PODCAST

Podcasting For Leads With Josh Elledge

Mitch Stephen|By November 3, 2020

Episode 425: Podcasting For Leads With Josh Elledge

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Marketing is one of the most important parts of a business. However, if we are honest about it, this is also one of the costliest. But what if there is someone who can help you get seven-figures business to business income without spending a diamond in advertising? Mitch Stephen introduces you to Josh Elledge, the founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. Just as the name of his company, Josh is here to share with you some great wisdom and tips on how to influence and become a stronger, bigger presence online, especially in podcasting. He talks about how you can be more remarkable, establish yourself in business, be taken seriously, and become an authority. Join him as he guides you on podcasting for leads and more, all without having to spend so much.

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I’m here with Josh Elledge. We are going to learn a lot about how to influence and become a stronger, bigger presence online. I have to pay homage to my sponsor, LiveComm.com. It’s a lead generation platform based around mass texting. You buy phone numbers there for $2 a month. Every phone number comes with a text distribution list. Every time someone calls in to your LiveComm phone number from a cell phone, it’s captured and put into a text distribution list. There are many ways to use this tool, and there are many other assets that you’ll have to learn about. Check out the homepage and see how I use it.

I have 24,000 people that will not opt out because they’re still looking for an owner financed home from a guy like me in their town. The reason I have nine days on the market and average 12% down is because I can hit these 24,000 people that want what I offer. I can hit them right between the eyes with a text that almost always gets read for $0.02 apiece. It’s an incredible product. There is much more to it than I have described as if that wasn’t enough. I paid the bills. Josh, how are you doing?

I’m excellent.

Where are you physically sitting right now? What city?

East Orlando, not on the tourist side. I’m on the expat side rolling in Eastern Orlando, at least my neighborhood. I don’t know of anyone who is from here, but we all came down for a Disney vacation at some point. We’ve decided it would be fun to live in the city of Mickey, so here we are.

I always like to help get everyone together connected by giving a free giveaway so you can learn more about the guests. Josh Elledge is giving a giveaway that’s worth $10,000. I’ve checked it out and I have no doubt, give or take a few bucks, that he’s right in there. This guy is giving away a super product. I want you to hang around and find out what it is. It’s amazing and I appreciate you doing it, Josh.

I’m doing okay in business. One thing we decided, especially this with COVID and everything is a rising tide lifts all boats. I know how valuable it was for me when I was in the earlier stages of business and/or was trying to get everything all figured out. One thing is we’ll get into this. I’ve been able to get in the media over 2,000 times. I know a lot about that subject. I know a lot about not having to pay money to some lame PR firm to get that. I’m happy to teach that now for free.

Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable. Share on X

You’ve said something interesting before we started. You said you help people get to seven figures business-to-business income without spending a dime for advertising. You described advertising as the cost you pay for being unspectacular.

I can’t take credit for this line. It was the founder of Geek Squad who said this, “Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable.” The goal is how can we become more remarkable in our industry, peer groups, clients, customers, ambassadors, partners or whoever it is. I believe that comes down to three variables. Those variables are authority. I also believe that part of that is platform. Do you have something that makes it easy to engage with other people? Number three would be your generosity. If you have a scarcity mindset that the only people you only engage with are the people that give you $7 for your dumb tripwire product.

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be too harsh on that. I think that there are a lot of snake oil salespeople that sell funnel systems. They are probably good people but I understand consumer behavior. I’ve been studying and leading consumer behavior for thirteen and a half years now. I can tell you that we have been in the midst of the marketing apocalypse and certainly in 2020. We just fast forwarded it a good couple of years. Consumers don’t want to be tricked. Consumers don’t want to be sold to. I don’t want to be on your email drip campaign. I don’t want to get your messenger bot that’s trying to sell me stuff. I don’t want your AI that’s trying to trick me. I’m not going to opt in. I’m probably not going to watch a webinar. Here’s the thing, I do a lot of business with a lot of great consultants, advisors and service providers.

I hire a lot of people. I do a lot of great business with our customers, clients and our audience. There’s a big difference. Generally, if you ask most people, “Where have your best customers come from?” Almost everyone will tell you it’s by word of mouth or relationships, “So-and-so recommended or a happy customer gave me a referral.” That is because in my opinion, especially in B2B, the most attractive people in terms of doing business together are not looking to click on ads. It’s how we engage with them. We have to accelerate our rate of networking and do so in a way that is frictionless and attractive for your dream ideal client.

Can you give us a case study? One of your more successful students or the average student. They’re not students, but your client. Tell us how it works from the beginning when you met them to what it took and where they evolved to.

