From $0 to $100M: How One Channel Grew My Business

Speaker A: What would it feel like if the entire world sat on your phone hanging onto everything you say? Most people think a single podcast can't change lives, but what if it could generate millions in revenue and launch hundreds of shows? We are interviewing Joss elitch today. Over 15 years, he's proven podcasting is the highest return on investment relationship building tool with more than 3,000 episodes, 100 new shows and 42,200 million revenue generated for clients. He has also appeared on 3,000 TV, radio and newspaper spots. Josh Eldich is here. I'm Ash and this is the founders podcast. We skip the flub and dive straight into the high stakes stories and proven strategies of the world's most successful builders. If you want the raw breakdown of how brands are built, scaled and sustained, you are in the right place. Hello, Josh. How are you doing today?

Speaker B: Ash, it is great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker A: No, I've been looking forward for conversation from a while since we had our intro call. I was like, what, what are the questions I have to ask, uh, Josh, because I know there's lots of golden nuggets gonna come out today from our conversation. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for speaking with us.

Speaker B: Pressure's on me now to perform, so I better bring the goods.

Speaker A: Great stuff, great stuff. Josh, before we start then, would you. Do you have a favorite. Do you have a motivational quote which you follow? It's your favorite. Would you be able to share with our audience?

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I always really appreciated m. Abraham Lincoln's quote. You know, just a man or woman is about as happy as they, or, you know, as they decide to be. Right. It's very kind of stoic, existential kind of view on life. And it's tough, it's easier said than done. But it is a reminder that, that I do have a choice. I don't have a choice with a lot of what happens in the world. In fact, I've got no. I mean, it's. The world's just going to keep on spinning and doing its thing, you know, Then there's some things that I influence on, like maybe other immediate people in my immediate vicinity, but I don't have control over that. Like, I can't control what someone's going to do or say generally. Um, but what I can control is my response. And what I can control is how I think about that, process it, internalize it and interpret it. Right. So, yeah, you know, again, I'd say, you know, I really got into Stoicism about a year ago. And I try, right. It's. It's a practice just like, you know, just like yoga, just like meditation, just like Buddhism. It's, you know, it's just like, you know, being able to not, you know, not respond in a way that you don't want. Right. You're always going to have that initial response, but I'm kind of going too far into this here. But, but, you know, it's the recognition, like, here I go again. Here I am, um, you know, catastrophizing or feeling anxiety, and that's normal. And so, you know, to just observe those feelings, um, has been something that I've really been working on over the past couple of years, and I'm getting better. But, you know, it's a daily practice.

Speaker A: Indeed. Indeed it is. It is. So, Josh, tell us more about why. So you've been in the industry for 15, 20 years now. You have helped thousands of founders, entrepreneurs to get on appearances on tv, radio, newspaper, whatnot. Right. Why did you choose to be in this industry? What was the. What was the reason behind it?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, it. It started, uh, when I was. Was in high school, and I, you know, there was no way I could afford college. I just did not have a path. And so I joined the United States Navy, and I was a Navy journalist, as it was my job. So I got to produce TV content, radio content, did a little bit of writing, a lot of public relations, and a lot of media coaching. So I would interview admirals and remind them not to swear when we were doing an interview that we're going to use for tv. And then. But when I was in school for that, I had, uh. There was a guest speaker that came in, Adrian Cronauer, who was featured, or he was played by Robin Williams in the movie Good Morning, Vietnam. And he spoke to our journalism class, and, you know, he really talked about how critical it is to always be honest with your. With your audience. You're not fooling anybody. You might be able to get away with it for a short term, but eventually folks are going to know when you're not being straight with them. And, uh, and then, you know, really went on to talk about what a sacred obligation we have when we say, okay, here's a group of people here. They're giving me my. Their time and attention. I really need to do everything in my power to give them value. And it's always about empowering and serving the audience first. And if I do that well enough, then, you know, maybe some things that might be Good for me will happen as a natural byproduct of that. So that's how I got into this. And I had a series of businesses that didn't do very well. Did okay, um, but then my seventh business venture, Savings angel, again I had no money for a theme, I had no money for advertising. And so uh, I just, I reached out to local radio stations, magazines and newspapers and I said, listen, I'd love to advertise but I don't have money for it. Can I write for you? Can I do a segment for you? And here's what we could create together? And they, they said, okay, well we'll try you out. And thankfully it worked out okay because that led to over 3,000 media appearances. Uh, and Savings angel became a pretty great seven figure a year company. And then I just, you know, I got good at that. And then I just started pro bono teaching in my local startup community. You know, with uh, sbdc, a lot of women owned, minority owned, veteran owned businesses just serving pro bono. And then that led to accidentally starting up my influence and now podverified, you know, where we really take a very different approach to how we build media brands and how we drive revenue, which has to be a part of this. I had to learn how to do this on my own because I had no other choice. Like if I didn't get business out of media, then, then I was going to go out of business. So with our clients now it's always about okay, you're going to do this thing, but it's not enough just to on air and then you're magically going to get business. You probably will not get a whole lot of business, but you do it anyway. And if you do it in this way, you're going to be far, far, far more successful. And I'm happy to get into more of that. But in answer to your question, that's why I got into this. And since then, yeah, we've launched over 300 podcasts for clients. We've generated somewhere between 40 and 100 million dollars in revenue for them. I've facilitated thousands and thousands and thousands of podcast clients, guest connections over the years and that we do that. Um, and we have a ton of free resources over@pod verified.com, um, which you know, we're, we're becoming pretty well known because of the just amount of value that we provide to folks for free.

