The Publishing Performance Show

Eddie Rice - Why Fiction Authors Are Missing Out on Podcast Goldmines

• Teddy Smith • Episode 102

Share episode

Eddie Rice is the founder of Eloquent Mind and author of the bestselling book "Toast: Short Speeches, Big Impact." With a background in PR and public relations, Eddie specializes in helping authors transition from invisible to in-demand through strategic podcast appearances and speech writing. His "Your Book, Your Voice" approach focuses on helping authors leverage their written expertise into spoken word opportunities, whether through podcast guesting, keynote speeches, TEDx talks, or virtual speaking engagements. Eddie believes that appearing on 100 episodes of other people's podcasts is far more effective than starting your own podcast with 100 episodes.

In this episode:

  • Why podcast guesting is more effective than starting your own podcast
  • The importance of positioning and finding your unique angle
  • How to research and find the right podcasts for your niche
  • Creating a compelling 2-3 page media kit that gets results
  • Specific strategies for fiction authors to get podcast bookings
  • The ladder method: starting small and building up to bigger shows
  • Live case study with Teddy demonstrating the consultation process
  • Tools and platforms for podcast research and content repurposing
  • How to maximize each podcast appearance through promotion
  • Building long-term partnerships with podcast hosts


Resources mentioned:

  • ListenNotes.com (free podcast directory with listener scores)
  • Rephonic (premium podcast directory - $99/month with detailed analytics)
  • Headliner app (for creating audiograms from podcast clips)
  • Blaze.ai (automated content creation and scheduling)
  • ChatGPT (for repurposing podcast content into blogs and social posts)
  • Commit Action program (high-leverage task prioritization)
  • Trust Me, I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday (PR strategy book)


Book Recommendations:


Connect with Eddie Rice:


Connect with Teddy Smith:

Support the show

Discover More with Our Curated Starter Packs: https://teddyagsmith.com/starter-packs/



[00:00:00] Teddy Smith: Hi everyone and welcome to the Publishing Performance Show. Today I'm really happy to be joined by Eddie Rice, who is the founder of Eloquent Minds, and he's also the author of Toasts Short Speeches, the bestselling book, and he is the person who's going to help you go from invisible to in demand as an author.

[00:00:21] So thank you for joining the show, Eddie. 

[00:00:24] Eddie Rice: Teddy, it's amazing to be here. Thank you very much for having me on. 

[00:00:26] Teddy Smith: No problem. We have to make sure we don't stumble over each other's names. 

[00:00:29] Eddie Rice: I know. They're so close. I've been called Teddy before. I've been called Eric. I, I've been called everything but my own name.

[00:00:37] Teddy Smith: Perfect. Well, thanks for coming on. Anyway, so today we're gonna be talking about your business eloquent mind, which essentially helps authors to. Become famous or become more well known in their industry, especially by appearing on podcasts. So you wanna give us a bit of a background about eloquent minds and how it works?

[00:00:54] Eddie Rice: Of course. So there's a few areas of eloquent Mind, as you said. First is just getting booked onto podcast, which I believe is one of the most underused under, appreciated efforts for getting your message out there as an author. Instead of starting your own podcast with a hundred episodes, I think it's far easier to go on at a hundred episodes of someone else's show and reach a hundred unique audiences to promote your work that you wanna reach.

[00:01:19] But I also help people out with speech writing where if you want to take the message of your book and turn it into a keynote speech, a TEDx talk. Anything like that, I can help you go from the initial idea to the draft, to the final product, to getting on stage booked as a speaker. So it's a lot of just taking what you have as an author, your written words, and translating them into the spoken word, whether that's a podcast.

[00:01:46] Speech writing or even social media presence as well. 

[00:01:49] Teddy Smith: Right. Okay. So when you are helping people to get, appear to appear on more podcasts, what are the sorts of strategies that you use to help 'em find the right podcast to them? I. 

[00:02:00] Eddie Rice: The very first thing that you have to do is really get your positioning down.

[00:02:05] And I know this sounds a little bit backwards or you know, and maybe it's not a step that people always think about, but you want to think about who you are in the marketplace. I. And what unique offering you're going to be able to teach a podcast audience. Mm-hmm. And what I mean is, you know, this is kind of a fancy way of knowing your brand, but I really like the word positioning.

