Josh Elledge Discusses Podcast Guesting

Hey everyone, Ashley here with RSS Podcasting. In today's episode, I'm chatting with Josh Elidge of UpMyInfluence. Josh has had more than 2000 media appearances and more than 300 podcast guest appearances. So he's an authority on leveraging podcast guest appearances to build your brand and your business. Enjoy the show. All right. Well, Josh, I'm so excited you could be here today. Could you do me a huge favor and tell me who you are and what you do?

Yeah, my name is Josh Elidge and I am the Founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com and I have been an entrepreneur for decades and been a podcaster when I was hand coding my own RSS feeds back in, I want to say March 2007 and I was taking my radio segments, chopping them up, the very manual process and you know, I'd hand code my own RSS feeds, created that, get that submitted and you know, then I've fallen in love with podcasting. Matter of fact, I was just looking through the numbers, Ashley.

I have produced now over 1500 episodes. I have been a guest on over 300 different podcasts. I am such a fan of this platform and I can just tell you to any business owner that's listening or someone who's responsible for growth, it is absolutely a life changing platform. If you use it right and I suspect that we're going to be talking about that in this conversation.

Absolutely. The reason I wanted to bring you on is because of the fact you have done so many podcast interviews because they say that podcast guesting is the new guest blogging and so I'm kind of curious, how is it that you choose which podcast you're on? How do you even pitch people? Tell me all the, spill all the tea.

Yes, in the beginning, right, there's a lot of outreach that you have to do to get the momentum going. Here's what I want to let people know in terms of like, you know, if they're kind of thinking about their long term business model, it gets easier. In fact, it gets so ridiculously easy that we'll talk about this from two different directions, right? Because you talked about being a guest and then being a host, right? So as a guest, we'll talk about that because that's pretty quick.

Is that in the beginning, yes, my recommendation is that you aim for small shows, people that are at your level of authority or smaller. And there's so many reasons why I think that that's just good business practice. Number one is the bigger shows, they get hit up a lot. I get about 15 inquiries every single week for the thoughtful entrepreneur and I have a pretty tight requirement in order to be a guest. But that said, when you aim for smaller shows, number one is you're going to get practice.

I know you know this, Ashley, every podcaster will tell you this. Your first 10, 20, 30 shows, they're going to be good, not great. And you will get so much better as you go. So what I don't want you to do is I don't want you to pitch a bigger show and let's say you do get placed, right? Number one is just like in media, right? Because my background is in media consulting and training in PR. And so people would come and say, hey, can you get me on the Today show?

And the answer is like, yeah, it's going to take us a year or two. But if you're really committed to it, we can aim for that. And so they'll say, wait a minute, a year or two? No, I want them to book me next week. I'm like, yeah, well, tell me about all the media that you've done already. And they're like, no. And I'm like, well, there you go. So you have to honor the path, right? So you either have to earn your stripes somewhere, right?

So if you want to be a guest on podcasts, be prepared to share when you're presenting yourself as a guest and be a guest on a podcast, be prepared to share, here's where I've been before, here were the results, here's how I promoted that episode very heavily to my own audience. We could create a great win-win together. And here is what's, anytime I pitch the media, it's always about here's what's in it for you, nothing to do with what's in it for me.

And that's a really good philosophy when you're reaching out and you want that visibility. So yeah, so that's it. So start small, please, please, please start small. And then my recommendation is you could either work with agencies, you could work with an expert, you know, you can work with someone that knows the ropes a little bit. They can certainly speed up the process.

But I think really it is just about authentic one-to-one communication, resist the urge to send out email blasts to podcasters. Please do not do that. We know what you're doing. We don't like it. So I'll just speak on behalf of other podcasts, maybe other, maybe some podcasters do like it. I don't. But if you would be spend more time with fewer people, spend quality, authentic time in your communication, it's absolutely worth it.

You'll get way more bang for the buck rather than just trying to blast everybody. So ignore any guru out there that tells you to do that. Don't do that. So basically, it sounds like what you're saying is before you can go after the big fish, you need to up your influence. That helps, that helps. So here's the thing, right, is that any podcaster worth their grain and salt is going to check you out a little bit before they book you. Now, not everybody does.

