Blaze Your Own Trail - How to Land Your First Podcast Sponsor with Jordan Mendoza

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

In this episode, Jordan Mendoza shares his journey of creatively landing podcast sponsorships despite having a small audience. He emphasizes the importance of thinking outside the box and leveraging one's warm network to secure sponsors. Mendoza discusses how he started with minimal downloads and social media presence but was able to generate revenue through strategic partnerships and by providing value to potential sponsors. He encourages aspiring podcasters to focus on building value rather than solely relying on audience size.TakeawaysYou don't need a large audience to get sponsors.Think creatively to land your first sponsorship.Leverage your warm network for potential sponsors.Provide value to sponsors beyond just downloads.Start small and grow your sponsorships over time.Your passion can lead to revenue generation.Building relationships is key in sponsorships.Focus on deliverables that matter to sponsors.Your audience can grow with time and effort.Keep pushing forward, no matter your starting point.Chapters00:00 Creative Approaches to Podcast Sponsorship05:37 Building Value Beyond Audience SizeConnect with Jordan:LinkedInInstagramTikTokOrder a copy of Jordan's new book The Life-Changing Power of AdversityThe Blaze Your Own Trail Podcast is exclusively sponsored by CityGate Studios Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome back to the Blaz Your Own Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host, and today's topic is going to be how to creatively land your first or your next podcast sponsor. I remember when I first started my show, sponsorship came to mind immediately. I think that comes to mind to a lot of folks that have a podcast, and you know, you want to start bringing in revenue for your show. And everybody I talked to told me that the only way to get sponsors is you have to. have to have a lot of downloads. And honestly, when the show started, I didn't have a lot of downloads.

I think the first month, we did about 30 downloads. And so I knew that that wasn't going to be the vehicle that would get me a sponsor. Other people said, you know, you got to have a big social media following. And at the time, I had a decent following on certain platforms, but the ones that were most important to most people, I didn't really have a large audience yet. So I knew that my social media following wasn't going to get me. sponsors. And so what I did, like any good Trailblazer does, is I had to truly think outside of the box. And so I went to a platform that a lot of you listeners know, it's called Canva. And I searched for

different templates, sponsorship templates, and I found a template that I liked, and I just started plugging in different information. I would plug in, you know, what the investment would be to become a sponsor. I plugged in, you know, what they would get, you know, They'd get an ad read. They would get tagged on all the social media platforms. And it would go to our listeners. And at that time, I think, you know, we had listeners in about 10 countries. So it was a global audience. And so I'd used what I had. It wasn't my large audience, my large social media presence. It wasn't a ton of downloads. And so those weren't really things that I focused on. My biggest focus was on some of the other deliverables that I knew I could deliver on. And I remember, when I started reaching out to people, it wasn't something that I posted on social media because I knew that people would probably look at this small list of deliverables and my audience and say, you know, why would we want to invest in that? So what I did is I actually went and reached out to my warm network. And the good news for you listening to this or watching this,

no matter how old your show is, everybody has a warm network. And so what's a warm network, Jordan? Well, a warm network is the people that are in your immediate circle, your sphere of influence. And so I went to some past coaching clients. I went to friends that I knew had businesses and might want to invest. I went to family members that I knew might want to invest in me. Because what I learned is if people like you and people like your mission and people see that you have aspirations to grow something and that you have goals, they will be willing to invest in you. And so it wasn't like, was charging him a million dollars to become a sponsor of the show, I actually started out by just starting somewhere. And I remember when I got that first sponsor, it was $199 and it was for one episode

and I did an ad read talking about their business. I added them to the show notes and then I tag them on a social media post. And I remember when I told them, you know, what I was going to deliver and how quickly they said yes. And I was like, like, man, I've figured this out. I figured out how to creatively get my own sponsor, and I didn't do what some of the big players with all the big audiences did. I didn't rely on my massive audience. I definitely didn't rely on the fact that I had hundreds of thousands or millions of download because I just didn't have it yet. And so I hope this encourages you, no matter if you're on episode one, you're on episode 31, you're on episode 101, or episode 5001, or maybe you're even

past that. If you've never landed a sponsor, this episode, what I hope is that you see that if you think outside the box a little bit, you too can land creative sponsorships. And so what did that do for me? Well, it, one, actually gave me revenue into a thing that I was doing for free because I was passionate about interviewing people, and I was able to now monetize the podcast. And And what's really exciting is it went from $199, $19, and it continued to grow from there. And now, you know, when you fast forward five and a half years later, it costs a lot more to become a sponsor for the show. And I've also been able to build other strategic partnerships because over time, my audience

size did grow. We're now in 85 countries. Now, the listenership grew. You know, we're doing a couple hundred thousand downloads a month. And my social media audience has also grown. And so I started when I really wasn't probably ready in most people's eyes to have a sponsor, but I knew that I could deliver some semblance of value. And so again, I hope this encourages you to know you don't need a massive audience.

You don't need a lot of downloads. But what you do need is to build some type of offer, some type of value that you can provide with everything that you do have. Okay. So if this was valuable to you, I'd love for you to drop a comment on the social post where you saw this video. Let me know if you're going to start a creative podcast sponsorship. If you have sponsors for your show, I'd love to hear feedback from you on how did you land your sponsors? And do you think this advice is valid for people that don't have a sponsorship yet?

And maybe are seeking to get their very first sponsor. Like always, keep up the great work. Keep blazing your entrails. and we'll see you on the next episode.