[00:00:01] Speaker A: Want to protect your business. The time is near. You've given it heart. Now get it in gear. It's passage to profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: I'm Richard Gerhardt, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
[00:00:20] Speaker C: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. Not an attorney, but I work at Gearhart Law doing the marketing, and I.
[00:00:24] Speaker D: Have my own startups.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Welcome to passage to profit, everyone. The road to entrepreneurship, where we talk with startups, small businesses, and discuss the intellectual property that helps them flourish.
[00:00:35] Speaker D: So we are very excited to have Linda Hollander here today. I met her at small Business expo in New York. She's a sponsor concierge, and I'm going to let her tell everybody what she does. Welcome, Linda.
[00:00:46] Speaker C: Great to be here. Okay, so I want to talk to all the entrepreneurs out there. A lot of people have all these great ideas for a podcast. They want to do a show. They want to do a nonprofit charity. They want to create a business, an event. And you think of this great idea, but then your second thought is, uhoh, how am I going to get it funded? Because we're all taught to have big dreams, but the big dreams cost money, and that's where sponsors come in. So I help people get corporate sponsors to underwrite their show, their event, their nonprofit, whatever project they're doing. And I've been doing it for over 20 years. And it's very cool because sponsors give you money you don't have to pay back. And the reason they give you that is because, like you, they connect a company with their core consumers. And that's why sponsors can fund you.
[00:01:41] Speaker E: What are your secrets for entrepreneurs who are looking for sponsorships?
[00:01:46] Speaker C: A couple of things you want to do as an entrepreneur. First of all, you want to do what we call the sponsor wish list, the list of companies that you would like to work with as a sponsor to have them fund you. Now, the way you do your wish list, it's all about your demographics. We always say your demographics are your destiny, because for you with passage to profit, your demographics, your audience is entrepreneurs. What do entrepreneurs buy? They buy office supplies, they buy shipping, they have a bank account, et cetera. And then they also buy consumer goods in their personal lives. So you make your wish list. That's the first step. I'm going to give you three steps. The second step is you need to create a sponsor proposal, and it has to be an industry standard sponsor proposal. And then the third step is the funding step. And I can't tell you exactly how much you'll make with sponsors. Most of our clients get between 10,000, even up to 100,000 from each sponsor. And there is no limit to the number of sponsors you can have. So it can be quite lucrative. You could do your five, six, seven figure deals. You just combine a few different companies. So that's the basic process to getting corporate sponsors.
[00:03:06] Speaker D: What are some of your success stories, Linda?
[00:03:08] Speaker C: Well, I'll tell you how I got started and then maybe I'll give you a couple of examples. I got started because, and you'll love this, I wanted to do a women's small business expo because I was in the poverty trap. I was in an abusive relationship, and I got out of that situation because I started my own business and I started it with my best friend and we knew nothing about business. I was an art major, she was a cinema major. But we grew it to a multimillion dollar enterprise and I wanted to show other women how to do what I had done. So, like I said, I had this great idea to do a women's small business expo, but then I said, uh oh, how am I going to fund it? So my very first sponsors before I started my very first event were bank of America, Walmart and IBM. So before I even started, I made a profit because I had sponsors underwriting my events. And then after that, I got Microsoft and Staples and FedEx and all these really great sponsors. I think this is important for people to know. I had no experience with events and I had no following. Nobody knew who I was except for my brother in law and my cat.
A lot of people think, oh, well, when I get this many people on my fan base, then I'll go after sponsors. No, you sell them on the concept.
[00:04:32] Speaker D: Do you have to have all your brand to get everything all set up first?
[00:04:35] Speaker C: You should, because sponsors don't want to start the train. They want to jump onto a moving train. So they want you to get your website up, your branding. They want you to do the basic things. You need a business account because they want to write a check to a business account. So you need to get your basic infrastructure and your brand going. And then you could go after sponsors.
[00:04:56] Speaker F: Kenya, sponsorships can be a little tricky in terms of measuring ROI. So what do you say is a good return on investment for someone who's doing a sponsorship? And what are some of the KPIs that you put into place for your clients?
