It’s much easier when another media share about you instead of you talking how good you are. Different media already communicate with your audience and potential customers.
Our today’s guest went all the way from nobody to recognized expert using media.
He will share with you how to craft your press kit that media would love to interview you, what you need to pitch media, what media to reach to attract your audience, grow your expertise and become a media celebrity.
In this episode, Josh Elledge shares why you should become a media celebrity – and how to make it happened.
Josh is U.S. Navy veteran and launched UpMyInfluence.com to help turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities increasing their authority, influence, and revenue.
He also started SavingsAngel.com which has grossed more than $6 million in sales with less than $500 in advertising.
Josh writes a syndicated newspaper column to 1.1 million readers and regularly appears on more than 75 TV stations across the country. All told, Josh has appeared in the media more than 2000 times.
In this episode, we will cover:
- [00:22] About the episode and Josh Elledge
- [02:07] Josh shares how he went from being in no media to being featured in the media over 2000 times
- [04:03] When he just started out and had no money he reached out to anyone with the audience trying to be helpful
- [06:00] His work on the radio station helped him to get a lot of businesses
- [08:20] At the beginning when you reach media be very careful about not selling. Instead, think about how you can bring value to the audience
- [09:29] How Josh spent $25,000 on PR firm and didn’t really get the results
- [11:31] Start by showing your authority. You need to be one of that person who media would consider as a respected person
- [13:12] The important parts of the email that you send when you pitch media
- [15:35] Don’t ask for any promotions when you reach media
- [16:18] Make sure that your website is updated and look professional
- [17:55] What to include into the press kit that you send to media
- [19:15] Make the job of the journalist or the host as easy as possible when you pitch them with your press kit
- [19:29] Prepare the questions that they may ask you
- [21:56] You want to serve a lot of people
- [22:48] If you want to look professionally take LinkedIn and Twitter seriously
- [24:42] You want to be known as an expert, so pick topics that will establish your authority in the specific area of expertise
- [25:18] People need to describe you in one sentence
- [29:05] Keep the record of all media mentions you have
- [30:02] Find out what you should focus on, the topics that you share
- [31:27] How Josh’s client multiply his income because he narrowed his focus from talking about the relationship in general to talking about the relationship for dentists
- [33:34] For people who have no money your free content will be enough but serve the audience who has a budget
- [34:15] How to choose which media to pitch
- [36:17] There are media that you do for authority and another type is for exposure. Get to both of them, but understand which one is which
- [38:20] When people see you as an authority they want to give you your money
- [42:36] Where to find Josh online
- [44:00] For the show notes go to marinabarayeva.com and subscribe to the Marketing for Creatives show
3 Key Factors to Consider If You Want to Be a Media Celebrity
- Make sure that you have a professional website
- Don’t rush to be on the top channels, get exposure and credibility with the medium media
- Always think about how to serve the audience you talking to
Pin the quotes on your Pinterest:
Download podcast transcript [PDF] here:
Resources from this interview:
- Learn more about Josh Elledge on UpMyInfluence.com
- Josh’s first company Savings Angel
- Take a look at Josh’s press kit
- Attend Josh’s webinar to get more tips on how to become a media celebrity
- Follow Josh on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
Connect with Marina Barayeva:
- marinabarayeva.com
- Follow Marina on Instagram
- Follow Marina on Twitter
Why You Should Become a Media Celebrity and How to Make It Happened – Interview Transcription
Marina Barayeva:
Hi Josh. Welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
Josh Elledge:
Thank you, Marina, doing well.
Marina Barayeva:
It’s so great to have you here. You’re the superstar. We’re excited to hear your story.
Josh Elledge:
Well. I’m very humbled. I’m eager to provide a lot of value and I’ve been very fortunate to be able to get a lot of media and thankfully I’ve documented it very, very well on how I’ve done it so that I can teach other people how they can kind of follow the same path.
Marina Barayeva:
How did you document that?
Josh Elledge:
Because my business and livelihood depended upon it. If I didn’t get this kind of success, I would be broke. I would be poor. For me, this was just so critical.