Speaker A: M. Indeed, indeed. And I think that's, that's a fair reason to be in the place where you are right now. Because usually what Happens is when we, when we are young, uh, we are thinking about going in one direction, but life takes us into a different direction and that's where we are. But I'm, I'm thinking 90% of the time we don't love that direction. But in your case, it's opposite. Like you love what you do and you, you, you like to go to that direction. Is that correct?

Speaker B: I'm very grateful. I don't take it for granted. I mean, every day. M. You know, my typical work, uh, you know, I, I work as a, as a fractional chief revenue officer. I work as a, as a, as a consultant to drive revenue through media. And I, I'm very, I, I will just say, and I'll explain why I appreciate what I do. So number one, I've been a hundred percent inbound for over eight years and I will explain exactly how I got there because you can do the exact same thing. And I don't wanna, I know you're gonna ask me about a book later and I'll mention a little bit more of it later, but the, the concepts that I've, I've just followed religiously and I have even before the book was a thing, is just what's taught in the book the Go Giver by Bob Berg. You know, you lead in generosity, you lead in noble intent, you do nice things for other people and then you just let, you know, you just let everything else kind of, you have to have some intention. Uh, but generally it's, it's, it's a lot easier. Um, rather than having to push or sell or do lead gen at people. I don't like that. I don't, you know, especially I think at this stage in my business or my life, I just don't want to do that. Like I don't want to be low key selling at people on Facebook. I don't want to be hitting them up in the DMs. Like to me that just doesn't feel great. So any kind of marketing or business where, you know, business, uh, effort that I put into growth, I just, it needs to be in alignment with my values. And because the work I do is nearly always a hundred percent in alignment with my values, it just makes for enjoying the work I do. And I'm sure you ash, I know in the work that you do, you know how important it is that a founder love their work because if they don't, they start to regret it and they're like, what am I doing? I may as well just go get a job then If I'm not going to love what I do. And so one thing I'll just hit on really quick and this may surface for some more conversation, is that, you know, a lot of times, let's say you're a leadership consultant or an SEO expert or an AI consultant or whatever, and someone said, well, if you want to do that work, you're going to have to do a bunch of stuff that you don't like, such as Legion sales, webinars, you know, scarcity, urgency, hitting up DMs, um, yeah, you got to send the spam out. There's no other way. You got to do it. That is just not true. I have found that to be patently untrue. You don't have to do that stuff. I'm sure they want you to do it because that's what they've all they've been able to figure out. But most of the folks I work with, uh, don't want to be a spammer. They don't want to be an annoying pest. They really do well when they get a warm introduction. They do very well, you know, when they're just, you know, able to connect with the right kind of people. So you can earn that through generosity rather than pushing your message on other people. So podcasting is just such a nimble way, an effective way to do that, whether you're hosting or guesting, that, you know, I'm biased. I'm really biased, but I don't know why you would do any other kind of Legion, particularly if you don't enjoy it. Stop. Don't, don't market it people the way, you know, don't market at people the way that you don't appreciate being marketed at. Don't ever do that. I just don't believe we have to do that. There are other ways. And again, I'm happy to get a little bit more tactical. And by the way, everything, I just want to say, everything that I'm teaching and talking about, uh, you can go spy on me. I've got, uh, you know, tons of free little videos where I explain these concepts, I show examples. I, I, I break it down into much greater detail. If you want more tactical. I just know with a podcast, we're a little limited. And you know, just how much I can go into the weeds on this because we, we have to keep moving. But just if you want to go spy on me, you could just go to www.podverified.com. i don't need your email address. I don't need your money. You don't need to book a call with me. Just go spy on me. Or you can ask AI about me. AI is usually pretty forthcoming if you just google my name or ask AI. But what's this Josh Elledge guy do? What does he do usually? Usually it'll point out kind of my background, what I help folks with.

