influencer-marketing · finding-creators
How to 10x Your Business Overnight With Influencers
The full super influencer method, how to grow your business with influencers, how to pick one creator, how to get them to reply, and how to get them to promote your product.
Key takeaways
- You do not need a following or a big budget yourself, you need one creator whose audience already trusts them.
- Pick them by working out from people you know, to your network, to creators you follow, to their formal channels.
- Get a reply by verifying your profile, sending a short personal message, and sending 100 a day, the rule of 100.
- Close with over preparation, a proof, promise, plan pitch, and an offer so good they feel silly saying no.
- Two UK operators reached 44,031 dollars a month by branding a community around one 50,000 follower creator.
If there were a way to get your business or new product to 2x, 10x, or 100x overnight, would you do it? If there were a way to all but guarantee that no matter what business you are in it could become more successful than it currently is, would you do it? And if you could compress a decade of building a business into weeks, would you do it? If so, this guide is for you.
Using the super influencer method laid out here, one right partnership can change the whole path of a business. The proof is not just talk. To show what this looks like at the top end, we will use the real numbers of one operator who has done it again and again, alongside public examples you already know.
Take that operator. His first big business, gym licensing, scaled to 2.5 million dollars a month, which was B2B. His second was an e-commerce business that sold through an affiliate and influencer program, which got to 1.7 million dollars a month, which is B2C. His third was a software company for lead gen agencies, which grew entirely off affiliates and influencers to 1.6 million dollars a month.
So this is someone who has paid real money to get influencers to promote his businesses. For context, he spent over 20 million dollars on influencers to promote one supplement brand. Those are the actual checks. And he spent over 22.8 million dollars on influencers to promote the software. Those are actual payouts from a dashboard.
He also had over 23,000 affiliates promote one of his books, which helped sell over a million copies of his last two books.
one supplement brand
a software company
one book
That process is what let him sell his first two businesses for 46.2 million dollars, then use that money to invest in and scale other companies, a portfolio that now does about 17 million dollars a month.
We start with this proof because there is a lot of fluff being taught out there, from people who have never done what they claim and simply copy and paste stuff they do not understand. We refuse to do that. After spending, losing, and then finally making millions on influencers, the people who have actually done this learned a lot of what not to do, but they also figured out a few things that work.
So this is a three step super influencer method anyone can use to get a flood of buyers into your business for free, even and especially if you have no following or money yourself.
Think about it this way. If tomorrow The Rock or Taylor Swift agreed to promote your business, do you think your business would grow? No matter what you sell, be it umbrellas, contracting, tequila, or VA agencies, if The Rock got up there and said "this is the one," do you think you would make more money? Obviously, of course it would.
And better yet, do you think there is any single move that would make you more money in less time than partnering with someone like that? We talk about the opportunity cost of the time and effort we put into every move we make in business. Probably no single move beats it. So why on earth are we not putting all of our time into the one thing that could make us the most money in the shortest period of time?
Why this works right now
There is a big shift happening in the economy, specifically the economy of attention. Traditional advertising is dying, and social media and influencer brands are on the rise. You have all heard this, but let me show you some stats to support it.
It is the reason that Logan Paul and Prime, a two year old company, now have more sales than Powerade, a 36 year old company. Two years versus 36, and they are crushing them.
Logan Paul and KSI
on sales
gaining on Hershey's
It is the same reason MrBeast Feastables, a less than two year old company, is in the multiple hundreds of millions of dollars a year in sales and gaining rapidly on Hershey's, which before this age was thought to be impossible.
And it is why so many mega brands are getting launched with influencers. Kylie has her Cosmetics. Proper Twelve was launched with Conor McGregor. Kim has Skims. Ryan Reynolds has Aviation Gin, and a bunch of other brands as well. So many of these mega brands are getting launched with super influencers, because they can almost guarantee profitability on day one.
Think about it like this. If you can reach 1 million people for free, then as long as your product sells for more than it costs, you make money, period. So the question just becomes which thing will make the most money, rather than whether that thing will make money at all.