If I can kind of go back and tell the story of how did I go from being in no media, zero media, nobody knowing me to today, now being in the media over 2000 times.
And I know for those of us who are freelancers we’re in the agency world this is really important. I’d love to talk about a little bit more later on about this concept of authority and why it’s just so critical.
But my company, I’d actually launched 11 years ago and that company was called Savings Angel. What we did is a membership based website and we helped consumers cut their grocery bill in half.
When I knew like every other business is you have to have exposure. Exposure is everything because you can have the best business in the world, you can be the best freelancer in the world, but if nobody knows about your services, you’re not gonna make any money. You’re not going to get any customers.
When I started Savings Angel I had no money for advertising. At the time, there really was no Facebook groups. There really wasn’t that many great options for me.
Instead what I started doing is reaching out to local media. So, I reach out to radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, ad magazines, like really anyone with an audience, blogs, and anyone I could and just offer to be helpful.
I would tell them and say, “Look, I’d love to advertise with you, but I don’t have any money. Maybe we could do a segment instead or I could produce some content? Is that something that we could possibly do?”
In offering that, enough people actually said yes. In fact, I started with one local radio station and I started doing a radio segment with them. At the beginning when I launched Savings Angel, as I mentioned, I couldn’t even pay my utilities.
It was in the state of Michigan where it gets very cold in the winter, kind of like Siberia. At least it feels like it. And our heating bill was due at the end of the week and I was going in on a Tuesday morning and I’m like, I have to make this work like I have to get customers.
If I don’t get customers, I don’t know how I’m going to pay my heating bill. I’m going to have to beg. I don’t know. Maybe get my parents to help me. And as a husband and a father, it feels really, really awful. At least I’ll speak for myself. It feels awful not to be able to take care of my obligations.
Thankfully I went in and I did this first radio segment. I went home and I had made over $300. That paid my heating bill. That was recurring revenue. So really if the average member stays on the books five months, they actually paid $1,500 for a three-minute radio segment.
Marina Barayeva:
No, bad.
Josh Elledge:
Yeah, this is pretty good. I should do this more often. (Laughter) So I did. And in fact, I got to come in week after week, after week, after week, and I actually worked with that radio station for about three years. I got a lot of business from that and it was quite an honor to serve that audience.
The good thing is I wasn’t paying the regular advertising rates. I ended up doing a revenue share with them just because it was so good.
Marina Barayeva:
How did it work?
Josh Elledge:
I wanted to incentivize them. I’m like, “Look, I want to keep on coming. I can pay you a little bit now.” And they’re like, “OK, that sounds good.”
But from there I started writing a newspaper column. Then that turned into a syndicated newspaper column. I did a local TV segment then that turned into doing TV on a regular basis and syndicated TV.
So today I’ve been writing [inaudible] or I’ve been writing a newspaper column for the past eight years to 1.1 million readers. I’ve been on TV over 700 times and I do TV in 75 cities, a two to four times a month. I’ve been doing that for many, many years.
All told it all adds up to about 2000 when you add it all. Plus, I’ve done like a hundred podcast interviews and I’ve had the opportunity to be on stage.
I share that really not to brag, but like I said at the beginning I was really bad at this. I was just a desperate business owner who needed to make money, otherwise, I was going to lose my home and not pay my heating bill.
I share that to say I know what it’s like to be at the beginning. I know what it’s like to do something very uncomfortable being in the media, being on the radio was very uncomfortable. I didn’t sleep the whole night prior, but I did the segment and it turned out OK, not real great, but good enough that I was at least be able to pay my heating bill for one more month.
Marina Barayeva:
How did it work out for your business? What did you talk about? Did you promote your business somehow or was it in your topic that you were covering?
Josh Elledge:
You know, that’s such a good question because the tendency for us is that for our sales and marketing brain we want to make sure that we’re getting a lot of value out of our time. So in our mind, we’re thinking that we’re going to talk all about our products and services and you do not do that. Don’t do that.
