Gift biz unwrapped episode 249 you go from feeling invisible to

being seen and celebrated.

Attention gifters,

bakers, crafters and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one

now you are in the right place.

This is gift to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources and the support you need to grow your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

Hi there,

it's Sue and thanks For joining me here today.

It's been a couple of weeks now since the holidays and

things are starting to calm down.

All the celebrations and the parties are over the after holiday

shopping and returning frenzy is over and all the eating and

drinking has leveled off and you know what else is starting

to become a memory now,

those new year's resolutions,

but for me,

one of them is part of the master plan.

You see,

I make a commitment every single year that with the click

of my champagne glass at midnight,

I get serious again about my whole 30 diet.

Not really to lose weight,

although that's a great side benefit,

but to refresh after what I've just put my body through.

Not enough sleep,

lots of heavier foods than I would normally eat.

Just an overall cleanup to start the year.

I can typically go about 20 days or so,

really strict like to the book's whole 30 and then after

that I'd lighten up into something that I can actually live

with throughout the year.

Over on the business side,

I also do a refresh.

I pick a theme word for each year and truth be

told this year it's going to be the same one as

it was last year.

Visibility, I'm giving myself grace about not really attacking this in

2019 because to be honest,

emotionally, I just couldn't do it as my mom was in

her final year.

I wanted to be there for her and it was hard

sometimes to be present in the way I would have liked

doing something where I'd be stretching myself and being more visible.

Well, I knew I'd be showing up more acting than really

being myself,

if that makes sense.

So I intentionally put this initiative on hold.

Luckily we can do that as business owners,

right? My mom has now made her journey and both my

businesses actually had a really good year.

So now I'm back full force with visibility top of mind

that makes my guest today really relevant to me.

And regardless of your yearly focus,

word should relevant to you too.

Here's the simple truth and why visibility is so important.

If people don't know you exist,

how ever are they going to get to know you,

become comfortable and believe in you,

which then leads them to buy your products?

And guess what?

Surprise. Surprise.

We are not talking about social media,

although it plays a little bit of a backup role to

our discussion here.

Let's get right into how this form of visibility is so

important to your business and can actually make everything you do

Today. It is my pleasure to introduce you to Josh Elledge

of up my influence.

Josh is a us Navy veteran and launched up my influence

to help entrepreneurs attract perfect audiences and grow their brands without

the crazy costs associated with traditional PR companies.

Uh, my influences,

purpose is to democratize access to influence.

Josh believes he has immoral imperative to help entrepreneurs serve the

world with their collective messages while growing their revenue.

Oh, my influence was the natural outgrowth of his first startup

called saving angels,

which has grossed more than $6 million in sales with less

than $500 in advertising.

That is so amazing.

I'm going to repeat that.

Grossed more than $6 million in sales with less than $500

in advertising.

And he did it all through building authority and serving audiences

in the media.

Josh is a weekly TV consumer expert in Orlando,

writes a syndicated newspaper column to 1.1

million readers and regularly appears on more than 75 TV stations

across the country.

times. Josh loves living in Orlando,

Florida with his wife and three children.

Welcome to the gift biz on wrapped podcast.

Josh Sue,

thank you so much.

I am so glad we connected and just by that intro,

everyone already understands why you're on the show and everything we're

going to be talking about.

That's great.

My aim is to replicate what I was able to do

for anybody else who's listening.

There is absolutely a formula for this.

All right,

well, you know I'm going to dive deep for those goodies,

Josh. But before we do that,

I have a tradition here on the show and I'd like

you to describe yourself by way of a motivational candle.

So if you were to envision this candle that really speaks

to you,

what color would it be and what would be the sane

on your candle?

Yeah, I mean I think I would go with like I'm

a big fan of blue and especially that as it starts

to get a little bit of tint of green in there

as well,

but not too much.

And just because I resonate,

I really liked that color.

It's just very clean.

It just feels like streamlined.

It's just a very confident color.

And so along with that,

I think the quote that I've really leaned on more than

any other would probably be Abraham Lincoln who said that a

man or woman is just as happy as they make up

their mind to be.

And it's a reminder of,

I have a fairly existential personality where I just truly believe

that we're far more impactful on our outcomes than we give

ourselves credit for.

And similarly,

I know sometimes it can be really hard and there's some

definitely some tough parts of business.

It can be really stressful and I still have those from

time to time,

but I know that I will be my highest good if

I choose to kind of,

Hey, you don't Tony Robbins,

we're talking about,

you know,

live with passion.

Just to keep myself in a peak energy state where I

can truly serve others as best as possible.

Yeah, and I think what that says to me too is

you're taking control and ownership of where you exist today and

what your future could be.

Right. Instead of being the defeatist,

all these other things are happening.

To me,

it actually kind of aligned with your color too because when

you say blue,

green, I think very corporate kind of professional,

not necessarily,

I don't mean corporate in a bad way.

I mean it in a good way,

but professional and in control and systems and all of that,

which aligns with also doing that same thing for your life

and where you're trying to go,

what you're trying to achieve.

Yeah, I hear ya.

And again,

I don't want to make light of anyone who has challenges

in business.

Listen, everyone has challenges in business.

It's we get into this full well knowing that there's a

lot that rests upon our contribution.

What we do,

we can blame the economy.

You can blame the president,

you can blame anybody if you want,

and there's certainly bad circumstances that come our way,

but our goal is to succeed despite those circumstances.

Build your business for a season of winter.

Build it for the hard times,

make it so resilient,

developed so many great systems that make success all but inevitable

is really the goal.

I think all of us should have,

Ooh, making success all but inevitable.

I like that.

Is that a quote somewhere or did you just say that?

I think I just made it up.

Okay. Well I think you can.

I better patent that.

There's a good tweetable,

by the way.