Some, you know, some are kind of more of an open. It's like open mic night, you know, to be a guest on their show. That's fine. But most podcasters, they're going to check you out. So knowing that, right, what do you want them to see? So in marketing today, in sales today, I can tell you this, having studied and led on consumer behavior since 2007 is that consumers today are pretty darn skeptical. Consumers are empowered and everybody's a consumer.

That includes podcast hosts, right, or other media. They're going to do a quick Google search on you. They're going to check out your LinkedIn. They're going to check out your website and see if you have a media page, right? If you don't have these things, I'm not saying it's going to, you know, prevent you from anything, but why not? Right, because they're going to look for it. So what I like to do is I like to head them off at the pass and say, oh, hey, you're looking for Josh Elidge.

Let me show you what I would like to show you. So I'm going to lead with my authority. So authority is one of the key three things that you need today to truly succeed in business is what is your perceived authority online and everywhere that you know people might your name might come up, control that narrative, control that message. So podcast being a guest on podcast is a great way to fill up Google with lots of great stuff about you, right?

And then what you want to do is you make sure you make it ridiculously easy for Google to find all those podcasts. You want to make it ridiculously easy for future podcasters to find out where you've appeared on. So when you go to up my influence dot com and you hover over about you're going to see one tab that says 200 plus or 300 plus podcasts that I've appeared on. I indexed all of them, right?

And I also have a separate media page that shows all my traditional media placements, everything like I want to make it brain dead easy for people. So to someone who's listening to us and you want to just go copy what I do, go for it. Go see what I do because I can tell you it works. And then to answer your question, Ashley, in the beginning, yes, you're going to have to push really, really hard both as a guest and as a host. You got to just you got to just wear the shoeless curtain.

You got to do the manual work. I hate to tell you gurus want to sell you their stuff will tell you, you know, that there's no work involved. And you know, they're the ones making a lot of money there. It's just going to take a little bit of effort. But that said, if you'll do the work for about three, four, five, six months, you will start to develop a lot of organic activity, a lot of inbound activity where you just don't have to work that hard.

So you put in the work, you put in the work now and then get the results later. I like that because I mean, even if you wanted to do like, if you did want to get on the Today Show, if for some reason, for some miraculous chance you were booked, you wouldn't be ready and you could totally bomb and ruin it.

And so I like what you said about the idea of practicing and getting good at it, honing in your craft, honing in your message, honing in who it is you're talking to so that when you do finally get in Today Show answering your call, you know what to say and what to do and you don't look like a bumbling idiot. That's right. Can I share a dirty little secret too? And that is no, no, no, no, keep your dirty little secrets, Josh. Okay, so here's the thing, right.

And I can tell you this in hindsight, having been on and I've been on some big shows, but and I've had some big media placements, I can tell you that the typical podcast guest experience from a, oh boy, they're going to promote me to the narrow audience and I'm going to make all this money. Right.

So that is pretty underwhelming. Authority, the authority you gain from your media placements, whether that's being a podcast guest or whatever it is, is generally less valuable than the, so you get more value from the authority of being in that podcast than you do from the visibility of being on that podcast.

So in other words, you're going to get way more value from your own audience, seeing you in the interview chair than this podcasters new audience, this new audience that's hearing you for the first time. Actually, I recognize that there are people listening to our conversation right now. They're hearing me for the first time. They're like, okay, cool. I don't really know Josh that well. I'll keep listening, you know, and you know, the jury's kind of out for now.

I mean, he seems kind of excited about what he's talking about, but I don't know. So they're not going to buy my stuff. Honestly, you're not. We're at the beginning of the relationship. The best you can hope for is you can get people to follow you somewhere and kind of start paying attention to what you're doing. So let's have realistic expectation. But that said, when you appear as a guest, how you use that, when you appear on TV, for example, it's what you do with that that matters.

Can you repurpose that, you know, a dozen, two dozen, three dozen different ways to your own audience? It's a great win win. You know, TV stations thrilled that you're promoting the segment promoting their, you know, it's it's it's it's totally symbiotic at that at that point, right? But again, in terms of people taking action, it's going to come from your own audience.

And so I share that to say, do as much media and podcast guessing as you possibly can, because it's the greatest opportunity out there for getting your own audience to take action and to introduce new people to you. Absolutely.

