Josh Elledge – takeaways – 

• Focus on building relationships and authority
• Network with people that are a little higher up the ladder than you
• People in the PR world use Twitter. You should too!

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Doug: Welcome back to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Today I’ve got a super special guest, Josh Elledge. I’ve been talking to him about PR. He is on a mission to help entrepreneurs attract the perfect audience. He is the founder and chief executive angel of Savings Angel and has emerged as one of the nation’s leading experts on consumer savings.

SavingsAngel.com has become a major operation employing up to 50 employees and grossing more than 5 million dollars in sales over the past 8 years with less than 500 dollars spent on advertising. I think the hint here is that he does good PR.

Josh has shared his successful couponing strategy and expertise with millions of families both online, in person as a dynamic speaker, and as a weekly, syndicated columnist for up to nine newspapers, with a readership of over 1.1 million readers. On a number of radio stations and regularly appears on more than 75 TV stations across the country. All told, Josh has appeared on TV or Radio more than 1500 times.

Josh is also a podcaster. His show “Savings Angel Show” is the number 1 consumer shopping and savings lifestyle podcast on the planet. Josh shares hacks, details and research strategies for earning and saving more money. Through the years, Josh has consulted hundreds of successful entrepreneurs helping them in creating the same sort of success that he has, and that consulting eventually led him to the curation of Up End PR, which is designed to inspire and provide a roadmap for entrepreneurs who want to dramatically increase their sales by attracting the perfect audience without the typical expense associated with typical PR companies.

Up End PR is a Software as a Service membership based website providing step by step video coaching, live training, direct access to over 1 million media contacts, media monitoring for ongoing story success, agency level journalist inquiry monitoring, ongoing pitch creating and impactful consulting for entrepreneurs and startups seeking to exponentially increase sales and traffic. Josh served in the US Navy for five years during Operation Desert Storm. He is passionate about his family, physical fitness, is an avid fitness geek and marathon runner and performing improv comedy.

Josh now resides in Orlando with his wife and three children, and we want to welcome Josh to the show as he has lots of value for our listeners. Welcome to the show, Josh.

Josh: Hey, thank you so much, Doug. It’s awesome to be here.

Doug: Well, we don’t know each other really well although we have had a number of conversions on PR and how we can work together. One of the things that I saw from following you online before we connected was that you provide a lot of value. Let’s get right into it, and let’s talk about what you do and how you help small businesses to create those dramatic results that you have for your own business without spending money on advertising?

Josh: Well, to become successful with any business, you can have the best product in the world, but if nobody knows about it, it’s kind of frustrating. I’ve worked with a lot of good people that they’ve worked, maybe they’ve worked on a book, a video course, a new product, and then they launch it, and it’s crickets. There’s nothing that’s more, again, it’s just very frustrating when you put that much work into something and you don’t get the validation that you feel that you have in your product.

Our job is to help make sure that that audience falls in love with you. Everybody hears about it, and everybody’s excited to do that. With Savings Angel, we ended up doing, we’ve done over six million dollars in revenue, and we’ve spent less than 500 dollars in advertising.

For those of our friends here who are listening who have done a lot of Facebook advertising or they’ve don traditional advertising, they might be a little floored by that statement, but that’s the reality. Our philosophy, Doug, is that we just … we focus on building relationships. We focus on establishing authority. When you have high authority, and you’ve got a lot of relationships, and you have relationships with influential people, you’re going to be successful. I believe that as owners of businesses, as founders, we have one job and one job only.

That is to grow our businesses. If you’re spending a lot of time in the minutiae and you started a pie-making business because you love making pies and nobody makes them better than you, that’s great, but you know, if you only want a lifestyle business, that’s fantastic. That’s exactly what you should be doing, it’s just doing your craft.

For me, I really enjoy growing large companies and I love helping our clients evolve into large companies too, so they can have a huge impact in the world. Again, what I would say is, network with influencers would be the first thing you should be doing. That’s very, very important, and by the way, we’ll talk, we’ll really get into this in this conversation about how you do that specifically, but I’d say part two to that is, what are the two best activities you could be due to be growing your business? Network with influencers is number one, hopefully, you write that down. Number two is, Serve large audiences. I didn’t say sell, I said to serve, and bring value to people.