Exactly. If you want to tag me on Twitter at Josh

Elledge, let me know that you heard us on Sue's show

and I'd love to retweet that to my audience.

Oh, that sounds great.

You might see it in an InstaQuote to here connected with

the show.

You get to that point so well first off and bringing

a little bit of seriousness to the show.

I guess I really do want to thank you for your

service before we even start in the conversation,

anybody who serves in any of our branches,

I just have so much respect for,

so thank you so much for that.

Oh my gosh.

Yes. Thank you.

It's my honor.

Okay, so share with us where life took you after you

got out of the military.

When I got out of the military,

I went to school for family therapy because I to be

a love doctor on the radio.

I was actually a journalist in the us Navy,

so thankfully I didn't experience any battle or anything like that.

I really got to just focus on informing and entertaining my

fellow military brothers and sisters.

But from there I went to college for a few years,

did internet development for corporate America for a few years.

It was kind of miserable doing that and recognized I needed

to do my own thing and start my own company.

So I started one and that failed and then I started

another one and that failed and I started a third one

that failed.

Started a fourth one that failed fifth one that really,

really failed badly.

Ended up losing a house and declaring bankruptcy as a result

of that.

And it wasn't until six business did pretty good,

but eventually I had to make a hasty exit out of

that. But thankfully I had started savings angel,

and this was about just over 12 years ago.

And when I started it,

I had no money,

but I had a great idea.

I mean,

I had figured out how consumers could cut their grocery bill

in half and that makes a big difference for someone who's,

you know,

and it was really just based out of necessity because we

were going through a Dave Ramsey's financial peace university.

We got to the part where you need to come up

with a spending plan.

And I asked my wife,

and I just remember this so distinctly,

how much do we spend at the grocery store?

Like maybe like $400 a month?

And she laughed at me and she goes,

we spent like $800 I was drinking coffee at the time.

I would have spent it on,

I say $800 that's a lot of money.

That is a ton of money to feed your family.

And that's the average is now North of $900 so gosh,

there's gotta be a way that we could do this better.

And so I just started reading every single expert I could

on the subject about how to cut a grocery bill in

half. And I found out that there was two ways you

could do that.

You could either grow all your own food and that is

a possibility,

but not for me.

Cause I was horrible at that and I just knew that

as a busy business owner and we had two and three

young kids at the time,

there was just no way we were really going to be

able to do a whole lot of gardening,

certainly not farming.

So that really wasn't a good option for us.

Every time I tried,

I'd failed miserably.

The other option is that you just get really,

really good at stacking discounts and it's a little complicated to

do on your own.

You really a lot of extreme couponers will keep these binders

and do a lot of math.

Well, I created a system that would do that automatically.

And so all I simply did was built up a system

where I would database all the available manufacturer coupons and all

the available store sales.

And it's just really about timing.

So Cheerios,

we'll put a $1 coupon off Cheerios and that at the

same time there might be a buy one get one at

a local store.

Well you could take the cost of a box of cereal

down from $4 to under a dollar or more.

I've gotten cereal for like 20 some cents a box at

times if you do it right.

And so that makes a huge difference.

I mean,

if the average family could pocket an extra three,

$400 every single month,

I knew that that would make a huge difference in a

lot of lives.

And so I created it but,

and it was a great idea.

But you have the best idea in the world if you

don't have visibility.

So, and we'll talk a lot about this.

You can have the best craft in the world,

you can have the best product in the world,

but honestly,

at the end of the day,

we're not going to get discovered.

That's just not how it works.

It's not about creating the most amazing widget or most amazing

product ever.

That's important.

But honestly,

the majority of our work needs to be about creating visibility,

awareness. We have to get in front of eyeballs.

That's the only way that we can really truly grow a

business if we're focusing on growth.

And so with savings angel,

I just reached out to everybody that had an audience and

I said,

look, I'd love to pay your ads,

but I don't have a budget for that.

Could I instead maybe do a segment and just focus on

delivering value?

I tell people how to get free groceries every single week.

And so a local radio station said,

sure, we'll have yawn.

And so I did the radio segment and at the time

I didn't even have enough money suit to pay my utility

bill. And I had made enough in that five minute radio

segment. I got home and I had made enough to pay

my heating bill that week and I just kind of kept

at it.

So I just kept showing up and kept doing more and

more and more media.

I wasn't very good at the beginning.

I was horrible in fact,

but I just kept doing it over and over again.

now savings angels done over $6 million in revenue.

And like you said,

we've spent less than $500 in advertising.

Just everything we do is just all about giving value to

audiences. That's crazy.

So I have a couple of questions here for you.

And I've heard somewhere that the product is about 10% of

the success of the company marketing and getting your message out

is the other 90 I believe it.

So you're kind of referencing that.

So how does savings angel make money?

So now for the longest time we were a membership based

website. So we would charge consumers $5 a week.

And if they just followed our system,

then it would be very,

very simple for them to pocket three to $400 from the

grocery store because we would index,

listen, all you gotta do is go to Publix or Meijer

or target and you bring in this coupon and you'll be

able to get your baby food or your diapers or whatever

it is.

And we would show them exactly how to get that deal,

exactly how the math worked.

So they could really just kind of,

what I would do is every week I would just say,

okay, just show me all the 60% off better deals and

I would just load up on that stuff.

So that's kind of the idea is you want to,

and unfortunately we no longer offer the service.

We're just a plain old blog now because I've gotten too

busy with other things too,

which I'm sure we'll talk about.

But businesses evolve and change and adjust.

And during the time that savings angel was going,

coupon was a big thing.

Absolutely. Now it's a lot of natural savings if you come

to the store and all different types of things.

Right? But I remember seeing television clips and maybe some of

these were from you,

I don't know,

but where people were check out and they would have this

whole big cart full of product and the bill would be

under $5 or something so crazy and unbelievable.

So I remember those times for sure.