You have to go, especially at the beginning, you have to be very, very careful about not selling. The host generally will promote whatever you’re doing appropriately. But as the guest, it’s really important to just deliver a lot of value and build up your know, like, and trust with that audience.
I didn’t share the rest of my story, you’d asked about how did it work for us business wise, and that is that we ended up doing over $6,000,000 in revenue and I’ve spent less than $500 in advertising. So it worked out pretty well.
Marina Barayeva:
We’re ready to know the secrets. (Laughter) Tell us how to become a media celebrity.
Josh Elledge:
Absolutely. Today, it’s never been easier. And in fact, one thing that we had tried with Savings Angels, we say, “Oh my gosh, we’re doing so well at getting in the media. What would happen if we hire a professional?”
We hired a PR firm. I spent $25,000, which that was a lot of money. And for that $25,000 I did get one good connection to a reporter. Then other than that, I got to speak at a lawn and garden show and that was my $25,000. I might Grrhh!
That doesn’t seem like a good deal. I actually started doing a lot… so my family and I moved to Orlando, Florida, and I started serving in the startup community, just helping new business owners, trying to navigate the world of their own public relations and getting out to audiences.
And again, when I’m talking about media, I’m also referring to social media. I’m really, really big on working with social media celebrities, social media influencers because they can do really amazing stuff for your business.
The rules of what I’m going to teach you and share with our audience here, they work regardless of if you’re talking with a reporter for the Huffington Post or Forbes or the New York Times or some big YouTubers. We help our clients. They’re doing all of the above.
We’ve had clients do YouTube collaborations with people that have nearly 2,000,000 subscribers and they ended up making tens of thousands of dollars, like instantly because of that. Influencers truly do have the power to do amazing things for your business.
Marina Barayeva:
What should we start with? When you shared your story, you said you were nobody. Nobody knew about you.
Josh Elledge:
The biggest thing that really, really helps comes down to one word and that word is Authority. If you have a lot of authority and you show the image, indicators that are already on the Internet, then this is going to work out really well for you.
Because what we all do, and I’ll give you a perfect illustration, is imagine that you get an email from somebody and you don’t know who it is. They’re making an ask, they’re asking you for something. You’re going to very quickly put that email into one of four categories. A, B, C, or D.
A – I’m absolutely going to respond to this person because they seem like they’re a very important person. I’m kind of honored that they emailed me. OK, that would be an A. that’s good.
B would be, “Oh, I’m absolutely going to respond to this person, but I’m busy right now so I’ll get to it later.” And then you do. Because again, you respect who they are.
C – I can’t respond to them right now. I’ll do it later. But then you just forget. You get too busy and it just, you never end up doing anything with them.
And then D – delete. I have no time. This is a spammer. I don’t want to deal with this at all. Or I don’t feel like there’s anything that I have to gain because they’re emailing me and they’re asking me if they can guest post on my blog and I’m like “I’m good.” I don’t know why I would let you on my stage because I don’t even know who you are.
Our job with our clients is to make sure that they’re always A or B. I always want to make sure that you’re respected.
How do you get respected? When you get an email, there are certain things that you’re going to look for and you’re very quickly going to… I think all of us, we pride ourselves on being able to sort through people very quickly.
We feel like we’re really good judges of character and let me tell you that your volume of people that you have to sort through is nothing compared to someone who has a million followers on YouTube or Instagram.
They’re getting hit up all this. It’s nonstop. Every time they checked their email is just flooded with people who are rolling the dice and hoping that that influencer is going to do something for them.
As a journalist myself, I get hit up by PR people all the time and they’re all selling something. Usually 99% of the time they’re not interested in what’s in it for me. They’re only interested in what’s in it for them.
I generally put those in the trash bin. I try not to work with spammers. And everyone’s kind of in that same boat. We don’t want to support people who spam.
So again, what is it that we look for? How do we determine whether or not this is someone we should work with? Well, we generally look at the professionalism of the communication. Do they have a good signature? Is it well written? Do they communicate what we have in common? How did we connect?