Speaker A: That's great. That's great. And Josh, thank you so much for sharing that. Because this is one of the biggest pain points in founders life, right? So founders are obsessed with the quality of the product. They want to make their product and services pixel perfect. They want to make sure that they are serving their customers with not just 100% of what they can give, but they can. They actually end up working late nights, middle of the nights, and taking calls from their customers to make sure that they have the best service, et cetera, et cetera. What they don't do is getting the word out. Now getting the word out has multiple mediums, multiple ways. And you're spot on to say that I have never, I have interviewed around 200 millionaires on the show and I've never heard anyone saying that they love outbound marketing. They always say that they don't, you know, and, and every single person says that they love inbound marketing because that actually makes sure that people reach out to them and then they serve them with their open heart, you know?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's awkward. It's super awkward to initiate a conversation where your purpose, everyone kind of knows your purpose is that you want to make a sale. Right? So, you know, again, and by the way, what you're talking about too, you all are, uh, the E Myth, right? You know, if you are a founder or if you are ultimately responsible for growth in your company, like it kind of lands on your shoulders, then yeah, you do have a moral obligation to grow your company. As much as we'd wish that everybody would instantly come 100% inbound, it doesn't happen automatically like you have to do. You have to do, uh, some effort, but. And Rome wasn't built in a day. You can make this happen. It's going to take a little bit of effort, but if you've got good authority, if you're good at what you do, then you can earn this truly by your merits, by your wisdom, by your willingness to be a generous teacher. That's what audiences are looking for. They're not looking for fast talking salespeople. But if you can clearly communicate an idea and people can hear the generosity and the care in your voice, it's. It's the, it's. I don't wanna say anything is easy, but man, is it a lot easier and certainly simpler than a lot of the other crap that marketing bros want you to do.