And, you know, the other good thing about it is that the more podcasts that you're on, the more that you're boosting up your search engine results, you're boosting up, like you said, your authority, you're showing people, I know what I'm saying, I know what I'm doing, and I'm giving more people the opportunity to see that that is true. And that's one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on is because I have been watching you and what you've been doing.

And I think it's amazing how many podcasts you've been on. And, you know, you said that anybody listening to this might not buy from you, but they should, because everything everything that you do, it just makes sense, like you break it down in a way that makes sense. And so I have to ask you, okay, so I'm a baby podcaster, I come to you and I tell you, you know, I want to start a food podcast, I want to talk all about food. So what's the first thing you would tell me?

I know that you gave us some ideas of like, of tips and things like that. But walk me through what you would say to the person who comes to you and says, All right, I do want to get on the Today Show. What's the very first thing I do? Yes. Okay, so we're going to talk about are we talking about being a host now and like, because I like that. I think I'm a huge fan of that, and for a number of reasons, there's so many benefits to being a podcaster.

And as long as you know, you got some great advice kind of going into it, because you know, you don't want to make too many mistakes on this thing. You don't want you certainly don't want to take forever. That's why I'm a big fan of like, you know, really working with a guide or someone that can get you launched pretty quickly.

Here's what I see when people just try to DIY it themselves, they spend forever in action, worried, it's not going to sound right, worried about this worried about the technology, right? Someone has done it a bunch. They're going to be Oh, no, it's super easy. Here, let me show you. And you're going to learn from their mistakes. I like that. All right. Just to get just so I can get you in the world quicker. And I hear this and actually, I know you've heard this too.

What's the anytime you ask a podcaster, what's the number one advice you give to a new podcaster, it's almost always get started, right? It's, it's not Oh, save up your money and get a really good mic first. Now, that's not usually the advice is so it just gets started. Right. So, um, in the, like, let's say that you want to become known for being an expert in, let's say, French pastry, for example, now that would be a little bit more of a visual type level of expertise.

So I would say, listen, it's cool if you want to do a podcast, right? But I would probably create your original content for YouTube, and then repack repurpose and repackage that very simply for a podcast, which you can do. Right. So now what I would, here's one piece of advice, right, is that if you're going to produce content for YouTube, produce content for YouTube, if you're going to produce content for podcasts, so that means you're going to need to be aware of your language, right?

So put all the YouTube, hey, YouTube, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then have a certain point that you edit so you can recut that intro for your podcast outro. Same thing because you've got to have all that YouTube stuff in there. But you don't necessarily want that in your podcast because you don't, you don't want people to feel like it's repurposed for them.

But again, all of that said, right, I'm a huge fan of creating something one time, like I love Ashley that we're recording this right now. We're recording it in video. That gives you and I the opportunity to get video clips, right? And so we can repurpose this dozens of different ways and get it everywhere. And so when you keep working on platform, right, platform is like it's the greased track, right? It just makes your rise to greatness just so much easier.

Just grab a platform and start giving, start serving, stay in your zone of expertise, you know, hammer that everywhere you go. It's like you're the evangelist that's like advocating for a certain idea, right? And so but but use that. And so as you become the content creator yourself, that will absolutely make it easier for you to get booked on other stuff, right?

So when you have a platform and you say, yeah, listen, you know, I've been doing a show about blah, blah, blah, you know, for six months, you know, and so it makes it easier for the media who are going to check you out before they book you to look at your stuff. They're like, Ashley Grant is TV ready. Or she's radio ready. Or she's, you know, clearly an expert because you've owned that mantle of expertness.

Now before we actually started recording, before we started discussing all the things that we were going to chat about, you had said that you have changed your business model to be more podcast friendly. So tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, quite unintentionally. And that is, start with this, right? When the car is in motion, it's so much easier to turn the wheel when you know that the wheel needs to be turned. When you're sitting in parked, you're not really going anywhere.

It's really hard to get to where you need to get. So Savings Angel, which I launched in January 2007, was an unintentional company, right? I had a problem. I needed to save money because I was spending way too much money at the grocery store, created a solution for myself. Wow, maybe this could be a membership type thing. And we ended up becoming a seven figure year company with that.