Sonia Gomez would be a great illustration. She’s someone that has worked hard. She served her audience. She’s in the hemp CBD space and continued to serve her audience. She has a pretty decent audience herself. She worked at it and it wasn’t overnight. She didn’t do any funny, tricky business or whatever. She delivered a lot of value and helping companies that want to get into that market legally. They want to do so without being discriminated against. She didn’t get into the THC products, but the ones that are okay nationwide. She does a lot of work and helping them get through the labyrinth of regulations, especially banking. That thing can be tricky in that space. Certainly, marketing is tricky in that space.

She has a lot of experience there, so she’s able to help some good people. We work together and my job was to help continue to legitimize her and what she does. She’s a good and successful businesswoman. She’s sharp. We were able to help her get a lot of traditional media. That was the authority prong of it. She also has social proof. That’s another authority indicator. We started working together. She developed this podcast and now she has a platform. Finally, what she wants to do in addition to that. She’s got the authority. She’s got the platform and now, what we helped develop with her is this generous system for relationship building.

The Millionaire Next Door

We worked with her to create this B2B sales system where what she does is these $25,000 masterminds. She’s good at what she does. Our clients typically get great ROI. We helped her with her introductions and her networking. In about 90 days, we were able to get her a great six figure revenue because she put her authority platform and generosity into action. She had a client of hers and she’s like, “That was awesome. Can you do the same thing for one of my clients?” Sure enough, we did that, and same results. This is what works. You’re saying, “Josh, who I need to reach out to is the decision maker with an otherwise successful company.”

Advertising to attract that person might be okay for awareness, but they’re not going to take action on that. What they will take action on is something that’s a bit more relationship based. She’d be a great example in terms of why and how this works. I have an interview that I did with her on our website and that’s at 1000Houses.com/Influence. You can watch my interview with Sonia, she’s pretty transparent about what she does and how she does it.

You have a giveaway and it’s called the Media Influencer Makeover where you spend some time with people in their business concept and you do a makeover for them. It gives them the possibility of getting more free press and more notoriety. Can you explain a bit about the Media Influencer Makeover that you’re offering for free?

With my other company which I launched years ago, it was SavingsAngel. I didn’t have any money at the beginning. The only thing I could do is reach out to local media. I thought, “Maybe if I could get them talking about me, I can get some free advertising.” That ended up working out well. I was broke at the beginning of SavingsAngel. I had failed in business six times. I launched SavingsAngel. I got to be on as many stages as I can serving audiences, helping them, giving them value. That ended up getting us over $6 million in revenue with $0 spent in advertising. Having gotten good at that, I started teaching that and speaking on it quite a bit in a lot of conferences, social media marketing world. I spoke for the Tony Robbins organization, Business Mastery audience.

Up My Influence is an outgrowth of a lot of the pro bono work that I was doing in our local startup community on the speaking circuit. Up until when COVID hit, we were charging a lot of money for this. We’re doing okay. Business was good. We took this big program and we’re going to allow scholarships for this for someone who qualifies. I’m going to tell you how to qualify. Number one, say that Mitch sent you and we’ll let you in for free. We asked for an application and I’ll get into everything that we give away. It’s designed to help you become a media influencer. It’s got everything you need for press, getting to social media platforms, growing your social proof, displaying your authority, how to engage with reporters and influencers, and how to get them to want to work with you.

In the application process, there are a few key questions. We ask if you’re committed to this and if you say, “No, not really,” we’re probably not going to accept you. One of the other questions in the application is, “Are you going to do the work?” If you go, “No, not really,” then we’re probably not going to accept you. I’m telling you a hint on how to get through. I’m not the scholarship person on our team. I let someone else check people out and vet them. If you’re trying to do the right thing out there and trying to do good stuff, we want to hook you up.

That makes sense because you’re going to apply yourself, and there’s no need for you to apply yourself if someone’s not going to be serious about doing it. There’s a reason why this thing is valued at $10,000 and I can see it because it only takes one door to open where you get on an interview or get a piece in a magazine or a paper to bring you a lot of money. Some of the numbers you can rack up from so-called getting lucky. We’re going to change that from getting lucky to doing it on purpose. It’s a great offer. I want to thank you again for it. Go to 1000Houses.coms/Influence. Go ahead and do your interview, make sure you’re committed, and make sure that you are willing to do the work. Maybe they’ll give you a scholarship on Media Influencer Makeover.

Consumers don't want to be tricked. Consumers don't want to be sold to. Share on X

This isn’t some weird “I got you” type thing and we’re going to sell you. We’re good because we put so much work into building this thing. We have low operating costs on that. We’ve invested easily tens and tens of thousands of dollars into developing everything. It’s probably close to $100,000 for building everything. If you want to hire us that’s completely up to you. We can help you get a little bit more media visibility and help with your sales, but that’s completely optional. My main thing is I want you to discover why you’re not being taken seriously in business. A lot of times, it comes down to your authority. You just don’t look at that part.

