TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

How Roger Wakefield Turned Plumbing into a Multi Million Dollar YouTube Channel

• vidIQ • Season 6 • Episode 11

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We trace Roger Wakefield’s path from struggling local plumber to building a trusted YouTube brand that commands million‑dollar sponsorships. Along the way we unpack evergreen strategy, on‑camera presence, clean branding, and how to pitch partners with confidence.

• utility content that converts when paired with trust and cadence
• the 2018 pivot to YouTube and early mistakes
• coaching, tools, and the shift to evergreen topics
• making “boring” viral with cutaways, slow‑mo, and reactions
• ranking the entire channel for “plumbing”
• three rules for camera presence that build connection
• selling the plumbing company as sponsor revenue grew
• brand safety and product integrity that attract big partners
• pricing, deliverables, and negotiation frameworks
• SponsorKit.pro for faster, smarter sponsorship outreach

“Go to YouTube and type in plumbing.”


Opening & Why Utility Channels Fail

SPEAKER_00

I had no idea you could make money on YouTube. Oh my gosh. You don't have to be the biggest plumber in the world to make YouTube work for you. You need to be making great content, titling it right, SEOing it right, descripting it right, and telling stories that are very beneficial to people in your area.

SPEAKER_02

Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that will spare no expense, including sometimes telling on ourselves to give you the best content possible. I'm here with someone very special, but of course I'm Travis. If you're new here, you're about to lock in and hear some amazing stuff from my special guest, Roger Wakefield. Roger, I I can't um I let me just give you a little bit of an intro. First of all, the I have said on this podcast many times that um when I talk about what I call utility channels, that is channels that you go to for an answer. Nine times out of ten, you don't subscribe because you got the answer and you leave. There is one exception to this, and I'm talking to the guy that is that exception, Roger Wakefield. Welcome to the podcast.

Meet Roger Wakefield

SPEAKER_00

Travis, thank you for having me on here. Number one, it's been great to see you at the conferences over the years. You're a great guy. Love your energy. Thank you. Love your knowledge. So when you reach, God, it's only been a few days. And normally I'm I'll put people on podcasts office. Like, man, I'm busy. I got a lot going on. You reached out and said, Do you want to do it? I'm like, absolutely. You just tell me when.

SPEAKER_02

I'm not gonna lie. Um, some of the people on Twitter are also like, yeah, you should do this, which was nice. It was nice to hear the the the the people backing me up on this. And I want to I wanted to talk to you specifically for a couple reasons. Number one, I've known you for a couple years, you're a great guy, but you've done something that is like top of the top percentage of people that are in your niche could do. Most can't. Um, that is have a business um kind of before YouTube that you brought to YouTube and made it uh a successful YouTube channel. Now that is so hard to do because, like, let's say, for example, um I'm a plumber, just like you, you're a master plumber. Let's say I'm a plumber and I'm like, I want to get most people, most plumbers think, oh, I would like to use it for like a business opportunity, which is great, smart, right? That makes sense. You bet. But they don't know how to do it. They'll make a bunch of videos about how to fix things, which is great, but the viewers are just basically getting that information, leaving, and they never go back to that plumber channel ever again. It's just if they got their answer and they're gone, and it hasn't expanded their business. Let's start from the beginning. How did you start on YouTube? What did that channel look like at that time, and what were you doing wrong?

The 2018 Pivot To YouTube

SPEAKER_00

Oh my God. Well, number one, I did everything wrong. Uh I'll start, I'll start off being 100% honest. All right. I walked into social media marketing world in 2018. It was uh like February 28th and March 1st, uh, something like that. I said I'd never been to a conference like that. So I show up early. Uh basically I'm talking to people there, and they're like, man, there's nobody here like you. The first day's the workshops. I heard a gentleman named Pete Vargas talk about speaking on stage. And then the next day, I'm I'm, you know, Travis, at the time I'm 54 years old. I'm walking down the hallway, I'm there to learn social media. Well, at 54, that's Facebook. And I'm walking down the corridor and I see a placard on the left that says something like getting in front of your customers using video. And I thought, you know what? We've done some video, we could do that. So I walk in, I sit down on the front row, and I sit in this chair and I'm right in front of the podium. I'm I'm always ADD learners. If I'm not on the front row, I'm I'm like everything that walks by is a squirrel or a shiny object. Yeah, yeah. And this guy walks out and he starts talking, and he says, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. And I'm sitting there and I shut my notebook. I thought, I'm not taking any notes. This guy's stupid. He doesn't know anything. And I put my hand on the chair next to me and I raise up to turn around, and the back of the room is full. And I turn back around because I'm thinking, okay, he must know something. And I look up, he says, and it's owned by Google, the largest search engine in the world. Now, I'm just a plumber, okay? But but it went through my head really quick. It's like, hey man, why don't I know this? And I thought, we're spending money to be on Google. Why aren't we spending money to be on YouTube? And then I realized, wait, you don't spend money on YouTube. You make you bring value on YouTube. You make videos on YouTube, you help people on YouTube. So a month later, I mean, I walked out of this conference. One month later, we start posting three videos a week every week. Okay. And I can't even begin to tell you. It it was horrible. Uh we did we did everything in the world wrong. We we kept making videos, we kept trying to make videos, we weren't getting views.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I called the guy who was on stage that day. You may know him, a guy named Daryl Eaves.

unknown

Yeah.

Early Mistakes, Coaching, And Tools

SPEAKER_00

And I called him and asked him to do a channel audit. And he gave me tickets to Vid Summit. He didn't give me tickets. He said, if you'll buy one ticket, I'll give you another one. Because he's he knew my stepson was helping me. So when I got back into the office from the conference, I asked my stepson to get on YouTube and learn how to do YouTube. And that's what we did. By the end of that year, I had 350 subscribers and thought, man, I am living the dream. We went from like eight or nine subscribers when I was at the conference.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh, it's funny because whenever I went to Vid Summit, now now my shirts, I'm always branded. You know that. Of course. We'll talk about that. At the time, I was wearing Texas Green plumbing shirts. And I remember a girl coming up. Uh, you may know her. She has the little bitty channel called uh the snow, what, the snow dogs.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. She walks up, she says, Oh my god, a plumber, we got a plumber in here. This is great. She says, How many subscribers do you have? I said, 117. She said, Oh my God, 117,000 subscribers. You're pushing it. And I'm like, oh no, no, no, no. I'm sorry. I've got 117 subs. I love her. Every time I see her at a show now, we always we hug. She's like, Roger, you're you're my favorite story.

