic celebrities. They may not even be working with partners at all. It’s never something that they’ve tried. It’s you reaching out and saying, “Have you ever thought of collaborating with a musician in the following way?” That may lead to a conversation that leads to compensation for you.

The fear that a lot of people have around pitching is, “What credibility do I even have? I’m a small musician. I may not have a large following on social media. Isn’t that something they’d care about? I don’t have that many people attending our shows.” There’s all this Imposter syndrome that comes up when we think of doing stuff like this. If you can remember that, especially a lot of these smaller to medium-sized music equipment brands, number one, they probably don’t have very many people on their marketing team. They’ve probably never done partner marketing.

Especially if you have a bit of experience let’s say getting your music out there on the internet. That might be something an expertise that smaller or medium-sized businesses would value. Leaning into your credibility and expertise, you may not think that 10,000 followers on Instagram are very much compared to the people who have billions but to a smaller or medium-sized brand, maybe it might be significant.

Even something as simple as maybe there is a chain of music stores in your local community, state, or something like that. What would it look like for you to reach out and have a conversation with them? Their objective is probably getting more foot traffic into their locations or maybe getting more people to book music lessons at their locations. What could you do potentially to help drive some of those outcomes?

How Musicians Can Build Credibility With Brands

I’m assuming you have other things that you do in your business. You’re an artist but maybe you’re also a voice teacher or a piano teacher. You can mention that as well because then you have more direct contact with some people who would be their perfect customers.

A hundred percent. A big asset that a lot of musicians forget they have is themselves. Potentially, it would be interesting for you to help the brand accomplish something. Going back to that example of the local music store chain or something like that, what would it look like for you to say, “Let’s forge this partnership where I will come into your stores every twice a month or something and I host some session around introductory musicians or guide to music stores?”

A big asset that a lot of musicians forget they have is themselves. Share on X

You can go around and show all the equipment or maybe it’s a tour for people who maybe had a career before and always wanted to write music or play guitar or something but they’re intimidated. You’re older in life and you feel like that’s a young person’s game. “No. This is a session for you. I will come in. I’ll talk about that. I’ll do that.” That’s part of the partnership. Sponsoring you and in other ways could be part of the deal but it’s this mutually beneficial thing where you can understand some of the objectives of the brand and company and forge some of these unique partnerships.

Figure out how to think outside of the box because I’m sure maybe those music stores aren’t thinking like that. You can bring that to the table.

They’re not exactly. A lot of musicians, because I’ve known so many over the years, mistakenly think that they don’t have good business sense. “I’m just a creative. I don’t know all that stuff and how to navigate all that.” Creativity, music, and business are more related than a lot of people think. You use similar parts of your brain when you’re trying to sit and think, “How could I be creative with this composition or impact my listeners in this swipe away?”

The same approach can happen when you’re trying to think, “It would be awesome if I could get some financial support for this musical endeavor. To make that happen, I need to use my creative brain to figure out ways in which I can convince the brand that I can help them move the needle on some of their business objectives by sponsoring me.”

We’ve had to do that in some cases, the way we market on social media. We’re combining that creativity with the business of, “I do need to market myself. I need to figure out how I’m going to promote myself to the people who might be interested in my music.” That’s where we sell ourselves short. You were talking earlier about the UGC content. We can provide content for brands. We already have had to learn how to create videos on social media to promote ourselves to our fans, talk to our fans, and that kind of thing. Why couldn’t we use those skills and transfer them over to how can we promote the brand?

Every musician has had to reckon with how fundamentally the industry has changed, especially if you’re looking at the traditional labels. It’s almost a requisite that you have to have a following on social media for them to even consider you for a deal. The set of skills is fundamentally different from what you need to be a successful musician. It’s totally different than it was years ago. You can apply that same logic to, “If I want to have a sustainable career as a musician, probably that means needing to hone some different skillsets. Maybe one of those is interacting with brands, companies, and partners in a way that they may be willing to support me financially if I’m also able to help them in these other ways.”

I know what they’re thinking. “I love that idea but how do I email them?” It’s so weird to write an email to them and they get all self-conscious. I’ve heard you talk about this before. Don’t start your email with, “I love your brand. I use it all the time.” It’s about the brand. It’s not about me. How can they start an email in a way that’s going to make a brand keep reading?

To your point, the biggest mistake that most people make is they say, “Hi, this is my stage name. This is my band name. We get this many streams on Spotify. We have this many followers on Instagram. We have XYZ. I’m coming out with this amazing creative project. I would love for you to support it, brand XYZ.” What do they do? They don’t respond. They delete the email. They ghost you. You feel sad. It’s the long night of the soul. You’re crying in your shower and this type of thing.