Now, while I was doing that work, you know, and business was life was good, I started serving in our local community. So I started doing pro bono mentoring, workshops served on boards for minority owned, women owned, veteran owned businesses, just doing what I can to give back. And I was talking about how I built everything with zero paid ads. That was a seven figure company with zero paid ads. So obviously, people want to know, well, how'd you do that?

And I talk about, well, here's how you get the media. It's pretty easy. And let me break it down for you step by step. Now in the course of that work, where you plant your seeds is not necessarily where you reap your harvest, right? So when you're out there just doing the good work, don't be surprised if opportunities become presented to you. So that's what led to unintentionally starting up my influence is people would say, wait a minute, you're pretty smart. You're doing this media stuff.

Can I just hire you? And I was like, oh, well, I guess. And so lo and behold. And while we were helping people get tons of media coverage, we had developed, we had a problem. And my problem was, is that I was getting good customers from showing up at events, speaking at events, spoke for the Tony Robbins organization, spoke at all the kinds of podcasting conferences, think on social media market world, et cetera. And I would get some good business there, mainly from the green room, right?

When I would talk with network with other people or just kind of at the mixers and stuff like that. But the inbound was up and down. Like we'd have good months, we'd have bad months. I'm like, how can I level that out? And so we really had the brilliant idea is like, wait a minute, let's take this podcast we're doing, the thoughtful entrepreneur.

And why don't we just open up the floodgates and say, listen, if you are doing six figures in business, come on in, I'd love to interview you with the intention that I'm going to cultivate a relationship with this person and we'll see where it goes. Maybe we end up doing business together, maybe something else. But I believe, Michael Gerber Emitz, as business owners, we are charged with growing the business. That's our number one job.

And so I believe that the best activity that we could be doing is networking. High level networking just leads to amazing stuff, collaborations, joint ventures, strategic alliances, cross promotional opportunities, client work. So yeah, that's what we did is we opened up the floodgates. Now it was an investment of effort for sure. And we didn't know if it was going to work out. Well, it did.

What we find is between 10 and 30 percent of people that I interview, I end up doing business with in some way. Sometimes I'm hiring them, sometimes they're hiring me to help solve a problem. So I believe, Ashley, if we're just talking about profit center, potential profit centers, this is going to blow anyone who's in the podcasting world, it's going to blow your mind. And I've taught on this a lot over the years.

I believe that most podcasters are tripping over big stacks of cash to pick up pennies to try to get value from your audience and get an audience member to, quote unquote, buy your stuff. That's a lot. That is a grind. It's just realistically, if we think about your own behavior as a podcast consumer, we really don't do much. Most podcast listeners, some people are not going to like me saying this, but most podcast listeners are pretty passive.

Now that said, they're building a relationship for sure. But what we discovered is that if I can cultivate a relationship with whomever I want, why not? So I use a podcast to build relationships and then I do a ton of business. And here's what happened. One of my clients, I'm getting to your original question here, sorry, is that we had one of our clients who said, hey, you know, the PR is all well and good and stuff, Josh, but I know what you guys are doing on the sales thing.

Can you hook me up? And we said, yeah, okay, sure. Because it was working for us. And so she had a $25,000 mastermind. And so like, well, who would be like the perfect member of that mastermind? So she described it. I'm like, great. Let's start inviting them in. So I think I want to say she did maybe about 23 interviews, ended up seven of them joined her $25,000 mastermind. She made $175,000 in 90 days. That was spread out over a year.

But you know, for, you know, essentially was about 90, 90 days of just, you know, talking to a couple of people a week. It's a good gig. I cannot believe I get paid to do what I do. I just get to meet awesome people and, and, you know, produce content and I get paid for that. It's crazy.

It's the best way to do it though, I think. So, okay. So you're doing a whole bunch of podcasts through your company. I can't remember how many you said you run right now. How many podcasts are you producing? About 70 to 80 podcasts. We're actively producing. We've got 125 active clients that we work with. And so our job is to help them build relationships with their dream customers through leveraging their authority, generosity. You got to be generous.