Speaker A: Indeed, indeed. And, and that's what I would like to talk about today is most of our listeners are the people. So let's say, let's talk about the stats. 28% of our listeners are the people who already have some kind of investment like from angel investors or you know, some kind of seed investment for their startup, remaining other people who are still in their nine to five, but they're trying to get into the founder's shoes, right? So both the stages are the stages where the founders struggle to get more traction, more eyeballs into their system. So let's take an example for our, our conversation today. Let's say, uh, a founder who has built a digital product, some kind of product, which, I mean, most obvious example comes to my mind is, I don't know, rota scheduling app, right? You run a retail business, you have 2020, uh, staff. And I came to you and say, josh, I have created this app. It's this magical, it uses AI and then it schedules the route for you for the rest of the months and then it makes sure that their employees, uh, can swap the shifts. It makes sure that there's no gaps in the route and everything. But I have no clue how to market it. I have no clue how do I get the word out. I have no clue how to get the customers. And I'm running out of ideas. What are the step by step process or the framework? Would you be able to help me out with so that I can go out there, not just produce the content and get in one lead, but also make sure that it creates some kind of influence of myself as a revolutionary or somebody who is an expert in that industry.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, so what? I would highly recommend you do that. So overall what you want to do is get your thought leadership into the marketplace. And it's tough because social media is so noisy, right? But you, you kind of have to do that right now. Here's what I'll say again. If you are more generous than other people, you want to be way more generous than a marketer, for example. And a marketer is always just kind of pitching and selling their thing. Now again, this might feel scary. You're like, well, wait a minute, I need people to buy. Okay, they will buy, but not on a first date usually. I mean, unless you're selling something really cheap. Most folks, you know, they're they're not just going to like, uh, if we think about like how we buy some, I mean, unless we really need something, most of us are going to do a lot of, a fair amount of due diligence. We're going to think about it. We're going to, you know, ask AI about it. We're going to read reviews. You know, especially right now, people are pretty conservative with their budgets. And so, you know, if what you are selling is, you know, I'd say maybe $800 or above, you're probably going to need to get on a sales call. I mean, it's just the reality of it. Folks don't spend that kind of money without talking to somebody. Now that can change. But right now that seems to be about where we are. So if, you know it's going to take a conversation in order for someone to buy something. Like, so if you have an agency and you know, you got like um, a, you know, you charge like 2, 3amonth for something, whatever, so you know you're going to have at least, at least one sales call, probably more than one. So my recommendation would be you just need to make yourself super, super, super accessible to just help people. So your opening invitation should not be jump on a sales or discovery call with me, it should be, here's a bunch of stuff that I can help with right now. Now obviously if we were to engage together, I can do more. But as, as m much value as I can give you today. And again, you have to be protective of your personal time. But you, you, you do a lot of one to many content and you have to make it like explicit. Like here is how you do step by step what we do. Now if you want us to do it for you, happy to help, right? And here's what you're going to find. And again, this is scary to some people because you're like, well if I teach people how to do what I do, then no one's going to buy your thing. Yeah, they will. I don't want to. I want to know how you do what you do and then I want you to do it for me. Some things I'll do internally, some things I'll delegate to my team. So you were probably never going to get that business to begin with. People are either diyers on your stuff or they don't. You know, they've got budget and they're like in a million years, I don't want to do what you do like running Facebook ads. There's no way in heck if I, if I ever needed to do that, is that a skill set I want to learn? I don't even want my team to have to worry about learning that. Right? But if I have someone that can share in strategy, you know, the big picture stuff, right? Strategy and execution, making sure it gets done, then, uh, I'm going to hire somebody for that. So now if, uh, you can, you can share content specifically to me for my buyer Persona. And it's, you just talk to me, you address me, you're like, you're talking about my pain points and my problems, all that other stuff. Like, I'm going to get into your, your thought leadership, your content. I'm going to listen to a podcast episod, I'm going to watch your YouTube videos, I'm going to probably pay attention to your social media. And then we're just going to keep a relationship going, right? And if you can make it insanely easy for people to get to know you, right. And, and we call this, uh, you know, familiarity bias, or, um, you can create parasympathetic relationships, parasocial relationships with folks so that, uh, you know, I just feel like I know you and we've done that all electronically. I'm going to work with you. Why would I work with someone I don't know? I'm not going to give my money to the lowest bidder. I'm going to give my money to someone who I trust to do the job well so that I can get my outcomes. And by the way, that's the kind of business you want. You don't want to win the lowest bidder kind of business. Those are, those are tough gigs you want to win. People that really like you, appreciate you, they know, like, and trust you, they're going to be advocates, they're coming in, they're coachable. So again, the more content you could do, the better. And I'm a big, big, big, big fan of short form video. So not just having video out on social or YouTube or whatever, but you also need to make sure that it's on your website. Most people's apologies. I feel like I'm monologuing here. I mean, I was like, oh, and I got to tell you about this. We got to tell you about this. But listen, you know, if most, most folks, and, and I've done over 2,500 interviews on my podcast, so I look at a lot of websites. Most, the vast majority of people's websites are designed for an audience that's way further down the buying journey than the average person. Coming to your website, you need to back the truck up a little bit and just assume that someone coming to your website, they're a total tire kicker. They don't know anything. All they know is they kind of, they're like, well I kind of like this guy or seem like to, you know, she seemed like she knew what she was talking about. And you know, that's pretty much what most, that's the majority of people coming to your website. And so if you start there, you're going to get way more engagement ultimately on your website. People booking calls. I get probably about five to eight calls a week just cold from people like oh I found you or AI was talking about you or they were on my email list for a long time and we can talk about that as well. But you know, and then I get another eight to 10 podcast interviews I do every single week. And of course I'm building a relationship with these people and you know, we end up doing business about 20, 25% of the time. So like I said, it's, it's a good gig to get to but you have to again share a lot of value on the front end so you can earn those relationships and then people. And by the way, I'll just say it gets easier the longer you do this at the beginning. It's a grind. It really is. There's no shortcuts there. You just have to earn people's trust and you earn it a day at a time and you do it through spending more time with fewer people than trying to be everybody's connection on social. That's a metric. But if you can get 200 people that know you, like you and trust you and would refer business to you, my friend, it is game, set, match for you when you can get to that point. So stop thinking about total follower count. Yeah, that is a metric. I largely think most uh, of that is a vanity metric. It's not harmful to have more followers but it's a lot of work to get follower counter when I would much rather spend, you know, I spent. If you can spend, listen, if you can have 500 one on one calls this year, then over the next year with folks at the end of that year you're, you're, you're probably, your business is good, probably going to be in a very, very different position. So it's, you know, and you have to earn those higher level relationships with generosity, Allah the go giver. Like you're not going to get it through a sales funnel. Like you're just legitimately going to have to reach out with and the higher you are punching up. So like in business, if you're a three and you're trying to do business with sixes and sevens, you're gonna have to be pretty generous with whatever it is that you're giving or the value you're providing. If you're a three and working with other threes, it's pretty easy. So just know that, you know, unfortunately there, there are some, I'd say, superficial things that, that we just, we all kind of look for on the web when we're looking at who we're going to spend and invest our time with. And it's, it's only because marketers have ruined it, uh, for a lot of us that just want to do good work out there.

Speaker A: Indeed, indeed. And I, I, I couldn't agree more with you on this one because I am a living example of what you just, uh, you know, just explained. I mean, a year back we had the biggest problem is we were hiring different editors for our podcast show, right? We are sending the footages to them and they used to edit it. Then we started hiring these editors to create short clips for us and then the AI came up and then it started doing it and all this kind of stuff. So I was sitting with my, uh, colleagues from my previous work and it was like there are some things which we do on a regular basis which is, which could be automated and which could be, you know, given to an AI or a computer and it does for us. And then we started putting things up. Now, uh, what we did is instead of building the tool, we started creating the content for the tool. Right? We started publishing the videos. Now when we started publishing the videos, what people did is so maybe, maybe I can actually share my screen and then it will make more sense to you. Let me know when you can see it. Right. Um, okay. Can you see my screen now?

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Yeah. So this is the product we created. So the product does nothing but it has open APIs for editing your videos. What it does, it, it basically add intros, add outros, add a background audio to your video, add captions to your video. It might create video with multiple videos or images or concatenates. So all these kind of small things you need in order to, you know, create a, uh, create a video. Right. And what we did is we started putting content on YouTube and then putting. People started getting back to us saying, can you do this with your, um, tool? Can you actually do this? And then what we created, let the

Speaker B: market tell you Yep.