I look for that really, really quickly if it’s just, you know, I was browsing on the Internet and I found your site. It’s like, “OK,” but that doesn’t work as well as “Oh my gosh, Marina, who you know, you were on her show, she actually recommended that we get connected.”
I’m like, “Oh, of course, I know Marina. I love Marina.” So now I have a personal connection that’s always going to play a lot better whenever you can use that.
There’s that. Kind of like what’s in the body of the email? Is the pitch or the request something that’s at least a win-win?
But my recommendation would be to send, especially if this is your initial email is to, don’t ask for anything like honestly make it all about them. Don’t you dare ask for links back or promotion or anything like that. Just make it all about you serving the influencer, the media, the journalist.
And a lot of people are afraid to do that because they think, “Well, wait a minute, then I have nothing to gain from it.” Listen, a professional will reciprocate, but you have to give them the space to reciprocate.
If you ask for it, boom, it’s done. It’s gone. They’re not going to work with you. You have to allow them to deliver to you, but you can’t ask for it.
A couple of other things. Obviously, in the signature of your email, you’re going to put a link to your website. Of course, they are going to click on it. That’s the first thing I do is I click and I look at your website.
If the website unprofessional or just doesn’t look like it’s updated it communicates something and you will generally attract… The caliber of your website as a freelancer is going to dictate the caliber of the client that you attract. I really believe that very strongly.
Similarly, the caliber of your website will also attract the caliber of influencers that will be willing to work with you. If it just looks unprofessional… I would rather you have a one-page single business card webpage that’s extremely professional looking than just a mess. Like a blog that still has like lorem ipsum in there.
I see it. I see it all the time. It’s like, “Oh yeah, you know, our blog, we’re going to get to that” Then don’t put it. Don’t put it on your site.
Don’t put unfinished stuff on your website. It’s better to only have like one or two pages, where it’s like really buttoned up well-put together. Because all that other stuff, you’re going to get judged on it.
Ultimately, I would like to see you eventually put together a press kit. I’d like to see you have a BIO, have good headshots, cause that’s really going to help your work.
Marina Barayeva:
What do you include into the press kit?
Josh Elledge:
So, press kit. The most important thing is that you’re going to have a BIO and ideally, again, you would have multiple versions of your BIO. For example, I do podcast interviews from time to time so I’m going to write up a couple of different intros that the host could use.
Cause some hosts don’t mind telling a little bit more, someone like there’s like a three sentence max. That’s all they want. You want to give them all the content.
Here’s our job, Marina. We want to make the job of the journalist or the media or the influencer, we want to make it as easy as possible so that they can look at it and say, “Oh, my work is all done because the worst thing today is forcing a journalist to have to work harder than they already work.
Most content producers, social media influencers as well. You look at it from the outside and you think, “Oh, it’s so easy.” It’s not. It’s so much work.
When you’re having to fulfill the requirements that your audience wants to hear from that producer, from that content producer, that influencer. It takes a team and it takes a lot of effort.
Our job should be to make their job as easy as possible. And then they’ll say, “Oh, well, I’m going to work with you because you made my job very easy. I’ve got some other ideas, some other content, but you know.”
Again, it’s really easy to work with you. That would go into the press kit. You want to have a list of questions that you could ask.
Marina Barayeva:
How would you come up with those questions which you would include? Usually, for example, if I talk to people, I invite them for the interview I prepare some questions. But a lot of people pitch me or I saw on other people pages that they have prepared questions and they’re kind of the same. So, you pitch everyone the same questions?
Josh Elledge:
In the press kit. The press kit is going to be that one press kit for everybody. That would just be a webpage that’s on your site and you want to have a lot of questions. I would recommend you to have like 20 questions on there that anyone could choose from.
When you have a bite and you’re like, “OK, now we’re looking at potentially doing something together,” I would absolutely personalize that.
For example, if I’m speaking to an audience of freelancers, I’m going to suggest different questions as opposed to if I’m speaking to a post revenue growth stage startups and most of them have teams of like 20 to 50 people. We’re going to talk about different stuff.