But I do have another question and then I want to

get into the guts of why we're here.

So you were talking in the beginning about you started a

business, it didn't work,

started another business,

it didn't work six businesses in.

How was it that you continued to motivate yourself and go

forward and just say,

I know one of these is going to work versus stopping

and saying,

okay, I'm going to get a job somewhere.

What made you push through?

Well, one thing that you'll find that if you're out and

you're circulating and you're busy and you're networking and you're just

in that environment,

you're going to come across other opportunities.

One of the bad businesses that failed very miserably was a

newspaper, a small town newspaper,

which is a horrible business to start.

I had created a blog to go along with that as

well. And this is back before blogs were really even a

thing, but I was afraid of selling.

And so that's a problem because if you want to run

a successful publishing platform,

you gotta have advertisers.

And I was afraid to approach advertisers and ask for their

money. So again,

that's how big problem.

Well, I learned that one pretty painfully.

But my next business,

I was actually working as a freelancer doing sales and marketing

and I did that for five years and that was a

tough gig.

But man did I learn a lot.

And I learned a lot about how selling,

it's not about selling,

it's just about bringing value to someone's life.

And you always want to just stack the deck so that

you're bringing more value to them than what you ask in

return. And I've just always made that a principle of my

businesses over the past 12 years now with up my influence,

especially we just deliver a ton of value.

well I think this is a great example of a lot

of people will be like,

Oh, you know,

it didn't work.

I can't run my own business.

I would be a terrible business owner.

I've just proved it.

My first company didn't work.

But you're a great example of learning,

adjusting, trying again along the way,

picking up more skills and people who are working nine to

five, you don't even realize how much you're learning on the

job that then you could apply to your business as you

move forward.

So I wanted to underline that and talk about it a

little bit because of the example that you set.

So and look at you now.

So just shows,

keep going.

If that's something that's in your heart,

you guys keep going and don't stay too long like this

would be a good final question before we get into all

the PR talk.

How did you know it was a point to stop each

of those businesses?

Because I was losing money.

It was really the bottom line.

It was like,

this is just not sustainable.

I'm amassing personal debt just to keep this business afloat and

I'm just not seeing a path forward that would be profitable.

And so at some times might have been a passion project

that I really,

really loved.

We just have to be willing to let that go and

the sales and marketing.

I was working with a network of law firms that wasn't

really my passion,

but I saw that I had an opportunity based on all

of the networking and connections and relationships that I had built,

so I was able to do and I did okay at

that for about five years,

but unfortunately that position kind of ended on me,

but thankfully I had seen the writing on the wall and

had started savings angel about five to six months before that

ultimately ended.

Beautiful. You know,

a lot of people who are listening here also will use

this show as a way to understand how they can create

a bridge.

Let's say they're going close to retirement.

They could start a business six months to a year out,

very comfortably.

Right. And then when they retire,

they're not going into,

okay, what am I going to do with all my time?

They've already got the wheels going and some traction happening to

a business that now can be their own cause.

Let's face it,

at retirement age these days,

a lot of us are just getting started and now we

can do something that we really love.

Oh gosh,

yes. Absolutely.

Not that you don't always love your job.

I was one who did,

but anyway.

Alright, well let's bridge over and I want to start with

what might be an obvious question,

but I'm very interested in what your thoughts are on this.

You know,

when I think of PR,

I'm thinking of radio,

television, print,

the traditional things we've always thought about with PR.

Yeah. But social media has become such a big thing these

days that I think a lot of people have said it's

either or.

And now it seems like it's all about social media and

what's new that's happening on Instagram and now we've got tick-tock

and like all of that stuff.

Let's talk about that.

Like where does PR play a role?

Is it either or?

What are your opinions on all that?

Sure, so PR is public relations and so really it's like

communicating to audiences.

Many of us think when we say PR,

we think media relations,

and I look at media today as being a subset of

influencers. I think that media are influencers,

but then they also have an additional level of authority based

on what the media outlet is.

So if I appear in the Washington post or in tech

crunch or in good housekeeping,

you gain a lot of benefit.

Most people think that when they do PR,

the greatest thing that they're going to get is the visibility,

right? They're going to get,

Oh my gosh,

this influencer talked about me.

This visibility is amazing.

Or if you get to do a local TV segment,

and by the way,

I've done over 700 TV segments.

It's good visibility.

But honestly visibility is only one of six major benefits that

you get from doing media,

particularly media that carries with it authority and so the first

off would be your own individual authority.

Authority is a currency today and if you have high authority

in your industry,

you're respected in your space,

you just have more opportunities.

Like things are just going to be easier for you.

You're going to sell more things.

People are going to naturally want to do business.

If you do paid advertising,

your advertising is just going to work a lot better.

Partners are going to want to work with you.

Influencers are going to want to work with you,

your conversion rate goes up,

your sales cycles go down.

It's really the currency that we should all be going after

today because again,

you just don't have to work as hard when you have

high authority.

Would you equate that also to like social credibility?

I mean if someone came to my website and I was

showing that I had been in Forbes or entrepreneur or something

like that,

you're at a different level just by that association.

Yeah, that's exactly it.

So I am much more likely to do business and we

all are like,

I've been studying and leading consumer behavior for 12 years now

and I can tell you that consumers have never been more

skeptical because we've just been bombarded and we continue to be

bombarded. The American marketing association estimates that the average American is

exposed to up to 10,000

brand messages a day.

That's significant.

We just see brands everywhere.

We see offers everywhere and social media,

like platforms like Facebook and Instagram and Google,

like they're really clamping down because Facebook knows that.

And we could talk about this a little bit,

but social media is constantly changing and so when we talk

about, Oh well all I care about is just talking to

people on social media and Facebook's always going to take care

of me.

They're always going to be there for me and they're always

going to provide me a very fair platform to advertise my

stuff to audiences.