As you do that, people are going to fall in love with you, and they’re going to want to know, how can I get more? It’s really great, because now when you wake up in the morning, you don’t have to ask yourself the question, “who am I going to sell to, because I need to make money?”

You just say, “Who can I serve to, because I have trust that people are good people, and they also like other good people, and they love doing good business with good people who have good products and services.”

Just trust that people are smart, and follow what I just shared, and you will win.

Doug: I mean, like you said, that goes to relationships that we do business with people that we like and trust.

Josh: Yes.

Doug: For our listeners, you’re saying, “Network with influencers,” while that sounds good, how do we put that into action? What does that mean for the entrepreneur that’s listening and going, “Okay, sounds great. How do I do that tomorrow?”

Josh: Sure. Every influencer, at one point, was not an influencer. Somehow, they were able to climb that ladder. They were able to get on, you know, I almost feel like it’s the cool kids in the lunch room or whatever, how do I get to the cool kid table? I was a complete and utter nerd. I never got to sit at the cool kid table.

I kind of figured out how to get there, and how can you get into those circles? If you ask influencers, what did you do? How did you get there? They earned their way there. They really paid their dues. I will tell you that there’s a couple of shortcuts. The first of which is that and we all believe in that principle that you’re the … at least you should believe in it because it’s true, you’re the combined average of the five people you hang around with most. I believe that was Jim Roan that shared that originally.

We’re always looking to up our average, but here’s the thing. People who have a larger average than maybe where you’re at currently, they know this principle, too. They don’t necessarily want you to bring down their average, so how do you get in?

I think the number one thing you can do to network with people that are a little bit higher than you on the influence scale, and again, some of this, I know, it sounds a little, it sounds Machiavellian, it sounds a little weird that I’m talking about, they have a higher score than you do, just work with me on there. I think you all know what I mean.

The person who’s listening, I think you know what I’m getting at, right? They have a larger social media audience, they’re making more money, that sort of thing. It doesn’t mean that they’re more or less valuable than you are. It’s just kind of the way that things are done. The way you get in, I believe, for those of us that are kind of working our way up, is that you do so through service.

What you need to do is identify what is the value that you bring? What is the one thing that you are an expert in, that really puts you in a unique position to do good things for other people? Generalists generally have a little bit harder time. If you’re just a social media consultant, that’s great, but you’re going to be competing, you’re going to be commoditized.

If, however, you are a Facebook marketing expert and you only work with dentists, now that’s pretty specific, and if you work with other, say, agencies that are very successful, but they do a lot of work with agencies, and you say, “Look, I don’t do what you do, but I do this one specific thing really, really, really well, and here are our results, and I’d love the opportunity to bring value to serve you in some way.”

Especially in the beginning, don’t be afraid of doing pro bono work to establish and build and invest in that relationship. If you are a content producer, you might love the idea of being quoted in other larger blogs. How do you do that? We’ve all gotten those emails where somebody says, “I would love to guest post on your blog.”

What do you do with the vast majority of those? You throw them away because they start making demands. We want two follow links back, and we want this, we want that, who the heck are you, by the way? That’s like going into someone’s house and you say, “Serve me food, and give me a bottle of wine and give me this!”

It’s like, you’re a guest, and you have no right to start making demands that early in the game. When you show up at somebody’s house, or you reach out to a blogger, that would be completely inappropriate to make asks for anything. Instead, what I want you to do is, I want you to focus on the relationship. Provide value with no expectation of return. I know some of you are getting itchy skin right now listening to us, and are thinking, that makes me nervous. I might end up doing all this work, and the person might not give me something in return.

Yes, that’s correct.

Doug: That’s true, yeah.

Josh: But that’s okay. Doug, can I share the script that I use, if you do want to reach out to other bloggers?

Doug: Sure.

Josh: It works.

Doug: Absolutely, feel free.

Josh: Here’s what you say. You say, and you approach them as a fan, not necessarily as someone who’s a nobody, but you appreciate professionally, you really appreciate the work that they’re doing. You say something to the effect of, “I’ve been reading your blog for a couple of months, I really love the article, especially on, you know, some of the new changes that are happening to the Facebook algorithms. I really learned a lot about that, in fact, myself.”

