NEGOTIATION: LET'S TALK 🤑
Ask An Agent with Max Fleming of "Motive LA"
Welcome to “Ask An Agent,” a monthly agent - brand conversation with Max Fleming, founder of Motive LA, where we have in-depth discussions around specialized creator economy topics.
Oooooooo boy, this is a big one!!! I’ve had this topic circled from the moment I created the Substack at the beginning of the year.
When I began working in this space four years ago, I was embarrassingly green in the art of negotiation - Let me paint the picture: Agent would pitch an extremely high number, I would counter with an extremely low number, and we would stand (virtual finger) guns blazing at each other until someone caved or we agreed to split the difference. This process often left me feeling unsure of whether I made a good deal or a bad deal, not to mention a lack of any understanding of how or why I was determining the numbers that we agreed upon.
Now with more maturity and experience, I’ve come to understand the game of negotiation much better than when I started but still often wonder how decisions are being made by others (brands, agents, creators, etc.) when time after time I encounter scenarios that begin not too dissimilar from the above, where rates are thrown around with minimal clarity.
Similar to questions surrounding ROI in the creator economy, negotiation often unfolds without any data leading to business decisions that are based off… vibes?
Maybe the answer is one posited by Tom Markland in our conversation, where historical content performance is used to forecast social metrics of a given collaboration which one can map to agreed upon paid media rates (how much would it cost me to achieve the same impressions/engagements/etc. through paid media?) and price accordingly.
In an effort to better educate myself (as well as you, the reader) and pull back the curtain on the often taboo topic, I brought back Max Fleming to provide real-life examples and insight into how he approaches negotiation at his agency by diving into:
CPM vs Engagement Rate as pricing metrics
Factors to consider when determine a rate/evaluating an offer
Communication tips for how to improve your conversations
And more!
Agree with our conversation below? Think we’re totally off-base? Reply directly to this Substack or send me an email at foxteno@gmail.com to share your thoughts.
Neil: I'd like to begin with two topics I believe are at the heart of the uncertainty around negotiation in the creator economy: lack of objective standards and unreliable market rates. Starting with the objective standard—there's no metric the industry has agreed on as a basis for discussion. Do you agree? Are there any metrics you use to formulate pricing for your creators?
Max: There is an average engagement or CPM—you can price CPMs. For example, some brands have a $25 CPM, others have a $50 CPM. But CPM is subjective; its definition varies depending on who you're talking to. Generally, it's cost per 1,000 views. So if you’re getting, on average, a million views per post over the last 30 days, you can do the math to estimate what that CPM might be.
The hard part is, people don’t generate offers based on CPMs for organic content. They try to apply branded content CPMs to get a lower fee. Often, buyers aren’t successful in doing that. So, to your question—there’s no industry-agreed metric. On YouTube, for long-form partnerships, CPM is often the starting point for execution. That’s how agencies or media buyers calculate their overall fee.
I don’t do a lot of those deals, honestly. If we ran a business purely off CPMs, I wouldn’t make any money—neither would the creator. Sometimes the content underperforms, sometimes it goes viral. And when it does well, the buyer ends up in full control of the deal.
Now, do I use any metrics to formulate pricing? I work with creators across the board—macro, mid-tier, micro, and smaller. It’s really about leverage, engagement, and what the work actually entails. At the end of the day, this is a talent hire. People have to execute, and there’s a time investment to produce the asset that’s being distributed.
For us, we have general fees based on creator size, but engagement rate is what lets us price things higher. It’s a tangible metric—if someone has a 10% engagement rate, that means one in ten followers are listening, taking action, and potentially converting. That performance allows us to price up. On the flip side, anything below a 5% engagement rate makes it hard to justify a high fee.
So yeah, there are metrics and baseline indicators, but it all comes down to who throws out the budget first.
Neil: I like that we’re grounding this in data—CPM, engagement rate, etc. Do you actively use engagement rate in negotiations?
Max: I do, for sure—on talent with great engagement rates [laughter]. I definitely wouldn’t use a metric that doesn’t perform for the creator in a negotiation I’m trying to win. That kind of metric isn’t going to help the negotiation.