Anybody who knows anything about Facebook advertising is laughing right now

because Facebook is under a lot of pressure to provide a

good user experience and there are a lot of advertisers that

are finding that it costs all lot more to advertise today

compared to a few years ago.

And so just real quick,

I'll rifle through some of the other benefits of doing media,

but authority is one,

getting the media logos on your site will improve your conversion

rate. Bottom line consistently,

we will see an eight to 20% improvement when we're working

with our clients and members of up my influence.

You definitely get a lot of free social media content to

share on your social platforms and people really,

really liked that.

Like we see this all the time.

Like if you have a friend that's like,

Oh my gosh,

I actually got to be on TV this morning.

Here they are,

here's my candles.

Oh my gosh,

you know,

I can't believe it.

Like everyone's going to jump on there and go,

Oh my gosh,

I'm so excited for you.

Like it's a big deal.

It really gives a lot of positive affirmation to your existing

tribe that they hitched their wagon to the right horse.

Like it's gratifying for everybody.

It's validation for everybody.

You're not bragging about you,

you're sharing a win for your community and those who believe

like you do or share your passion for your product.

So don't ever feel bad about like,

you know,

getting in the media.

It's not really bragging if you do it right,

but number four would be you get a lot of relationships

with influencers when you do this commonly.

And when I say influencers,

I include media contacts and by the way,

it's the easiest way to pitch the media or the easiest

audience to pitch is someone that you've already worked with.

So if you've already done something together and you have something

else where you can be of service to them,

then that's going to be very,

very good for your chances of getting additional media.

Of course,

there's the visibility and then I'd say the final benefit would

be your SEO.

So if people are searching the web,

looking for your content,

if Google sees that you're commonly talked about on other high

domain authority news websites and blogs and influencers are talking about

you, you're just going to rise.

Like you wouldn't believe in the Google algorithm.

Google's getting more and more and more and more and more

intelligent and it's not so much about even like those follow

links back,

it's just is there buzz around what you do and if

there is then you're just going to be rewarded for that.

Google is just going to show your content to far more

people. Right.

So let me ask you a question.

So of all of the benefits that you've just listed,

once you get an article published,

let's say,

or you're on a show,

you still need to take the action of putting those logos

on your website,

doing the free social media like posts,

you know,

promoting it for yourself,

staying in contact with media context.

Like there's actions and activities that you have to initiate for

your PR to work as well.

That's it.

Yeah. And most people really don't do this correctly.

And that is is they think they get,

okay, well I was on TV,

there's my win.

And that's like you're only like halfway done when you pitch,

create the segment,

blah blah blah.

You go in and you do it like you're only halfway

done with the job because those people who see you like

they're just getting to know you for the first time.

They're not ready to engage with you at a very high

level, but they'll follow you on social cause they're interested,

they're curious.

But the people who already know,

like, and trust you,

those are the ones when you get that visibility,

that media,

that authority,

those are the ones that are going to be like,

you know what,

let me get another order.

I'm so glad to see that the outside world validates what

I was suspecting early on.

Right. So would you say that then getting PR in any

shape that it is is an introductory point and also a

credibility play to start.

And then you have to go from there.

And the reason I ask that is I've heard so many

people, I was just recently at trade show and I was

the moderator of a panel for celebrity chefs.

Okay, so I'm talking about Martha Stewart weddings,

food network,

et cetera,

et cetera,

et cetera.

And all of them really were saying that really doesn't,

hasn't done that much for my sales.

There's not a direct correlation,

I guess is what I'm saying.

Yes, when you do that visit is because they stop at

the visibility.

Most people listen.

I'll just tell you like again,

I obviously we've made a lot of sales when you accumulate

them over and over and over again and you get really

good at using that media.

Well that's good.

That's how you get the sales.

Most people are going to be very underwhelmed when they do

TV media.

They get quoted whatever,

and they're going to be actually pretty overwhelmed when they become

masterful at sharing that content.

So if you're quoted in a blog article,

you can take that and you can turn that into like

five to 10 pieces of social media content very easily.

You could slice and dice it,

create screenshots,

you could do all kinds of stuff.

With that.

Repurposing is honestly one of the greatest skills I think we

can have in terms of being able to be more places

and more platforms in front of more eyeballs.

Right. This is so good,

Josh, because I know give biz listeners,

a lot of you have been on your local television shows,

you've been to trade shows and won awards for your product,

potentially just a number of different ways that you've had visibility

and exposure,

but taking it the next step,

to your point,

Josh, is where most people don't go,

so I think a lot of our listeners right now have

the content already and they can still use it,

right? It doesn't grow old.

No. Right.

I mean,

it's very helpful to get fresh and relevant buzz.

I mean,

that's always good.

There's a certain feeling you get when you go to a

website and they say,

well, here's all the media we've gotten,

and then you take a look at it and it's like,

Oh, okay,

well that was like four years ago.

Those are your hay days I suppose,

but you can continue to share that stuff,

but don't rest on your laurels because it really matters that

you continue to circulate.

So Sue,

I spend like 95% of my time in support of up

my influence now where we turn entrepreneurs in the media celebrities,

and I spend 5% of my time with savings angel,

that 5% I still do a lot of media.

I've been writing a syndicated newspaper column for 10 and a

half years.

I do TV.

I usually do,

I'd say on average maybe like two to five TV segments

every single month.

I continue to do that even though I really don't make

a lot of money on that.

I do it because I want to show that I'm relevant.

Like I eat my own dog food,

I keep fresh.

I want to make sure that I am always tuned into

the latest,

greatest. I love making sure that I'm connecting and talking with

journalists and I'm learning what they see and I ask questions

because I gotta be in the trenches to make sure that

I can advise our clients on that.

Right. So a PR strategy should be included in your marketing

plan? Always.