Speaker A: Yeah. And then what we created is we created integrations with the AI tools like any 10. And if you go to Zapier, these are the most famous, um, um, AI integration, uh, workflow creation tools in the industry. Right. And again their customer come to us and ask us, can your tool does this, can you create a video for us? And we create that, put it on YouTube, send it to them, and that brings not just the customer who reached out to us, but also the other people who are searching for the same information. And that is how we are building it. A, ah, lot of free tools we created for people like video 2JF, trim, video, auto, caption, thumbnail, watermark. All these tools are getting a very small number of traffic, but they are genuine people who are looking for a solution for this. And the best thing people like about uh, our product is we don't have any subscription. So you, you Basically pay us $5 and you get the credits and then you use it until you want to use it. So I can vouch for what you have just said, because this is what we did. Exactly. You know, uh, what you just explained.

Speaker B: Excellent. Love it.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And on top of it, then when, uh, founders start a, uh, journey, you mentioned that you have, they have to go out and you uh, know, give it generously. You mentioned there is a name in the industry, very, very famous, called Gary V. I don't know if you've ever heard about this person. Yeah, sure, he always swear on the video. He always talk about give, give, give, give, and then take like after like 20 gives. Right. And that kind of worked out for him. But founders are very, very busy. Founders are this much up under the water because they have very thin space or budget and they also have very less amount of time. But I totally understand that when you don't have the money, you have to replace it with the time or otherwise it doesn't work that much. What is the framework would you advise if a founder comes to you in order to generate inbound leads and what are the things they should be doing from day one before even starting building their.

Speaker B: Well, it's, it's really working on who you are, what your thought leadership is, what is the value that you are going to make and bring to the uh, to the audience? And so, you know, it really is, it's almost like, okay, well it's like a character study. I'm going to be in a movie. Who is my character? What am I doing? What am I committed to? What is the value that I'm bringing How would people know that? How could I communicate that in advance? And that's the job of your content, that's the job of your website to do that work so that when someone does eventually get to meet you or chat with you on Zoom, they're like, yeah, this is all in alignment. You talk about the same stuff in a call personalized to me that you teach and you know your brand, uh, and you've got it locked down and that's very important. Uh, but it be also is equally as important as you have to know who it is that you're serving, what is their pain point so that you can speak in their language. For example, who I generally work with are folks in their 40s on up. They have a lot of experience, they've got good authority. They are at the level kind of like what I was talking about earlier where they say I don't want to do spammy stuff in my business. I'm too, I've been doing what I've been doing long enough that I don't want to do that stuff. I appreciate that, baby. Brand new entrepreneurs who just kicking the tires on their business, they have to do a lot of selling on social and they have to do a lot of, you know, lead gen or whatever. I don't want to do it. I don't want to be an annoying pest. Quite frankly, I think I've earned it that I don't have to do that. So that's who I work with. And also people who say, you know, also at this stage of my life I kind of felt like I would maybe be a little bit further along in business if I have those two things. That is someone, there are a lot of indicators there that that is someone that I can help. So because I know exactly who I serve and I communicate directly to them and I let them know I know what you're talking about. I, I, you know, I, I feel you. I, I, I talk with people daily who say the exact same stuff as you. Here is the path forward. Now there's other things you could do. Obviously I'm just one voice. Obviously I have my biases. You know, I've been doing what I've been doing a long time. So I love it. You might not love it, uh, but, but I would at least urge you to consider, could that be a part of your brand identity? Could you be uh, you know, that, that teacher that, that, that gives well and communicates well from the stage and communicates well uh, to audiences as you collaborate with other content creators and, and leaders out there and could you, could you really, you work on how you teach and the stories and then, you know, back that up with free resources that you give away on your website and, and you just, you're there to serve the masses and then you let the masses kind of self select on who is raising their hand saying, josh, I want more. And then it's pretty easy. You know, once they, you know, once they're hanging out in my website, they can see how they can help them more. I've got, you know, pretty low ticket stuff. I can, I can help you, you know, get on podcasts. I can help with your media brand if you wanted to start a podcast. I, uh, don't take everyone for that, but if you have a very particular use case that matches with what I do, I'm about the best in the world at working with my very specific audience to create a very specific outcome. Nobody does what I do at the level just because I've been doing it for so long. So I'm pretty typical at a lot of stuff. I'm pretty average at a lot of stuff. But there's a few things I'm pretty good at. And that's all I try to do in business. Business, Stan. It's, you know, it's just like staying in uh, your zone of genius. And I really try hard to stay in my zone of genius as much as possible.