Neil: We’ll touch on rate cards in a bit, but I want your take on unreliable market rates. Between how young the creator economy is, conversations I’ve had in the space and how many variables exist within each collaboration —I do not have confidence that brands across the industry are using any data to back their negotiations. So when someone says, “X brand paid us X dollars, so that’s our new rate,” I’m skeptical. Do you agree? Do you use market rates or past deals to base fees?
Max: I’d say that’s just not a good way to do business. Saying, “Okay, X brand paid me $50K, so now I make $50K from all future deals”—dude, that’s crazy. That doesn’t make any sense. That’s called getting a great win from a set buyer, but you’re not reading between the lines and asking, “Where’s the value of the partnership?”
Market rates are in the eye of the beholder and the buyer. Look at the stock market, or anything else—the world’s uncertain, and values are constantly going up and down. It’s the same across any industry or market.
Your rate is determined by how much people are willing to spend. Brand X has $50K to spend on certain services from Talent Y. Talent Y charges a base fee to work—that’s the ignition fee, what gets them out of bed. But if there’s real value in what they’re going to create, that fee can change. It all depends.
Remember, Neil, these aren’t my deals. I don’t execute the work. I’m here to protect and serve my clients' best interests, offer advice, and recommend why they should or shouldn’t do a deal. When we work on deals together, we both know it’s not always about having all the money in the world—it’s about access and the opportunity to create high-profile content. You just have to evaluate what the market’s willing to offer.
But if a brand has budget, you need to go get that money, too. That’s our job—our client isn’t paying you to not get them paid [laughter].
Neil: Yeah, I think a big mistake creators and agents make is not asking about the total campaign budget. Instead of countering my $5k offer with $50k, they should ask where more money might exist. Too often, I get a huge number with no conversation. If we talked more about where rates are coming from, we’d learn a lot.
Max: Yeah, I’ll tell you, dude, it’s because there are so many buyers out there with massive marketing budgets—billions of dollars for any company on the S&P 500. They think using the same tactics across the board, no matter who they're communicating with, will win them the same business. That’s just an ill-advised approach. You're not reading the opportunity—how the dollars are being spent, what the person on the other end actually has to work with—and you end up wasting time by responding with a set fee before understanding the full picture.
More often than not—and this is a general statement, not a rule or an accurate representation of all talent—but if you have a really cool opportunity, like something with the MLB, the NFL, or even your company, you can often get more value with a smaller budget because the offering is so exclusive.
For example, if we’re shooting at a fast food QSR location, we’re going to ask for a good amount of money. That kind of content isn’t super high-profile or exclusive, and we can publicly check what that brand has to spend on marketing. You know what I mean?
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Neil: That’s interesting. Of the contractual elements that impact pricing—deliverables, platforms, usage, exclusivity, timeline—are there any that stand out?
Max: I had someone ask me this today—“How do you determine the number?” A buyer literally said, “How did you even come up with that?” So I broke it down.
What’s most important in establishing rates starts with: who’s creating the work? Is Talent X filming, editing, producing the content themselves? That’s part of the fee—it’s time and productivity.
Second, where is the content being distributed? If it’s just going out on the creator’s channels, we know what that costs. If it’s a collab post on two handles, we usually don’t charge more for that because we like the exposure. It looks great from a performance standpoint.
Third, is there paid media behind it? Is the usage going beyond the creator’s organic reach? If money is being put behind it to reach new eyeballs, we charge more. More people are seeing their name, image, and likeness—and that has real value today.
Fourth, are there any other distribution methods? Will it be used in email marketing, on websites, or internally? Are they using that content in perpetuity as an asset inside their brand? You have to read all the fine print in the contract. That’s how we build the fee—based on how the asset will actually be used.
So let’s say the total fee is $100,000. That might break down to $20K for creation, $20K for distribution on the creator’s channels, $10K for a collab post, and so on. We break it down like that. Maybe it’s not the perfect method, but it’s the most realistic way to ask: how are you using this asset my client created?