I do podcasts. I’ve done podcasts where I’d speak to an audience of career people. So they’re all like engineers and they’re growing, professionally. Absolutely, I believe a good interviewer should come up with their own questions, but the reality is everybody is so busy that if you can give them questions, it just makes it flow a lot easier.
Then that way, what the advantage of if you’re looking to promote your business is that you’re giving them questions that you know, that you can answer very well. Again, the goal is you want to provide maximum value to the audience and the more value you can bring on that, you’ll build up your know, like, and trust with them.
There were two other things I was just going to share really quick in terms of like, indicators of authority because we talked about the website.
Obviously, your Google search results. If you do a Google search right now for my name, I can tell you exactly what you’re going to find. It’s pretty good. You could search Josh Elledge and you’ll look at that and you’re like, “OK, well, obviously this guy’s been around, he’s done a lot.
Here’s the name of it. You want to serve lots of people. The more people that you can serve, the better. Do so without this pressure that you have to have like follow links on all these sites. Don’t worry. Google will figure it out. If you just make sure that your name is included everywhere and you’ll see…
When you do a search for me, you’re going to see my two companies. You’re going to see my Twitter is pretty popular. Depending on where you live geographically, you might see my Wikipedia article.
You might see my business if you live in the southeast of the United States. On the right-hand side, Google’s going to show you this big thing all about my business, which is fantastic.
Then finally, I’ll just say this, social media is huge for establishing your authority. The two biggest ones, if you want to showcase how successful you are professionally, the two social media platforms you need to care about are LinkedIn and Twitter.
With LinkedIn it’s all about your profile, how amazing of a profile can you build and can you communicate in a way that talks about “Here’s the value that I bring people.”
I don’t think you can over-invest quite frankly in your Twitter or in your LinkedIn profile today.
Twitter obviously when you have a great profile as well, but the thing with Twitter is that the number of followers that you have and the engagement that you have with those followers is so critical when you’re working with anyone in the media or other influencers.
It’s very much a vanity metric that matters. I’m a big fan of using, I don’t necessarily love it is my favorite social media platform, but you better believe I use Twitter as a communications tool. A – to establish my authority, but B – they can reach out and communicate with other influencers.
Marina Barayeva:
So in the press kit, we have our BIOs in different options, we have photos, we have questions. What about the topics? Especially when you’re not so popular yet.
You can talk about different things, but you still want to promote your business and you need to pick the topics. When we had the interview about speaking staff, we talked that you need to pick one to three topics and stick to them. What about this media? The press kit. What should we pick here? And which ideas will we share?
Josh Elledge:
I agree with that. In fact, some people are concerned, you don’t want to be typecast or you do want to be typecast. Typecasting means you go on and you talk about the same stuff over and over and over again.
Here’s what you want to do. You want to be known as, for example with Savings Angel, “Josh Elledge. Oh yeah. He’s the guy that knows how to get deals, hookups, and upgrades on everything. He’s just like a master at getting deals.” That’s good.
People need to be able to identify you in one sentence. And that one sentence, for example, with UpMyInfluence, “Oh Josh Elledge. He helps create media celebrities and he works with mainly small business owners. He works with startups and freelancers, authors, speakers, coaches. But the guy’s just like… he’s been in the media forever” You want the media… that’s a little long (Laughter)
But it’s like “Josh Elledge. He’s the guy that turns thoughtful entrepreneurs into media celebrities.” You want to be known, you want to be able to be described in one sentence.
Again, on your press kit, that’s kind of what you want to convey is like, here’s the one sentence, this is how you can define me. And it’s good. We should be able to be very easily defined.
And it should be unique too. You wouldn’t say “Josh Elledge. Oh, he’s a business coach.” That’s boring.
Marina Barayeva:
Everyone is a business coach. (Laughter)
Josh Elledge:
Yeah. It has to be very unique. Also, I would say that there’s this matrix right there where there’s on one end you can be very mainstream and then on the other end of that matrix, you’re way out in Cuckoo land, where you’re way extreme.