[00:05:10] Speaker C: Well, there are intangibles and tangibles in sponsorship, so let's talk about those tangibles first that you asked about the metrics, shares, land visits, et cetera. Those are the tangibles. Those are the actual metrics. Attendees at an event, et cetera. But then there are intangibles, like building goodwill, cause marketing. And this is how sponsorship changed after the pandemic, because cause marketing became so important. People buy from companies who give back to the community, and that's really. You can't really measure things like that, but it's very, very big in the world of sponsorship. So sponsors know that there are certain things, yes, you can measure, and you could give them a report on and show them metrics, but then there are certain things that you can't like, those things of brand building and cause marketing.
[00:06:03] Speaker D: Evan, do you have a question or comment for Linda?
[00:06:06] Speaker G: Yeah, I think this is really fascinating because it is different than, say, venture capital or seed rounds or that kind of funding. And I think we're all used to seeing sponsorships with, say, nonprofits, right? Well, we need a sponsorship for this program, but you're saying you're doing this as a for profit, but the return for these sponsors is views, clicks, et cetera, et cetera, which is almost on the edge of a social media star, because that's how they fund themselves. It's. Here's the hairdryer I'm using today. And you would really love this hairdryer. Right. So take us through that. How did you make that work?
[00:06:39] Speaker C: I made it work because I started before social media, and I sold them on the concept. So I went to sponsors. Like, my first sponsor was bank of America. And I said, hey, how would you like me to connect you to the biggest spending block on the planet, which is women? And I did so much research on the women's business market, found out that women are starting businesses at twice the rate of men. But more importantly, I found out that women make or influence over 85% of the purchasing decisions in America. So that's what you do when you want to get sponsors. You research your demographic, what they buy, where they go on the Internet, what their lifestyle is, and that's how you sell sponsors on the concept of who you can connect them with, because that's what they're looking for. They're looking for sales. They're looking for brand loyalty. They're looking for lead generation.
[00:07:33] Speaker E: Can just about any business look for sponsors?
[00:07:36] Speaker C: Sponsorship doesn't work for everybody. It doesn't work for every business. It probably wouldn't work for the neighborhood gas station or the neighborhood dry cleaner. You have to have some kind of influence you have to have some kind of what we call extended reach. If you have that, you can get sponsors. Some of the challenges are, first of all, doing that proposal, because the proposal is really important because that's all sponsors see, and that's how they make their funding decisions. So I read a lot of proposals, and some of them are created by OpenAI and Chat GPT. And some of them are created by canva, and sponsors are calling me saying, what's happening, Linda? I could tell this is a canva proposal. I could tell it's created by Chat GPT so you want to have the right proposal. That's a big challenge for people. And then another big challenge is really asking for the right amount of money because asking for too little, and I think Kevin can relate to this because he deals with big companies big money. Asking for too little can hurt you in the world of sponsorship, because you're telling sponsors you have nothing of value and it's not worth their time.
[00:08:44] Speaker G: That's very true. I used to say it's a lot easier sometimes to get $100,000 than it is 1000. 1000 is not even worth my time. What, are you going to introduce me to three people? There is a mindset there, but I think you have to work your way into it and have the guts to go up and say, how about $100,000? And here's what you're going to get for that 100,000. And I don't think you could spend your quote unquote ad sponsored dollars any better than that.
[00:09:07] Speaker D: So, Linda, how do you get to those people that Kevin's talking about, the decision makers who actually hold the pocketbook strings?
[00:09:15] Speaker C: You're completely right, Elizabeth, because your relationship, it's not with a faceless corporation, it's with a person. It's with a human being. It's with the decision maker. And that's a big challenge in sponsorship, finding that decision maker, because sponsor companies have thousands of employees. There's usually one person that can greenlight a sponsorship deal. A lot of people go on LinkedIn and they say, oh, I'll find a sponsor on LinkedIn. That becomes an exercise in frustration because a lot of sponsors don't even put themselves on LinkedIn, or they block content because they don't want to be slimed. So it's best to get a list of the decision makers, because I'm telling you, that is going to cut down on your time and your frustration and really lead you to the right people who can really greenlight that deal. Now, my company has the list. And at the end, maybe you could tell people how to contact me, but we do have a list of the decision makers.