Speaker A: Indeed, indeed. So what, what does, what does founders have to think about before creating any kind of content going out? So for example, if somebody is producing an AI tool like say an AI tool which actually has access to all the LLMs, anthropic, OpenAI or any kind of open source LLMs. Right. Let's say the value they deliver is it's cheaper and it's available on all the devices and it, you can like ask the same question to multiple AI models in parallel just for an example. You can take another example also. What I want to learn is what's the strategy they have to follow in order to understand what content they should be producing?

Speaker B: Well, the golds are you asking about, uh, you know, how do we know if this is what the market wants or how do we just attract a bunch of customers?

Speaker A: So I think it's, it's, it's both because the point of generating all these free giveaway content is to attract customers, but also understand what content to create.

Speaker B: Yeah. So you know, your best, your best wisdom on that is going to be from your customers themselves or your ideal customers. So when you're engaging in product and, and listen, when you're at the beginning stages, the more one on one conversations you can have with your ideal buy buyers, the better. Because listen, I am not smarter than the marketplace. Ash. You're not smarter than the marketplace, our friend that's listening. You're not smarter than the marketplace. Ultimately it's the marketplace that will let you know what they're willing to exchange their dollars for if you can truly help them. And in, you know, once you have, you know, 40, 50, 100 sales conversations or validation conversations with your customers, you're going to figure it out, but probably not right away. And I know that frustrating to hear, but it's the reality. And anyone who tells you otherwise is just selling you a, uh, bill of goods. It's, they're selling you snake oil. It's just not the way that it works today. It's possible to get lucky. Um, but it's very much kind of like that, that you know, Jim Carrey. So you're saying there's a chance most of the time you're going to be stuck in, when you create a product, you're going to be stuck in the messy middle for a bit of time. And the messy middle is where you just have to get out there. You have to get a product, you have to get a product to the marketplace. It's, hopefully it's an mvp. So you haven't spent a lot of time and effort into it, but then you just, you get people's opinions on it and then based upon those opinions, you're probably going to evolve, you're going to iterate and you're also going to hear the concerns of and objections of your clients. That's going to give you really big clues on the content that you need to be creating. Now some of that content is going to go out on social media, some of that content you're going to put on your sales page, some of that content you're going to put on product pages, you're going to put on FAQs, help documents and you know, just everything that somebody, you know, if you, once you start figuring out, listen, I've only heard there's basically, you know, five main objections that I get and I can pre handle those objections so well now with my content or out on stages, that I'm just going to handle it there and then that information, that content, my audience is going to be exposed to it. So for example, if they say, well, I don't have any time to be a guest on podcasts, uh, I'm going to say That's a choice, right? And if you choose not to do that, and you hope that you could just build your business from behind your computer screen and just hang out and tweak stuff all day long, I'm just going to tell you right now, that's naive thinking. It really is, and I think most experienced business leaders would agree with me, is if you're the founder and you're responsible for growth, your job is just. You got to be the evangelist. You got to take it out to the marketplace. Someone has to lead the charge. And if you're not willing to do it, you better find someone who is, because you're not going to get rich just by hoping and wishing, you know, that that someone magically shows up, you're gonna. You're gonna have to work probably 10 times harder than you're expecting to drive that business. But when you get to the other side of it, it's gonna be all worth it. It's gonna feel, it's gonna suck at the beginning, but you keep at it, and you do what other people are not willing to do, right? And that's generally a personality trait that a lot of experienced entrepreneurs have, is they just have a tenacity and they have, you know, just a caliber of what good enough means that they keep on going when everybody else throws in the towel. It's hard, man. It's. It's really hard. But like I said, once you can get over the initial humps, it's a good gig.