MrBeast has to decide, am I going to promote margaritas or am I going to promote chocolate? If he promoted margaritas he would still make money, just not as much as with chocolate.
What crazy world can you live in where you can guarantee millions in sales on something that actually has poor product market fit? This is one of those big insurance policies you can take out on the future of your business, if you make the right pick. And this has never existed before this moment, until now.
It is the same reason there are more viewers on the internet than on television, and more listeners than there are radio listeners. And even crazier, this costs less and converts higher. There are more total people watching, listening, and consuming, and more of them buying, for less money overall. The game has changed, yet so few businesses are taking advantage of it.
Said differently, if the only thing between you and the fastest business growth you could imagine was three steps, wouldn't it be worth doing? I think so too. So let's dive in.
The super influencer process in three steps
Here is the whole process, and everything after this is just detail on each step.
- Know which influencer to pick.
- Know how to get them to talk to you.
- Know how to get them to promote your stuff.
Because if you know who to pick, and you get them to talk to you, and you get them to promote your stuff, you will make more money than if you do not. And if you pick the right influencer, you might make life changing amounts of money.
Step one, pick the right influencer
There was a movie that came out a year or two ago called Air, and the premise was simple. Nike, a shoe brand, was struggling to enter the basketball market. Every year they would spend money on player sponsorships and get second tier rookies to wear their stuff, and they kept losing the best players to Adidas and Converse. Yes, Converse was actually a big player back then.
So the exhausted partnership manager, the talent scout, insisted to Phil Knight that they go all in on a new young rookie named Michael Jordan. They bet their entire basketball budget. They took what they were going to pay five to ten players and gave it all to one, in order to sign him. He got the biggest deal anyone had ever signed, because Nike needed him more than he needed them.
They hoped they would do 2 million dollars in basketball shoe sales. Instead they did 122 million in the first year, and they created an iconic brand that has yet to be surpassed decades later. Nike now eats the entire pie, all because they went all in on the right influencer.
So the question for you is, who is your Michael Jordan?
The two ways to approach it
There are two ways you can approach this.
- You have a branded product, and you go find a super influencer to partner with. You have the thing, then you go find the person.
- You find the person, and then you brand something around them.
Either works. The Nike Air story was an example of the first one. Nike was selling basketball shoes, and people who wear basketball shoes tend to watch and idolize basketball players, so finding the best available player made the most sense. They kept their brand, and Jordan promoted a personal line. Nike overall was still a bigger brand than Michael Jordan, especially as a rookie, so they created a specific line around him.
An example of the second is a company you probably have not heard of, Congo. Congo is a drink manufacturer with three massive brands underneath it, and one of them is Prime. The other two also do half a billion dollars a year in sales. You have never heard of Congo. You have probably heard of Logan Paul. So they decided to go find the influencer, create the product branded for them, and do the delivery.
| The two models | You do this when |
|---|---|
| The influencer promotes your brand | Your brand is bigger than their audience, like Nike and Jordan |
| You build and deliver a product for them | Their audience is bigger than your brand, like Congo and Logan Paul |
Which model you use depends on who has the bigger audience. Nike had a bigger audience than Jordan, so he promoted them, though since he was bigger in basketball they created a line around him. Logan Paul has a bigger audience than Congo, so Congo delivered for him. Understanding this is what lets you actually execute on it.
An army of small, or one super influencer
You can get an army of tiny influencers, or find one super influencer.
If you want lots of little creators who are 100,000 followers each, it will take you longer, but you will retain more ownership, because you will pretty much always be bigger than them. That is what the operator we mentioned did with his supplement brand and his software, lots and lots of little affiliates. The second path, one super influencer, is faster and easier to manage, but you give up more.
As you understand branding, speed to market, the value of aggressive growth, and the insurance policy a super influencer provides, the one super influencer route starts to win more often. One community platform did exactly this by having its founder act as its own influencer for the platform and its events.
The circles, how to actually get in contact
So how do everyday business owners actually get in contact with influencers? First you have to know who buys the sort of stuff you sell. The fancy term for this is your ideal customer, or avatar, or ICP. Then you figure out the influencers they follow, and then you pick out the super influencers that best fit your product.