Yeah. I mean,

listen, it's the difference between having a Hunter gatherer mindset and

a farming mindset.

And so like advertising and going up and setting up a

booth or whatever that's hunting,

gathering, you go,

you sell and you eat for a day or maybe a

few days or maybe a few weeks or something like that.

But that's about it.

If you are constantly investing into the bank of your brand

and your authority,

then you're going to find that you're just not going to

have to work as hard.

Things are just naturally going to work out better for you.

So a great example of this is I've gone to conferences

where I've just been another face in the crowd.

I've gone to lots of those.

And then I've also gone to conferences where I've been the

keynote speaker.

It is a completely different experience.

Like I get way more opportunities out of being a keynote

speaker than I do just showing up and like again,

just another face in the crowd.

So we want to increase that authority because honestly,

it really makes a huge,

huge difference.

That makes so much sense.

What about the differences between the different options like TV,

radio, print?

Do they serve different purposes or what would you say there?

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So there's media you do for authority and then there's media

you do for,

maybe it's just more visibility,

like you're not going to get as much authority out of

working with an influencer,

but you should still do it because you get great visibility

in front of ideally your target audience,

and this is another thing too in terms of,

well what should I go for?

Well, you ideally want to do media that if you want

to gain as much value as possible,

getting new people into the top of your sales funnel,

you want to go where your audience is pre congregated and

so who has an audience like you serve that audience,

bring them value and then you know,

you don't even have to did and I'd recommend you don't

do a hard sale.

You just bring as much value as you can tell stories

and you'll find that that audience will naturally resonate with you

if they feel like you've got integrity and you have their

best interests at mind.

Now in terms of platform,

like whether we're talking,

you know,

should you collaborate with a YouTuber,

should you be on TV,

should you be in radio,

should you be in print?

I say yes.

I say yes to all of the above.

I generally will do about anything I can get because I

know that the greatest value is to be how I use

that. So for me,

I do want to pay attention to,

well, what is the perceived authority of this outlet?

And many times a print or broadcast outlet,

although they might not have as many eyeballs,

is going to carry more authority.

So I want to balance my visibility and authority,

always be working on my authority and meanwhile always try to

get in front of as many eyeballs as possible with my

message. All right,

perfect. So let's bring this down to be a little more

actionable for some of our listeners.

If they've never really thought PR before,

and I can guarantee you a lot haven't.

They've either had local news stations approach them because they've heard

about something that they're doing in the community,

so they bring their cameras in.

So it was never intentional.

It just kind of happened.

But most of the time I think all of our efforts

have been on social media posting,

which was why I asked that question earlier.

But if someone's understanding now that I should take a more

active role and influence my future,

kind of like what you were saying with your quote earlier,

what would be the first steps for somebody to take to

start getting some visibility?

And I'm talking more on a local level now.

Yeah, absolutely.

So if you want to be respected by influencers,

by media I mean honestly by customers,

by everybody is that you have to take your own brand

very seriously.

And I mean that's kind of part of our up my

influence community is it we together really take our brands very

seriously and know Sue that we live in a swipe left

swipe right world.

We are earning consumers and everybody's attention like honestly like four

to eight seconds at a time.

And the idea is that you want to communicate that you

can solve their problem or there's a lot of social proof

behind what you do or that you're a professional brand.

You're not some fly by night organization.

Your quality is excellent.

When we meet in person,

we have this immense benefit of this kind of this person

to person communication,

which is very impactful.

But most of us do business over the web.

And because of that we have what's known as a digital

barrier. So the idea is that it's kind of like online

dating. It's like if you are going to have a dating

profile, do you want a bad profile or do you want

a really,

really great profile that truly shows who you truly are?

We want that.

We want a really great profile.

We want great pictures,

we want great description,

we want to show our heart,

we want to attract people and so that's what we need

to do with our branding.

And when I say branding,

let's make this very simple.

Number one,

your social media profiles need to communicate that you're a very

popular service or product like people really like what you have

to offer and so you'll start by making sure you've got

great images.

And I,

again, I'm talking about your profile,

not even what you're sharing,

what you're sharing is very important as well.

But what people's first impression of you is generally going to

be, what's your header image,

what's your profile image,

what's in your description?

And then they might look at stuff like,

well how many followers do you have?

And that's something that you can work on as well,

is really building that up.

We work with a lot of author,

speaker, coaches without my influence.

And so sometimes we get a speaker and they'll say,

well, I'm only able to get like X thousands of dollars

for a speaking gig.

And I look at their social media and I say,

well, let me ask you,

what's the difference between a speaker who has 400 followers and

a speaker that has 40,000

followers? And they'll say generally,

well, this speaker that has 40,000

followers is probably making more money.

That's right.

So we need to very actively work on growing followers.

And I'll be honest,

like I know best practices for this.

Generally it's not really in my zone of excellence.

There are a lot of people that could talk about growing

your social media following and you don't have to stress out

about this.

If you're just getting started and you don't have that yet,

that's okay.

But this is something that we want to work toward.

My low hanging fruit that I would point out is if

I go to your social media profile and it's just unprofessional

or you don't have good imagery,

you don't have a good headshot of yourself,

people depending on your business.

Most businesses when we engage,

we like to engage with people.

Not things are faceless corporations.

So I know we want to highlight our goods,

but there's a way that you can do that with our

branding, your cover image on your social media account where you

can show your product and service but also show you because

people are can connect with you much more readily than only

your product or service.

So that should give you some indications on what your social

media accounts should probably look like.

You're so right and this is something that everybody can do

immediately is go look at your social media platforms and just

make sure everything is in sync first.

You should be consistent across all your platforms obviously and everything

that you just said Josh,

in terms of personality in there,

good images,

all of that.

The other thing that I would just add to what you're

saying is you should be regularly posting so that someone doesn't

come to your Facebook page,

let's say,

and the last post you did was four months ago.