Speaker A: Got it. Got it. So, Josh, throughout your journey and experience, then there must have been some valuable lessons learned. If you don't mind sharing, could you reflect on your experience and tell us about one mistake or a setback that you encountered along the way that you now consider not a regret, but a lessons learned. And additionally, what advice would you give our listeners based on this experience?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, look, you know, with our own core service, POD Verified, uh, you know, it's, uh, we started this process over a year ago to build it. I've got a really great audience. I've got a lot of, I dare say respect, uh, you know, in. In my space. And it's hard. It's hard to launch a product. The very first version of our POD Verified services, you know, it was okay. It wasn't great in terms of sales, and the market kind of gave me feedback when they said, well, I don't want to. I, uh, you know, and, and this is like, what you can't do is decide to, you know, you could build an MVP if you Want to, especially now, you know, with AI, to speed up the process. You know, it's not as, you know, challenging to, to get something, you know, so people can start playing around with it, but you're not really going to learn what people really want or your final product. It's going to take a little while. So we've been through a lot iterations, so today the product that we have is really good. It's really, it is so much better than it was a year ago. I mean, we were just guessing at this thing a year ago. But then, you know, I've had hundreds of sales conversations over the past year. Literally I have a pretty full schedule and I just kept getting little, these little bit, oh my gosh, like someone would just share an idea and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's brilliant. Yes, I need to do it like that. But mostly you want to find out are willing people, are people willing to exchange their money for this? And if not, why not? What you know, and it's like, well, you know, if I were to give you a magic wand and this is what I'm really good at, you know, what would it look like? You know, if, if you could just design how I could help you and how much it would cost, what do you imagine that that would look like? And you, you ask, you know, 40, 50, 60 people that question privately on one on one calls. Not on social media because people will lie to you on social media, but when you ask for their money and uh, a one on one call, you're going to get a completely different answer. So if you go on social media and say, I'm going to start a food truck, yay for me, isn't this awesome? People are going to be like, hey, awesome, yeah, go for it, you know, whatever. Because they don't want to make you look bad in front of people. At least a lot of your friends will, will kind of take that tone. But yeah, when, when you're asking for someone's money, that's a little bit different and you'll get valuable feedback and then you just iteratively improve on it. And it was really disappointing to miss it pretty badly on the first guess at uh, what the product would look like. But now we have a much better product, right? So like for podcast guesting, we're 100 performance based and we're able to do that because we know what our numbers are and we know what our numbers are is because we've done this enough times. So it's pretty easy for us now. You know, for someone that they want to enjoy all of our free tools, like, we've got a free AI press kit builder, we've got a free LinkedIn makeover tool, we've got a free, uh, media friendly website blueprint tool. And they're all at POD Verified. I don't need your money. I don't. You know, I'll give you a free Pod Verified score as well, so you can see exactly what types of shows you should be targeting. Stop wasting your time sending pitches to, you know, the top podcasts out there. That, that's not how that works. You know, you, you have to work at your level and you earn your way up. And, you know, again, the more you're just out here circulating with people, talking with other leaders, yeah, your, your, your product will definitely evolve. But yeah, to answer your question, it's, it sucks. Messy middle is always a pain. It's just emotionally taxing. Uh, you're like, oh, I invested all this time and effort in this thing and now people don't want to buy it. No, they don't want to buy that. They want, they like you. They have, they still have a problem. It's just like you're not quite meeting them where they want and maybe their expectations are unrealistic. You're gonna have to be creative sometimes, but you'll figure it out.

Speaker A: So I think we are good to move to our next section, which is the Quick Fire round. I've got six quick Fire, uh, questions for you at any stage. If you feel like you don't want to answer one of them, just give me a skip and then I'll move on to the next one.

Speaker B: Okay, sounds good.

Speaker A: Great. Question number one, what are the top three strategies to generate leads in 2026?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, number one, go get on podcasts. Uh, if you're really new, you're probably going to want to use a platform like PodMatch, which is great for brand new podcasters and brand new guests. We've launched over 300 shows and it's usually a pretty great way to get your first 20, 30, either guests or shows. But just know that they're all generally very, very small. A lot of times, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of a newbie. You know, the podcaster is going to be kind of a noob. So, you know, if you can get through that, it's kind of like doing open mic night at, ah, if you want to do stand up, good, go do it. You need to go do 20 open mic night. Sets and then you're going to start to get comfortable with it and then you can start looking at bigger shows where you would likely just be looking at building authentic, genuine one on one relationships with hosts. Don't send spam, don't pitch people right out of the gate. It's very uncouth. Podcasters hate it. Podcasters who have been around a bit of time get hundreds of pitches a month. You're, you're, it's going to be really hard for you to break through the noise. It's not your fault. Again, marketers ruin everything. Listen, I'm um, just going to stop there. I, I, Once you can, once you can be out there and you can get good at that, there's nothing, there is no better ecosystem on the planet for attracting business. I'm just going to keep it at number one. So I would say number two would be you could start a show. But that's a little bit more, there's a little bit more to that, that, but it's, and that's a longer conversation. Not in the speed round.

Speaker A: Indeed. What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

Speaker B: Yeah, Go Go. Read the Go Giver. If you resonate with a lot of what I'm talking about from a values perspective, then read the Go Giver by Bob Berg. It's, it's a super, super easy read. It's mostly just a story. But, but you'll, and, and the premise is fairly simple. But I need it, I need you to internalize this. And the book is very good at internalizing the values of being a Go Giver. How you do it. Then when you come over and you take a look at what we're doing with POD Verified, you'll see, uh, wow, this is a great way for me to be generous, giving and attract all of the business I want in a way that works for me, uh, and my lifestyle.

Speaker A: Great. Indeed. What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

Speaker B: Generosity. Right. So you can always tell a newbie, uh, business owner by uh, their, their energy. Right. So if you feel them with just a little bit of, uh, kind of frenetic kind of scarcity energy where they're kind of trying to go to their sales funnel a bit and they do it in a way where, where they're, you know, you, you could tell they're trying to move you toward a sale. You know, it's like the guy at the, at the mixer who's slapping business cards in your hand. Don't, don't be that guy. Like we all know, like experience. I mean unless you're working with other people at that level, then that's fine. Uh, but if you're trying to work with sophisticated business owners, have been around a little bit of time, just go 100 into generosity, you'll do a lot better.