[00:02:26] Yeah. Because what it allows you to do is say, this is how I'm different from other people who are trying to talk about the same topic. And then that gives you an edge in figuring out a. The right podcast to go onto, and B, the actual pitch that you make to the podcast show's host. In order to get on, you wanna have that differentiator inside your pitch so that they say to themselves, okay, this is the 10th person that reached out to me about social media, but this person finally has a unique and fresh take.

[00:02:56] I want this person on my show and not those other 10 people that are just gonna gimme the same three tips. That everyone else does. 

[00:03:02] Teddy Smith: Yeah, that's a really good point, because it's actually what you did to come on this show. Uh, you know, one of the main things that I get, you know, I get a lot of people messaging me saying, oh, can I come on the show?

[00:03:12] And the ones that really stand out to me are the ones that have got an angle or like a reason for appearing on the show. And you don't, I, I found you don't just have to have one reasons to come on the show. Maybe you've got three things you can talk about. But when people have done that. That's really stood out to me and helped me to book people.

[00:03:29] 'cause I can see, okay, I want this person to speak about, for example, appearing on podcasts like you've messaged me about. 

[00:03:35] Eddie Rice: Oh, no doubt. I come from a PR background, so angles are my bread and butter. When you're thinking about a new story, having a particular angle or a client having a particular angle that you wanna pitch for a new story, it's that unique edge that you give.

[00:03:49] And if you, the more of those that you can have, the more angles, the more ways that you can differentiate yourself, the better you are going to be when you are pitching that host and finding the right show, because they're gonna automatically think, oh, this person did their research. They match my show, they match my audience and they have something fresh and unique to actually talk about.

[00:04:09] Yeah, and so that's exactly what we go for in the media kit that I put together with people is it's not just your bio and your social media profiles and all that fun stuff, but we come up with the actual 10 angles. I. That you're going to choose from to pitch. And we put those directly into the media kit when I'm working with someone so we can ensure that the host knows those angles.

[00:04:29] And also, it's a great area for questions that come up during the show too. So it's a perfect match and it's a step that people seldom take. They just fire off random emails saying, can I come on your show? They wonder why they're not getting accepted on the podcast. 

[00:04:44] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Now, how do you get people to, how do you find the right podcast to appear on?

[00:04:49] Have you got a way of getting those leads, or is it just a case of scrolling through social media to find the right ones? 

[00:04:55] Eddie Rice: It really depends on what your budget is. I think if you have a kind of low budget and you don't have a lot of, you know, extra money lying around, I think Listen Notes is the very first place that I would go.

[00:05:06] Listen notes.com. Mm-hmm. And it's got a whole database of podcasts that you can search for free along with a listener score, similar to a Nielsen rating for a podcast. So you can see, okay, how well known is it within that niche, how you know. Difficult or easy of a show? Is it going to be to get on, is it one of those mega shows or is it one of those medium shows, or is it a new show?

[00:05:32] That's great to start, but if you want to take it one level up, I would definitely, look into the more, expensive podcast directories like Raf, where you can get listeners show data. On a show, so you can know its demographics, you can know listener numbers, you can know, host outreach, contact information, and anything else that you would wanna know about the show.

[00:05:55] I think Rafik starts at maybe $99 a month. So that prices it out of the price range for a lot of people. Unless you just sign up for the free trial and use it for one month, which is definitely a way to go with it. I apologize to Rafik for all for saying that, but it is a method that you could do.

[00:06:11] Just sign up once, get your podcast list, download it. And then cancel the subscription just like you do for Netflix or Amazon Prime when there's nothing left to watch. 

[00:06:19] Teddy Smith: Yeah. I should, I should sign up for a phonics and let everyone just use my account or something. 

[00:06:24] Eddie Rice: That's exactly what I do. It's built into the price structure so I have access to it and can use it for different clients.

[00:06:30] Mm-hmm. And, I can leverage it that way rather than just using it for myself to find podcasts to go on to. I can, you know, help others and just do the research for them, and that's definitely one of the services that I help provide too. Nice. 

[00:06:43] Teddy Smith: Yeah, li list notes is good. I, I, I followed my own podcast on there so I can see that it's like top 5% in the world, which is amazing when I think about it, that it's got to that point.

[00:06:53] Eddie Rice: That is amazing. Congratulations. 

[00:06:55] Teddy Smith: Yeah. So with, when you are that, that one pager that you put together, what sort of information should we be putting on there as authors to try and catch the eye of podcasts Hosts? 