And then finally, number three, leverage platform. Platform, we've tested a lot of stuff. How can you be generous? And a really good book I recommend almost every day is Bob Berg, GoGiver, particularly GoGivers, sell more if you want to know philosophically what we do. That's it right there. Is we lead with a lot of generosity. We ask ourselves, listen, what does my dream ideal customer really want today?

If they don't know me, what's something I can give them that they would say, yeah, sure, I'll do that. And so we've tested that with a lot of stuff. Being you know, investing in that relationship and saying, listen, I would love to promote you. I would love to celebrate you. I would love to learn from you. I would love to, you know, blah, blah, blah. Like that works. That works with our audience. So that's what we give away.

And I'm not afraid of investing into those relationships rather than just, I don't invest in ads. Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable. That was a good, that wasn't my quote. That was, that was a founder of Geek Squad who said that. So that's a good one.

I like that. Well, with doing that many podcasts, I'm sure you get a bunch of pitches of, oh, I really want to be on the show. I want to be on the show. I want to be on that show. So tell me what makes a bad pitch. Oh, robo pitching. Yeah. Oh, it's so easy. It's so easy to tell if someone just, you know, they don't get the facts right. It's like, listen, and what I generally tell people is like, you don't need to email me. You don't need to email. I don't need to see your email.

What I want you to do is I want you to go to a guest link that we've got and it's upmyinfluence.com forward slash guest. Okay. If you qualify, then by all means schedule. If you don't qualify, please don't schedule because I, I, what I do is I just have everybody book now that said, you're going to have to wait 60, 90 days before I can get you in the queue. So I'm always booked out generally about eight to 10 weeks in advance.

And then the show takes, so sorry, but that's just, yeah, it's the way that is. And then the show takes about eight weeks before it gets published. So as long as you don't mind being patient, and that's a daily show, Ashley, I record about 12 episodes on average every single week. And that some podcasters listening to me right now, that's blowing their mind. They're like, what, why? Because I just explained the more people that I talk with, the more business I ended up doing.

If I'm going to do business with 10 to 30% of those people, do I want to, and my goal is to talk. If I talk with 50 people and I ended up doing business with 15 of them, do I want to talk to those 50 people in one year or within two months or within one month? I'd rather talk with them within one month. I can do it. If you have great systems, a good team, and you use great technology, you can crank out episodes.

The reason why, it's like someone who's never run a half marathon might look at running 13.1 miles and go, I could never do that. You might, well, I mean, in the less physically if it's possible, you can. You just have to work your way up to that. And I'm speaking as a formerly like obese dude who ended up running a couple of marathons. It was impossible at the beginning. And then I just started doing the work and I'm like, oh, okay, I can do this.

If I can chat with 45 people a month, you can chat with 10. It's not that hard. Okay. I like that. And like I said, it's fun. I get to talk with really smart people and I get to pick their brain and I get to let them know very transparently, man, this is what's going on. Like, what would you do if you were me? Like, how would you fix this problem? And guess what? If someone's super smart, they normally might charge, you know, two, four, $8,000 an hour for their time. And I get free coaching.

Another benefit of being a podcaster is you get coached for free.

So now I'm curious, do you do, what do they call it? Guest swapping? Oh, sure. I'm open to that. I don't do that if they don't fit the qualifications just out of fairness, because I do get a lot of people that they reach out and they say, well, I don't meet your qualifications, but I'm a financial planner and I really want to be on your show. I'm like, sorry, you know, you know, you have to be doing six figures.

You have to be in a B2B, you know, kind of situation where you're selling something, maybe bigger ticket or whatever. That's just our requirements. We got to do otherwise. We got, you know, we were at a point at one point where I was getting 20, 25 pitches a week. That's way too many. Yeah. So I have to start drawing. So and this is what will happen to my aspiring podcasters out there when you start doing more and more shows, right? And this is what will happen.

You get more and more people that are coming, coming inbound. So at the beginning, that's why if you're a guest, find brand new shows, because usually they're pretty flexible on who they let in. And then what ends up happening is they start tightening the requirements. So it used to be a lot easier to be guest on the podcast. Now, I mean, I have so many people in queue that, you know, I kind of have to be tighter and tighter and tighter on that.

