# Dani Reyes, Full-Time Creator + Founder at Little Loma Creative — read of Brand Deal Tracker, June 6 2026

> Six years making content, two years managing two other creators on top of my own deals. Running everything out of Notion and a prayer.

## How I got here

I Googled "brand deal tracking spreadsheet alternative" after I realized I had completely forgotten to follow up on a $2,800 invoice from March. Found a Reddit thread where someone mentioned this in passing, no link, just the name. Typed it in. Landed here. So no ad, no pitch, just desperation and a search bar at 11pm while my kid was finally asleep.

## What I clicked first

The pain list in the middle section landed. "Contracts scattered across email, Google Drive, and Notion. No single source of truth for terms, rates, or deliverables." That's just my life described back to me, word for word. The Google Drive and Notion callout specifically -- that's not generic. Most tools say "scattered files." This one knew where the files are scattered.

"Brand managers can't gaslight you about scope" under Deliverable Tracking also made me actually laugh out loud. That phrase is doing real work. Someone who wrote that has been gaslit about scope.

## Where I paused

The Creator Benchmarks feature. "See what creators at your follower count earn for different deliverable types." I stopped and read that twice. If this is real and current, it is genuinely the most useful thing on the page. I have negotiated blind for six years. I have no idea if my rates are competitive. I asked a creator friend once and she gave me a number that was 40% higher than mine and I didn't know if she was lying or I was getting ripped off. A live benchmark dataset, if it's actually populated, would change how I operate. The question is whether it's real or whether it's a vague promise backed by 200 signups.

## What I distrusted

The three stats: "73% Less time on deal admin. 4.2x Faster payment collection. 15% Higher negotiated rates." No methodology. No sample size. No time frame. 4.2x is a weirdly precise number for something that would be almost impossible to measure cleanly across different creator types and deal volumes. These read like they were written to fill a stats row, not because someone ran a study.

The testimonials bother me a little too. Sarah Chen, Marcus Johnson, Jessica Torres. No links, no handles, no way to check. Jessica Torres has no follower count, just "Creator Manager." I can't verify any of these people exist. Sarah Chen with 450K followers is a real size creator -- if she's real and using this, that's meaningful. But I can't click her name to confirm.

Also: pricing is completely absent from the homepage text. The page says "Start Free Trial" and "Get Started Free" but never tells me what happens after the trial. I had to squint to notice the Pricing link in the nav. That's a small thing but it makes me slightly suspicious. Show me the number.

## What would convince me

Show me the benchmark data is real and current. Not a screenshot of a table -- a live look inside the actual benchmark feature, ideally a short Loom with a creator who has real follower counts pulling a real number and going "yeah this is what I saw and what I negotiated." Even one verified testimonial where I can click through to the actual creator's Instagram or TikTok and see they're a real person with the size they claimed.

On the payment tracking side, show me a before/after from a creator who actually caught a late payment because of the tool. Not a stat, not a quote -- show me the flow. "Here's how the reminder fired, here's that it was overdue, here's that the creator got paid." That's the thing I'd forward to my accountant.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. The benchmark data -- where does it come from, how many creators are in it, and how often is it updated? Is it self-reported by users or pulled from somewhere else? And does it break down by niche (beauty vs. tech vs. lifestyle) or just follower count?

2. How does the messaging hub work if brands aren't on the platform? My brand contacts are all on email and Slack. Am I copying and pasting into your tool, or does it actually integrate with those?

3. What happens at the end of the free trial? What's the pricing tier and is there a seat limit if I'm managing deals for two other creators on top of my own?

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The pain is articulated better than 90% of tools I've seen in this space, and the scope creep / deliverable tracking angle is smart. But the stats are unverifiable, the benchmarks might be vapor, and the pricing is hidden. I'd poke around the trial before I'd reply.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-06-06. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*