Joe Casabona: Can you really delegate out when you are in your business? Don't people hire you to work with, well, you? That's the question that I set out to answer with my friend, sponsorship coach, and author of Sponsor Magnet, Justin Moore. We talk about the challenge of running a personality-driven business, why it's so hard to step away, and how to build a company that serves your life instead of consuming it. Justin shares how he's built a coaching business with a team he trusts, why Impact is his North Star, and the mindset shift that helped him let go of control. We also get real about balancing work with family time, the guilt that comes with stepping away, and why building a lifestyle business is just as valid as chasing a big exit. Things get real. Justin and I are friends and we are pretty open about the things we're thinking about. And this episode is something that all business owners should hear.
Now, if you are wondering how you can maybe delegate out some more or step away from your business a little bit, I would encourage you to take the Business Overwhelm Diagnostic. It is a six-question quiz, and based on your answers, you'll get a customized blueprint to help you step away from your business a little bit. I think it's truly helpful for a lot of solopreneurs, especially. And if you're interested, you can head over to Streamlined FM Overwhelm. But for no,w let's get into the intro and then the interview. If you're overwhelmed by a chaotic business that's stealing time from your family, streamline Solopreneurs for you. Hey everybody, my name is Joe Casabon,a and I've been there. And on this show, I will show you how to turn chaos into clarity.
So you can stop checking your email at the playground. You are a present family man. You are running a business. It seems like an increasingly growing business, at least from the inside. I'm meeting more people. What's the most important thing for you in balancing family life and business life?
Justin Moore: All right, we're just gonna get really dee,p really quickly.
Joe Casabona: Super deep.
Justin Moore: Just slam straight to it.
Joe Casabona: I hope you didn't eat before this cause we're in the deep.
Justin Moore: Here's the deal, dude. About a year ago I started thinking every time my kids came bounding in the room asking me to play basketball with them or play chess with them or anything. Basically I started imagining myself in 20 years looking back on this very moment. So Justin, 59 years old. I'm 39 right now and I thought as a 59 year old, what decision would I hope 39 year old Justin would make in this moment, would it be, hey, buddy, sorry, I gotta finish up this email sequence, or would it be, sure, dude, let's go play basketball. And so I've been having this split second vision every single time this happens over the last year. And I'm very proud to say that I have made the decision to just like hang out with my kids virtually every time. And as my kids get older, they're 8 and 11 now, I start thinking I've got basically 10 years, 7 years with my oldest until they're probably out of the house at college, 10 years with my youngest, and really, in reality, maybe just a handful of years until my older son doesn't want to hang out with me anymore, you know, wants to like, hang out with his friends.
Justin Moore: So I don't know, man, I'm just. These days I'm being much more intentional about how to balance my family with my work and knowing that kind of like, when they're gone, I can work as hard as I want.
Joe Casabona: I think that that's a really good thought to have everybody listening probably to this knows I've got eight, five and three. And yeah, like you said, like, right now my kids want to hang out with me. That is increasingly less likely as the years go on. And so I try to do the same thing. Like, I try to think about the same thing. Now you have a coaching business more or less. Right. Would you say you have a coaching business?
Justin Moore: I have a coaching business. Slash, we have a coaching business, I think is more accurate because we do the coaching together. Yeah, I would say that that is what I would call the business now. Yeah. Coaching and education.
Joe Casabona: This is something, I think a lot of solopreneur small business owners, which, by the way, would you say you're a solopreneur?
Justin Moore: I would say, you know, I feel like I've transitioned out of that now that I have basically full time employees. But I generally still feel like I have that vibe, though.
Joe Casabona: I was talking to Layla Pomper about this on a previous episode and the distinction is kind of weird and blurry. Like, I've called myself a freelancer solopreneur. I think small business owner is probably good, but with businesses that rely on the person, the personality, especially coaching businesses.
Justin Moore: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: Have you found it hard to step away? How do you start to delegate more of that? I don't know if listeners know, but I coach for you. And one of the kind of insecurities I have is that people sign up because they see your content. And I'm worried They're going to be upset that they're not getting Justin. They're getting Joe, to be honest.