We think about contacting people in layers. This is the part where you take notes.
Influencers you know personally. You probably know someone with a bigger following than you, that is often why you know them.
People your network knows. Ask who they know, and cut them in on the deal for a warm intro that works out.
Influencers you follow or have heard of. Reach out everywhere, multiple times, and find mutual connections.
Formal channels. Their agents, and the email or support form on their own website.
Start with influencers you know personally. You might say you do not know any influencer, but believe it or not, you probably do know someone with a bigger following than you. If you contact all of them, or do not know any, you move on to the next circle, which is asking your network who they know.
When we make this point, we want to emphasize that you actually ask. You can even cut the person you ask in on your side of the deal if they make an intro and it works out, and you can pay real money for this because it is exceptionally valuable. You just say something like, do you know this person, or do you know anyone who has that size audience, or who caters to this type of people? And optionally, I am paying this much for an intro.
If they do not know anyone, and your friends do not know anyone, then you move to the next circle out, which is influencers you follow or have heard of. What we do is reach out everywhere, multiple times, and find mutual connections. Look for the same person across:
- TikTok
- Direct mail, and you cannot unsubscribe from direct mail
People forget about this, you can actually deliver stuff to people's address.
Here is what is interesting. Someone with a very large following on Instagram might have a small following on LinkedIn, and they might check both inboxes. Where are you more likely to stand out, when they get one of ten messages on LinkedIn, or one of a thousand on Instagram? Go everywhere, because you might stick out. And you can follow up.
If none of them respond, you go through formal channels. Some of these people will have agents. Having now dealt with super influencers, we will say it is not as much as you think, most of the time. Superstars you can get for a couple hundred grand a year, you would be amazed.
Here is a little pro tip. Most influencers have a website, and most sell at least one thing. So actually go to their website, opt in, contact support, find the email address, and reach out. Instead of the thousand message DM inbox on Instagram, there might only be six people actually emailing.
Do not make the assumption that because lots of people see something, lots of people take action. Here is a quick story to bring this home. One media team ran a contest for editors, and 1,200 people said they were interested in the role off one post. Many people probably thought they did not have a shot. But wait for the second stat. They gave all 1,200 people one raw file and said, just edit it, you have 48 hours. Guess how many of the 1,200 actually submitted an edit? Sixty. That is 5 percent, one in twenty. The odds are still in your favor if you actually take action.
Recap of step one
Find the biggest person you can connect with using the circles. If your audience is bigger than theirs, you ask them to promote your thing. If their audience is bigger than yours, you offer to deliver for them. Finding your Michael Jordan gives you the benefit of years of building a massive audience without the time cost, and you immediately reap the benefits of their work in exchange for a portion of the upside.
Step two, get them to talk to you
You have got your eyes on your Michael Jordan. Now you have to get them to talk to you. No matter how good your thing is, if they do not respond, you will not get very far. Here is how we get them interested, in three parts, verify yourself, the magic message, and the rule of 100.
Verify yourself
Verifying yourself has two steps. First, you literally verify yourself on the platform. If you can pay the 10 dollars a month or whatever it is to get the blue check mark, do it, because you will get five to ten times the response rates. For 10 bucks you can get five to ten times the time back. We cannot imagine a better use of resources.
Second, do not be like the spam account with a random string of numbers in its handle. Be the professional.
If you want to be treated like a professional, act like one on your profile first. Have a profile picture that makes you look like a human being. Make it your face, closer up, lighter and brighter. Plenty of people learn this the hard way, with a first version zoomed all the way out and pixelated. Then actually use the platform, post a few things that show who you are.
The magic message
Now, what do you actually say to them? Here is a sample message script you would send to an influencer. This one is written for a community offer.
Hey, long time fan, first time messenger. I own a company that partners with influencers to start communities. Based on your following, it looks like you generate anywhere from X to Y per month in recurring income. Here are screenshots of people who started this month alone. You get the majority of the profits, we do the majority of the work. Would you be up for a 15 minute call for me to walk you through what something like this would look like?