SPEAKER_02

She's phenomenal. Love her.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, she is. Love her to death. I knew by the end of the year, look, if we can go from 10 subscribers to 300,000, 350, we can do better. And I met a roofer at that first vid summit that I went to that had like 20,000 subscribers. I'm like, man, the possibilities are phenomenal. But Travis, one thing that I didn't know, I had no idea you could make money on YouTube.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00

I still at this point I'm almost a year in. I still had no idea until probably Vid Summit where I started hearing people talk about it. So when we hit 10,000 subscribers, which is probably about a year and a half in, I started asking for sponsors. The first sponsorship agreement that we did was just uh well, I asked for$720,000 a year.

SPEAKER_01

Whoa.

SPEAKER_00

Needless to say, they said no. Okay. But but we agreed on just under$400,000 a year.

SPEAKER_02

Well, look, I need you to help me get my sponsorships, and obviously I'm I'm in the wrong business.

SPEAKER_00

Well, we'll we'll talk about that more in a little bit because now what I've done is I've built a product that does all that work for me. Oh my but used to take us 10 to 12 hours, we now do in 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_02

Whoa. Yeah. That's incredible. So let's talk a bit about how the where the business was before kind of this YouTube growth. And then we'll dive deeper into the YouTube growth. So, what was your business like before YouTube? Like, you know, about 10 years ago or so. What was it like? Was it just a cool little local business? Was it big? Like what was it?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, it's it's a local plumbing company. We we were doing okay. Okay. Uh, but but we were struggling. Uh, I got tired of marketing companies ripping me off. Literally, every time we called a marketing company, they're like, Well, we need to rebuild your website.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Then we'd pay them a lot of money to rebuild it, and then they'd say, Okay, well, now we need to SEO it. And it's like, well, wait, why didn't y'all do that when you built it?

SPEAKER_03

In the first place.

From 117 Subs To Serious Growth

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. And I I I tell people, I had spent$47,000 on websites at that point that weren't working. Wow. And I mean, Travis, imagine if you're a business owner, you're you're driving to your office, you've got a bag next to you,$47,000 cash in it, and you just start throwing it out the window. Knowing that when you get to the office, the phone's not going to be ringing. Oh my God. That's exactly where I was. So I started doing research. I I go to social media marketing world. And it's funny in the social media marketing world, my phone starts blowing up. And I'm like, wow. And I go outside, and it's my ex-wife, she ran the plumbing company with me. And she said, Roger, I hate to tell you, when you get back back home, we're not going to be in business.

SPEAKER_01

Whoa.

SPEAKER_00

It was that bad. Now, I told her, I said, Look, there's people that owe us money. I want you to call these five or six people here. Tell them, look, I've got to collect something now, or we're going to have to take y'all to court. Tell them whatever you got to tell them. So we didn't go out of business. But what I learned on social media is I was able to make videos and put it out there. And within just a few months, we were getting calls, say, hey, I saw Roger on YouTube. I need him to come fix this. Well, the problem with that was they lived in North Carolina and I'm in Dallas, Texas. But what happened is that started helping my domain authority. So my website started getting more views and all because more people were going to it. Now, I didn't even know what a call to action was at the time, Travis. But I had a banner over my shoulder that had the name of the company and the website and the phone number. And we were getting calls.

SPEAKER_02

And it was not that you need like a million views for this to happen, right?

Realizing YouTube Can Pay

SPEAKER_00

No, no, no. We would know. We were getting hundreds of views per video, and we were still getting calls. It doesn't take you don't have to be the biggest plumber in the world to make YouTube work for you. Right. You need to be the the best plumber in your area, making great content, titling it right, SEOing it right, descripting it right, and and telling stories that are very beneficial to people in your area.

SPEAKER_02

So let's talk a little bit about that. So you went from I see here that you did a lot of like podcasting type stuff early on, like nine years ago. I mean you still do podcasting, but like that seemed to be what the primary portion of a library concept.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, no, wait, you say nine years ago. We started this eight years ago.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, all this other stuff. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, no, my YouTube channel started eight years ago. Oh, because it says honest plumbing nine years ago.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, the the yeah, the the plumbing company started back then. Yes. Gotcha, gotcha. So with the YouTube portion of it uh starting, I mean that's still a long time. Like that's some a lot of creators quit in like two years, like or even less. I get it. Yeah, I understand it. And I can understand why. What was the content that really started taking off for you? Like, what was the thing that changed? Did you did you was it uh hanging out with Daryl talking to Daryl? Like what what exactly happened?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I I I had I had Daryl. Yep. Uh I hired a coach at Vid Summit, a guy you probably know from VidIQ, Jeremy Vest.

SPEAKER_02

Jeremy was amazing. Yep.

Life Before YouTube: Marketing Struggles

SPEAKER_00

Okay, Jeremy was my first coach. Yeah. And actually at Vid Summit, he did a channel audit through vidIQ. And he's like, man, look, we're we're looking at your channel. Have you got these tools? I didn't even know what tools I needed. So I got vidIQ. And I'm like, okay, wait, these tools helped me learn insight that I really didn't know about, that I didn't have. And and learning things like that, Travis, it it it opened my my mind to new ideas. Now, Jeremy's a great coach. Jeremy Jeremy taught me how to do how to go viral and how to how to make uh videos that people would really want to watch. Then we learned and and from working with Jeremy to make the evergreen content. What are people searching for today that they're gonna be searching for next year that they're gonna be searching five years and ten years from? Because people are searching for that evergreen content every single day. And if you can make that content and put it out there in ways that's easily understandable, that brings them value, they get what they came for, they're good. Now don't get me wrong, the homeowners, the DIYers, they're not gonna subscribe. They're gonna come in, they're gonna answer their question, and they're gone. But when you're building content like that, the plumbers start watching you. The HVAC tech start watching you, the roofers, the electricians, everybody's watching you because you're in the trades and they're learning from you. And I've had chiropractors send me messages saying, look, you made me a better chiropractor because I took out the word plumber and put in chiropractor, and you taught me to be more professional.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. That's powerful.