We all know that you're not going to get a lot

of organic reach,

and I'm an advocate now of posting regularly.

I normally say two to three times a week on Facebook,

not assuming everyone's going to see you and come to buy

your stuff.

But it's to the point that if someone lands on your

page, which is what Josh is talking about,

there's something that is fresh and new on a regular basis,

because then it looks like you're actively engaged with your business

and your brand.

Yeah, for sure.

So in a couple of things you can do is you

just have to schedule it and you just say,

listen, Monday,

Wednesday, Friday,

not going to be doing any sales anyway.

So from nine to nine 30 on those three days,

you gotta be really focused on engaging with your audience,

sharing valuable stuff.

Don't get caught into the newsfeed,

you know,

you gotta be very,

very diligent,

focused and just say,

listen, these three 30 minute blocks are for sharing content only,

and you'll do things like participate in Facebook groups and be

helpful and things like that.

Yes. Just give away your expertise,

go answer questions.

Just be a nice person in terms of engaging on other

communities, but on your own,

you got to keep doing it.

And I know so a lot of people will get frustrated

like, okay,

I did that and only three people saw it.

That's just the way that it's going to be.

Again, Facebook is very much a pay for play platform now

and Instagram is absolutely becoming that way as well.

So it just is what it is.

Yeah. It's not for people to organically see you.

It's for the people who come to find you to see

that there's activity going on.

That's it.

Yup. Yeah.

But I also liked your point about going in and being

active in other people's groups because you got visibility.

Bring value there.

Okay, so let's be done with that part.

So the brand and social media now,

what towards the goal of getting some type of local TV,

radio, print spot,

what do you do then?

Right. And the reason I mentioned that is because again,

media is absolutely going to judge you.

So if you do reach out and your branding looks horrible,

they're gonna ghost you and you're gonna be like,

Oh, maybe they didn't like what I said.

No, it was probably okay.

But they can't risk bad guests.

If you want to do TV,

it's mandatory that you have video on your website or in

your social media and you have to make sure that they

see that TV will not book you.

Maybe small,

small, small market will,

but medium and large and certainly national.

There's no way,

and by the way,

I should say like if you live in a market like

Chicago or Atlanta or certainly LA,

New York,

you're going to have to go to a smaller market.

Even Orlando,

where I live is pretty accessible.

I think pretty much anyone can get on air in a

market like around that size or under is pretty accessible.

Miami gets a little bit tougher for people like we've done

thousands and thousands of pitches.

We just know what works.

So now what should you pitch?

Okay, here's my general guideline for this.

When you pitch something you don't want a response of,

Oh, okay.

I mean I guess we could do a story on that.

We weren't really planning on it.

So it's tough when you're creative,

right? You're going to have to think a little bit outside

the box.

Now, the best piece of advice I can give you for

designing a pitch is that you learn about news jacking.

If you go to my YouTube channel,

I did a really great 20 minute video all about the

elements of just a perfect news jacking pitch.

And what news jacking basically means is that you're looking for

things that are trending on social media.

You're looking for things that people are already talking about and

you need to make the story about that.

Not you.

People and business owners sometimes don't like to hear this,

but honestly,

most people just don't really care about what you do.

And I know we a great deal about what we do,

but it's just the reality.

Unless it's something that's like really trending right now and you

happen to be a part of that.

Like with extreme couponing,

it was very,

very easy for us to say,

Hey, everyone's talking about extreme couponing right now.

I've got a new story that's related to that and I

trust me,

I had some really great,

we did a 20 minute segment I did on WGN in

Chicago and we did more business in that 20 minutes.

You know,

if you get a really good deal,

it can make a big difference.

Like we did more business in that 20 minutes than I

did the previous month.

So it can happen just depending on what you get,

but don't get big deal Litas right.

Everybody does that where they're,

Oh, if I could only get Oprah to talk about me

or Ellen or whatever,

right. Trust me,

they get bombarded with everything.

Just earn your way there.

That's the way to do it.

Do lots of local media where it's easy to get to

and again focus on a pitch where the journalist instead of

saying, Oh gee,

I guess,

I mean we were really planning on doing a story or

I don't know if we really have time to do that.

You don't want to set yourself up for failure like that.

Right. Pitch something where it's like,

you know what everyone's really,

really talking about.

Like you just have to be creative and this is one

of these things where if you sell candles,

you're going to have to watch the news.

And if someone like,

Oh, who played pepper pots,

this is embarrassing.

I can't remember.

And it Gwenyth Paltrow,

like she's a real trendsetter.

And so when does Paltrow posts something on Instagram and it

gets a lot of traffic and it starts trending a little

bit and it has anything to do with your product or

service you need to know about that.

You need to be the eyes and the ears for your

industry. Even if you sell something like,

I dunno,

like it could be anything.

You have to be really,

really hyper aware of when influencers or celebrities feature or talk

about your industry,

your product line,

anything like that.

And when that happens,

you need to jump on it and you need to drop

everything you are doing.

You need to move very,

very quickly and you need to say,

Oh my gosh,

this is training right now.

We'd love to come in and do a story.

I can be available tomorrow to do a story on whatever

it is.

So I could see.

I'm just kind of thinking and trying to brainstorm for our

listeners, since there are a lot of product makers,

seasonality could be something.

It could also be a certain scent or a certain flavor,

right. That you have that's kind of unusual or different that

happens to be trending right now we're recording this in the

fall, right before Thanksgiving.

The show is going to go live in January,

but right now pumpkin spice is all the rage.

No. Yeah,

of course.

That's an easy one.

That's a layup as far as the pitch goes.

Yeah. So I'm just thinking of different ideas and the way

that could work And it works and it absolutely works.

Yeah. Remember when bacon and chocolate was like the newest thing?

Yeah. Like things like that.

Yup. You gotta be clever and you got to think outside

the box.