Justin Moore: Joe. After I wrote my book Sponsor Magnet, part of the goal was, frankly, Impact, to be able to reach more people with what I believe around sponsorships. It definitely took a mindset shift for me to decide that I can't be precious with this stuff. Yes, I would love to be able to have eyeballs on every single coaching client that we're touching, every single person that watches my courses, every single person who emails us of the tens of thousands of people who are on our email list, you know? Cause we're getting lots of inquiries, not just from customers, but also from audience members and so on. And so for a long time, I did have that block where I was like, it has to be me answering the emails because they're emailing me because it's my email address that's sending out the emails. Right. But I had this moment where I was just like, actually, my North Star is Impact. And that led me again to do the book, to have other people in my universe help to hire you and have you support our clients.
Justin Moore: And so I think it's just about expectation setting. It's not, Justin, that you're looking for. You're looking for support about sponsorships. And so I think a lot of it is like a positioning exercise. But I very much had to kind of kill my darlings when it came to realizing that it doesn't just have to be me.
Joe Casabona: That's really important. I mean, it's something that I try to teach my clients all the time. Right. Like, you don't need to do everything in your business. What you're doing, I think, is a big shift. Cause I was asked the same thing a few years ago. Like, your business is inextricably tied to you. How would you.
Joe Casabona: How would you sell your business? They said. And I'm like, oh, I would almost never sell my business. But I still think about that. And I've kind of come to the conclusion that I like to do the implementing my North Star is definitely like, build cool stuff.
Justin Moore: I think early on, within the first, like, two and a half years of the business, I had two acquisition offers for Creator wizard. And these were kind of more like Aqua Hires, almost where they were proposing to buy my brand and I would stay on and continue to kind of build out their creator advocacy program and so on. And so I was actually faced with a real decision early on about, what am I even doing here? Like, is that something I even want? Like, I played that out for several years, like, am I going to be happy doing that? And ultimately what I decided I turned down both of those opportunities was that I played this out like 10, 20, 30 years. I love this stuff. I can't imagine waking up and not doing this and not helping people day in and day out get their very first partnership or learn how to charge 10 times more without 10 times the work. Inject that in my veins, dude. That's what I love, that's what fulfills me. And so I had the idea that like, wow, I'm going to have some sort of burnout with this other acquirer probably there's going to be some performance metrics, I'm going to have kind of golden handcuffs for a couple of years.
There's probably going to be some sort of exclusivity where I can't start a business in a similar category for a certain duration. And holy cow, I played that out and I got cold sweats thinking about that. It's as much about, there's all this talk around build your business so it can exit and then you can have a liquidity event. And if the brand is built just on you, you'll never have an exit and all that. And I don't know man, I think that there's a real thing to like creating a lifestyle business and you just like wake up every day loving what you do. I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. And so I kind of have a counter perspective here that like, yes, of course it's good to have SOPs and processes and systems to help you make it all easier so you can take a vacation. But I'm really not looking to like, oh, what's my next chapter going to be? In five years I'm going to be sitting on a beach looking at the sunset. That's just not my personality.
Joe Casabona: I remember I competed in a business plan competition and one of the things that you had to do was in your business plan talk about your exit strategy. And I was like, I'm not starting a business to exit it. I'm starting a business because I'm passionate about this. Obviously the people judging the competition didn't like that because when you invest you either have to go public or you have to sell, right? So that the investors get an earn out. And so like, yeah, lifestyle business all the way. I feel like you have deftly delegated a lot of what you do. Obviously you've got a great team, I mean, present company, whatever, but mainly you.
Justin Moore: Yeah, of course Right. I know that's what you wanted to say.
Joe Casabona: That's what I was trying to egg you on to say that. I mean, like, is your team, Like, I don't want to out your team on the podcast, but, like, you're pretty public about who your team is, right?