SPEAKER_00

Those became my subscribers, those became my community.

SPEAKER_02

And that's a that's a good place to start. Understanding who your target audience is is something that we talk about a lot here on the podcast. I think it's really important. And your target is slightly different. Like you still answer the question for the common person. I'll literally like three months ago, I had a problem with my toilet. I started searching something and you came up. I didn't watch any of the video. I'm like, where's Roger? I know I'm gonna get the answer. I got the answer. Things are fixed. It's great. I loved it. Um, but like again, to kind of stand out, first of all, let me ask: how did you come up with a viral idea for plumbing? Because that doesn't sound like a real thing. It sounds like when I say viral, I don't mean like how to unclog a toilet. It's gonna get a million views over 10 years because everyone's gonna look for it. But like you have some really banger, like viral stuff, especially some of the reaction stuff. How did you come up with those ideas in what most people would think is a more mundane kind of niche, but you make it really interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Well, you start looking at what people are talking about. One of my first viral videos was remember those little balls called called Orbies or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. You put them in water and they get like 10 times bigger.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Well, we found an article where somebody over in London or something had filled up a bathtub with them, got them wet, put them down the drain, flushed them down the toilet, didn't I? And supposedly was stopping up the sewers in London.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

First Local Results From Few Views

SPEAKER_00

And I'm like, wow, what if we did that here? Well, I didn't want to put them in a tub or anything, but but we put them in a sink, filled them up and watched it as well. Then we tried to unclog it. We just we started looking at stuff and saying, how can we do this and make it fun? And uh another another good thing was we weren't afraid to build something to show it a different way. We we bought slow motion cameras, we bought probe lenses for cameras where we could stick it up in pipe. We just started looking at things. One of the neatest things for me to learn is something about something I know nothing about. If if you can show it to me in a way I've never seen, we got one of the water heater manufacturers to give me a water heater that was cut open where you could see inside of it. I'd been in the trades 35 years. I'd never seen the inside of a water heater like that. So now I'm showing this to other plumbers, to homeowners. So now when I'm talking to homeowners about something, they see why. My most popular video, I cut the back out of a toilet so I could show them me rebuilding it.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

That's so cool. And Travis, people are like, I've I've never seen it like this.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah, because it's easy, it's cooler and easier to understand like what's going on. So, for example, um, before I bought my house, I did not know how a toilet worked at all. It was magic to me. You just think I thought it was electrical. I didn't know. Um, I unfortunately know too much about my toilet now. I know everything I need to know about that's a good thing. That's a good thing. Yeah, I never, if there's a problem with this one, I can fix it at this point. Um, but I think demystifying these things is so is like the the viral moment, the kind of that moment where something that seems so common can be so interesting that you can get people to come back. And like, for example, um, the DIY toilet repair video you have has five million views, which is ridiculous. And by the way, everyone, if we don't know, uh Roger has on just his main channel over 140 million views. I'm not talking about someone who just has 20,000 subscribers. 104, think about this 140 million views on a plumbing channel. So this is I got the right guy. Um, but I see like uh DIY toilet repair. And literally what you're talking about is the cut open side of the toilet so you can see in it for the thumbnail, like exactly what you just said, uh proof proofs inputting.

SPEAKER_00

And and Travis, let me let me tell you something about that video because my my stepson was still with me at the time. We needed a video to post that day. Yeah, and we had talked about this, and and I said, Look, I got that tank. Come on, let's do this. And we set up, we shoot it. Uh, you notice that video is not even eight minutes long. Back then we were trying to make videos 10 minutes long, right? Because we wanted the mid-roll ads. Yeah, yeah. We didn't even hit eight on this.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And he he edits it, he posts it, and he comes in the office and he said, This video sucks. I said, How come? He said, Look, you you you didn't make it fun, you didn't tell a lot of stories, you literally just went through step by step and showed him how to fix the toilet. I said, Then don't post it. He said, No, it's it's already up.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

Evergreen Strategy And Audience Shift

SPEAKER_00

I said, Well, look, do we have another video on the vault? And he says, No, we we didn't have anything. That's why we had to shoot this and do this today.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I said, okay, from now on, we're gonna keep videos on the vault. We're never gonna do this again.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

And if you think a video sucks, we're not putting it up. Okay. I'm glad we put it up.

SPEAKER_02

I think you should be. How long before it took off? Do you remember? Do you remember like uh because when you put it up, I don't know if it was a 10 of 10 or whatever, but do you took it a while?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it really did. It it it's not something that happened fast, but I think again, we were consistent. Travis, we put up three videos a week every single week, no matter what. I remember the first video that we missed. I started to put it up anyway. It was a sponsored video and it was in the contract that they had to approve it. They had had the video for over a week and they had not approved it. And I mean, literally, I'm calling my manager, I'm like, look, I'm posting it anyway. She's like, No, you're not. She says, It's in the contract that you won't do that. And she said, That will cost you a fortune. And I'm like, Okay. And again, we we didn't have another one to post. And I was out of town at a training, so we couldn't shoot anything quick. And it was just like, you know what? We're gonna make sure this doesn't happen again.

SPEAKER_02

So does that, does that um are you really uh kind of fastidious about that sort of thing? Like if you're supposed to have three a week and you miss one, does it bother you mentally? Like, does it throw you off at all? Yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_00

And and I've had coaches tell me, look, if you if you've got a video out that's trending, or you don't want to post another video.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I'm like, but wait, y'all y'all talk about consistency being important. Now you're telling me don't be consistent. So so I I know the algorithm. I I've I've studied it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I'm like, you know what? If I mess up this other video, that's fine. I would rather be consistent because I have viewers that message me, hey, what's wrong?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Why didn't your video come up today?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And it's like, I mean, we get up on Saturday mornings. If we get up Saturday morning and Nick's not live, it's like, wait, what's it?

SPEAKER_02

I know, I feel that way. I feel that way.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So that I've got viewers that are the same way.