Neil: Well said - From the brand side, I always begin with determining my total budget allocation for a certain campaign. Next, I establish overall business objectives (x number of impressions, engagements, etc.) and how many creators/deliverables are needed to achieve the results we’re looking for. Once the creator roster is set, I tier them based off social metrics derived from the last 30-60 days of their content performance to match rates.
I love that breakdown, though. I’m still amazed by how many negotiations happen with zero data. If I ask, “How did you get to this number?” and the answer is, “Just vibes”—that’s not it.
Max: Dude, literally—go ask a car manufacturer how they generate a price. They’ll say, “Here’s what all the parts cost, here’s the labor, here are the import/export fees, here’s what it costs to package everything together,” and then—boom—add the margin they need to make on the sale.
It’s no different than anything else someone is creating. Tangentially, it's the same model.
Neil: Even if we debate the exact CPM or metric, the fact that you've thought through it shows experience. If your whole negotiation falls apart after one “how” question, that’s a bad sign.
Max: It’s like—remember, you're a buyer and I'm a seller. I need to sell you something worth buying. If I have no data points to back my pricing model, why would you buy from me? Why would you trust the number?
It’s like, “Max, how much do you charge to clean a house?”—$200. “Where’d you get that number?” Because my hourly rate is $50, and it’ll take four hours to clean your house. Same logic. It’s just breaking it down.
But I’ll tell you this—as creators grow and their reach increases, fees go up. They’ve earned the right to be more selective with their work. We’re able to command that fee because we delivered for previous partners, and that’s what we believe the work is worth.
Neil: The same goes for brand affinity, brand equity, right? You’ve had sports creators working with sports teams, like Jackson Olson working with MLB - Any specific example you recall where alignment was one to one?
Max: Jackson had the opportunity to work with Capital One over the last four years for the All-Star Game and the World Series. Dude, we’ve shot with Derek Jeter three times as part of that partnership. Jackson grew up wanting to be number two for the Yankees—that brand affinity is real, and it’s been amazing.
When we landed a recent partnership with another buyer at last year’s World Series—which was very lucrative—they pointed to that Capital One content as the type of work they wanted to replicate. That’s how we win.
As a creator, your content is your digital resume—on Instagram, TikTok, wherever you post—it follows you everywhere. And for me, as a business professional, same as you, I’ve got to make sure my resume looks as good as possible, because it follows me too. The only way I get new opportunities is by delivering great work in the past. Creators need to look at it the same way.
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Neil: That long-term mindset is often missing. It’s refreshing.
Max: My clients won’t miss it. That’s non-negotiable.
Neil: Any final thoughts or tips on negotiation?
Max: I’d say my biggest negotiation tip is this—before I got into the creator economy, I worked in theatrical representation with actors and actresses. In that world, when a studio was ready to make an offer, they always told the agent what they could afford first. They brought the number. That allowed for real negotiation and an eventual agreement.
In this business, it’s flipped—it’s “Tell me your rates,” and then I have to present fees. More often than not, the most strategic tactic I’ve used in negotiations is always finding out what budget you're working with. Because maybe the brand had all the money in the world, and you undersold your client. You didn’t do your job.
At the same time, you don’t want to quote $50,000 when the brand has $5 to spend. Now you’ve misread the situation and probably burned the relationship. I stay in business—and my clients stay in business—because of buyers like you. I have to be respectful, assertive, and self-aware. Not everyone’s working with the same budget.
But if we can still accomplish a shared goal through transparency and honesty—saying, “Okay, that’s your budget. Unfortunately, that creator won’t work for that due to higher offers”—then we can pivot. Here are alternative ideas that do deliver value within your budget. That approach works, 100%.
Neil: Asking “how” isn’t a new tip, but it’s critical. Otherwise, it’s just high fee vs. low fee, and everyone’s stuck.
Max: For me, it’s all about protecting and serving the best interests of my clients—always. I only play for their team. But I also have to mediate the relationship with the buyer, so they not only buy from me and my clients again, but maybe even come back for a future deal if this one doesn’t work out.
It’s all about relationships, man.