You actually want to be somewhere in the middle. You need to be just outside the mainstream where when you get on people say that guy is a very unique point of view or that gal. But you wouldn’t say “OK, but Josh is like a Zany guy. He’s like way out in La La land. I can’t even identify with him. He’s kind of…”
You don’t want to be out in the fringes, but you want to be to the point where people like, “Wow if you really want a fresh perspective, you always want Josh because he’s gonna bring some unique points of view that generally other people aren’t talking about.”
What great is in the public relations industry right now is hemorrhaging. I can tell you exactly why it’s hemorrhaging. It’s because they’re relying on all these old techniques and these old tactics that no longer work. Because of social media, you don’t have to pay a gatekeeper anymore for introductions.
All the most powerful, amazing, influential people on the planet are all on Twitter or Instagram or wherever. Just go ahead and reach out to them. They’re there.
But here’s the thing, you need to know the rules of engagement. And that’s what we’ve been talking about in this conversation. You also, the more authority you can show going in, the more that they’re going to respect you.
Marina Barayeva:
So basically, in one sentence you try to describe what you specialize in or what you want to be known for.
Josh Elledge:
Yeah. Right. I mean that. That should all be included in your press kit. Again, here’s the thing, I don’t want someone to say, “Josh, this is sounding like a lot of work. I’m going to do this next year.”
Marina Barayeva:
It sounds like a lot of work.
Josh Elledge:
It’s not. Look at if all you had was a BIO and, honestly, like a three paragraph BIO and a good headshot, Bam, that’s a great phase one. Now we kind of build onto it. And the better your press kit is, the more seriously you’re going to be taken.
If you don’t have any press kit, guess what? It communicates something about you. It communicates that you’re not used to working with the media.
If you communicate that you’re not used to working with influencers in the media, then your chances of getting Yes go way down.
By the way, one other thing that’s really important is obviously you would keep a list of all of the places that you’ve been. So, like if you go to UpMyInfluence.com and then you click on about Josh, you click and look at my press kit, I’ve been very diligent in keeping a record of all these stuff that I do.
Marina Barayeva:
Cool thing. And Josh, let’s get back topics, topics, topics. Because we have creative entrepreneurs and for example, I’m a photographer. I can talk to you about photography, but people always tell me “Teach photography.” I don’t like to teach photography. I passionate about my work, but I like to talk about business and marketing.
I can share about photography, I can share about marketing and I traveled all over the world. So there are several topics which I can talk about. How would you pick the area which you want to share with people and sending your press get to media?
Josh Elledge:
This is a really, really great question. What I’m about to share with you is just, is so valuable and so powerful that I don’t want you to blow this off. People have questions about this all the time about what should I be focused on.
We already talked about kind of finding your voice, where are you in the mainstream versus the fringe. Now there’s the topic. It’s really important that you align with something obviously you care about passionately. You feel like you can make an impact in the world. That’s really important.
However, I think it’s more important that you identified with something that makes you very unique. For example, if you were to talk about general business success as a freelancer for, “Oh, I just worked with everybody and anybody,” guess how many people you’re competing with right now. You’re competing with 10 thousand of other coaches out there.
That doesn’t make you very special. You’re a generalist. And when you’re a generalist, now you are going to be highly commoditized. What that means is that you’re going to have to compete on price. Now, you’re competing against everybody on UpWork, everybody that’s teaching stuff on YouTube and Podcasts for free.
It’s a really not great place to be if, however, you were somebody, and I’ve got one client and what he teaches is he teaches relationship skills to dentists. Now we’re getting very specific. In fact, he was teaching relationship coaching to high net worth individuals.
He was doing OK. I think he was making very, very low six figures, just over 100,000 dollars a year, making a good lifestyle like for himself. However, he’s noticed that he had a lot of his clients were dentists. He also noticed that he could speak and communicate the language of dentists pretty well. He saw that there was a need.
What he did is he said, “Forget it. I’m not going to market to successful entrepreneurs. I’m not going to interview or help executives.” He basically said I only work with dentists and he thought, what’s going to happen when I do this? He quadrupled his income. This exactly what he did.