Justin Moore: Oh, yeah, yeah. I could share. I have Bianca who runs operations. I have Joshua who handles our newsletter strategy. Obviously, you are my lead coach. And then we have a smattering of freelance, you know, editors, graphic designers and so on. And so it's like, we're a small but mighty team for sure. But yeah, again, I go back to the impact goal.
My goal is like, I want to reach more people. So my mindset is always like, who can I hire? What consultant can I hire, what person can I bring in? Whether it's a freelancer or if I'm able to afford it on a full time basis, who can I bring in to help me reach that goal? And so I'm not precious about that. It's very much driven by impact. I think if there's anyone listening or watching and this is resonating with you, perhaps what you're thinking is, maybe I don't have a North Star. Maybe I don't know what my big mission is because right now I'm not able to look at hiring or process decision through that lens. For me, every decision that I make in the business is because of that impact. I want to help creators big and small land a million sponsorships in the next 10 years. That's my goal.
And so every single opportunity that comes inbound, everything I'm deciding to invest in, it's always like, I point to that mission. Is it in alignment with that mission? Is this a worthwhile investment or expense? I think it's very helpful.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, for sure. And I would say I thought I knew what my North Star was, but it turns out, like, I was just doing what I thought everybody thought I should do. Right. Like, I had a really good conversation with Barrett Brooks at Jay Clouse's. I'm like, just name dropping everywhere. But like in Boise, right? Jay had like a in person event for his community and Barrett was there. He basically led me to something that was unexpected, which was like, maybe you're an implementer. Like, maybe that's the thing, because I always struggle to just coach people in the sense of like, well, what do you think I need to solve the problem? Problem solving is probably my North Star, right? And that's like, I'm not going to probably reach as many people, but I'm going to try to help as many people on like a limited engagement as possible.
That feels really good to me. So, like, if you think you know what your North Star is, I would just like encourage you to put some time into asking yourself why, how it does impact your business. If you're happy in that regard as well. But that's a really good point.
Justin Moore: Can we real quickly revisit the whole business plan competition thing that you were mentioning about? Like, okay, what's your exit strategy to go public or to sell it or whatever? I've actually had a couple opportunities over the last few years to advise certain businesses and they have offered like, hey, we'll give you equity, we'll give you some like stock options or whatever as part of this deal. And I think that feels exciting to people generally, especially like subject matter experts who have never had an opportunity to do something like that. But you really have to understand, like a lot of these businesses, like play this out, like you have to make this decision. Equity or cash, Is there a realistic scenario where this company or business that's offering you this is ever going to have a liquidity event, ever going to have an exit? Because that's the only time where that equity is going to be worth anything. Yeah, there's maybe like a option for like a secondary where other people invest and you have the option to like take money off the table. But very, very unlikely, very, very rare. I think that this is like an important thing for especially subject matter experts to educate themselves in because as you're building your business as a solopreneur, you may get opportunities where other companies are wanting you to advise them. My take is that in basically all scenarios it makes way more sense getting the cash and not equity.
And so I don't know, I guess I'm just maybe jaded or more realistic about most of these types of things go to zero. And so you got to really protect yourself.
Joe Casabona: Equity is like in most cases a no risk thing for the person offering it, which is like, I mean, affiliates versus sponsorships. Right?
Justin Moore: That is a great example of the analogy here.
Joe Casabona: In a past life, I was a web developer and people would come to me and I would quote them and they're like, what if you worked for equity? And I'm like, that means that I have to believe that you're going to make way more money than what I am charging you. And I don't believe that. And so you have your North Star. What do you do in your business? I think it's like you obviously Create content. What's the rest of your day look like?
Justin Moore: Okay, so as we speak, I am actively recruiting an assistant because I still spend too much time mired in administrative just minutia. Again, this is a toxic trait of mine, which while at the same time, yes, I'm good at delegating and bringing other people on, I still am very careful about the details, the polish of the things that get published by my company, by my brand, whether it's a YouTube video, social posts, case studies, any sort of content, anything related to our education. And this is a problem because there absolutely are people capable of like producing things that can be published without me having my final eyes on them. And so me as the bottleneck has been the number one disruptive thing in my business over the last five years. And so it's actually something that I'm thinking about getting therapy about. This is weird. There's a variety of reasons why I have this personality from my childhood into adulthood and all that. And I'm like, not proud of it.
