I didn't pay a single cent for this or this or these or most of this or this and in fact I actually get paid to use and enjoy a lot of those things that I just showed you and paid well enough that Beth and I have been able to run this channel and do these things full-time well at the same time moving to one of the most beautiful and quite literally one of the most expensive mountain towns on the planet and you can do this too I'm gonna show you how Show you how we created partnerships and sponsorships within categories and sports that we had no previous experience in. How we went from companies just providing product to proper, well-paying, long-term sponsorships. We're going to chat with actual marketing managers and hear from them exactly what they look for in people who they sponsor. We're even going to talk to a lawyer who specializes in partnerships and sponsorships. But before we dive in, I just want to say that one, everything involved with being sponsored is one heck of a lot of work.
And two, when it comes to getting products and services for businesses. There is no such thing as free. All right, let's dive in here.
Let's pretend you are a marketing manager and you have a product that you wanna get in front of the right people. Now, there are a whole bunch of different ways that you can go about doing that, but it's your job to make sure you get it in front of the most amount of people for the least amount of money, time, and effort. So really, you're just looking for value.
All the way around, no matter who we're talking about or what part of this whole situation we're talking about, value is the key. For there to be a successful sponsorship, the number one goal is to bring the viewer or the person that goes and actually buys the thing value. They're number one.
Don't let anybody tell you anything different. I'm just going to call them the viewer. You have to bring value to the viewer.
The viewer gets value, marketing manager gets value, and therefore you get value out of it. That's how it works and that's how you have to think about it. All right, here we go.
I'm going to tell you exactly what won't work and then the three things that actually will work to help you get sponsorships. So here's what won't work. Sending a message. on Instagram or TikTok or whatever and saying, I'm like really good and stuff.
So can I have a free bike? That will never, I promise you that is, that will never work ever. That is a Lone Ranger guarantee. But here are the four things that you should do that will work. And I'm going to make this quick because it is unbelievably cold out here.
Number one, you have to have a great idea that you are very, very excited about. Whether that is a video that we're, that you're putting out, that could be on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram, whatever. It could be a series of videos. It could be a race series that you're going to be a part of. You need to have a specified project that you've thought through all the reasons why this project or whatever it is, is going to be awesome.
You need to have that great idea on lock. Number two, you need to know exactly which audience is going to get the most value from this awesome idea that you have. And so we're talking about demographic.
It's fall here. And so we're talking about demographics here. What is, what are the age of the people who are going to be viewing this either in person or online or whatever? What are their location?
What are their interests? What is the platform that they interact with most on? Is that YouTube? Is it Instagram?
Whatever. And what, are the likely amount of viewers? How many eyeballs do you think are going to be viewing this project? And where did you come up with that number?
So you've got the idea and the audience who will be stoked about this idea and who will get value from this idea. Number three, what do you need from this potential sponsor to make this project a success? Do you need funds? Do you need products or services? Do you need access to something like an event?
Make sure it is very, very, very clear what you need from the sponsor. And number four, take the last three things. and compile it all in a really nicely written pitch that very clearly covers what the sponsor will get out of being a part of this project.
This is the exciting project. This is the audience that we're making the project for, and this is how they're going to experience or view that project. And most importantly, this is how your company can be involved in this, and this is what your company is going to get out of it. And lastly, it's always important to have some kind of a timeline. Having an open-ended anything.
is not great on the marketing manager side of things. They want to know when the project starts, what's going to happen throughout the project, and when it ends. Because marketing managers are always working within typically yearly budgets. And so if they're spending a certain amount of money on a project, they need to kind of know when and how much of something they're going to get over a certain amount of time. Because if not, they're not likely to get that kind of expenditure approved without knowing by June whatever, they're going to get this out of the project.
So that is the list right there. So that is the list right there. Oh my gosh, I'm so cold my mouth isn't working properly.
If the marketing manager decides to sponsor you or put their trust in you, you've got to deliver or that's it. Now as far as getting the attention of that marketing manager, this is Pierre from The Inside Line and The Inside Line is an online and in-store bike retailer. And Pierre, I know you guys do ambassadorships and some paid sponsorships and so I just wanted to ask a person like yourself directly, what are you looking for?
out of somebody who wants to be an ambassador for a brand like Inside Line? Typically, we'll look for people who are members of the community, people who volunteer for the Trail Association, the younger folks who are racing. You see a lot of that.
They have a good online presence, you know, good Instagram, maybe on YouTube or something like that. So we find value in different places from different people. So long as you're a good person, you're a member of the community. That's a good place to start. Yeah.