[00:07:06] Eddie Rice: Of course. So honestly, I make mine more than one page. It's kind of like that rule with resumes where people say, or CVS over in England, where they say, oh, you should only have one page.

[00:07:15] But as you get more advanced in your career, you go to two to three pages with your resume so you can look more, respectable and authoritative. So here it's really more of a two to three page media kit, but what I'd like to do is one, include high quality headshots. Yep. That's incredibly important because this stuff is gonna be put onto social media.

[00:07:33] It's gonna be put onto YouTube, it's gonna be put onto websites. You want to invest in some great headshots. So reach out to someone local to you who can match your style and match who you are as a photographer and get them to dos, session of headshots in an afternoon, and you can reuse those for your website, your own social media.

[00:07:53] It's probably one of the best investments you can make. And then two, you wanna start off with what I call your short bio and your long bio, your short bio. You write that in the third person, and that's the bio that's going to be read on air just like you did for me today. And then the longer bio can be about two to three paragraphs, and that's really just for the host to read.

[00:08:13] It's to understand who you are, your experiences, and to see if you are a fit for the show. I then follow up with suggested topics, angles, and questions for the host. And this is something I think people are a little bit apprehensive about. They're just like, I don't wanna script my interview. But that's not it.

[00:08:30] You're just giving suggested ideas and suggested topics to steer the conversations so that the host doesn't have to do all the heavy lifting on their end. You are a partner with them. Then of course you wanna highlight your online reach, and this scares some people too because they say, look, I'm just starting out on social media.

[00:08:48] I'm just starting out with my email list. What do I have to offer this host for promotion? What you do is you highlight your best channel. I. Whether that's your website traffic, your email list, or your best social media channel, just highlight the one with the highest engagement rate, the highest numbers where you're going to promote your work, and just being honest about that is great for the host.

[00:09:11] Most just wanna know that you're going to share the episode afterwards in some way. It doesn't have to be, oh, I've got a hundred thousand. You know, Twitter followers, and I'm gonna promote it to all of them. That's great if you've got that number, but not all of us do. And it's, you just wanna go with the, you know, the, the piece that is the best to sell yourself.

[00:09:30] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:09:31] Eddie Rice: And then of course, if you've got a book, if you've got a product, if you've got a service, put it in there and describe it. So show the, you know, the book cover the mockup, the 3D image of it. And of course, have a separate file for all the other downloadable files like your headshots and your book cover and things like that.

[00:09:49] And then, of course, this last part, too many people forget it, but your contact information, please, please, please put your email in there, your phone number if you're reachable by phone. And then of course, all of your social media handles that you want the host to get to along with your website. People forget to put this in there and they send it off to the host and they wonder why they don't hear back.

[00:10:09] It's because they can't find the contact information for this great guest. So please, please, please make sure you put your contact information at the end so that the host can reach out to you. 

[00:10:19] Teddy Smith: Yes, I get a lot of people contact me and then, you know, they haven't put the right thing down to get back in touch with 'em or, you know, they, they message me on Instagram and it goes to my requested folder.

[00:10:27] So I dunno how to get back in touch with them. 

[00:10:30] Eddie Rice: I know. It's, it's, it's such a simple step and I. Honestly, like it's the easiest thing to do, but we forget it too often. We just assume that they'll get through to us. Or even if we just give our email out, those follow up emails can go to spam pretty easily.

[00:10:45] I've lost things in spam before that should not have gone there. The automation is not perfect in Gmail and that's just, you know, unfortunate when it happens. Yeah. 

[00:10:54] Teddy Smith: Now a lot, a lot of people who listen to this are that we've got a mixture of fiction and non-fiction authors. And so the people who are fiction authors 'cause it, it sounds like most of the work you do is with non-fiction people, but for people who are fiction, what sort of angles do you think they could use to approach some of these podcasts with some great talking points?

[00:11:09] I. 

[00:11:11] Eddie Rice: The first thing to do, I think about fiction a lot when I, and you're a hundred percent right. I do work with a lot of nonfiction authors just lends itself to a lot of public speaking, a lot of TED talks, a lot of keynotes and things like that. But for fiction authors, I've definitely put some thought into this as well.

[00:11:26] And one thing that I know about fiction authors that a lot of other people don't is how much research goes into your fiction book, whether it's the time period that you're researching, whether it's a. Area of scientific research that you might be researching or a unique thing about our world. Well, you can take what you learned from that research and use that to get onto relevant podcasts that align with it and what you found out when researching your book, which I think is really cool to talk about.