And so I very much think that again, going back to the mission, going back to the North Star, maybe I need to do some healing personally, mentally to be able to move the needle on the business goal. And so it's just like, definitely something that I need to improve. But to your point, like, I spend a lot of time on content. I spend a lot of time on the various pings and dings all over social media because I get tagged constantly in all the different platforms and I feel as though I need to get back to people because they could be potential customers and it often prevents me from getting deep work done. When I was writing the book, I was very disciplined. I had a two hour writing block Monday through Friday, every single morning. And I was very disciplined about it. I had like a two hour hourglass, this like giant hourglass that I just like flipped over and I shut everything on dnd.
I wrote for two hours every day. But that was because I felt like I had this big project. It was the book, I had to like devote myself to it. But in the absence of a big project, I don't know, I find it much harder to be super disciplined. So I've tried using all sorts of tools, freedom, and, you know, lock myself out of social media apps and like, the honest answer is that it's a work in progress.
Joe Casabona: I love that. We're gonna have a quick little therapy session here. There's a really good example of this. And then I wanna tap into the book and social media. So I think one really good example of this from our work is. I don't know if people know this, but I'm co host of your podcast and I'm producing the podcast. I am not a YouTube packaging guy, so we work with a thumbnail designer. I'm not confident enough to give the final okay on thumbnails without you looking it over.
Joe Casabona: I don't know that this is like, you as the bottleneck, but you definitely pay attention to more of the details than I do. When it comes to thumbnails, that's not in my wheelhouse. And so I'm not confident. I don't know what that is. I mean, yes, everything that you were just, like, radically vulnerable about, I want to validate, but it's also kind of like I'm not allowing myself to be more confident in that regard.
Justin Moore: At least I have two takes here. Like, number one, I think it's both things. I think, number one, you should be more confident because you're extremely capable and knowledgeable, especially about just podcast strategy. That's number one. But number two, though, is that I've thought long and hard about the fact that, like, content is my superpower, without a doubt. I love it, I'm good at it, it impacts people, and that's what I should be spending most of my time doing, whether it's content or also collaborations, community sessions, you know, workshops. That's my superpower. And so my goal is to just clear off all that other administrative stuff so I can focus just on that.
And so my idea is that, like, I don't necessarily know that. Like, that's like, a terrible thing for me to continue to be involved in figuring out the final packaging and all that stuff. I think that's probably, like, a good thing. But again, both can be true. Like, you should lean in more to your confidence. I also should probably not be completely removed from that process, because the content stuff I think I should continue to do. And so I don't know, dude, I was at CEX not too long ago, and we had this whole conversation about the who, not how. That famous book, it's like, it's not how are you going to do it, it's who should you bring in to your team or who should you bring in to work with you, and what skill sets do they need to have so that you can feel confident that they'll figure out the how.
Joe Casabona: I like that a lot. Yeah, I appreciate that, too, because I definitely agree with you that your content and your packaging, like, your face and your name are all over it. So you want to make sure it's like, a good thing. I guess both things can be true is the best way for you to put it. I want to shift gears and talk about two things that are really top of mind before I let you go. One is the book. It really feels like the book has brought everything together for you in a way. Maybe I'm just closer to this one, but I haven't really seen that with other people.
Right. Like, we reference the book constantly. The book is part of your signature framework, which Charlotte and I talked about in our episode. And I just feel like if, like, your North Star is Impact, then your book is like the second star in the Big Dipper. Right. Where the North Star is part of the handle. You were a Boy Scout, I think that's right.
Justin Moore: I am an Eagle Scout, not past tense.
Joe Casabona: Ah, that's right.