And sometimes this is where people struggle with this.

And so ask your audience.

I'd say be very,

very careful about hiring PR people.

I'd say it would be better.

You want to pay people what they're worth and that sort

of thing.

But I could just tell you that intro like so I

spent $25,000

on PR for savings angel and almost had,

I mean it had next to nothing to show for it.

And that can happen and certainly I don't want that to

happen to other people.

There's a lot of ways you can crowdsource this and you

could just go for a walk and just think or just

start doing some keyword searching in Google news or social media.

You have to just experiment.

And again,

the best way to do that is just block off 30

minutes in your schedule.

And say this is brainstorming time and I'm just going to

see what people are talking about when it comes to gift

giving or whatever it might be.

And then you want to just get in on that.

So I'm thinking with print you pitch a story and then

if it's accepted then you write the article or someone comes

in interviews you or something like that.

So that,

I'm just going to say for time sake now is a

little bit more clear cut,

but what if you get a chance to have a local

television spot and this is a brand new thing for people.

What should they expect?

Like how do they need to prepare or what should they

expect? Either if they're going to the station or someone's coming

with cameras on site.

Yeah, make it so easy for the reporter.

I mean basically just go and write the story for them

and the easier you make it for them,

the more that they are going to be like,

Oh my gosh.

Thank you for making my job easy.

Being a broadcast journalist,

I can just tell you from experience is one of the

most difficult jobs in terms of stress.

It's generally very low pay.

The hours are ridiculous.

The expectations if you're in broadcast media are just very,

very tough.

So anything you can do to make their life easier,

they know now that you can be not just a trusted

source but a partner in this.

So I write out all the questions.

I said,

here's five questions you could ask.

Here's bullet points,

here's some stats that you can throw in for like the

intro or something like that.

I mean I basically write everything for them.

I make it really,

really easy and then just be practiced without sounding too rehearsed.

But you just want to practice this and do this over

and over again,

which is another reason why it's important to start small because

you want to refine your messaging.

You want to get good at this.

There's nothing worse than being on TV and just freezing,

which totally happens.

So you want to put yourself like the best way to

practice this like is honestly is set up cameras.

Put a camera in your face,

practice on just what it's like to have a bunch of

bright lights in your face.

A lot of pressure,

a lot of people watching you and a lot of people

judging you like or you feel like they're judging you because

that's what you're going to feel like the first time you

do media,

the first 10 times you do it,

you're not going to be that great.

You're just not.

And that's okay.

Like you'll get better at this.

Do as best as you can to try and practice,

like do Skype or zoom video interviews,

do live streams as many of those as you can and

you'll get more comfortable in speaking on the fly,

being able to look into the light and obviously on TV

you're actually not going to look into the camera and almost

every single case you don't do that.

That actually is easier than live in my opinion.

You kind of forget that you're have games on you and

you're talking to whoever's interviewing you.

I think that's easier than live where there's nobody even there

that you see.

You see them by comments,

but that's it.

That's right.

Don't worry about performing.

But what you do want to make sure is that you

get very good at communicating the things that you need to

communicate. So just like we'd call these talking points,

right? And so,

and I've done TV where maybe a brand was involved and

they were paying me to make sure that I conveyed that

certain messaging.

And so that one you definitely need to make sure that

you're well-practiced in being able to do that because the interview

may not go like they can ask you anything they want.

So that's another benefit to writing the questions for them is

that chances are good.

They'll probably ask you those questions.

Again, most journalists are overworked.

I don't,

I want to say lazy.

They're not,

it's just hard.

There's just only so much time and you just have to

produce all these segments and you're just given like minutes to

do this stuff sometimes.

Right. And I think another thing is just to be yourself,

don't try to come across as this big professional whoever.

Just be yourself as the owner of your business.

Cause the worst thing I've seen on TV,

and I've also somewhat had this when I've done podcast interviews,

is they're so concerned about what they're saying and the impression

that they're giving that it's very monotone and just kind of

boring. And then if it's video,

it's like deer in headlights.

You just who you are owning who you are and come

with all of that genuine you.

Right? Because you want to see the personality as someone who's

watching too.

Yeah. And so when I say kind of work on your

talking points,

there's certain messages that you want to make sure to share.

Now performance wise,

again, your whole goal is to be approachable and likable and

that's the sort of thing that will come with time.

But to your point,

you're right,

it's better to relax and be imperfect than it is to

be overly polished,

being overly polished.

It's like it's icky.

Right? And so we want to avoid that.

No one will trust you either.

Absolutely. Yeah.

We do a lot of like media training where we'll take

a look at how someone did on TV and let me

tell you like I work with some experts in communication,

you know,

maybe they're expert speakers and we get them on TV.

One guy in particular,

I spent an hour analyzing a three minute segment and talking

about his body language.

And when you lean forward like this,

there was this male female dynamic that you need to be

aware of that it comes across as,

there's just all of these sensitivities and just all this,

everything, you know,

the way you hold your face,

the way you pause or don't pause between certain points.

It's, I still make lots of mistakes.

A lot of times it's hard to be our own coach

is why it's really important to then get feedback from people

and say,

please roast me.

Be very honest.

What could I have done to improve this?

And then just practice that.

But also don't let that be a hindrance to getting out

there and doing it either.

Because again,

you're going to be imperfect.

It's okay.

Right. And you know,

they always say there's the thing with podcasting that they say

all the time now that is if your very first episodes

aren't cringe-worthy,

you started way too late.

Yes, yes.

I totally agree.

Totally agree.

Go and listen to your favorite podcaster.

Go back and listen to their first few podcasts.

Like there's a guy that really helped me at the beginning

and starting was a Pat Flynn and if you go and

listen to his first few podcasts,

they are really,

That tells people to go and listen to,

well, mine aren't that great either,

but you guys can go listen if you want,

but you only get better by doing is the thing.