Making Plumbing Viral: Orbeez And Cutaways

SPEAKER_02

Roger, let's talk a little bit about um if you had to start over, let's say you had a small plumbing business. And I say this because we have a lot of different creators that listen to this podcast, some that are in different trades and some that are just creative, but there's a there's a a group of people that listen to this show that haven't even started their channel yet, which I actually love those people because I feel like the research ahead of time, so they can be. I wish I'd have done that. I'm the same, right? Like, I mean, super smart people. Let's say that you are a tradesman in really any trade. I actually have another person, a friend of mine, who's coming on soon, uh uh C Jane Drill, who does trade stuff in her channel. You bet. She's fantastic. Absolutely. If you're a tradesperson, and generally speaking, you know, when you go tell someone what you do, they're like, oh, okay, that's cool. I they don't need you till they need you, right? When they need a plumber, all of a sudden you're the best person in the world. Then they don't need just like, okay, I don't need it. How do you make what is your first couple videos that you think are the best videos to make right off the bat to launch this channel? What would you do if you had to do it all over again without like all the knowledge you have?

SPEAKER_00

Well, with the knowledge you have, I'm sorry. You know, if if it's really to grow your business, talk about your business. Why did you start your business? Well, it can be a video about the owner, and this can be a video that you embed in your website. Ah, yes. But let them know who you are, what you do, why you started your business. You know, to me, I really didn't want to start a business. I uh I uh I was director of operations for a large mechanical contractor in Dallas, I was making great money, company vehicle, expense account. I mean, man, I had it all. I was running director of operations of the commercial work. So I had projects at DFW, I had projects throughout schools in the city of Dallas, and I had I things were good. And I sat in an executive board meeting one day, and the the new owner, a nurse, who was taking over the company from her parents, uh, and her dad was a good pipe fitter, knew what was going on. We're in an e-board meeting one day, and she says, We're gonna start doing residential service, we're gonna specialize in customer service, and we're gonna have the best trained plumbers. And I looked at her, I said, So what are you gonna do to have the best trained plumbers? And she said, What do you mean? I said, Well, what kind of training do you have in mind? She says, Well, Roger, we'll make sure all our plumbers have a license. And I'm like, Wow, that's required by the state. Okay. I said, so what are you doing for customer service? Now remember, I was married at the time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

My wife was an etiquette and protocol consultant.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00

She taught manners.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

She taught professionalism. I said, so what are you going to do? Teach this? And she kind of rolls around. She says, Roger, we'll make sure our plumbers know how to say please, thank you, yes, ma'am, and no ma'am. And I knew right then, if you've ever read the book, Good to Great, I was in the wrong seat, on the wrong bus, going the wrong direction at the wrong time. Wow. And a few weeks later, I was out the door.

SPEAKER_02

So then you you had to make a business by like need at that point, right?

The “Bad” Video That Won

SPEAKER_00

It was crazy. I got a phone call from somebody. I knew one day I wanted to open my own business. So on the side, I had been doing some work. I had insurance. I had permits. I had everything done right, but it wasn't my full-time gig. And that's that Monday when I was off, I got a customer or a call from one of those customers, said, Hey Roger, look, I know you can't come see us, but lightning hit our hit our house last night. It hit the gas line, it shorted something out. There's a gas leak. The fire department turned it off. We need it fixed. Can you refer to somebody? I'm like, Matt, I'll be there in a little bit. Travis, if you're a small business and you're wanting to use YouTube to grow it, talk about what you do in the towns you talk to or in the towns that you work in. Me, when we started really growing plumbing, we were talking about slab leak detection in Richardson, Texas. Sewer line repair, Dallas, Texas. Leak location, Plano. I mean, the cities that you work in, I mean, your YouTube title there, that's SEO metadata right there. And your description, everything about it. The first words you say out of your mouth in the video. You know, learn how to do that. Uh it it blows. Dee talked to me one day or made a comment. He says, I want y'all to see what just happened. Somebody in the comment said, said, Roger, how do I find your channel? Well, number one, you can click on it. Right, of course. But but but they they weren't thinking, they were new. Right, yeah, of course. I said, do me a favor, open up a new YouTube tab and search the word plumbing. Wow. And Dee literally says, okay, stop.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

He says, Do y'all see what just happened? Somebody just asked Roger how to find his channel, and he told them, search the word plumbing. He didn't say my channel name is. He said, search the word plumbing. And I was at a conference at AHR uh this last week out in Vegas. And I'd go up to booths because I make my money through sponsors now. That's where we generate our revenue. And I would walk up to booths and tell people, hey, like talk to y'all about a sponsorship. And this are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, have you got YouTube on your phone? And they're like, well, yeah. It's like, do me a favor, pull out your phone and search the word YouTube. Travis, it was the first thing that popped up.

SPEAKER_02

Plumbing, you're a video. A channel. Not a video. Your channel. Oh, I want to talk about that. Go ahead, keep going. I love this. I love this.

SPEAKER_00

And it's like, they're like, How did you do this? And I said, Well, I do it very well.

Consistency, Contracts, And Scheduling

SPEAKER_02

I love you. I do it consistently. Um, this is something I've talked about in private courses. I I don't think I've ever talked about this on the podcast as far as like how search works and how you can get an entire channel to rank for a subject. Um, I I might go into detail in another video, but what Roger just said is so powerful. If you can rank for the subject matter itself, that means a lot of the even non-search traffic will still go to you because YouTube knows that your channel is about that thing. And Roger has nailed this to the wall. His channel is plumbing, whether you're a professional, DIY, or whatever, he's got you covered. So if you just put in the word plumbing, Roger comes up. That is that is the algorithm saying you won. You win, you win this complete category. It's incredible. Um, so let's talk a little bit about on-camera presence because you said even there was a couple of videos that weren't the best. Uh, what have you learned over the years?

SPEAKER_00

You know, I I and I teach people this. There's three things. And you're really good at it. Number one is look the camera straight in the eye. Because you're looking at that one viewer that's watching. And you know, when when the big pandemic happened, I'm watching these reporters and Travis, they're on screen and they're talking like this the entire time. And this is what their news broadcast looks like.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, looking off the side, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. They're looking at them or a teleprompter or whatever, and it's like your viewers up here.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I'm watching this, and me, I was a YouTuber at the time, so I'm like, guys, y'all gotta learn how to do this.