Make yourself kind of known. Say hello to people, kind of shake some hands and meet people. OK, so one of the biggest things for you guys is people just showing up, being there in person, making that introduction, showing that they are already like themselves, getting a lot of value from the inside line. Totally.
I think it's just important that we get a sense of who we're going to be bringing on as an ambassador. Let's take things from the very beginning because I can share my experience where I am right now, but I think it'd be a lot more helpful for most people for me to take it back to when I was just trying to get my foot in the door with all of this. So about 10 years ago, I had made the decision that I wanted to use the skills that I have as a photographer and videographer to branch out from the more commercial side of things that I was working on at the time.
and into a sport that I really, really loved, which is mountain bike. I was ready to 100% dive in right then and there, but I didn't have any portfolio. I had never shot anything mountain bike related for photo or video, but I saw an opportunity where a gold level FMB event, so like a free ride mountain bike world tour event was coming to my hometown, which is like a city in the middle of the prairies in Canada. For whatever reason, FMB decided to bring in like tons of riders from around the globe. build like a four pack of jumps and have that be a gold level event.
Hey, I'm not complaining. I was just a little surprised. And I knew that this could be a big opportunity for me to break into things, but I needed access.
And so I reached out to one of the biggest online publications for mountain biking. They're called Pink Bike. I told him that, hey, I know I don't have any kind of portfolio for this, but I'm already in Edmonton, which is where I was being held. I have photo skills.
If you guys were able to get me access into this event, I will shoot photos and I will write an article so that you can publish it on your website. And they said, maybe like if it doesn't suck. And that's all I needed to hear. I had access.
Let's go. And so I threw everything I had at making sure that I did a great, great job at this event, getting lots of solid photos and writing a good article on it. And when I submitted that article to the editorial team, they put it on the main page. Pretty stoked about that. And so I was able to bring value to the viewers of Pinkbike by having this photo and written article out there.
that could keep them up to date on this gold level event, which brought Pinkbike value because, well, they could provide that for their viewers. And I got value out of it in the end because now I have something tangible within the mountain biking sphere. Fast forward two years and we knew that we wanted to start a YouTube channel.
There were barely any mountain bike YouTube channels out there at the time. And we wanted to do things a little bit differently. And over and above all that, I wanted to dive more into storytelling and video work within the mountain bike space.
And I saw an opportunity to do a photo and a video piece for Pinkbike. There is a place on the west coast of Canada called Coast Gravity Park. And the only thing out there that I had seen at that point were just pro riders doing pro rider things at the park.
And so I wanted to answer two questions for myself. Is it possible to stay within Canada to go on an incredible mountain bike vacation? And two, can normal people ride Coast Gravity Park and still have fun without doing backflips and stuff?
So I pitched this idea to Pinkbike once again, using the work that I had shown them beforehand. and telling them that if I get a yes from them, I'm going to start reaching out to other people to try and put this really cool project together. And they said pretty much the same thing they said the first time.
Yeah, we would post it on the main page if it doesn't suck. And that's all I needed to hear. So I took that tentative yes, and I leveraged the viewership numbers of Pinkbike and got Coast Gravity on board. And from that, I got Tourism BC on board.
And from there, we got an incredible, incredible resort on board. So we had somewhere to stay. and a bike shop on board where we could get rentals, and even a float plane company to fly us from Vancouver over to Sechelt, BC. And then guess what? Same thing as before.
Well, we've now got ourselves way in over our heads, and it's time to swim up to the top. Beth and I put a massive amount of time, effort, and work into making this project a success. I love the video that came out of it, and the photos got published onto the Pinkbike homepage, and it brought a lot of value to their viewers.
And so you can kind of see where I'm going with this. And that's coming up with interesting stories and things that I would personally like to see happen or try to discover, questions that I want to have answered, and things that I want to try that I know my audience would find value in as well. And if those two things are locked in, that means that I can go and start pitching this to the right people and the right marketing managers to help try and make it happen.
Rinse and repeat, and it adds up to a decade worth of incredible life-changing experiences, doing what I personally love to do every single day, and bringing a lot of value, yes, to my sponsors. but most importantly, to my viewers. We have Kate here and she is a lawyer who specializes in sponsorships and partnerships. On your end of things, for somebody who is just starting out and looking to add sponsorships or partnerships, what are sort of the main key things that you would recommend to them to look out for or keep an eye out for?
Kind of starting right off the bat is making sure that you're identifying a legitimate sponsorship or partnership opportunity versus opportunities that are required. just effectively scams. I'm a creator myself, so I get a lot of inbound partnership requests that aren't necessarily partnership requests.