What I’m talking about sounds pretty superficial, “Why should I be judged based on my profile image on social media?” Sadly, you are. It’s all fair game. We live in a swipe left, swipe right world. You might have the greatest product or service in the world. You might be the most benevolent and wonderful person out there, but unfortunately your branding, your presence, your social proof or lack thereof is doing all the communicating for you. Think of it like internet dating and how quickly we will dismiss somebody with a swipe left in a dating app if they don’t have a good profile. My job is to make sure that from an authority and influence standpoint, you pass all the tests so that when you do reach out to a journalist or an influencer or a big YouTuber or whoever it is, they go, “Who’s this Mitch Stephen? The Mitch Stephen.” They’re impressed with what they see.

It doesn’t take hundreds of thousands of dollars. It just takes some focus. You focus effort on doing the right stuff and you’ll find that it’s like that scene in one of the Harry Potter movies when he drinks the lucky juice. Things work out better for him. I’ve been to events where I’ve been a face in a crowd, and I’ve also been at events where I’ve been the featured keynote speaker. It is a completely different experience. I’ve been on both sides of it. When you’re a featured keynote speaker, it’s cool. People are running around, wanting to do business with you, and getting in touch with you. You get a lot of business out of that.

I want that experience for everybody else. My goal is to 10X. To the person who’s reading this, I would love to put you in a position where you could 10X your authority within your industry. Imagine if you had ten times the authority that you currently have, what your life would be like? Imagine inbound opportunities, partnership opportunities, influencers, customers, how your family, friends and your peers on social media would treat you. You might not care about some of this stuff, but it is how business gets done now.

One thing I like about you, Josh, is we have the same philosophy. If you go to 1000Houses.com, you can pick up a lot of free stuff. I give away the farm. I’ve been chastised by the other people out there like, “You’re giving the whole thing away.” If you can go and get my free stuff and launch a career from it, great. There’s a certain amount of people that understand that you’re either going to pay the street or pay for your failures because you didn’t know and you didn’t have anyone to ask. It’s a lot less anxiety to get with somebody that goes, “I know exactly how to do this, follow me.” You can go 110% and not second guess yourself because you’re going with this guy who’s already been down this road. He knows where the mountain, lions, tigers and snakes are. He’s not going to let you have trouble with that. I agree with the philosophy. When you go to get your free Media Influencer Makeover kit, don’t worry about getting stuck at a bunch of drip campaigns or anything.

You won’t find it. We’re good. I don’t care if you don’t buy anything. We’re busy. We’re just happy to be of service.

You were talking about podcasts. I happened to start my podcast about 400 episodes ago. I never thought it would last as long. I started it with no expectations at all. I didn’t even know if anyone would ever even tune in, if I would be interesting to anybody or if I would be any good at it. I don’t know. I just wanted to try my hand at it. Being an entrepreneur, I didn’t have any monetary expectation from it. It turned out there are ways to make money on the podcast and still give away tons of content and be a benefit to people. I did this course called Profitable Podcasting. A lot of podcasters are podcasting, but they’re not monetizing. A lot of people say, “I do this to give back to this content and I don’t want to be sales.”

Podcasting For Leads: As a means to build relationships, do great business, serve the community, be generous, and be a nice person in an industry, but use it to leverage your own authority within that industry.

They’re not mutually exclusive. Another thing I’ve got to tell you is that I’m a married man. If you’re in a relationship and you’ve got other obligations in life in general, those obligations when it comes down to, “Do I keep doing this? I’m not getting rewarded for it. Do those other obligations keep clawing at me?” All of a sudden, it gets a lot harder to stick with something that’s not as rewarding. You can’t make a business justification for it. You may have hopes of starting podcasting and hope that it’s naturally going to grow on its own. The reality is the average podcast episode out there doesn’t get more than 200 listens. That’s the reality of the numbers out there. If you could stick with it and do 400 episodes, you’ll get those numbers.

Let’s back that up with some facts. I’m getting about 17,000 downloads a month. That’s nothing. It’s in the top 5% of the podcast world. That’s how much. If you’ve ever read the book, The Millionaire Next Door, in the United States of America, until they lay out the facts about where you are ranked. If you make $55,000 a year in America, you’re in the top 10% of the world. You wouldn’t have known that on TV. I thought at 17,000 downloads, I was way down in the pack somewhere. I had no idea it was in the top 5%. It’s the people that are getting the millions and millions of downloads, our imagination goes crazy.

They’re being divided by 1/1000of a point at the top and they drop off fast, then it gets down to the lesser numbers quickly. My point is it doesn’t take a lot of shift to jump you way up in the numbers and the percentages. People like Josh Elledge can help you make some of that shift and get you some extra notoriety, and push you into a whole different bracket in a relatively short period of time. Media influence and advertising in general takes time. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. You’ve got to be in it for a while and build a momentum.