SPEAKER_01

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, but number one, look the camera lens because that's you looking at that viewer straight in the eyes. Number two, say the word you. Interesting. You're talking to that one person, the one person that's watching the video. Now we all want to say, look, I know all y'all can do this, and what you've done then is you've given somebody the opportunity to say, look, he doesn't know me. I can't do this. He's talking to everybody. He's not talking to me. And the third thing, talk to them like they're your best friend.

SPEAKER_01

I love it.

If Starting Over: First Videos To Make

SPEAKER_00

Don't teach them, don't sell to them, don't push them, talk to them. Even if you are trying to sell something, if I'm trying to sell what I do to my best friend, I'm gonna be like, look, nobody does this better than me. I'm gonna take care of you, it's gonna be done right. And what I would do for you is the same way I do it for my mother and my sister.

SPEAKER_02

I love that.

SPEAKER_00

So those three things that make camera presence amazing.

SPEAKER_02

And I need, I need everyone to, if you haven't written down notes on that, you need to have that written down because it's so it's such a hard thing that most uh growth channel stuff don't even talk about because camera presence really is everything. People need to connect with you. That whole you thing, I mean, I've been doing this for years. I'm like, I need to do that more. What am I? I'm not even doing it as much as I should be. Wow, that's crazy. Um, let's talk a little bit about you said now that subscribers are kind of, or not subscribers, sorry, sponsorships are kind of the main uh kind of uh grease for your for your engine, so to speak. Um, how does that work? Like for a channel that's um you obviously do you still have your own plumbing business still or no? No, we sold the plumbing business about four years ago now. Okay, so you're now just the the money-making machine by doing it for other people, which is amazing. Tell us how that happened, letting go of a business that you had made to this. Where did that transition? How did that happen? Walk us through the story.

SPEAKER_00

You know, it it's great, Travis, because social media, this this stuff kind of works.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh, we started getting so big on YouTube and started making sponsorship dollars. And it got to where we were making the same amount of money per year in sponsors than we were with the plumbing company, but in social media, your profit margin's a whole lot higher.

SPEAKER_02

A lot less overhead.

SPEAKER_00

Uh yeah, a lot less. And I mean, man, at the time, I mean, I've had teams of up to eight people at some point. Wow. Right right now, we've got four of us, including me.

SPEAKER_01

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00

And you know, when you're running a plumbing company, and look, I coach plumbing, uh, I coach tradespeople. You're doing amazing to make 15 to 20 percent profit. Meaning, if you do a million dollars a year, you're profiting 150 grand, maybe 200 grand, maybe. Okay. When you do a million dollars a year in sponsorships, which which I've done multiple years now, you're making about 70, 80 percent. Yeah, a lot more.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Owning Search: Ranking For “Plumbing”

SPEAKER_00

And and it's it's a game changer. So we when we when our revenue numbers started matching, when it got to the point where, hey, we can invest money and get better in YouTube, or we can invest more money in marketing and the plumbing, but we can't do both. Because I was being pulled. My my my office manager and my ex-wife were running the plumbing company. Me and my stepson were running the the YouTube and social media. And she's like, Look, I I either need you to step back in the plumbing company or we gotta get rid of it. And it's like, I think nowadays she wishes she'd have just taken it on and said, Look, you just keep going doing being you. Uh because she's good at it, she's really good. Uh but we had to make a decision, and finally we said, look, we're gonna sell the plumbing company and we're gonna go all in on social media. And you know, when when your first sponsorship deal is almost$400,000 a year, it's easy to do that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And at that point, branding is more popular and more important than ever. And you've always kind of branded yourself, but talk a little about how that where that change came, why it's important, and how it benefits you now.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I think that I I understood branding when I had the plumbing company with the logos and the branded shirts. I remember the first year I went to social media marketing world and I'm wearing a Texas green plumbing shirt. Michael Stelner's like, look, I love this. First, he calls me up and said, Tell me about your shirt. And I'm like, man, this is my plumbing company. And he told me, he said, Roger, next year or in the next couple of years, there'll be 50 to 100 people here with shirts like yours. And later, we when we went back, our YouTube channel was growing. So we we branded it for YouTube. Uh, I've got it on the front, I've got it on the back, and I do it big. I want it big enough people can see it. But to build a brand, I mean I'm probably the only plumber in the world that's got a 42-page brand book. But it talks about what we do on social, what platforms we're on, what are our brand colors, what's our mission, vision, mission, and vision statement? What do we do? What do we not do? What brands do we not talk about? Do we not represent? What other channels do we want to be nothing like because we don't like what they do? And Travis, from the very beginning, it was look, we will not cuss on air. Uh, we will we when we're out, I I've got an ulterior character I did have when I had the plumbing company, Texas Green Plumbing Man. Texas Green Plumbing Man will not drink a beer at lunch. He will not have a drink, not out in public. We knew our image on every single thing we did, and we knew why.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's funny you say that because uh I don't talk about this enough, but it's up I talk about it to creators personally. And I say that you never know who's watching your content. And much like you, I've had uh conversations with either uh sponsors or or other media companies to say, I've been watching you and we like how safe you are. And it it wasn't something that when you're doing it, you're thinking too much. You're like, Yeah, I just don't want to be in that that crowd, but it later comes back to pay dividends because then other companies will work with you and want to do things.

SPEAKER_00

I've had other trades influencers reach out to me that do social media all the time, and they're like, Roger, I I hear you talk about sponsors, I want sponsors, and I watch their videos. It's like nobody's gonna sponsor you. And it's like, why not? It's like listen to the language. You talk, well, man, look, I'm real, I'm a real construction worker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand that, but do you think Kohler wants you talking about their product talking that way? Right. And it blew their mind.

On‑Camera Presence: Three Rules

SPEAKER_02

Yes. Yeah, it's it's like, yeah, well, we in a trade talk that way. Yeah, but the company that's gonna put money behind you, like just imagine you're you're essentially a TV commercial at some point, right? Would you expect to see that on TV? Probably not. Uh it's not to say that your content can't be, quote, real or whatever, but I think you just need to really consider like, which do you want more? Do you are you rather to be, would you rather be more quote, real, or would you rather have this be a business for you that can pay for your food, pay for your family, pay for your enjoyment, all those things? And sometimes you just got to make a conscious choice about that. And I think it's not as hard as it might seem either, by the way.

SPEAKER_00

It's it's really not.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's not that hard.

