Sponsorships.com | Rollup Update

A while ago, we acquired sponsorships.com (if you want a deep dive on that, see below).

To give background, I had no intention of purchasing this domain name, I simply gave it a chance, and the deal happened— which is generally the way I approach deals, without attachment.

In the background, since earlier this year, I’ve been building a “moat” rollup, which is essentially a rollup of companies, that are meant to secure your main business.

See, our main long-term business is Wisdom University— a collection of certifications, courses, memberships, and overall education. My biggest bet is that the future will be defined by self-education.

Knowing that, we created Wisdom Media to allow us to, in the future, direct the attention of tens of millions of people, ensuring that we could protect against the cost of attention.

And in order to protect all of this, we wanted to create a roll-up specifically designed to help Wisdom Media, allowing us to do a few different things:

1. Educate the market on how to actually utilize podcasts, newsletters, and social media in relation to sponsorships, partnerships, and affiliates.

2. Educate the creators on how to leverage and monetize in ways that they haven’t ever seen before.

In both cases, it’s about being able to educate a non-existing audience, which allows us to generate more revenue and more attention inside an ecosystem.

From here, we also want to…

3. Have the data of who has attention, at what level of attention, in which segment, and how effective that attention is for getting in front of an ideal audience.

4. Have the data of what companies understand the return on investment of being able to use “rented” audiences such as sponsorships and partnerships.

To do this, we started buying companies inside the ecosystem, along with hiring and building our own partnerships, allowing us to help both sides of a marketplace and, by default, helping us expand the two sides that Wisdom Media must have for success.

A. Creators and Audiences to help us have more exposure.

B. Advertisers and Sponsors to help us fund our development.

As I got further into building this moat, I realized that, for the most part, when it came to newsletters, podcasts, or even niche sites, everything was fragmented.

You have one person running a small company, that addresses one issue. Then another company solved another small issue, however, the problem is simple with this.

None of these companies have the ability to create a large return, as the economies of scale for them simply don’t work.

Thus, we’re building a rollup of companies that solve this issue and one of the “brands” is Sponsorships.com 

The action plan here? Honestly, it’s pretty simple. It’s to take everything someone would need on either side of sponsorships and bringing it together.

To start, we’ve built a workshop that is happening next week on sponsorships and have launched this, earlier this morning: www.sponsorships.com/workshop

(If you signup, use coupon code: CUSTOMER)

Later in July, we’re launching an intensive, an 8-week experience for entrepreneurs who really want to dive in and utilize sponsorships. This will create the ability for us to train people on how to most effectively use sponsorships.

While this is happening, in the background, we’re building and merging together an M&A marketplace, a media (blog+newsletter+podcast) portion, a software play and creating partnerships with the “best of the best” when it comes to sponsorships across the board.

In total, my belief is very simple about the creation of this: If you are able to take something that is segmented and make it easy, you win.

Apple has done this.

Tesla has done this.

If you look at any business, that really kills it, one of the main things it does is enter a market that has high growth potential, but doesn’t have ease of use and solve that problem.

There’s going to be a lot of work here, however, the largest unfair advantage of running a portfolio company?

This doesn’t have to make money for a very long time. Why is that? Because, the entire thesis of this investment is to protect and expand another roll-up (Wisdom Media), our network of niche sites, newsletters, social media accounts, and podcasts.

In essence, the highest form of an unfair advantage: The person who can spend more and doesn’t need a return immediately has the easiest time building a business.

Yet… in truth, I expect that Sponsorships.com will easily be a 7+ figure business within 12 months.

When I talk to people, they are excited about being able to use sponsorships, yet, they don’t understand how to actually use them.

When I talk to people further, they don’t understand how to get R.O.I and in truth, I’ve cracked that code.

Most people who buy sponsorships, don’t have a marketing and sales background in the way I do. They don’t understand funnel flows, how to build the right messaging, or how to treat different leads differently.

In short, I’m able to engineer something that has been done by larger businesses, for almost any business.

If I’m successful at doing this, with Sponsorships.com, we’ll secure Wisdom Media (our network), help build a larger pond for others, and help us secure the rest of our portfolios by being able to have access to high intent attention.

Thanks for being along for the ride, and as a first step, I highly suggest signing up for this that happens next week.

Talk soon,

- Scott

P.S. Are you playing in this world as well? I’d love to see if we can help each other. My intention is to create market leadership, but believe in partnering and collaborating, over all else.