Monetization Brainstorm with Justin Moore - Events, Paid Challenges, Books, Best Funnels For Creators, and More

**Justin Moore** (0:00)
My thesis when I created this event was that it's gonna take five years to gain mind share of this event. And so I was prepared to either lose money or break even for five years. That was my forecast when I kind of mapped out the event.

**Matt McGarry** (0:12)
Successful event from a customer experience doesn't have to be financially successful.

**Justin Moore** (0:16)
I'm like pretty happy with the outcome. People have told me that they look at me and my business differently now, because I'm the person who throws this in-person event. And anytime anyone thinks about sponsorships, oh, there's Justin, he's got the book, he's got the event, he's got the MCU of everything that he's working on. And so I do think that there's something to be said about the halo effect of having an event like this. It has a very positive downstream impact on all other aspects of the business.

**Kolby Hatch** (0:42)
Welcome back to New Media, the podcast for media founders and entrepreneurs building audiences. I'm Kolby. In today's episode, Matt and I were joined by Justin Moore, the founder of Sponsor Games and author of Sponsor Magnet.
Justin sat down with us to break down the real numbers behind his event Sponsor Games, including why he intentionally lost money on the event itself and still came out ahead.
We talk about whether VIP tiers help or hurt your event. Justin discusses the paid challenge model that he uses to convert over 20% of his attendees every single time he runs an event. So if you run events, sell sponsorships, or are building a high ticket offer, this one is packed for you. Justin is the sponsor specialist, and we get his undivided attention for the next 45 minutes. So I really hope you enjoy the episode. Please leave us a comment on what you think, and yeah, enjoy the show.

**Matt McGarry** (1:45)
All right, Justin, thanks for joining us, man.

**Justin Moore** (1:48)
What's up, guys? I'm excited to chat.

**Matt McGarry** (1:50)
Yeah, let's dump into it. So I haven't talked to you since before your live event, Sponsor Games. We're just going to catch up and talk about whatever is interesting. But I want to hear about that first, because that was like year two, a lot of new stuff. Tell us how it went, and then we'll ask some follow up questions, and we'll dive into it.

**Justin Moore** (2:06)
Well, the headline is that I lost more money on year two than year one.

**Matt McGarry** (2:11)
Same, by the way.

**Justin Moore** (2:14)
Yeah, it was, okay, so let me back up a second here. So it was awesome. It was great. It's one of my most favorite things that I do in my business.
The quick TLDR of what the event is, is that it's very unlike other event formats. So it's basically like an outcome or transformation focused event. Basically, you come, you participate in, it's a competition basically. You learn, and it's a competition to learn how to become a better brand partner, make more paid brand deals, make more money, et cetera. And there's actually like a winner and the cash prize at the end. And so I very much wanted to create a new format that felt novel and fun and didn't feel like you're just kind of sitting in a hotel ballroom. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but like I just wanted to create something new and different. And so the first year was very much kind of the, can I even do this year? Right. It was, I don't even know if this is going to work, like are people ever going to come? It's so hard to get people to events to kind of see the vision, especially in year one when you don't have pictures or photos or videos of like what the event is going to be about. It's basically just like, trust me, you know? And so the first year, I think we had somewhere around 35 creators who came and it was amazing. It was great.
But in year two, we were like, okay, the format works. There's a lot of programming tweaks that we can make to improve it, but we want to go big this year. We want to double attendees. We want to go. We really want to ball out on catering because one of the big pieces of feedback we got from year one is how much people enjoyed the food. And so basically we just like had our, we had this rosy vision of what year two is going to be like. And so we increased the budget accordingly, right? And so the reality was we didn't start promoting tickets early enough. We didn't run, start running paid ads early enough. I regret that. We did get significantly more in sponsorship revenue for the event in year two, which was awesome, but we still lost about 10 grand because we, again, invested in an amazing venue and catering and all that. Oh, and we filmed a reality show in year two.