SPEAKER_00

You just pretend you're at church or your girlfriend's partner at the house.

SPEAKER_02

It's not that hard at all. We do it all the time. It's not, absolutely. So, what exactly what kind of sponsors are you taking on now? Like what kind of business are you taking on? And which ones do you stay away from? You don't even have to name specific names, but like what kind of things are you do you not do?

SPEAKER_00

There's products out there that that I don't believe in. There's products out there that I don't think are good. I think that they've marketed, and and believe it or not, the more I study the product, it's not a bad product. I think they've marketed it the wrong way. Telling anybody, look, you can do this. Just just cut it and put it together. Well, no, it's a lot more than that. And as a plumber, we were going in fixing a lot of these leaks. And people are using products on the wall and stuff like that, and they really shouldn't. But the companies tell them, oh, it's okay, it's gonna last forever. Well, if you don't treat the pipe right, if you don't bevel the edge, if you don't clean it, you could put just a little bitty nick in that rubber o-ring, that's gonna cause it to leak. So when I got approached by another sponsor, which was my first million dollar sponsorship, I got approached by another sponsor and they said, Well, we're kind of like that. And I said, Well, then I won't work with y'all. I said, their product sucks. They said, No, really, it doesn't. They said, But ours is made better. And they sent me a proposal and I said, Here's the deal I will talk to you. But the way I talk to you is you fly me and my videographer up to your plant. We come in, we do pressure tests in your machines that you've told me you have, and I'm videoing it. And if it fails, we're still posting that video, and this is how much it's gonna cost. And I think we charge them 30 grand for me and my videographer to come up here for two full days. Wow. And they said, We're good with that. That's incredible. Really? I know. Sometimes like, huh? I know. Wait, I'm gonna come try to prove your product doesn't work. I'm gonna charge you 30 grand. And if it doesn't work, I'm gonna post that video. And they say, Yeah, we're good with that.

SPEAKER_02

I love that.

Selling The Company, Scaling Sponsorships

SPEAKER_00

We were there for two days. By the time I walked out on the second day, because I went in and talked to the president, I said, Look, I gotta tell you, y'all impressed me. And you let me do my test, you let me do it my way. They were even like, Roger, we'll get out of here. We don't care. It's like, no, no, your guy can't stay. And I went in, I said, Look, I really don't like this product, the other brand. I said, It's a bad product. He said, Roger, it's really not. He said, they don't market it right. They don't tell people, look, the pipe prep is probably the biggest deal. He said, We want to do that. I said, I want to make videos about that. Absolutely. By the time I left, I'd signed uh it was just under a million dollars for a two-year contract.

SPEAKER_02

And that go, those videos go on your channel, essentially, or are you doing like commercial?

SPEAKER_00

That all went on mine. Okay. And and Travis, everything we put everything that we post on my channel, we repurpose to all my other social platforms. That's what I was talking about. Six or seven or eight platforms.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask. It's like, where else does it go? I assume things like uh Instagram and and stuff, Facebook and stuff like that. Is that something?

SPEAKER_00

But here's the fun thing is they reached out to me. But the first brand, but the one that we did just under 400,000, I reached out to. And I started it looking at how I was reaching out. And I think you know Owen Video.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, Owen's amazing.

SPEAKER_00

He he had made a video about how to get sponsors or how to do videos. And man, I went through it and I'm watching his video. I'm like, man, you ain't asking for enough money. So I doubled his prices.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And he said, you know, he said, I was reaching out for a$10,000 video. I'm thinking, well, then I'm gonna reach out for a$20,000.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

He said, or I'd do a shout out for a thousand. I'm like, well, I'm gonna charge$2,500.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Or I'm gonna do this. And I literally I did, I put together a package for my first sponsorship, and I asked for$720,000 a year. And of course, we we were going through, we were talking about what would you like to do, what would the videos look like, and we negotiated everything, talked about it, had everything done. And they said, Well, you know we're not gonna give you$720,000. And I'm like, Well, I didn't know that. So we went through and we talked a little bit more. And we ended up, I think my my contract was really like for$360,000. And then I got a$30,000 onboarding price to to build signs and banners and new equipment and stuff like that. And they're like, Yeah. So I think, I think if I'm not mistaken, my first contract was$390,000 for one year to keep doing what I was doing. Make a video and put it out.

SPEAKER_02

Let me let me understand that part. Because most sponsorships, um, at least a lot, I should say, are sometimes dedicated videos. What do you mean to keep doing what you're doing? Like what exactly were they paying for?

SPEAKER_00

It's still it's it's still a video. I'm still making a video, I'm still putting a video up every Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

But now Friday's video, I may be talking about a water heater.

SPEAKER_01

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00

The water heater they want me to talk about. So now it's a dedicated video.

SPEAKER_01

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00

But but it's really cool too, Travis. And man, I could talk about this for hours.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Because when I did sponsorships agreement back then, that they would try and tell me a whole lot of stuff to say.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And finally, by the time we got our second contract, because I renewed with them like two or three years. Okay. So it wasn't just a one-and-done thing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But every year, I'd want to raise my price. Like, well, we don't want to pay a whole lot more, so we'd lower the deliverables. So it went from a video a week to a video, a video a month and a live stream, and then it was just a video a month. Wow. For the same amount of money.

SPEAKER_02

How does that work? How or why are brands saying okay to that?

SPEAKER_00

Because I went from 40,000 to 200,000 to 500,000 subscribers.

SPEAKER_01

So the social media.

SPEAKER_00

The views were going up.