The screenshots do not necessarily need to be from you, they are just screenshots of other people who have had the same experience. That is it, very straightforward.
The more personal the message, the better. You only need one person to say yes, so put the time in to look like you actually thought about this person. Do not just blast a hundred copy and paste messages. Some of the best people to start with are creators you actually follow, and bonus points if they have interacted with you in the past. And if they do not respond, congratulations, you just got practice for free.
Offer to incur cost
Bonus points if it is your dream influencer, offer to fly out to show you are serious. If you incur costs, they take you more seriously. You would say something like, hey, I am out that way all the time, so it is no big deal, I am happy to stop by so we can meet and see if there is an opportunity that makes sense. The key part is "I am out that way all the time," because they do not want to inconvenience you, and it shows you are busy, that they are not your only prospect.
A few more moves that work when the person is worth it:
- Send a thoughtful, over the top gift with a handwritten card, the effort is the point.
- Offer to pay for their time up front, and size the number to them, not to you.
- Put their logo on the gift, not yours, so they will actually use it and think of you.
Be clear about that pay for their time point. Someone saying "I will pay 100 dollars for your time" might be a lot of money for you and nothing to them, so understand who you are dealing with before you name a number.
The obscene gift is more about the thought and the effort someone can see you put in. One business owner once received a full size modern art piece, with the background of an Ace of Spades, covered in graffiti paint of the quotes that had influenced the artist, and it was obvious a lot of time went into it and that it was relevant to him. That is the bar.
The rule of 100
Now, how many messages do we send? You send 100 messages per day, split across as many platforms as needed. There is a rule of 100 that is consistent across industries, and we can say that it works.
This normally takes about four hours per day, so set a kitchen timer and send the messages. Just rip the bandaid off, do it one day. Then you realize you did not die when someone did not respond, so you do it a second day, and a third, and all of a sudden you start getting responses back.
One person tried this after reading the method, did her first day of the rule of 100, and already got 10 responses, after spending years delaying her first message. Most people quit before their first message, so simply doing this puts you ahead of almost everyone.
Share their stories
One more pro tip. Share your target influencer's stories and posts. When a creator gets mentioned or reshared, it gives them content and spreads their message at no cost to them, so it is one of the easiest ways to give to a super influencer before you ask.
And when a creator opens their inbox and sees that you have shared their stuff many times, they feel a little goodwill toward you before you have even pitched. The big reminder to keep hitting is this, you do not need 100 influencers, you just need one super influencer to take your company to the next level.
Step three, get them to promote your stuff
Now that we have picked our influencer, optimized our messages, and started sending them, we are going to get replies. Here is how you close the deal, in three parts, over preparation equals profit, every position has an advantage, and NOs or yeses.
Over preparation equals profit
Before you speak with them, prepare mockups of what their thing would look like on your product, or on the product you want to make for them. You can take your Nike shoes and say, we have an idea for a line we want to put under you. Or, I white label drinks and I want to make a drink just for you, Logan Paul. Or a tequila just for you, The Rock. Or cosmetics just for you, Kylie. This is not new, but people are not seeing it, which is why the opportunity exists.
On top of the mockups, show graphs. This is you now, and this is you with me.
Show that you actually did a little math. You have this many followers, if we post this many times per week we assume this reach, and we convert 1 percent of clicks, which is standard, so within 12 months we should be able to get to here. Does that sound interesting? If they say yes, you are one step closer. If they say no, you ask them why, because they might give you some of the best feedback possible.
The bottom line is you want to show that you worked a lot on this, because they want to work with a partner who will work hard for them, and the best way to prove you will do it later is to do it now, to do it first. One of our favorite sayings is, the best way to show an audience you will give them value after they buy is to give them value before they buy.
People do not do this because they say their time is valuable and they do not want to be taken advantage of. But you are coming to ask something from them, and if you are going to a super influencer, you are the one who stands to gain far more, because they have themselves and can partner with anyone. You want them to pick you. Do not think about the day or two it takes to prepare one presentation, think about the years of work you save by them agreeing.
Proof, promise, plan
Here is how you structure the presentation.
- Promise. Tell them the good stuff they will get from the partnership.