That's absolutely true.

I just don't want people to be like,

Oh my gosh,

I'll never be able to be that palace so I'm just

not going to do it.

It just requires doing it a bunch of times.

So, and that's okay.

And that's why I said,

you know,

your first 10 are probably not going to be that great,

but that's it's activity knowledge.

So there's learned knowledge,

activity, knowledge,

modeling, knowledge and teaching knowledge are the four ways that we

learned and activity knowledge is easily 10 times more powerful and

memorable than you know,

doing the thing than just learning it.

Like hearing it on a podcast or hearing it on like

I can teach you this stuff,

but until you apply it,

it's all just very academic at this point and you won't

know until you do it.

Okay. So I want to summarize some action steps and you

tell me if I've got them all or if we need

to add anything Josh.

But I'm thinking for those of you who are listening who

are like,

okay, so I'm still trying to figure out how I would

apply this and do this for myself is the first thing.

Check how you're looking online.

Make sure that everything is branded consistently,

that everything's filled in,

that you're presenting the proper image.

The second thing is what are you going to pitch?

And so I love this news,

Jackie, and I'm going to find that YouTube video and connect

it up in the show notes for you guys.

But what's the story?

What's the point?

Make it as relevant to current situations as you can cause

that will increase your potential of being accepted for either an

article or a spot,

whatever it's going to be.

Then submit questions if you can so that you have a

better advantage of knowing exactly what they're going to ask you.

Practice a little bit.

Hopefully a lot of you guys are doing live already so

you're already practicing and you don't even know it and most

importantly above all,

take action and do it even if you don't feel like

you're quite ready.

Do it because of all the advantages.

I'll go back.

You know there's the six benefits that Josh was talking about

to doing this.

I'm not going to repeat them now,

but you can go back and listen to what those are

because it definitely can help you and I think the best

thing I heard you say Josh,

is to do this.

We'll make the growth of your business easier and we're all

looking for that.

Yeah, for sure.

Just two other things I'd throw into that mix.

Number one,

spend a little time getting to know who you're reaching out

to and definitely above all,

do not sell.

If you send a pitch and it's all about you and

selling your products,

you are dead in the water.

Journalists just,

they cringe at that cause I get bad pitches like that

almost every day and 99.99%

of them,

I just junk them.

And that's what unfortunately,

that's what everybody does because they're just thinking about,

Oh, I would love to sell my products on air.

Well, that's not the job of TV.

They don't want you selling your products on Eric.

That's why they have paid advertisers for,

right? Your job is to bring value to that audience.

Make an entertaining and enjoyable segment or even a news story.

It's to help out with the story.

It's not to promote your thing.

Now you may be able to promote your thing,

but you just gotta be cool about it.

It's indirect.

Yes. Tell stories about how you help people rather than,

or tell stories about how people use your product and have

benefited from your product as opposed to starting going through the

feature set and pricing.

Like don't do that.

Okay. Share with us a little bit more about what services

you offer without my influence.

Well, we believe that every person has a message that can

positively impact the world.

And so we kind of work on this premise of what

if the number one reason that your customers weren't buying from

you is you just don't have the social proof,

you just not being seen in the media.

And so as a result,

we fix that and we do that at one fifth the

cost of a normal PR firm.

And I only share that just to let you know that

we're not some pricey PR me because I've blown the money

and I know what it's like.

We really serve early stage startups,

we serve a lot of people.

That might be kind of the solopreneur level.

And even if you never pay me a dime,

you could spend years just going through all the content that

we give away for free and I just believe very,

very much in that concept of you just give away what

other people charge money for and then you're investing in relationships.

But everything that I share is all found on up my

influence.com and if you want to connect to like my YouTube,

et cetera,

you just down in the lower left hand corner,

we have over a hundred thousand people in our social media

communities and you're welcome to join us and would truly be

go from feeling invisible to being seen and celebrated and that's

what our community does together.

Oh, that sounds super exciting,

Josh. I love that.

That's a perfect sentence.

Where do you see up my influence going in the future?

Completely scaling.

I mean as we're talking right now,

we're going through hyper-growth.

through the front door.

It's now just how do we handle this and how can

we make sure that we keep our quality of service.

So we do a lot of media placements for our clients.

We guarantee results,

we don't do longterm contracts.

And you just won't see that in the PR world.

And then like I said,

we're like one fifth the cost of what they charge.

So that's why we're kind of,

we're having a problem right now with like,

Oh we can't onboard this many people.

It's a growth problem.

That's our biggest challenge.

And it's interesting from a business perspective,

it brings up unique,

it released stress tests your organization.

And it is a challenge whether you're going up or down

in business.

It's a good problem to have,

but it's absolutely something that we've been experiencing.

Well it's exciting to hear.

I mean quadrupling your numbers in one year is huge and

it's not like you just started yesterday,

so you're not talking from a small number to begin with.

Cause I know,

I think I met you four or five years ago actually

and so whatever number you're quadrupling I know isn't a tiny

number so congratulations on that.

That is so exciting.

Remember, gift biz listeners go over to my influence.

There's a lot of free information there,

Josh, so much good information.

My background is journalism so I come out of the industry,

but you've told me some things here that I didn't know

before. You've shared such great information with our listeners.

I just appreciate you so much being on the show To

your wonderful.

Thank you so much for having me.

I love Joshua's phrase about making success all but inevitable and

after hearing how and why it's so valuable for your business,

I hope you join me in adding visibility as an initiative

you will give attention to this year up next week.

I'm really excited to introduce you to my guest and her

brand new product.

She's building a solid brand while working a full time corporate

job like many of you are.

It can be done and she talks about how I'll see

you next week and make sure before you sign off to

subscribe to the podcast.

That way you won't miss a single episode.

They'll be ready and waiting for you when you have listening

time. Bye for now.

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