[00:11:56] And then second. There are plenty of book recommendations and book type podcasts specifically for fiction authors and their genres. Whether you're talking about mystery books, detective thrillers, whatever category you're in, there's likely a podcast out there that has that genre. Taken care of. So it's really just a matter of doing a really good Google search of podcast plus your genre, and you should be able to come up with a good number of, you know, books and shows that fit for you as an author.

[00:12:33] And then third, people love talking about the creative journey. So there's a lot of podcasts out there on storytelling, on creativity, on how you come up with ideas as a writer. And those are really great places to showcase your process, your method, your creative approach, and you can get onto those podcasts as well.

[00:12:51] So fiction authors, you're not left out of this. If you wanna talk it through with me, we can come up with a great plan to figure this out, but I just want you to know that I've got your back 100% and I know how tough it can be to find like the right podcast to go onto. I. This happened with me with my book Toast.

[00:13:07] Short Speeches, big Impact. I thought there wasn't going to be, you know, wedding Toast podcasts or wedding podcasts. And sure enough there were, there was probably about 15 that I was able to go on, to promote the book and it was a perfect match and I loved doing that. But it was only through searching and researching that I figured out where that could go.

[00:13:26] And then I found other podcasts that were similar for storytelling for Speechmaking that it worked on as well. So adjacent podcasts are a really good tool to use as well, where you say, look, I'm not the perfect fit. I'm just a good fit. I'm gonna go ahead and pitch this one anyways. 

[00:13:42] Teddy Smith: Great. And do you have any tips for how you'd approach po uh, you know, a smaller podcast versus say you wanted to get onto one of the big ones?

[00:13:50] Do you have a different approach that you usually follow? 

[00:13:53] Eddie Rice: It really depends on where you are as an online author and your promotional efforts for yourself, your platform, as we call it, which is just your overall brand, your overall reach, who you're able to, you know, get in touch with in your network. But for a lot of people who are just starting out, I recommend what's called the latter method, where you start with small podcasts to get your feet wet to figure out, okay, do I have my microphone set up correctly?

[00:14:18] Is my camera set up correctly? It's, you know. I don't wanna say practice, but in a way it is. It's effortful, deliberate practice where you're still showing up doing your best, knowing that you know, this is not the Joe Rogan Show or Kylie Kelsey. Instead, it's just getting your feet wet, knowing how the things work.

[00:14:36] And then once you have those few initial podcasts, that might be smaller audiences. You create a lot of promotional material around them. You can repurpose them for YouTube shorts, YouTube videos, blog posts. You get that really good base of promotional material. Well, then you pitch another level up. So maybe you're pitching a podcast with a thousand listeners, and now you're gonna pitch one with 3000 listeners.

[00:14:59] Then you do the same thing. You put on your best effort, put on your best show, and then you pitch another podcast that's a little bit higher up after that show. And the initial wins from those smaller podcasts build into larger ones, and you can just ladder up, very much in the same way. News media stories are done.

[00:15:19] They, they're typically first started off on a small blog or a small local station, and then they get bumped up to a regional station and then finally make the national news. For a really good way of learning about that. You can, read Ryan Holiday's book. Trust me, I'm Lying. And he lays out that entire process from a PR perspective of trading up stories.

[00:15:39] I just use it for podcasts and it's a little bit more ethical than what he was doing in that story, but he's still a fantastic author, fantastic guy, and changed a lot over time. But definitely read, trust me online to see how it kind of works behind the scenes with, news stories and then use the same method.

[00:15:56] For podcasts. 

[00:15:57] Teddy Smith: Right. Okay. That's, I've never, I'll have to go back to that approach because I've read some of Ryan holiday's books and they're really good, but I haven't read that one. So, that could be interesting thing to follow. So you're kind of looking at his way of. Basically he is addressing your own experiences to try and get out there a bit more.

[00:16:12] Eddie Rice: Very much. It's one of his earlier books. I wanna say it was his first book, possibly if not his second. And it's not a lot of book, not one that many people know about. 

[00:16:21] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:16:22] Eddie Rice: I think they're very much familiar with the ego is the way, or the obstacle is the way, excuse me. The obstacles of the Way is the quote, is the title of the book.