- Proof. Tell them why they should believe you, past experience, or if you do not have that, stats of people like them doing something comparable.
- Plan. Tell them what the next steps look like, what is expected of them, and what you will do.
If you have the product you think they should sell, bring it and show it to them, a demo. If they have a strong brand, they will want the thing to be good, because they want to serve their audience well. If you have got the bee's knees of products, let them taste the honey.
And by the way, make your side look better than theirs, so they feel like they are getting the best side of the deal. To be real, they should be, because they already spent all these years building the audience. You do not have to spend five years to build it, they already did, and they just point, which takes little effort, because they are leveraging the years of work they put in. You spend the rest of your time going forward making up for the fact that you did not build the brand. You might still have a smaller percentage of the pie, and it is still worth it.
The Michael Jordan offer
Then you make an offer so good they feel silly saying no. Give them a Michael Jordan offer. If they are bigger than you, offer them more. If they are smaller, still offer a lot.
Here is a key pro tip. Help them grow. If you go after a middle sized influencer, they may want growth more than money, so offer that instead or in addition. You can say, I can give you less in the economics, but I am going to invest all these resources, bring people I hire for you to help make extra content, so we both win. Because if they are permanently associated with your brand and they get 10 times bigger, guess who else gets 10 times bigger. You.
Every position has an advantage
The thing most of you will struggle with is proof. So let's talk about that. Every position has an advantage and a disadvantage, and you sell based on the position you have in the marketplace.
Take one operator whose software served agency owners, some of whom competed with his other company in the gym space, so they would say, it is easy for you, you are the 800 pound gorilla in the industry. His reply was, one, I was not always the 800 pound gorilla, I started at zero like everyone else, but I promised a different set of benefits.
As the new player you would say, these big companies do not care about you, you are just a number, you will get assigned some account rep who clocks in every day. But with me you are my only brand partner, I do not want 100 partners, I want one good one I can go all in on. It would be impossible for them to give you the same attention as me.
Then, once you are number one in the industry, you argue the opposite angle. We have the best practices across a lot of accounts and I can feed them directly to you. This newcomer does not have any other experience. We have the infrastructure and the specialists to plug you right in, and our specialist is better at their one thing than his generalist. If this thing crushes, the little guy gets overwhelmed because he has never had this much attention, and we know how to deal with it. Do you want to trust your brand to someone just getting into the industry, or someone with a track record who might still be here in six months? We have been here almost a decade.
So play to your advantages. If you are new, emphasize personal touch, care, flexibility, going all in, the owner mentality of us being partners. If you are the 800 pound gorilla, talk about track record, best practices, infrastructure, specialists, and the brand association they get from you.
NOs or yeses
If you do not have a track record, the other reason to over prepare and make your presentations exceptional is that you can show them to other super influencers. If you make a beautiful deck to pitch Kylie on cosmetics, with all these graphs and explanations, you can take that when you go to Conor McGregor and say, this is some of the work we prepared for other influencers. You are not saying work we did for them, just the type of stuff we do.
People see who you are pitching and see the quality of your work over and over, and they think, this person sustains a high level of professionalism and polish despite the business they might not have won. The subtext is, imagine what they would do if we were actually working together.
Even if you did not pitch them, you can show alternative structures you thought through. If you show three versions for three different influencers, they might say, I like what you did with Ryan Reynolds, can we do something like that for me? You give them more options to bait them into engaging with you. All of this helps you look more legitimate and increases the likelihood you get one super influencer. And if you get frustrated, do not, because the gap between no and yes is where the opportunity to make life changing money lives.
Two real examples, one giant and one brand new
To bring this home, here are two examples, one from a very large established operation and one from people who started with nothing, both using the super influencer method for life changing wealth.
The giant, a single creator partnership
A large team behind Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi, who run a very large portfolio of businesses, reached out to a super influencer, Matthew McConaughey. He plugged into their infrastructure, and they launched The Art of Living. It was a product Matthew was the front face of, and they did the delivery on the back end, branding the product around what he wanted.