Justin Moore: Yes. That's the thing. To be honest, when I heard the stat shout out to Matt from Lulu, my publisher, share one time in a workshop that most authors give up talking about their book very shortly after the launch. They've invested so much emotional energy into launching, and then basically their sales just plummet after the halo of the launch is over. When I heard that stat, I was just 100% sure that I was not going to suffer at the hands of that stat. And so even though at some times or some point it has felt as though, oh, man, I'm continuing to talk about the book, it's been seven months after it came out and all that. It continues to surprise me that the majority of people have no idea who I am. And the majority of people have never heard about my book to the point where when I was at CEX and LULU was kind enough to buy a hundred copies of my book for everyone, I had done a book signing.
I had signed maybe like 40 copies of it, but I still had 60 copies there that they were like, hey, where do you want these shipped? We can't bring them back, or whatever. And so I was like, no, no, no, I'm not shipping these books back to myself. So I literally walked around at one of the breaks with a big box of books, and I just walked up to literally every single person that I could find. I said, hey, would you like a book on sponsorships? And it led to so many great conversations. And it was just like the majority of the people that I walked up to, I'd never met, had no idea who I was and were very excited and interested in reading the book. And one more example is that, like, I heard about this consultant who's a really talented guy with webinars. And I found out, oh, he has a book. Bought it, looked up the COVID published it seven years ago.
I had no idea who this dude was. And it's a fantastic book. And so I really do feel like the book I have written is truly evergreen. And it would not do myself justice, it would not do the material justice if I didn't keep talking about it for years to come.
Joe Casabona: I love that. Is it Rob Fitzpatrick?
Justin Moore: So Rob Fitzpatrick, he did write useful books. He wrote that I used his playbook to write my book, Sponsor Magnet. But no, the guy that I was referencing, his name is Jason Fladleen. He has a book called One to Many.
Joe Casabona: Gotcha. That makes perfect sense, right? You've dumped your brain into this thing and you're right, it is evergreen. All of my books have been about programming. All of my books except one are outdated. I think you've hit on something really good here where, like, the principles you're teaching, it's not like how to get sponsors on Instagram, it's like how to form relationships with brands, which is a totally different and really important thing.
Justin Moore: I have considered. Maybe we could talk about this for a second. I have considered the Chicken Soup for the Soul strategy, though, with the book meaning sponsor magnet for YouTubers, sponsor magnet for podcasters, sponsor Magnet for nonprofits, sponsor Magnet for insert platform or a vertical. I probably could spend my entire career writing those series of books. And because I'm self published, I could do second, third editions. If I did choose to do platform specific stuff, maybe even find a ghostwriter or a partner to write those books with me. There's other authors who do things like that, right? And so I've definitely thought of that because what I talk about in the core book is very much evergreen. There is kind of a clamoring of interests of like, oh, yeah, but how does this apply to me? I don't know, man.
I've been mulling around, like, again, going back to Impact. How do I get into these little niche pockets? How do I, like, absolutely own the fitness community or something, probably writing a book that was specific to them. So I'm not really sure if I'm going to do that, but I've had a lot of ideas swirling around about what the next couple years look like.
Joe Casabona: That's so good. I would love that. You could be like the James Patterson of sponsor books. Right? He has like a million ghostwriters. We've ventured into social media. I want to close here with this because I hate social media. Something that a lot of people at sponsor games learned was that I don't have social media apps on my phone. Which was met with bewilderment followed by wow, that's like a really good dad move that you've done there.
How important has social media been to like your business's growth?
Justin Moore: I'm not sure if this is the answer you want, but it's been huge.
Joe Casabona: It's like the answer I expected.
Justin Moore: It's been huge because the brands who have wanted to partner with us, the primary goals that they have had have often included social media, primarily the large consumer facing ones like Instagram, YouTube, although some people don't consider YouTube social media. What I will say though is that probably the most surprising thing, and I'm sure you might agree with this, that we have found coaching creators in our program is that increasingly we work with folks who do not have social media as well. They are podcasters or they are event organizers or they have a community books. They may not have a very large social media presence, but they're actually doing sponsorships. In fact, one person who recently joined our program has like a series of in person events in their local, like Metro, their local community, like a breakfast club kind of thing. And they're getting those events sponsored. And so I think sponsorships look very different to everyone. And while you don't need social media necessarily to grow your business, I do think that they aid in it.