Speaker A: What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

Speaker B: Well, today is Claude, but I don't want to spend because I know we're in speed round. But uh, just uh, step one is using a good AI tool. Step two, starting to organize things into project. Step three, get those projects and your AI connected to everything else you're doing through APIs and the, the, the other connectors. I, I forget what the name of it is. Yeah, just get, get your AI communicating with all of your existing systems and dear God, that is going to make your life a lot easier. MCP. MCP. So again, start small and, and, but ask your AI and start learning about APIs and MCPs where it really connects with your existing systems. Like so. My, my Claude now looks at my transcripts for all my calls, helps me construct all of my emails, gives me notes because I record bomb bombs, video bomb bombs to everybody that I have a call with. Uh, so that is so much easier and my output is so much better today as a result of that.

Speaker A: What's a new or a crazy business idea you would love to pursue if you had time?

Speaker B: No, nothing I there. I do not want to pursue any other businesses right now. I'm good. Are you kidding? Absolutely nothing. I'm already doing it and I don't need any shiny objects. Now that said, I love creative stuff, but that's not a business album. Um, that's not necessarily a business plan.

Speaker A: Got it, got it. What's an interesting or uh, fun fact about you that most people don't know?

Speaker B: Let's see. That most people don't know. I got married to my wife or I got engaged to my wife after knowing her for 21. On day 21, day 20 of knowing her, I asked her to be my wife and we've now been married for over 30 years. We'll be 31 years in just a couple of months. And uh, and, and, and our success really is because you have two people that are committed to working on themselves individually.

Speaker A: Wow, that's, that's huge. I mean nowadays 21 days, people don't even tell their real names after three.

Speaker B: I know, I know. Right? Right. No, we met when I was a Navy, I was a sailor in, in the, in, in Hawaii and we met At a luau. And, uh, you know, she was a tourist. I was stationed there. And, uh, yeah, we just spent a lot of time together. And I'm like, this girl's flying back to the mainland. I'm not going to let her get away. And, you know, thankfully, it kind of worked out.

Speaker A: So perfect story. Great stuff. Great. Josh, thank you so much, uh, for joining me and sharing your story. Unpacking last years of building different businesses and some of the ups and downs. Before we go towards the end, I have this new section on my pod, which is what would you like to ask to your next to the next guest on our show? Now, they have. The previous guest has asked one question, which I'm going to ask you, but before I ask you that question, I would like to ask you, what would you ask next guest on our show?

Speaker B: Yeah, why are you. Why are you podcast guesting now? And why. Okay. And then you ask. Well, they'll give you an answer. You say, well, why do you want that? Well, why do you want that? And that is honestly one of the best exercises to do to get in touch with our core motivations. And if we. If you have someone that's willing to be honest with you, once you go through, you know, three, four, five, why's. It's. It's really kind of a compelling exploration.

Speaker A: Uh, perfect. I have noted it down. And then here is the question for you from our previous guest. So the previous guest asked, if you are. If you are going to teach one component of being a successful salesperson, what would that component be?

Speaker B: M. Yeah, again, every. Okay, so in sale, I could. I could talk about this alone for an hour because I've done thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of sales calls, and I've coached clients to do this. The number one thing is you just have to be honest. If you. And think about, like, notes that you take while you are talking with someone, would you be willing to share those notes with the person that you're talking with? If you wouldn't, that means, you know, I know we've got, you know, kind of like, you know, goals and plans and that sort of thing. But, but transparency and honesty and just, I think, you know, appropriate disclosure is one of the most valuable things. You could just lay the cards out on the table. And if you are truly a generously minded person, people will know. They'll know you're not. Like I said, go. You know, kind of coming back full circle. You're not fooling anyone. So you may as well just be honest with everyone at all times. And when you don't know something, say, I don't know. And that makes you way more credible because I don't know a whole lot. But there's a few things I, I, I dare say I'm, um, you know, probably in the top 1% of the planet. And it's just because I'm a total nerd on those things and I obsess things on, like how to get results or how to make something happen. So there we go. How's that?

Speaker A: Indeed. Indeed. Perfect. Well, Josh, if people want to get in touch with you, they want to ask you any questions, they have money in their mind. What's the best way to do it?

Speaker B: Yes. So you could ask your AI about me. So who is Josh Elledge? What is pod verified? You could just go to podverified.com p o d verified with the, uh, you know, with at the end there with a D. Uh, there's a free. Get your free score. I'm always looking for great podcast guests. I've done 2,500 interviews. If you're a smart cookie and you know some things and you serve a business owner audience, please let me celebrate the great work you're doing. I've got over a hundred thousand folks on social. I'd love to promote your message too, if you share this, the kind of values that I've been talking about. I absolutely want to celebrate you on my show.

Speaker A: Awesome. Awesome. Josh, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your inspiring journey and the impactful work you're doing through, through the help you provide to the founders and entrepreneurs. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on founders podcast.

Speaker B: Thank you so much.