The Art of Living
live
ever before
They had the most people attend ever, over two million registered, almost half a million attended live, and more than a million saw it, unlike anything they had ever had, because they harnessed a single super influencer with a phenomenal brand. A single partner can bring in life changing income. Those guys had the infrastructure, and Tony Robbins was probably one or two phone calls away from Matthew McConaughey.
The brand new, two operators and one creator
But let's talk about a small business example, because for some of you this may be the most relevant, since a McConaughey may feel out of reach. It is not out of reach for you, you may just feel that way.
Here are two UK operators, Mankz and Fahad. They added 44,000 dollars per month in recurring revenue without ads or a following. Neither of them has a following, and they were not even the face, just like Congo with Logan Paul. Nobody knows who Mankz and Fahad are, but you might have heard of who they partnered with.
They found an influencer, Eddie Abbew, a former pro bodybuilder from the UK who only had 50,000 followers at the time. They reached out just like this method describes. He replied, doing the exact thing described. They told him he would be their only partner and only client, and that they would spend all their time growing his brand, which is what he really cared about. He agreed.
Then they asked if he wanted to start a paid community, told him what would be expected of him, and gave him projections. Proof, promise, plan, here is the offer. Notice they focused on branding the product around him. It was not the Mankz and Fahad community, it was the Abbew Crew, for people trying to get in shape and healthy again.
in the first 30 days
at the start
no money to start
They launched the community, and in the first 30 days, two people with no following and no money got to 44,031 dollars in monthly recurring revenue, which in the United States is a top 1 percent income.
It is not because they got lucky. They were able to take five years of work and compress it into one series of conversations, because they were willing to give up the upside, and willing to get rejected by the other hundred people they reached out to, so they could get the one who said yes. The creator's audience wanted more high value access to him, so the two operators made that happen. He benefited from their operations, and they benefited from his brand.
The creator just wanted to make content, he did not want to do anything else, so they said, we will do everything else, we will bring the camera, do the recording, the editing, put the stories up with the CTAs and links so we bring people into the community, and manage the community itself, and send you a cut. He said cool, and they both profited.
The point is, if you actually follow this process, you can jump forward multiple levels of income quickly, because you only need one super influencer to change your life. Just one.
The recap
We hope this delivered on the promise from the beginning, the three step super influencer method.
- Know how to pick them.
- Know how to get them to talk to you.
- Know how to get them to promote your stuff.
If you do not have a product yet, you can start the way those two operators did, by building a community for an influencer. Pretty much every influencer gets followed because people want access to them, so all you do is give more access, more content, behind a paywall, so the biggest fans get what they want and everybody else still gets stuff for free. It is a win win.
So there you go, that is how you can create life changing wealth with influencers, if you actually take action.
Pick, reach, promote is exactly the job we do at Influencer Advisory for consumer brands, including the regulated ones where a good partnership can turn into a fine if it is run wrong. We find the creator whose audience already trusts them, handle the outreach and the deal, and keep the whole program compliant. If you want that run for you, talk with us here.
Want the numbers behind this in our own deal data? Read how we make revenue with influencers for the ambassador model, and the complete guide to SaaS influencer marketing for how the same picking and pricing plays out with real deals.
Frequently asked
How do I pick the right influencer?
Start with who buys the sort of thing you sell, then work out in circles, people you know personally, then your network, then creators you follow, then their formal channels. If your audience is bigger than theirs you ask them to promote your thing. If their audience is bigger than yours you offer to build and deliver a product for them.
What is the magic message?
It is a short, personal opener that says you partner with influencers, that based on their following they could earn a certain amount, that you do most of the work and they keep most of the profit, and it asks for a 15 minute call. The more personal it is the better, and you only need one person to say yes.
What is the rule of 100?
You send 100 messages a day, split across as many platforms as needed, which normally takes about four hours. Set a timer and send them. Most people quit before they start, so the ones who actually do it stand out fast.
Do I need a big following or money myself to do this?
No. The whole point is that you borrow someone else's audience. Two UK operators with no following and no money reached 44,031 dollars a month by branding a paid community around a 50,000 follower creator and doing all the work he did not want to do.