Then you introduce your expertise and what you do. Then you share, It would be my dream, obviously, you’ve built up an amazing audience and congratulations for that. It would really be my dream, or I’d really love the honour of collaborating in some way or sharing content.

Now, here is the magic, what I’m about to say right now. This makes all the difference in the world. You say, “I don’t need any links back, I don’t need any kind of promotion, I’m not doing this in any way so that you’ll do something for me. I honestly love the work that you’re doing, and it would just be a privilege to give back in some way, for the value that you’ve provided me.”

Here’s what’s going to happen, if they’re a professional. They’re going to promote you anyway, but here’s the thing, you can’t ask for it. You have to let the professional give back on their own accord. If you ask for it, it messes it all up. It’s like going on a first date with a girl and asking her to marry you.

If things work out well, you might end up getting married, but it’s way too early in the relationship to start making asks like that.

Doug: Got to wait awhile.

Josh: Just let it happen organically. Chances are they’re not going anywhere. Chances are, you’re not going anywhere. If you invest in this relationship, I have some incredible relationships I’ve invested in them, and as a result, we have done some pretty amazing stuff.

Just on that note, finally, I would add, just be patient. If it takes you a couple of years to build, an amazing business, is it worth it? Absolutely. Just chill. Just do this thing the right way, don’t make decisions based on scarcity. Make smart business decisions and follow what I’ve outlined, and it will work for you. I promise it will work for you.

Doug: If you don’t want to wait the year like you’re saying, or maybe be patient, I would say just step up your auction. Do more.

Josh: Oh yeah.

Doug: There are a lot more influencers, and I think the world has become a lot flatter than it has been before. You go to websites, you can’t find peoples’ email address, you can’t find the CEO’s phone number, and if you do, you can’t get past a gatekeeper, but guess what, you can find them on Instagram. I’ve found sending them, taking a page out of Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, sending them a direct message on Instagram, your approach, not asking for anything, and having a conversation, two or three conversations, has been a great way to instantly get access to these guys.

Josh: It’s absolutely true and kind of where we come in with Up End PR is that we’ve really, using a lot of modern-day PR tools and social media, we’ve really taken a growth hacking approach to PR. What you’re finding is that you just don’t have to pay what you used to for great PR services. There’s a lot of amazing PR professionals out there that are very good at what they do.

I think if you find an agency or a firm that’s a little bit more old school, and sadly, that’s the majority of them still, they’re still going to be charging you for an old guard system that in my opinion, is pretty irrelevant, because doing what you did right there, you could save yourself thousands of dollars in PR.

We just facilitate all those things, and as a result, our rates are 1/10th of what other PR firms charge, and we love it. We love upsetting the apple cart a little bit.

Doug: I’m with you. There are growth hacking and lots of changes going on on social media, and we don’t need to chase every shiny object, but we should at least have our heads up and know when there’s a different way of tackling that challenge of getting in front of our audience. In terms of serving a larger audience, what are you referring to there? Are you talking about PR in terms of getting pick up, or what were you thinking?

Josh: Sure. The rules of PR, and again, I use PR kind of generically. Really, what I’m talking about is authority and influence. If you have a lot of authority, things are going to go pretty well for you. If you have a lot of influence, things are going to go really, really well for you. That’s really just our outcome, we just happen to use a lot of PR tactics in order to get there.

For example, it might be something like a free service, which you can use, called HARO, H-A-R-O, help a reporter out, it’s a great service. It’s going to take you some time. It’s going to, you get an email three times a day, and it’s a bunch of journalists who all need experts in, they need a subject matter expert that they can quote for a story that they’re working on. If you’re consistent, and you put your time in, you can absolutely get some value from that.

However, it is going to be time-consuming. I’ll forewarn you, a lot of PR, and again when I say influence and authority, and you might be thinking, wait a minute, is he talking about traditional newsrooms, like a newspaper? It’s not just that. It’s all of the above. The rules of engagement, whether it’s an influencer who is on social media or an influencer that’s really big in news, the rules of engagement are pretty much the same.