Real-Time Example: Yamaha’s Women In Music Campaign

Not that I’ve ever done that but you have to understand they have lots and lots of people reaching out to them. Not only do they have lots and lots of musicians reaching out to them but the majority of musicians are fine accepting free gear. “Sure, that’d be pretty good. That’s awesome.” What it comes down to at the end of the day is doing a bit of research and saying, “I’m going to see what is Yamaha posting on Instagram.”

Should we do this exercise in real-time? This will probably be interesting. What I’m going to do is pull up Yamaha’s Instagram. Anyone who’s reading this, come over to YouTube to watch this. It’ll be fun. I’m going to go to the Yamaha Music USA Instagram page. One of the things that I teach is that we’re in January 2025. We’re sitting here thinking maybe I’m a musician and I’m going to get creative. I’m going to say, “For all those musicians who want to start some New Year’s resolution, I’ve always wanted to learn how to play guitar.” That type of message is too late to pitch. They’ve already planned their January 2025 campaigns months ago.

Yamaha is a gigantic brand. They have to plan these types of things way far in advance. One of my favorite things is to essentially scroll back on the brand’s Instagram until let’s say last March or April. We’re thinking a couple of months out. I want to know what campaigns they were running and what types of things they were doing last April. Let’s see here. They have a couple of things.

I pulled up this post from April 17th. It’s an interview/performance with an artist that they partnered with and they have this hashtag called #MakeWaves. We’ve discovered something. This is what’s called a campaign that Yamaha is running. I want to know what Make Waves is. I don’t know what it is. I’m going to open it and we can look at that. Let’s see here. Embracing. Yamaha REVSTAR is a type of guitar. This is someone that they’re partnering with. There’s another person they caught at Coachella. A Yamaha artist pushes the boundaries of women in music.

Here’s a great one for you. You talk about women’s empowerment in music a lot. They have an initiative for this. It’s called hashtag #WomenInMusic. If I were Bree, I would be sitting here and thinking, “I saw that last April, you did this partnership with Maria Finkelmeier all about women in music.” You’d want to watch this video and listen to what they’re talking about in this type of thing. You could say, “I was curious if this is an ongoing campaign that you’re running and if you’re going to be doing something like this again in 2025 like you did in 2024. I would love to support you. Guess what? I’ve got this podcast where I talk to a bunch of female musicians. I’ve got XYZ and all these things.”

You see the pitch naturally coming together here. It’s not like, “Yamaha, sponsor me. I love you. I’ve been using your products for fifteen years.” It’s, “I saw that you have this women in music initiative.” This is how they’re allocating their marketing budgets for, Bree. Do you see how I did this in three minutes of research? It’s not that complicated. It’s all about what’s important in their world.

It is what’s happening in the period that you can apply for because they’ve already planned January 2025. You’re looking at at least April or if not, summer. It’s like booking. You have to think six months out. Venues are not going to be like, “We have an opening tomorrow.” I was talking to somebody who’s like, “I approached this venue and they booked me for 2026.”

It’s crazy. It’s a great analogy.

Sponsorships For Album Release Parties

They’re out. You have to think like them. They have to plan much more in advance, especially if they’re big companies like that. There’s one place that I do talk about sponsorship that I have experienced when I talk to artists and that’s around their release party. I always encourage artists to do a release party, especially for an album or an EP. You can get sponsors for this because local companies want to get in front of people who are local.

This doesn’t even necessarily have to do with music. You can get the food or drinks sponsored. You can get the local coffee company to bring the coffee. You could get a local company that provides things for events like the chairs and tables, and a flower company for the decorations and stuff. I’m curious about your thoughts on that. You’re also doing an event coming up soon. What are you thinking about event sponsorship in that way?

It goes back to these first principles. What do these local brands and companies want? They want to be known in their local community. They want more foot traffic and business. What better way to do that than to illustrate that they’re advocates of the local community? It’s by showing that they’re supporting the arts, you and your launch party, and all these things.

There’s this marketing maxim that was developed in the ‘30s called The Marketing Rule of Seven. It’s movie studios. They did a bunch of research and found out that the average consumer needed to see a message about an upcoming movie at least seven times before they decided to go out, get their butt in the seat, and buy a ticket. It’s the same type of logic if you’re thinking about the brands and sponsors that you’re working with. They know this.

They know that the average local consumer needs to be exposed to the message about their local coffee roastery or brewery. They need to see that name around town and get familiar with it. There is value, especially if you can say that you’re doing not just a release party but maybe you’re touring around your local community and that company has a bunch of different locations. You help spread the word about your brand and all these different tour dates that I do around the community.