Because he was able to charge more money because dentists said, “Listen, this guy knows everything about our industry. He knows our struggles. He knows our challenges. He knows how difficult it is on the work-life balance. He knows everything about us. He’s the best on the planet when it comes to helping dentists with their personal lives, their relationships, their families and their marriages, that sort of thing.
Again, so they pay him a lot more and he gets a lot. I mean, I think it’s like all inbound. All his business is a referral based business. That’s the kind of thing that can happen. The riches are in the niches as they say, and it’s absolutely very true.
And one more thing, you should be working with an audience that fulfills two things, A – they have the desire to pay, and B – they have the ability to pay.
As much as we love to serve people who have no money, you can do that, but you do that with your free stuff. With your paid stuff, you have to serve an audience that they have a budget.
I do tons of pro bono work and I help the masses and I love doing that. But when it comes to my products and services it’s for people who have money. They’re ready for that next stage in business and they can afford my team, they can afford my time.
But that said, we’re still like one-third of the cost of a traditional PR agency. So, it’s pretty wonderful what we’re able to do.
Marina Barayeva:
How would you choose those people, those media which you would approach to, who has this audience who you want to talk to?
Josh Elledge:
I love this question. So people will ask, who do I reach out to? How do I decide? There are so many people, so many audiences. I just want everybody talking about me.
You can put these people in a hierarchy. Ideally, here’s what you want. You want to speak to an audience where the host, the journalist, the influencer has already pre-congregated your ideal clients. In my case, I love speaking to audiences where there are some successful business owners, they’re a little bit more established in their business.
I love teaching everybody, I love teaching the masses, I love people who just only at this point they’re only dreaming about starting their own business and I hope that I can inspire them to become more successful.
But ideally for me, that audience would also include people that “We’re doing OK,” like “We have a good roster of clients and we’re ready for that next phase. I’d like to go from a low six figures to high six figures.” That’s where we come in.
We have clients that are doing eight figures by the way. But generally, our clients, our ideal clients, they just hit six figures and they’re now looking to reach seven figures and beyond. We know exactly how to do that.
You want to look at that overlap of who that audience is. Getting on the Ellen show, in the United States would be a huge authority play, but it’s not necessarily going to bring in the audience that is immediately going to buy your services.
Now, I will tell you that the authority of being in a large respected media outlet is different. There are media that you do for exposure and then there are media you do for authority.
Media you do for exposure puts people into the top of your funnel. Media you do for authority moves those people down your funnel much faster and easier because they see, “Oh, the Washington Post or the BBC or whatever media outlet it is, they’re talking about Marina. So obviously Marina must be very important. We need to make sure that…”
Your audience, what ends up happening is they don’t want to get left behind. So, when they see you get all this media validation, like I was just on MSNBC and I don’t think I’ll get any new business out of that, but you better believe I told all of my own audience, hey guys, I was just on MSNBC and sure enough, I had people that were emailing me like, “Josh, can we talk?” It’s like they see this validation happening.
Marina Barayeva:
You really were there. (Laughter)
Josh Elledge:
Yes. Absolutely. That would be media you do for authority. It’s really important that every time you get a media win that you share it with your audience on every social media platform, you share via email, you do a blog post, you are just like nonstop.
Like, “Oh my gosh guys, this is so awesome.” Like “We just got another win.” This isn’t just because Josh Elledge was blah, blah, blah, you know, in whatever.
This is validation that our movement, that our tribe is being respected by the broader media community. That’s what you want to do. It makes people feel so good to be validated.
In many ways because your audience already bought into you at some level. Now you showed them this validation. What they’re saying is, “Oh, I was pretty smart. I picked a winner.” People love doing business with winners.
When you get media validation, when you get authority, people see that you’re a winner and they want to give you your money.
So freelancers, especially to my freelancing brothers and sisters out there, the thing that can shorten your sales because it’s one thing I know. This is the worst, when you have all these people are like, “Yeah, I’m interested in hiring you.” Then it just goes on and on and on and they don’t give you money and they don’t sign the contract. They are like, “bah.” It’s the worst. That’s probably like the number one freelancing thing that’s “bah”
One of the tools that are really super effective for shortening those sales cycles is up… I was in the media again and so that really gets people to hurry up. And I want those clients, the freelancers who are listening to this show, I want those, I want your clients giving you money and trust me, this system works. It works really, really well for getting those people to get off their butts and give you money.