[00:10:11] Speaker D: Well, how do people find you?
[00:10:13] Speaker C: Go to sponsorconciers.com or the better place to go is successwithsponsors.com. So just go to successwithsponsors.com and you could contact me through that website.
[00:10:26] Speaker E: So what does sort of a typical process look like then when you're looking for sponsors? So you have your sponsorship proposal and you have your list of preferred potential sponsors. How then do you follow up and connect your proposal to your preferred sponsors?
[00:10:43] Speaker C: You send your proposal. Most sponsors want you to introduce yourself by email because they don't want to be surprised by a phone call because they're usually busy. So you get the person and then you have your first conversation. This is really important. On your first conversation, you do not mention sponsor fees because they want to see if you're a fit for their goals and their visions and what they want to accomplish. So you'll have a couple of conversations. You'll come up with a sponsor fee. Then you go to contract and you have an agreement that you sign with them because you're probably going to be working with companies that are bigger than you, so you want to protect your rights in the deal. Now, after I get the agreement signed, I start to implement. So, for instance, if I tell a sponsor I'm going to put their logo on my website, I do that. I don't wait for the money to come in. Usually the money will come in in the form of a physical check. And sometimes it comes in quickly. And as you know, in business, sometimes it takes a while because they're setting you up as a new vendor. Now, after you've got that sponsor deal in place, the decision is just starting because you have to keep the relationship going. You want to send a sponsor a report, at least quarterly. You want to talk to them when there's something new and then there's something called renewals. The renewal is, we suggest a one year contract with your sponsor, even if you're a podcaster. And then at the end of that year, they can fund you for the next year and the next year. So if you keep in touch with that sponsor and show them what you're doing and talk to them about the program and be open, because if they don't like something, I had a bank sponsor and they said, well, we don't like this thing you're doing. And I was devastated, but I said, you know what? If we change that, can we have another conversation. They said yes, and they sponsored me for five years because we were really open and we didn't let what we call residue build up because sometimes they don't like something and then they just won't renew with you. You want to get that out in the open. So it's kind of a rinse and repeat process. But here's the cool thing about sponsors. You don't have to report back to the sponsors how you spent their money. You just have to fulfill your contract. So we'll take that example again of putting the logo on the website. If you said you're going to do that, you got to do that because they're going to check up on that. But you can spend the money in any way you want. You could pay yourself. You could hire a team, you could put the money in your business, et cetera, because you don't have to submit a budget to a sponsor.
[00:13:17] Speaker F: I just was curious from an asset perspective about some of the programs that you're building and what someone can expect.
[00:13:24] Speaker C: We're using digital and traditional because I ask a lot of people, I say, how are you going to promote what you do? And they say, oh, social media and the digital platforms. Sponsors are traditional. Radio, television, print, it's not dead. And sponsors love the traditional platforms as well as the digital platforms. As far as the media mix, now people can also get media sponsors, and I've gotten media sponsors to help me get the word out. And that is really going to amplify your assets and your effectiveness with a sponsor. Another asset, a meet and greet like I did for Verizon. We did a Verizon relaxation room at a conference where people came in and they got chair massages. And there was a monitor that had the Verizon logo and outside a traditional table with information about Verizon. But I thought that was a very creative way to promote verizon with a relaxation room.
[00:14:21] Speaker D: Well, this is x.
[00:14:22] Speaker E: As long as everybody turned off their.
[00:14:23] Speaker D: Cell phone, we have to wrap up once again, how do people get a hold of you?
[00:14:27] Speaker C: Successwithsponsors.com. And go to successwithsponsors.com. And I even have a free gift for everybody who is watching and listening to us today because I'll give you the number one secret to getting your sponsors if you go to successwithsponsors.com. That's nice.
[00:14:44] Speaker E: Sounds great.
[00:14:45] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Before we go, I'd like to thank the passage to profit team. Noah Fleischman, our producer, Alicia Morrissey, our program director. Our podcast can be found tomorrow, anywhere you find your podcast, just look for the passage to profit show. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and Instagram. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care, everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