Sometimes it's an inactive scam where it's a brand, it's someone pretending to be a brand and that's not actually the brand reaching out. Yeah, she makes a super good point. I want to add one thing in here real quick. It doesn't matter what size of following you have. Very quickly, you will start to get emails from scammers who are pretending to be sponsors.
And the number one thing I can tell you is never, ever, ever click a link within any of those emails. It doesn't matter how legit it all sounds. What I do instead of clicking links that take me to supposed information about the product or the company that wants to sponsor us, just go and manually type in that business or that product or service into Google and do your homework in that way. Never click a link.
Never download an attachment because the likelihood of it being a scam and then being able to take over your computer and your social media accounts is pretty dang high nowadays. Scary stuff. More than once, I have read through some giant contract and hidden in there somewhere, they've said that anything I shoot during the contract term, they just straight up own.
There's kind of two parts to the usage rights equation. There's the intellectual property rights, and this will cover who actually owns the content that you're creating, and it should be you. And then the licensing terms, and that's where you see those usage rights come in.
So how can the brand then use that content? Can they post it on their social medias? Can they run ads behind it? Can they put it on a billboard in Times Square?
So that's kind of both of those provisions are equally important when you're kind of going through the contract, just to make sure both parties are clear what can be done with the content versus what can't be done with the content. Anything you ever shoot, that is yours. You can allow usage rights for companies, but don't let them own the stuff you shoot. So there are a few different ways to get support from companies.
And it really kind of boils down to are you receiving money or are you receiving product or both? If you were providing something, especially if you're making content for a company, there really always should be money involved because you are putting a lot of time and effort into it. But every now and again, like even with where we are now, we still accept some agreements that are either an experience or a product or whatever.
If it grants us a certain amount of access, whether that's access into a new discipline or sport. or whether it's opportunities that could be really really big in the future. And so to cover this and a whole lot more, I'm going to kind of step you through this trip that I literally just got back from involving Chevrolet bringing Beth and I out for an unpaid trip to experience their new Silverado EV truck, which I'm personally very very interested in. So that's that's one type of partnership. And two, while I was down there, it just so happened that I needed to be down in the United States anyways to get out to a shoot with one of our long-term paying sponsors, Insta360.
Well, at the same time, throughout it all, I brought a pair of headphones with me, which I don't have on me right here, but I brought a pair of headphones with me that I wanted to get a lot of use out of and get a really good test in on for a video that I'm making for our tech channel that has a single video sponsor attached to it. So in this one trip, it was a big old blend of an experience or product-based partnership. a paid partnership with one of our long-term sponsors, and putting together content so that I can create a video that I can attach a single video sponsor to.
And on top of all of that, we had a massive logistical nightmare on our hands with me being able to get my own personal bike to this one hotel out in the middle of the Arizona desert for the morning of this very important Insta360 shoot for one day and immediately packing it up and shipping it back home again. And I wasn't able to take it with me from flight to flight to flight to flight. So this company called bike flights saved our butts on that trip and got the bike there safe and sound, no problem at all. And part of the deliverables for them helping us out and doing that is including them in this video.
And so if you are buying or selling a bike and you need to ship it or you just need your bike there waiting for you at a hotel and you either can't or don't want to bring your bike with you through the whole flight process, especially if you have like quick layovers, which the bikes never make it through, using bike flights in those scenarios really comes in clutch. Go and check them out. Links in the description.
Thank you, bike flights. I really appreciate your help on this one. And so with Chevrolet, one, I told them a while back, we've done one of these experience things with them before.
And I told them, like, guys, I'm really only interested in in the new EV truck because I had heard really good things, super long range and all of that. And so when they offered to bring us out to San Francisco, hop in a truck and drive it to Lake Tahoe for a couple of days and drive it back again. Beth and I said, yes, one, we love San Francisco and haven't been there in a decade. And so heading down there.
A couple days early to hang out, just two of us was great. Two, it allowed us to try this truck that we're actually like truly interested in. Three, it put us in front of people from Chevrolet once again, because working with a company like Chevy in a more official capacity in the future is something that we want to work towards.
And after that trip, Beth went home and I flew into Nevada, grabbed a rental car and drove out into the pitch black desert for a few hours out to a lake called Lake Havasu, where we were doing a shoot with Insta360. And this is a larger production shoot. There was a full production team there. And I'm one of the presenters for something cool that's coming out later on that I can't really show you anything about yet.