Acknowledge that even the biggest journalists put their pants on one leg at a time, they’re just people. If you communicate with people like people, you do so professionally, but don’t do it in a stilted an awkward way. In our communication, we tend to do a lot of very personal communication, and then we give them more the formal information, but when it comes to interpersonal communication, we really just try to talk to people like real people, and we find that that works out a lot better than this stilted, professional, you know, I remember taking a class in high school, professional written communication. We don’t do a whole lot of that.

I think Press Releases should still be formatted in the traditional way, inverted pyramid, that sort of thing, but largely, if you’re using Twitter, which we’re really, really big on, and I’d love to talk about that, twitter is just a great way to make those introductions, and just like you said, get directly past the gatekeeper.

Doug: That’s really cool. We’ve used Twitter as well. I have a conversation with someone in Australia, and it’s late, late night here for me, and we’re just having this full-on dialogue, just like we would be sitting across the table from each other.

Josh: Yeah, yup. It works.

Doug: Can you, let’s talk about a couple of really specific things. Give us a success story, and then let’s move through some action steps, okay, here’s a client and here’s how you help them move the dial, and then, some points on what we could do, and how we’d get started.

Josh: Typically, what we recommend, and again, we facilitate a lot of pro bono education and work. We’re really big fans. Our mission is to democratize the world of PR in a way that meets the technology that we have in 2017, 2018 and beyond.

We love that. We do a lot of pro bono work, and for our paid clients, and if you’ve ever priced out PR, you’ll be shocked by this, because you know that PR is just absurdly expensive. It is, again, I wish that it wasn’t, but here’s the reason it’s so expensive. You’re working with people that have a lot of experience, that have a lot of relationships, and if they’re really good … but a lot of, and again, the people are very good at what they do, but the processes, I think are a little bit old and outdated.

You could easily spend $15, $20,000 dollars a month and again, in PR, the number one thing you’ll be told is that there are no guarantees in PR. It just isn’t. It’s very time consuming, reaching out to people individually, having someone learn everything about your company, and then expecting them to rep your brand as efficiently as you, that’s just going to take a lot of time.

They’re still not going to do it as well as you do it. Our approach, Doug, is that we don’t represent your brand. We focus on boosting your authority, and I’ll talk very specifically, whether you use us or do it yourself, I’m going to teach you exactly how to do it yourself.

Again, you work on your authority, and then we facilitate lots and lots of connections with our coaching and guiding and our systems and our tools, we find that most growth stage startups, generally have somebody on staff that can do okay. If we make a connection with an influencer and we tell you, “This is what you want to ask for, this is what you want to say and do,” they’re going to do alright. In that instance, I don’t think you want an agent that’s going to do all that work for you, because unless you’re talking about, now you’re negotiating big JVs, or something like that, maybe you do, or speaking, that kind of thing, maybe you do.

I find if it’s just like, Hey, I know what I want to do for you, and it’d be really great if you could do this for me, and people are cool. Let them do their thing. Don’t outsource that part of it. Just, you can do it yourself.

We facilitate that. Here’s our process, and again, you could copy it, point for point, do it yourself. Number one, you need to develop a press kit for your website. The reason why you need to do this is that influencers, either on social media or in the media, need an executive summary of who you are, what you do, if I’m going to interview you, do you have some questions that I could ask you?

All of this stuff makes their job easy. Most journalists are so crazy, ridiculously overworked that they need your help. If you can hook them up with a little bit of help, you give them a story in a box, I have participated in stories where I’ve pretty much written the whole darn thing for them and it appeared exactly the way that I wanted it to. That happens. They’ll thank you for it. Consider working with them that way.

Again, the first step is that press kit. It doesn’t have to be magic. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but I find that half of a press kit or an okay press kit is way better than no press kit. You can go to UpEndPR.com, U-P-E-N-D-P-R dot com, just click on the link that says Josh, and just copy mine. You don’t have to pay me a dime. Change my name to yours, and put your own experiences in there, but that’s pretty much it.