And it's a bummer, you know, when I have to say no to somebody. But I mean, it's what do you do? I mean, you can only do so many. That's solid advice, though. And I actually really like the fact that you said that because, you know, people that are thinking, oh, I'm just going to start pitching, you know, these big podcasters. You can't not yet. You have to earn it. Pay your dues. Yeah. And listen, I share that it is an inevitability.

You will get that. You will earn that. So don't feel like, oh, that's a far off thing. Right. It's just listen, it's going to take a handful of months. And if you'll just do the work, I promise you're going to get into the promised land where it's easy. And so that's the thing on being a guest as well. You will get to a point where, you know, with very little, very little effort, you will have plenty of shows saying, Josh, Ashley, we would love to feature you. Just keep showing up.

Be a good guest. Get good at being a guest. You know, and be yourself. And I'm not saying that there's a perfect model. Some people listening to me don't like me at all. Don't like my delivery style. That's OK. And they're wrong. No, I'm into it. And that's OK. Right. So what you want to do is you want to you want to know who your audience is and appeal to them. And and quite honestly, like this, this gets into a larger conversation about branding and like who you are.

It's like be authentic to who you are. And that will be a natural filter so that you can make sure to work with people that are aligned with you. I love everything you've said. And if people aren't taking notes, they better rewind this and start taking them, because everything you have shared is exactly what I think people need to hear.

Because like I said, just so many people, they get into this business and they're like, OK, I'm going to start podcasting and I'm doing it because I want to make money. And how can I make the fastest cash? And like you said, they're tripping over stacks of cash to get to the pennies. I love that analogy. That is so sexy. Well, where can people find you?

Yeah. So a couple of things is that if you've been listening to me, you're like, wait a minute, how does this guy do this again? How does he, you know, and listen, if you want to write, if you hurry. And you go to the I'm going to give you the URL right now. And if you type this and you go to this, you can go through our our high ticket lead gen training and I'll just teach you everything. And it's free. You don't have to buy anything like we're cool. We're cool.

So specifically, if you're making under a quarter million dollars a year, this is designed for you. I'm happy to happy to give. And that's it up www.upmyinfluence.com forward slash free. So up my influence.com slash free and and scroll down to where it says scholarship and and you'll be able to enroll for that. I'd be thrilled to have you there. If you're doing six figures, you're in kind of in the B2B world. I'm always looking for great guests. You know, just hold on a minute.

You know, there's a little bit of delay. But yeah, you just go to up my influence.com slash guest and you'll see exactly where you can register there. Or you could just go to my main website. I'll buy you'll find it. It's I make it pretty easy. That's awesome. And everybody that's listening, you need to go to his website anyway, because his blog is filled with amazing content. Your YouTube channel is filled with amazing content.

I mean, it is definitely a place to go to get all the ideas on how to build authority in your business. And I'm just so glad you could be here today. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, I love the model. I love the work that you're doing. Ashley, you're you've been a longtime friend. You are truly someone who cares for the success of other people. You're good people to know Ashley. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for saying that. I really appreciate it.

Now, I'm going to ask you one last thing before I let you go. Is there anything I didn't ask you you really wish I had? Um, you know, listen, it's I think I underlined this a couple of times. Yes, I want you to read Bob Berg's book, The Go Giver or Go Giver sell more. I want you to anytime you hear any guru out there that is saying you can have fast and easy money, you're one funnel away, maybe someone who says that, take all that with a big grain of salt. Right.

It's if you're trying to shortcut the system, and all you care about is getting sales from people. We all know it. We all know what you're doing, and we don't really care for it. So whatever your intention is, we all know. And so you may as well just give up on the idea of trying to treat people like dummies and instead treat people like you would want to be treated as adults.

And just be generous with your time, be a giver, make it ridiculously easy for people to get to know you, build that proximity because that proximity will lead to familiarity. Familiarity then gives you know, like and trust and know, like and trust. That is who we do business with. Oh, that's so good. Fantastic stuff. Well, thank you again. Yeah, Ashley. Thank you so much. Well, my fellow podcasters, I hope you've gained some really good insights from Josh's interview.

To learn more about launching and growing your own show, visit us at rss.com backslash blog. And if you'd like to start your show, you can start for free at rss.com. You can get your first episode on us. Thanks for tuning in.