I mean, Jay Klaus has this great visual that he talks about often which is that using social media as a discovery mechanism and then first priority like immediately is basically get them over to a platform where you own, whether that's email, whether that's sms, podcasting to some degree, where when you are actually publishing a newsletter, a digest or podcast episode, as long as it goes out on the RSS feed or you send it out in your email service provider, it's guaranteed to be sent to them. Social media is not that way because the platforms have algorithms that determine whether or not that content is going to be showed to the people who clicked follow. And So I do 100% agree with that, that social media plays a role. But ultimately at the end of the day you want to migrate those people as quickly as possible to a mechanism you control.
Joe Casabona: Really, really good point. So I will ask one follow up which is you mentioned like social media vis a vis sponsoring. What about social media vis a vis the coaching and education side of the business? Like do you find that maybe is there a particular platform that you have found to Be incredibly helpful there.
Justin Moore: Two answers. Number one, YouTube has a unrivaled ability to educate people at length at scale. Daniel Priestley, in his amazing book Key Person of Influence cited a statistic that people on average need to hear your opinions and your voice for an average of 7 hours in 11 different places or 11 different times. I might be butchering that stat, but it's something like that before they feel comfortable purchasing something from you or patronizing your business. And so I always will prioritize long form platforms to allow people the ability to just kind of be indoctrinated by what I believe about sponsorships. Right. Because it's very different. So Whether that's podcast YouTube, I think that's like a big deal and you should always invest in one of those, at least in your business.
And then the second one, I think Instagram. Instagram has a different user behavior than other platforms in that the action of DMing someone, it being a communication platform is kind of inherent to the platform. Whether this is in stories, people responding to your stories, or DMing you just from looking at your profile. I've spoken with a lot of different coaches and service providers and so on that have told me that investing in Instagram over a platform like TikTok or over a platform like YouTube Shorts, which does not have a messaging feature, Instagram, if you had to pick one, it.
Joe Casabona: Would be that good to know. And the last question I'll ask, tying it back to the first question is I think you and I are very similar in that we have a lot of ideas and we like to act quickly. How do you turn off when you are with your family?
Justin Moore: Dude, I literally just. It was in a group chat with friends and I wish I could read you what I just said, but it was literally that is like when I'm with my family or I'm on vacation, how do I not feel this vague sense of guilt that I'm not being more productive? That is a constant problem that I have. The answers were very interesting. One of them was go to therapy. So that's also what's like pulled me down. What is it about my upbringing or my life that pulled me, makes me feel as though I have to be hyper productive all the time. There's something there. But then the other thing is again, it's going back to that visualization exercise of realizing that this time is sacred.
It's the scarcest resource. I'm never gonna get it back. And I think it's just like a daily practice. I don't think there's a silver bullet or a hack that can help. It's just like in the moment, you have to just make small choices. Much like eating a healthy diet and being healthy is. It's like hundreds of small choices that you're making each day is like, should I eat this? Should I not eat this? Should I drink this Starbucks Frappuccino, or should I not? It's the same diet for your productivity. I think of deciding, like, should I enjoy this calm moment laying in the hammock with my kid, or should I just whip out my phone and scroll my email? I think it's just being present in mind about those things.
Joe Casabona: It's a habit you need to form and it takes constant work. Awesome. Well, Justin Moore, author of Sponsor Magnet, sponsorship coach, thank you so much for joining us today. Always a pleasure to talk to you. If people want to learn more, where can they find you?
Justin Moore: I think that they should go subscribe to the Sponsor Magnet podcast, don't you?
Joe Casabona: Absolutely.
Justin Moore: Because then they can hang out with us more.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, they'll get both of us. Exactly. Just like this, but a little different. Awesome. Well, I will link that and everything we talked about in the show notes over at streamlined.fm. Justin, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks again, dude, and thank you for listening. I always appreciate it. Until next time. I hope you find some space in your week.