Next, is I want to make sure that your social media says a lot about you. Again, why are we focused so much on authority? It’s because if you spend a little bit of time making sure that your Bona Fides or communicate the level of experience that you have, then journalists and influencers are more likely to say yes to you. There’s nothing more frustrating … Well, another frustrating thing is sending an email out to ten people and nobody responds. They don’t tell you why they don’t respond, but I can tell you that the majority of the time is that they just weren’t that into you.

If you have a dating profile, obviously you want to have an amazing profile, because if you have an amazing profile, people are going to say yes to you. Definitely, do that. Social Media, which ones should you care about? Well, LinkedIn is number one. On LinkedIn, I would advise that you spend a lot of time, I believe, today, that you cannot over-invest in your LinkedIn presence. I’m not talking about doing paid ads, I’m just saying, make sure that you are spending a lot of time to make your LinkedIn profile look amazing.

Again, just copy what we’re doing, because that’s all we do. We take that same formula. You can either go to my LinkedIn, you can find me on LinkedIn and just copy and paste, do it yourself. You’re welcome. That was free. Just do it that way. Also, we have some great long-form blog posts that will teach you step by step on how to do this as well.

It’s really important that you look good on LinkedIn, because a lot of journalists and influencers, they are going to use that to figure out who you are and what your experience is. If you want all your pitches to turn into yeses, you should look really good there.

Finally, Doug, I’ll say Twitter. Someone listening to this conversation might say, “I don’t like Twitter.” It’s not a really fun social media platform. I’m not saying you need to use it as a fun social media platform, but you do need to make sure that you have a full and complete profile, and that yes, you should show some engagement, and you should show, at least a few hundred followers on Twitter. Anything less than that, and it’s an indicator of your clout.

Great example, I was at an event and I saw that someone was speaking on my area of expertise, and I thought, I don’t know who that person is, I wonder if I should take some time because we’re all busy. Influencers are all very busy. Successful entrepreneurs are all busy. Should I take my time and go and spend 20 minutes and listen to this expert?

I have to find some indicators of their level of influence. In their case, because they had a little twitter icon, I clicked on their profile, and I saw that they had less than 200 followers. I thought, well, even if Twitter’s not really their thing, they’re probably at the earlier stages of business, in all the decisions I have to make in a day, I’m probably going to have to choose out of that one. Simply because I’m probably not going to get as much value as maybe someone who has 20,000 followers on Twitter.

It really is, most journalists, like 95% plus actively use Twitter, and at the very least, they’re going to look you up there, because they just want to find, well, how many people respect what you have to say? They’re going to look there.

Those are the two biggies. Your website and by the way, if your website hasn’t been updated in a couple of years, it’s updated, and you need to spend some time to get a refresh.

Doug: Copyright 2001, right? The ones with the old copyright. I think with one of the things you said in terms of Twitter as well is, people say, “I don’t like using Twitter,” and it really has got nothing to do with whether it depends on what your audience is, and what your business objectives are, and if your business objectives, like you, say, are to engage and network with influencers and serve a larger audience, and the audience is on LinkedIn and Twitter, then you suck it up, and you say, this is a business proposition, and leave your Facebook for your fun stuff, and this is how you grow your business.

Josh: Yeah. That’s exactly it. Again, I want you to use Twitter for two purposes, number one, establish your authority, number 2, it’s a communications tool to reach out to anybody you want. That’s what you use Twitter for.

The rest, you can automate a lot of Twitter. There’s a lot of best practices, I will say, just using systems that we use for some of our members, I generally get about 100 to 200 people, new followers a day. I have my VA who does a lot of work on my behalf. I’ll generally check in a little bit every day or two just for a few minutes, but that’s it. Everything else, we’re just, we’re trying to be cool. Don’t be spammy, definitely don’t be creepy on twitter. If you’re providing value, there are a lot of ways you can automate that value, and then, you know, getting a VA. Pay your VA ten bucks an hour to check in on twitter once a day.

It’s absolutely worth the money you spend. She spends maybe 20 minutes every day just to go through and engage with people. For roughly five dollars or so a day, that’s money well spent because of the leads that I get there.