Brand, Values, And Being Sponsor‑Safe

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. The engagement was going up. We were getting better. So now, whenever I reach out to sponsors and now I do outreach, but when we agree to do something, if VidIQ said, okay, Roger, look, we we want you to promote VidIQ, I'd say, okay, what three things do you want me to tell people about your product? We want them to tell them it'll make the channel grow. We want to tell them that we can give them the back end that nobody else sees. And we can we have a video recommending tool that'll build titles and thumbnails for them. Great. Now, when I'm making that video, I'm gonna make sure, man, I nail these three things. But I'm also gonna tell people what I love about VidIQ. Okay? So I'm making videos about a water filtration system and they want these three points done. And if they send me 20, I'm like, guys, you don't want me picking the three things you want people to know. Give me three things. That's it. And I make sure, man, I do my research, I study it. Why are these three things amazing? What makes these three things better than their competitors? I I work for my money. I work for it. But then when I make that video, and I make sure I know those three things, I got those three things covered in detail. And I've already used the product, so I can tell you what I love about it. Man, when you do that, people are like, I can connect with you, Roger. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_02

And then uh the it's kind of like I was talking about before when I found one of your videos and I was looking for something for plumbing, I knew that I could trust what you were going to say. And if you had told me this is the product that I use to fix this, I'm gonna buy it. I mean, I I already trust you. And if you say this is the thing I should get, then I'm going to go ahead and make that purchase. And for the listeners right now, I want you to think about this. What we said before about connecting with your audience, this is where it pays off. When someone can trust you in your judgment, that's when sponsors will see, hey, you know, he has his engaged audience when he says to buy something, they buy something. Let me talk to this creator about maybe doing a sponsor deal.

SPEAKER_00

And I love the way you put that because I had somebody reach out to me that wanted me to coach them on getting sponsors. So we're talking about it. And there were a smaller channel. And I said, Look, man, I'll just I'll work for product, I'll work for my I'll I'll work with anybody. I said, Why would you say that? And he said, Well, because I'm new and I'm growing and stuff. I said, Okay. I said, look, from the very beginning, I was very picky about everybody I worked with. I said, Have you ever had anybody recommend stuff to you online? He said, Yeah. I said, anything bad? He said, Yeah. He said, I was watching his YouTuber. It was a horrible product, but man, the guy's like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. He said, Roger, I bought it. He says, it fell apart before I could even use it. He said, The next time I got a notification that that person put a video, he said, Man, I clicked on the video and I went in and I unsubscribed. Oof. I said, Is that what you want people doing to you? Right. And it was like he didn't even realize what had happened. And that's kind of what he was talking about. Doing I'll work with anybody.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I asked him, Would you go back and rep that product now? He said, No. I said, There's plumbing products that I won't rep.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That I won't talk about.

unknown

Yeah.

Product Integrity And Million‑Dollar Deals

SPEAKER_00

Or if I do talk about it, it's because we tested it and it's horrible and I've proven it. And he's like, man, I'm glad we talked.

SPEAKER_02

You just saved him a lot of uh the one thing you can't buy back, which is reputation.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the trust and the reputation because they believe in you.

SPEAKER_02

Let's let's talk a little bit about um this one thing that we talked about right before we went live that uh you want to help people get sponsorships and stuff. You got something cooking. What can you what can you tell us?

SPEAKER_00

Okay, okay. And this is where I get excited. When people ask me, Travis, how do you make money? I try and tell them.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And it's like, look, I do research on the brands, I do research on their social. I know everything about me. I run it through my brand book. And then I was comparing, okay, what are they talking about that I believe in? What are they selling that I agree with? And it's it's you find a synergistic relationship. But Travis, it was taking us 10 to 12 hours to do all this because you've got to find the brand, you've got to find the product, you've got to do the research, you've got to look at their social, then you've got to find out who at this company do I send this to? Right. What email do I send? Right. And if you think about it, and I'm sure you have people reach out to be like you all the time. Like, I want y'all to sponsor me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00

They send you an email say, Oh my God, I love your product.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Send me money. Okay? Yeah. So what I did is I start looking at everything we did. I have my team help me build out the things that I wanted to build to do this. And we have now built our own large language model. And it's a web based app. It's called sponsorkit.pro. And what it does is it takes what I was doing in 12 hours and does it in 15 minutes. It once you sign up, and I've got different packages. But once you sign up, and this is for small creators, this is for middle-sized creators, this is for large creators, and this is for jumbo creators. And there's packages that represent the different prices and what all you get all the way through it. So everywhere from$49 a month to$1,499 a month.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

But when you're making a million dollars a year,$1,400 a month or$14,000 a year, because you can pay for the year, pay for 10 months, you get two months free.

SPEAKER_01

Nice.

Pricing, Deliverables, And Negotiation

SPEAKER_00

At every level. But when you look at it, what I've done now is you go in, you you put all your socials in, it ask your mission vision statement. You upload photos of you, you do all kinds of things. And it takes a little while to onboard. It takes 20, 30 minutes because you've got to find the pictures, you've got to find the mission vision statement, you've got to know your brand colors. You've got to know everything because basically we're building behind the scenes your little brand book that tells us all about you. Then what it does, it now that it knows about you and what you're talking about, it says, okay, Roger, your your niche is, let's say, home improvement. Now it searches the World Wide Web and says, hey, who out here talks about or sells products for home improvement? There's a lot of companies. And it finds these companies, then it finds the data behind the company. What is their mission and vision statement? What have they been posting on social media in the last 90 days? What are they talking about? What's important to them? Give me 20 people at this company to email. Who's in marketing? Who's in who's in influencer marketing? There's a lot of different things that we've got it set up to look for. I think I've got 10 different job titles that we look for at these companies. Then we did something unique. We built an introduction, a follow-up, and a follow-through email. Wow. So you don't just send the first email and we write that email for you, Travis. We don't just send the introduction email, hey Travis, I love VidIQ, love the product, send me some money. Now there's a follow-up email. Now there's a follow-through email. But the greatest thing that it does is it builds you a six-card pitch deck.

SPEAKER_01

Whoa.

SPEAKER_00

That's what the pictures of you for. That's what the branding is all about. It has an introduction. Your slide one is just about you. I'm Travis. I talk about cool stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Slide two is really about them. Here's what we love about y'all. Based on your social media, based on your mission vision, these are the kind of things y'all are talking about. Slide three is what a synergistic relationship could look like. Y'all talk about this, we talk about this together, we could talk about this. Slide four is what a sponsorship would look like. If I'm talking about your product, I can put your product in front of my people up to 20 million times a year just on YouTube. We can do 10 million times a month by sharing this across all our social platforms. You go through and this is what we bring to you. Slide five is all about the data. What's my YouTube data? What are my numbers? What's my audience? You're a tool manufacturer. My audience is 91.9% male. These guys buy your products. The last slide is your call to action. Here's what we would like to propose. We'd like to do a video series. We'd like you to be a sponsor at the Blue Collar Bunker, about 10 acres outside of Dallas. We're wanting to build an event center in. You can go through and put whatever you want to in there. If you're a podcaster, if you're a coach, if you're a content creator, small or large, it doesn't matter. Small creators, okay, I want$500 a month. I'm going to do two videos a month for y'all. We're going to talk about your product. Or I'm going to use your pots and pans, you know, when I'm when I'm cooking.