Very soon, though. And I've been working with Insta360 in various capacities over the years, but they're one of our yearly sponsors and they've been really great. So, yeah, so there are some important distinctions there between what we did and the expectations for us between these different companies that we were working with.
With Chevy, they were providing a flight to a place we wanted to go to. a truck we wanted to try out and put us in front of the right people in front of a company we wanted to work with. And to top it off, there were no talks about deliverables.
They just said, come on out. So between all that, we found that it was worth it for us to go on that trip, despite not being paid. Versus on the Insta360 side, we were getting paid, not only our Insta360, one of our long-term paying sponsors, but also there were additional payments just for me coming out and doing this.
And so the Chevy side of it was super, super chill. The Insta360 side of it, because there was so much travel involved and this big production, being out in like plus 44 degree heat or like 113 degree heat, and getting everything organized, the Insta360 side of things was a massive, massive amount of work. It was a huge effort to get out there, get all that stuff filmed, and back home again.
Which is also perfectly okay, because they're a big part of us putting food on our kids'table. And so what they were asking of us, despite being a huge heck of a lot of work, was perfectly reasonable and I was happy to do it. Here's a question that I know I had in the beginning. Is there a difference legally between receiving money versus receiving products?
I'm assuming you're talking about a situation where in a gifted situation, the brand sending you a product and you're also responsible for then sharing the product. And then that's what's known as an in-kind collaboration or partnership. So technically your compensation. in that situation is the product that you receive.
You're not getting paid on top of it. Now, personally, I think that creators should always be paid when there are content deliverables. That's just my opinion. But I also recognize there could be circumstances where an in-kind collaboration makes sense if we're talking like a high ticket product or an expensive service or an ongoing service.
The biggest legal concern is the tax considerations. I've seen stories of influencers They're taking on a lot of in-kind collaborations. And then come tax time, now they owe taxes on the value of all these products.
And they weren't paid for it. So now they're kind of losing money from working with this brand because they weren't compensated fairly from the get-go. Writing a good pitch or having a nice-looking pitch deck is massively, massively, massively important.
Fortunately for me, I've always been half-decent at writing. And so I lean on that like crazy. It still takes me forever to write these custom emails to a specific marketing manager because I never send a blanket email out. It's always very custom tailored to the person I'm sending it to.
Super important. And so once I'm ready to send that pitch, I do a massive deep dive on the people in the company who I'm likely going to be sending this email to or the people that I'm going to be sending this email to. Who are they? What are they like?
I do a full on LinkedIn deep dive. Might even go find their Instagram profile. I will leave no stone unturned when it comes to building a really nice, complete pitch for somebody. Now, one thing I would caution against is writing an absolutely enormous novel of an email as your first email to that person. I've made that mistake plenty of times.
And you know what? When anybody gets an email that's that long, just out of the blue. when you already got a busy day, you're probably not going to look at it because it's just overwhelming.
So over the last couple of years, I've begun sending a much, much shorter email, just like maybe a paragraph or two, just kind of explaining very, very quickly what we're doing, just asking them, hey, can I send a more complete pitch to you? Because if you do that, one, it primes them for the giant novel that you're about to send. And then two, if you're sending a massive email with links and attachments and all this kind of stuff, 99 times out of 100, it's going to get sent right to the junk folder.
because of those links, because of the attachments and all that. And so you kind of need to get a conversation going with that person so that when you send the big email afterwards, it's going to go to their inbox and not straight into the spam folder. Another example is all of that sim racing gear that you saw earlier.
That is a lot of very rad stuff for sim racing. We are entering once again. into a category or sport that we have never been in before.
We have nothing to show automotive-wise except for one video that I made last year about our Land Rover, which is a whole other project that I pitched out to a ton of different companies so that we can at least have a little shred of something to show people this year when we dive into the Rally Channel. And so what we needed was to get at least one company on board, just like what we did with Pinkbike. If we can bring one bigger company in within the world of sim racing into the fold, then we can show other companies that, hey... Simagic trusts us or MSI trusts us or Sawbelt Simracing, whatever it might be, so that you can give other companies and marketing managers a little bit of confidence in the direction that we're going in this series. And then again, you've got to fulfill those promises and put in a massive amount of work.
Now after five videos into this brand new series, we're at half a million views and like 50,000 hours worth of watch time. People are pumped on the series. The products that we're showing and using make sense for the audience and everybody wins.
What does that ambassador need to provide? What do you need from them? We look for different things in certain people.
The really important thing to realize for any ambassador, whatever form they want it to be, is they're salespeople. They are primarily there to sell product. We do an exchange. There's different incentives. Either, you know, you get paid or you get discounts.