Doug: Yeah. I get tons of leads from LinkedIn. I worked early on to build my LinkedIn, I have a VA that that’s what she does. She looks after it because it grows, 8, 10, 12, 15 people a day. She has a qualifying process to go through to decide who we connect with, and then we connect.

Josh: Yeah. That’s exactly it, Doug, you’ve got it.

Doug: Just too short story this, because you mentioned influencers and reaching out. I do a lot of work on the venture capital side and with public companies and guys raising money and funding [deals 00:29:02]. I had built a large connection with LinkedIn guys in New York, or in the states, but primarily in New York and Hong Kong. I was going on a business trip, I was speaking in New York, and I added a few days. I just had my VA go on to my LinkedIn profile and connect with all of the venture capital guys in New York. Sent them a very simple note exactly how had outlined it. I’m going to be in the city, I’m going to stay on for a couple days. I want to find out who you are, what type of deals you fund, how much you fund, what stage you come in, and I promise not to pitch you.

Josh: I love it, perfect!

Doug: I got two days worth of meetings with people I didn’t know, and the one guy said, “So, what sort of deals are you working on?”

I said, “I promised not to pitch you.”

He said, “Yeah, but you’ve come all this way. I have to do something to help you.”

“I said, “No, my promise was, I’m not bringing you a deal to pitch.”

He said, “tell me what you do so I can make an introduction to somebody else before you leave the city then.”

I was like, If you absolutely have to, but yeah. You’re right. It works, and these were guys from huge companies who write huge checks, and it was easy, seriously it was an easy way to get a meeting.

Josh: It probably, in your VA’s time, cost you what, under a hundred dollars, I would guess?

Doug: Yeah. I have no idea. It wasn’t my time. It worked well.

Josh: Exactly that is time and money well spent. One of my mentors is really, really, really big on teams. Everyone is. Everyone who has created success knows that, again, you could build a lifestyle business, but if you want to do big, amazing things, you just have to get lots of people doing lots of good stuff on your behalf, all focused on the mission. When you do, it makes your life a lot easier, and you should be doing only the things that you can do as the founder of a company.

Doug: Yeah. Totally agree. Winding down to the close of our episode, let’s go rapid fire through a few questions with you. What are you most excited about today as it relates to marketing and public relations for businesses and what do you see in the future?

Josh: For my own business we’re very, very bullish on LinkedIn. Again, I think LinkedIn is in a bit of a renaissance right now, and the B2B opportunities using LinkedIn are just amazing. There are lots of very, very good people out there who can help you with this.

We’re really, really big on it. I would say, again, from the PR perspective, I’m excited because I think that this is an old school, it’s almost like the last of the old school systems when it comes to growth. Everything else has been evolving so fast, social media marketing, SEO, content marketing, everything is evolving. I think PR is kind of like this last bastion of old school growth, and we’re seeing signs that this system, there are agencies that are progressive, and there are agencies that are not.

Agencies that are not are finding themselves, they’re great with their large enterprise clients and whatever, that’s fantastic, keep doing what you’re doing. For the savvy growth stage startup, it’s not even an option for them to use the old school systems. They’re using new school stuff. Either they’re doing it themselves, in-house, that’s great, or they’re using services like what we do. I love that we’re disrupting a system that has been needing to change for quite some time.

Doug: I’d push back just a bit and say that you know the big brands are using the big systems. I often wonder, what would happen if the big brands took the approach that you’ve taken? I think they would just crush it, because if you look at where the audience and the millennials and everybody’s going, it’s away from a lot of the traditional media.

Your approach, I think could have a huge impact on a big brand that got out of the pay the big money to do what they’re doing.

Josh: Let me tell you how we’re doing that. We’re actually working from within. When I’ve said that we’ve evolved, we’re not really an agency anymore. We’re more of a platform. About 2/3 of our business now are actually other agencies that are serving large companies. They’re charging, you know, they’re charging a pretty hefty sum, and we happen to be a service provider, and the reason that they love us is that our deliverables are through the roof.

It’s almost overwhelming what we do, just because of our approaches and the work that we do. Yeah, that’s 2/3 of our business is actually disrupting this industry from within. In a sense, we’re improving the industry as opposed to ticking a lot of other agency owners off. If you’re an agency owner and you’re listening to this, don’t get mad. Let’s work together.