SPEAKER_02

So you're basically saying you don't have to be a million subscriber channel to use this this this feature. It's it's for it's even looking at creators who are still on the come up, still trying to build their brand, but actually have some sort of an audience. Not like I get a thousand, ten thousand people every single video, but enough that like a brand can see some value from it.

SPEAKER_00

You know, the the right audience, Travis, if I've got a channel, a very niche channel, and I'm getting 500 views a video, but they're watching the video, they're staying with me. If I tell them, hey, this new iPhone 17, man, the case that I've got on it, I can throw this up, hit the ceiling, let it fall down on the floor, and still pick it up and use it. It's not going to be a problem. If I've got 500 viewers that believe what I'm saying because I'm trustworthy, because I've built that relationship, because I communicate with them. And I say, look, if you want a case that's going to last, this is it. They're like, okay, I'm clicking the link.

SPEAKER_02

Clicking it by link, which is what we literally talked about. I've literally Absolutely. Yeah. So in this podcast, we've talked about a lot of things. We talked about how you came to be. We talked about how to talk better in your videos, how to connect with your audience, and then be able to take that connection with your audience and then potentially monetize it so that it can be your full-time gig. And I'm coining the phrase blue-collar YouTuber right now. I'm doing it, TM. And we have the master of all blue blue-collar uh YouTubers. Super successful, Roger. Thank you so much for just sharing and explaining and being very transparent because I feel like it's one of the things that uh creators need to hear more of. It's such a lonely experience when you're just doing it yourself. That's why I love things like Vid Summit because you get to go and connect with other people. It's it's amazing.

SponsorKit.Pro: Automating Outreach

SPEAKER_00

You know, Travis, here's what's neat. Yeah. And and so I I pitched sponsor kit.pro to Daryl. Yeah. When I was in her circle. And literally, and he talked to me again the other day because he interviewed me. He's re writing another book.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And he wanted me to talk about sponsors. Love it. And when I told him, I said, Daryl, look, part of my reason for creating this, new creators, they realize this costs money to do. And sometimes it costs a lot of money. And most of them get out because they're not growing, because they don't have the money to invest in it. Because they're spending money, they still have a full-time job. They thought by doing this they're gonna be able to quit their job and they'd be in front of the camera all day. But these new creators, like we said, small creators, sponsor kit.pro can help find sponsorships for a small creator, for a middle-sized creator, for a jumbo creator. It doesn't matter. And whenever I told him this, and I said, Daryl, look, this helps keep creators creating. It helps them get paid, it helps them make money. They're not getting out because they can't afford to do it now. And that's where this whole thing came from. Because I remember starting out, if I didn't have the plumbing company paying for it, I couldn't afford to do what I did. But I was making money that way. Then when the sponsorships came in, it was like, okay, this is really nice. So now I figured out a way to help everybody do it. And the cool thing is too, we've also got a price value calculator that based on your subscribers and numbers and stuff like that, it'll help you come up with a price to charge for your videos.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00

Because that's the question I get a lot.

SPEAKER_02

People ask me, I'm like, I don't know. I mean, how much do I charge? Yes. You know, the one thing that I love to tell people, Roger, is when you you should always have a this is the price, I'll do it. I don't really care because you're I have a price that a lot of times I would pitch out. It's like, I don't want to do this. Like the product's fine. I'm not gonna ever compromise who I am. But I'm like, I don't feel like doing it right now. Here's a number. And if they say yes to it, then okay, then I'll get excited about it. Right. Then it's worth doing it. Then it's worth doing. But the one thing I always tell creators, I'm like, of all the things I can tell you uh about sponsorships, which it's not much, the one thing I tell you for certain is if you pitch a number and they immediately say yes, you undervalued yourself.

SPEAKER_00

So I don't pitch a number from the get-go. I've got that price value calculator. So I know I know that normally for long-form videos, I get I've I get anywhere from$35,000 to$50,000. Right. I've I've got more, I've got less. Sure. For shorts, I've got up to$35,000 for a one-minute video. That's crazy. Okay. So what I do, if I were reaching out and you're like, Roger, man, we love you. We really want to work with you. I'd say, okay, Travis, tell me this. What kind of a budget range does VitIQ have for what we're talking about doing?

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Now you've got to go back and say, okay, let's come up with a budget.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Let's come up with a range. Now, my price is probably not going to be just within your range because I'm going to come back with three opportunities for you. I'm going to say, Travis, look, I can give you most of what you want. Or for the price you want, I could come down to this. I can give you most of what you want for the high end of your budget. But you know what? I can give you what you want and everything we talked about and a little bit more, but I came up over that budget just a little bit. Sure. Nine times out of ten, they want it all.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

And if you're still close to the budget, they're like, you know what? We can find that.

SPEAKER_02

We'll figure it out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

The third time that I renewed with my first sponsor, they came to me and said, Look, we're cutting the budget. We're going to go half of what we're doing. We're going to do this. Travis, I sat down and looked at it. I added some stuff to it and sent it back and said, Look, I understand y'all want to go half. But if y'all are willing to just do what we did last year, no increase.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

Keeping Creators Creating

SPEAKER_00

I'm going to eliminate a couple of things, but I'm going to add this in here, and I think this will be a game changer. He said, I love this. He said, We'll do it.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. So you avoided a cut in budget. That's insane. You bet. Insane. If you want to know more about Roger, I mean, there'll be links in the description in the show notes if you're listening to the audio podcast, but I guess you can just go to YouTube and type in plumbing. So I love it.

SPEAKER_00

Isn't that a great way to end it?

SPEAKER_02

It's right there. That's how you do it. We should all be so lucky to have a niche lockdown like Roger Wakefield. Thank you so much for joining me today, Roger. You're an absolute gem. Love talking to you. If you want to know more, there's notes, uh, there's uh links in the show notes and of course in the description. And we'll see y'all in the next one.