But at the end of the day... you are there to sell stuff. So if you're out riding with your friends and one of them is complaining about their bike not shifting well, well, that's it. An opportunity where you say, hey, you know, go see my friends over at the inside line.
We'll take care of you. It's those little things that they have to be looking for and sending people our way. That's when it becomes extremely important to make sure that the brand that you are representing is the brand that you would be talking about anyways. And people can read that, whether it is truthful and honest or not, from a mile away. For us, we know that the inside line is a place that we'd be sending people anyways.
So it all just works. Just to add on that too, like anybody who does a good job of it, we want to support and we'll make those next connections for them. So if they want a helmet sponsor, if they want to be in touch with one of the bike brands that we carry, we'll take those steps for those people so that they can further their career or make a bigger network for themselves. We'll make those introductions and we're always happy to do that.
If your ambassadors are helping spread, cast that net. a wider net for the inside line, then yeah, it only makes sense that you would now feel comfortable to share those people with the other brands that you work with. Yeah, it's great.
Makes total sense. Some of our ambassadors are still pretty new to biking. We want to share everybody's experience. The whole journey is exciting to us. If you can share that effectively with people, share the enjoyment, the stoke, that translates into some value.
So for me personally, the sweet spot for a company that I want to work with is one that makes a really cool, interesting product that has some feature sets that put it in general over and above some of the heavy hitting companies that are putting out products within the same space. So like the thing that they make has to be great. There's no way I will ever promote something that sucks.
That would be terrible. So they make a good product and they're right on the cusp. Like they want more market share. They have the product to do it.
and they just need some more eyes on it for it to happen. That's the sweet spot. That's where I come in. And I have a list of all sorts of companies that I would really, really like to work with on the mountain biking side of things, and especially on the rally racing side of things that are gonna be getting some emails from me pretty shortly. And the only reason why those specific companies are gonna be getting emails is because I know that I know, I know for a fact that I can do an incredible job telling the stories that I wanna tell and incorporating those products.
And I know for a fact that everyone's gonna get a lot of value out of it. If I can't say any of those things and mean them, I'm not reaching out to the company. Simple as that. Now, there are a lot of things to keep in mind when it comes to sponsorships, not least of which is the legal side of things.
So for some people just getting into this, when is it is a contract always needed and when when should a person have a contract? Yeah. So I think any time that both parties are responsible for providing something.
So the brand is going to either pay you or they're just providing product. and you're responsible for creating certain deliverables, then you need to have a contract in place just to outline the obligations of both parties. And again, the contract's designed to protect both of you in that situation. But any time that both parties are responsible for providing something, got to get that contract in place. Where do we get these resources?
Are there template contracts? Are there like things out there that can help lead us through making a contract? What does that mean? Do we always have to be reaching out to an attorney in these situations? Most often when you're working with a brand, they're going to have a contract that they can send that they're going to send over to you.
And in that situation, you want to make sure that you're reviewing the terms in detail, making sure that there's nothing, no surprises in there, that the terms accurately reflect what you already discussed with the brand. You may also be able to provide your own contract. I actually have contract templates for creators.
I also have a free guide. It's called the Brand Deal Contract Checklist. And that just has 10 different contract terms that should be incorporated into your contract that you get from a brand. And so that's just an easy resource to kind of go through, make sure that all of those points are covered in the contract, just so that you're addressing these potential issues up front. And if anybody wants to go and check out those templates, you can go to thelegalinfluence.com.
And Kate, thank you so much for shedding some light on probably one of the most, if not the most important aspects of sponsorships. So, yeah, appreciate you. Yeah, of course. This video could be hours and hours long. It really could be.
Maybe I should do a whole frigging course on this. But I want to leave it here because if there's one thing I can stress, it's the value side of things. And I think I got that across. I hope that I got that across well enough.
It's just sincerity, like just just being sincere about what you can bring to the table, what you will bring to the table, being sincere with the audience. and not just like pushing whatever and whoever will pay you a couple of dollars or send you some free things. There's so much opportunity waiting out there.
There are so many incredible things that you can go and do with the help of partnerships and sponsorships that it is well worth your time looking into as somebody who has these big ideas and these big goals and dreams. Understand the value that you can bring to everybody. Put yourself out there and put the friggin'work in to make it all happen. Because I can tell you from experience. It's well worth it.
Thank you so much for watching. If you have any questions whatsoever, please put them down in the comments. But thank you so much to everybody who contributed to this video and we will see you on the next one.
Cheers.