Doug: There you go. What advice would you give our listeners who to date, haven’t pulled the trigger? They said hey, I don’t get the PR stuff and I can’t speak or I can’t do this or fill in the blank what their excuse is, what would you suggest?

Josh: Right, right. What I kind of referred to earlier is, the first thing you need to do is authority. Go ahead and spend some time, read some great articles on LinkedIn, I certainly have one, that’s a great first place to get going.

Then once you have that improved, maybe use that to start filling in your own press kit on your site. If I go to a website, and they have a press kit, which is different from a media kit. A media kit is generally like, where you’re selling, and your ad rates, and that sort of thing.

A press kit is, hey you influencer, you should work with me because, here’s all the other people I’ve worked with in the past, and here’s everything you need to make your job easy. Do that, do that first, and you’re going to learn a lot of stuff about yourself in that process. Start reaching out to smaller podcasters. Reach out to smaller bloggers and then maybe consider reaching out to traditional media.

Maybe guest bloggers or guest writers on HuffPo or something like that. Then show your appreciation to them and offer to be helpful. Again, use the technique I shared earlier and make sure that you let them know, that just, Doug, I think what you said was brilliant. Say, I’m not here to pitch, I’m not here to sell. I’m not here for you to promote my thing, I just want to give back. I’m a total geek on this subject. It would be an honour to be of service to your audience.

Doug: Yeah, that’s really cool. Two questions for you, then we’ll let you get back to your day. Who’s one guest that you think we absolutely should have on our podcast?

Josh: Oh my gosh, yes. John Levisay. Without a question, John Levisay, the pitch whisperer, have you had him on yet?

Doug: I have not, no.

Josh: Brilliant. Dude is absolutely brilliant when it comes to, especially if there’s someone who’s listening to this show and they’re like, we pitch to investors, but there’s just something off about our energy. We’re getting objections, and it almost doesn’t make sense. John is brilliant, brilliant on that.

Another guy I would recommend is Greg Centineo. Greg Centineo has raised over 140 million dollars for companies. The dude, that’s my mentor. The dude is amazing. Both of those guys, I could come up with like a dozen more, but I just immediately, amazing podcast guest. Look those guys up. I would be happy to make that connection afterwards.

Doug: That’d be awesome. Thanks so much. Just before we ask Josh, this last closing question, everything that we’ve talked about today will be transcribed, will be on the blog. We’ll include in the show notes all of Josh’s contacts. Josh, tell us all the places that we can find you online and the best way to get a hold of you.

Josh: Yeah. You could do all of that. What I would recommend is for listeners to this podcast, only because you got to the very end, I know you’re a special person … For years, we sold a video library e-course, it was called Millions in Free Media, which is kind of my story of how I did it. I tell you very tactically how to do everything that we talked about in this conversation, and we sold it for $1200. We sold a bunch of them. We just made the conscious decision and said, you know what, anything information or education for the right audience, we’re going to give it away for free.

If you go to Up End PR, and you click on pricing, look for the button that says Free Membership, and then it changes from time to time, but I think right now, if you do it, there is a coupon code so you can have our $1200 video e-course absolutely free. NO one’s going to sell you anything. I really, again, I’m all about the democratization of publicity and influence and authority. I believe that everybody could have it. You just need a good friend to show you the ropes. That’s what I do.

Doug: There you go. You can’t get a better offer than that. We asked earlier how you can get started, you can go to the website, you can download that, you can have access to the video and get started today. I want to say thanks so much for sharing today. I love your message. It’s a great message. Big believer in PR and the owner or proprietor being in there and rolling up their sleeves and doing it themselves or doing it with someone like yourself. Thanks so much Josh.

Josh: Doug, thank you so much for having me on.

Doug: Well, thanks so much. That’s the conclusion of our show. Check the show notes, all the details will be there. You’ll be able to link to Josh’s site and if you want to reach out to him and add some value to his life without pitching him, I’m sure you can find him on Twitter. Thanks again and stay tuned for the next episode.

Resources

Free Video Course – upendPR.com

SavingsAngel.com

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