The reality is depending on what it is that you do, you don’t need a gigantic audience to monetize your podcast. In fact, our podcast is not enormous. It’s a daily show. We don’t have a huge audience, but we also have a big social media audience. Between the two, that’s all I do for marketing and advertising. We do quite well. We’ll do seven figures based on only using a podcast as a means to build relationships, do great business, serve the community, be generous, be a nice person in an industry, but use it to leverage your own authority within that industry. It’s amazing. Anybody now can become an influencer in about anything. You could even become an influencer in rocket science or brain surgery.

All you’ve got to do is be committed to interviewing rocket scientists and brain surgeons. All of a sudden, fast forward 6 to 12 months, you’re now an influencer in this space. It might be a baby influencer, but think of it though how valuable of an audience that is if you take an interest in that. You want to celebrate those who are doing good stuff. It puts you in a strong position. The world doesn’t necessarily need more gurus. What the world needs is more generous teachers who can curate, deliver and serve. If you can do that and you want to keep doing that, stick with it for a while. It’s like the YouTube algorithm. YouTube is looking for people to consistently produce content for four or more months.

If you do that consistently, YouTube starts to reward you. Four months seems to be that magic length of consistency that they consider, “You’re committed to the platform. We’re going to give you a more discovery.” Podcasting is similar in that regard. You got to stick with it. To your point, Mitch, as we were talking about earlier. You have built a business plan into it in some way. You’re doing it for your own pleasure. It’s fun, but it may or may not be fun if you’ve been doing this for 3, 4 months and you got no audience that’s coming to you and saying, “You’re the best,” because it’s probably not going to happen.

I make between $10,000 and $18,000 a month on this show. I didn’t plan it, but I’m helping people along the way too. The fact that I get paid now means I can’t walk away from this show is what you’re trying to say. I’m not walking away from this show because I meet a lot of neat people and I get an education myself. I’m helping a lot of other people get to where they want to go. Maybe I have a little piece in that, but I’m helping them connect the dots in their life. All I want people to do is learn how to find their own financial freedom so they can become the person they want to be. They don’t have to spend 2,600 hours a year trying to help someone else become their person.

The world doesn't necessarily need more gurus. What the world needs are more generous teachers who can curate, deliver, and serve. Share on X

Last but not least, when I figured out how to make the profit from it, I said, “I want to share that too.” If you’re a podcaster out there and you want to know how I did that, I’m not walking away from the show anymore. It would be like saying, “You want to stop making an extra $150,000 a year for something that’s pretty fun. Do you want to stop that, Mitch?” No, I’m not going to stop. A lot of the reasons why I’m going on is because it was profitable in addition to all the other reasons I started it in the first place. That’s your point. Go to 1000Houses.com/profitpod. I’ll start to discuss there and show you how you can make money on your podcast and not have to be a salesperson.

Maybe 3% of the time we talk about something like this, then we’re on with good content again. Letting people know that there’s stuff out there available, you want to get educated on this. Education’s never been free. At some point, you’re going to drill down and get to a point where they might want to charge a fee or a consulting fee. At that point, you should know it’s definitely worth it. If you’re getting the right person, you should see it come right back because you’ve done your research. They’re right in your wheelhouse. They know exactly what you need to know. They’re going to shortcut everything for you. Time is money and mistakes are money. I like to tell everyone that I graduated from La Calle U. Do you know what La Calle means in Spanish? It’s the street. It’s the most expensive university on the planet. It will take everything you own if you make mistakes. It’ll kick you and spit on you and won’t even give you a piece of paper to hang on your wall. It’s a tough university to go through.

Go to 1000Houses.com/Influence and get your Media Influencer Makeover kit. Sign up for the scholarship. If you’re committed, you’ll probably pass. If you say my name, you might have a better chance of passing. If you’re not committed, don’t waste your time and don’t waste their time. Thank you very much. Josh, what would you say to those people out there who are trying to up their influence?

If you’re doing well in business and you’re doing six figures or more in business, I love to interview you on our podcast. The link that you’ve shared, Mitch, we’ve got the direct guest link so that you could do that. We’d love to feature you and tell your story. If you could talk about growing, scaling and your experience with that. If you’re not yet at that six-figure level, that’s great. You’re going to get there eventually and that would be the free gift on the Media Influencer Makeover. I’d love to be of service in that regard. We’ll help you get to six figures, then we’ll get you on the show.

I would like to thank everybody out there for stopping by to get you some Josh Elledge. Thanks, Josh. I appreciate you. We’ll be talking soon. I’m going to talk to you personally about how maybe you can up my influence.

Thanks, Mitch.

We’re out of here.