Marina Barayeva:
So what should we focus on in our first month? Can you give us three steps? Because there is a lot of stuff we can do.
Josh Elledge:
Yeah. Authority is really, really important. Making sure you’ve got a professional website, you start working on… I know everybody wants to get into the big media, but I’m telling you, and listen, this is 11 years of experience, 2000 media placements, I’m going to tell you that it’s way more important that you get in front of any audience rather than just always saying, “All I care about is getting that interview with the BBC.”
That’ll come or maybe it’s like “I want to do a joint venture with Tim Ferriss or Tony Robbins or Gary Vaynerchuk.” OK, that stuff can happen. It absolutely can happen. We’ve helped facilitate some meetings like that. It really can happen. But those guys and gals are not going to talk with you until you’ve already shown some momentum and some success at the lower levels.
I would really encourage you to do is find any audience that’s like at your level. Let’s say you are on a scale from one to a hundred, you’re at 12 right now. What I want you to find the 13 to 20 in your industry and that’s who you work with.
Don’t worry about the fifties, sixties, and seventies yet. You’re not ready for that. But work with 13 to 20 and get yourself five to 10 placements at that level.
Then you could start thinking about 21 to 30. Then you go out and you get maybe 10 media placements at that level. And you keep on working your way up.
I’ll be honest, I think it’s really important to serve audiences. So just because you’re at the 40 to 50 level now doesn’t mean you should turn down a media opportunity that maybe is at a 20 on one to a hundred scale. Does that make sense?
Because you’re not always doing it for the host. But you’re doing it for that audience and you just never know where your next awesome, amazing freelancing gig can come from.
I have had these introductions that have come. I’m like, “Well how did we get connected?” They’re like, “Well, so and so introduced me.” I’m like, “Well, I don’t know who so and so is.”
Then I reach out to so and so and they’re like, “Oh, well this person heard you on an interview and then they shared it on Facebook and then I listened to it and then someone asked, a friend of mine said, “Does anybody know anybody in PR?” And I thought, “Oh yeah, I had heard about this Josh Elledge guy. You can check them out.”
And it’s like four or five levels deep that I got this freelancing gig from. That’s how it happens. But it’s so important that you just get your name out there in as many places as you can.
Marina Barayeva:
Fantastic, Josh. Thank you so much. Please tell us, how can we find more about you and more information about what are you working on?
Josh Elledge:
The best way to connect with me is to jump on a webinar. I will do webinars on a fairly frequent basis. Usually a couple of months. That’s where I really do a deep dive on changing your mindset in regards to authority. We really get into the numbers and the facts and the figures.
If you go to UpMyInfluence.com, then you click on the little tab that says webinar and just whenever I’ve got one coming up, do not miss that. I deliver a ton of values generally about 90 minutes. So my recommendation is that you bring a very thick notebook and get ready to take a lot of notes.
I can tell you that in terms of webinars, it will probably be the most impactful webinar that you’ve ever attended, because I’m going to get right to the core of why people are either ignoring you and I mean your clients, investors, influencers. I’m going to tell you exactly why they’re ignoring you. We’re going to figure it out for you.
And we’re going to tell you exactly what you need to tweak so that you can make sure that everybody is saying Yes to you. That’s what we’ll cover in that webinar and it’s free.
Marina Barayeva:
Amazing. I will put the link in the blog post. Thank you so much, Josh, for this amazing episode.
Josh Elledge:
Thank you so much, Marina. I appreciate it.
Marina Barayeva is an international speaker and coach who helps women entrepreneurs become recognized experts and confidently sell their services. She is also a TEDx speaker, has presented to audiences in Asia and North America, and has been featured in such media as ArtPeople, CCTV, China Radio International, and others.
Leave a Reply