It goes back to these first principles. It’s about what they are trying to accomplish. Is it awareness? Is it repurposing? Is it conversion? They’re trying to sell stuff. If they’re trying to sell stuff, at your launch party, maybe you allow them to table. They’re selling their wares, coffee, alcohol, or whatever it is. If that’s an objective and a goal of theirs, then let them table. Let them do great. This is awesome.

It comes back to being flexible, having conversations with these people, seeing what’s important to them, and co-creating the experience. I want to preempt everyone because there are probably a bunch of musicians thinking, “I don’t want a bunch of brands, sponsors, or corporate sponsors violating the creative purity of my craft or music. You’re talking real corporate business here, Justin. I don’t want to deal with that or do anything with that.”

What I have to go back to is, “Look, we all need money to survive, thrive, and continue to invest in our art, music, and craft. There’s nothing wrong with figuring out creative ways to do that.” If there’s anyone here who has that block, I would encourage you to sit with that and realize there’s a lot of power that can come from harnessing these types of business-related strategies for your music business. You’ll be shocked at how it can help propel you forward.

We all need money to survive and thrive. We all need money to continue to invest in our art, music, and craft. Therefore, there's absolutely nothing wrong with figuring out creative ways to do that. Share on X

I’m so glad you said that because my thing is profitability. People think that’s only for businesses. Musicians are businesses but there are the people who are like, “No, it’s a hobby.” It’s a freaking expensive hobby. You want to keep making more music. You need to figure out a way to support that. If it’s just that you paid for the thing, you were able to pay off that album and not go into your retirement savings, that is worth it. That is why you need to be paying attention to ways to be more profitable because we can’t keep dipping into our coffers all the time for this expensive hobby.

A hundred percent. I could not have said it better myself. I have a story. When I was younger, I was very optimistic about how many copies I was going to sell with my very first guitar album. I convinced my dad to loan me $3,000 to get the album mastered. I got 1,000 copies printed, which to me was not a problem. I probably sold about 200 of them.

In every house that I’ve moved to over the last several years, I have lugged these giant boxes of my first CD. I finally got rid of them. I kept a couple. I was like, “I don’t need 600 copies of this anymore. I’m not going to do anything with it.” It was very sad. I get it. It is an expensive hobby. There’s a lot of stigma that still needs to be removed from being creative about how you can have a profitable livelihood with your music.

I love that you have that story. Pretty much everyone reading this has one of those stories. Early on when I started talking about this in 2015, when people did still have CDs and stuff, I talked about all the space in your garage that you’re dedicating to these boxes of CDs that you can’t sell and stuff like that. That’s why I say let’s do a release party and make a big deal around it. If you’ve paid for it in advance, either from doing pre-sales or some kind of sponsorships like we’re talking about, then you don’t have to stress.

Final Thoughts And Where To Find Justin Moore’s Book

You can enjoy the experience. That’s part of the reason that we’re doing that. Thank you. This has been so great. I love that we went in real-time and looked at an actual brand. It’s going to be so helpful for everybody. Tell them again how they can get a hold of your book, how they can watch you on YouTube, and all that. You’re always creating so many great helpful videos on YouTube as well.

I appreciate that. The URL is SponsorMagnet.com/Podcast. I have a channel on YouTube. It’s called Creator Wizard. I have hundreds of videos all about this topic around sponsorships. Keep an open mind. I do talk a lot about social media influencers, content creators, and stuff like that. As you hopefully have gotten through this conversation, maybe there are some interesting avenues for you as a musician to think about getting sponsored. I would love to see you over on YouTube as well.

The more we can get educated on how to talk to brands about it, we’re going to open their minds because it’s our job to help them see how we can help them. Thank you so much for all those specifics. I appreciate you hanging out with us.

Bree, it was a blast. Thanks again.

 

Important Links

• Justine Moore on LinkedIn
• Sponsor Magnet by Justin Moore
• The Musician’s Profit Path
• The War of Art
• Sponsor Magnet Podcast
• Creator Wizard Podcast

 

About Justin Moore

Justin Moore is a Sponsorship Coach, author, and the founder of @CreatorWizard, a school & community that teaches you how to find & negotiate your dream brand partnerships so that you stop leaving thousands on the table. His latest book, “Sponsor Magnet,” offers a succinct distillation of his ideas and frameworks for securing successful brand collaborations.

Along with his wife April, he has been a full-time creator since 2014 and has personally made over $5M working with brands. He also ran an influencer marketing agency for 7 years that helped other creators earn millions more.

Justin brings a very unique perspective because not only has he been a creator in the trenches doing sponsorships for years but by running an agency, he has insider knowledge behind how big brands choose which influencers to partner with and why they pass on others.

Justin’s mission is to enable creators big and small to land 1 million paid brand partnerships by 2032.