[00:16:30] Yeah. And then the Ego is the Enemy, I think is the other book. Yeah. That's really popular by his, I may be flubbing these, we'll have to redo 'em, but at the same time, they're fantastic books. I love his work and I'm definitely on his, mailing list. It's definitely one of the best ones out there.

[00:16:43] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Nice. So what I thought would be good to do today is I want to appear on my podcast myself. So I thought maybe it could be quite cool to use me as a case study so that we could help people who are listening to put some of the things into action, but then also go and speak to you afterwards about how you can help them.

[00:17:00] So what, what I'll let you do shall I, shall I let you, ask me some questions and then we can maybe go from there? 

[00:17:07] Eddie Rice: I think that would be perfect. Great. 

[00:17:09] Teddy Smith: Well, why don't you 

[00:17:10] Eddie Rice: start as if 

[00:17:10] Teddy Smith: like how we would start off. 

[00:17:12] Eddie Rice: Of course. So Teddy, thank you for getting in contact with me. I understand that you want to get onto more podcasts to build your profile.

[00:17:20] And can you tell me a little bit more about, let's start with your goals. I. What are your goals in terms of getting onto podcasts and what it is that you want to promote when you get on them? 

[00:17:30] Teddy Smith: Yeah, so I, I want to go on small podcasts so that I can speak to, to promote myself as a, as a person so that I can get more listeners to my podcast and also, get more people to,

[00:17:42] get in touch with me and, book me for, speaking engagements and things like that. I'd also like people to eventually use my software as well, which is publishing performance, the ad platform software. And I think I'd like to drive people back to my podcast and also to software as well. I. 

[00:17:58] Eddie Rice: Of course.

[00:17:59] It sounds like you've got a few goals going on here. I heard speaking engagements. Yep. I heard getting listeners for your own podcast and then of course I heard the, awareness and downloads for your publishing platform. Can you tell me a little bit more about that platform? I know about the first two a little bit.

[00:18:14] I. From your website and of course being on your podcast, but tell me more about your publishing platform. What does it do? What, how does it help people? What, what are the ins and outs of it? So it 

[00:18:23] Teddy Smith: is, Amazon advertising platform and it uses AI to basically be your Amazon ad account manager. So it helps authors to sell their books by plugging in their KDP account and running their ads for them using ai.

[00:18:35] Eddie Rice: Oh, that's fantastic. You just hit on a few things right there. Amazon ads, digital marketing, ai. I'm already starting to see which angles we may be able to go through to pitch you onto certain podcasts, or at least how to narrow down some of the research. So what I'm thinking right now is it's probably going to be a, a dual strategy where some of your shows are gonna focus more on.

[00:19:01] What you're doing with your podcast, whereas other shows are gonna be focused more on. The software itself. And then of course, speaking engagements can come out of either of those. And then one thing we can look into that would really be a really great compliment for your skills are virtual speaking conferences, where you can get booked.

[00:19:21] You don't have to fly anywhere. You don't have to be on a stage. You just do a virtual zoom session essentially with conference attendees and you can get in there. So I'm thinking about that as well, to help you out when we put our plan together. But let's talk about a few things. One thing that hosts really love when you go onto their shows is what you can teach their audience.

[00:19:40] And this is how I frame almost all of my pitches, everything that I put in there. It's not about you, it's really about these podcasts. Audiences that you want to reach. So what would you say are the top three things that you can teach an audience that they've never heard before? 

[00:19:56] Teddy Smith: So firstly, I think Amazon ads.

[00:19:59] I'm a like an experts in Amazon ads, I would say. So I can teach them about some of the best practices for Amazon ads, especially for authors. I could talk about. Using AI for Amazon ads and how you can, use AI to make your ads very straightforward. And I think that's a quite an interesting topic at the moment.

[00:20:16] You know, everyone's talking about ai, so I think that's a good topic. And I think I can also talk about using, other types of book promotions. So not just selling on Amazon, but create, using things like your website and newsletter to sell your books for you. 

[00:20:30] Eddie Rice: So as an author myself, I think one of the things that I ran into, and this is just a personal aside, is that it's really hard to track book sales.

[00:20:38] Yeah. And Amazon ads to an extent. Knowing if. If I do x, Y result happens with my ads, I can do this with my website really well with AB testing, UTMs trackable metrics. I can see the whole kind of user flow, but Amazon hides that from me. Is there any way that your tool or software can. Help us out with the tracking piece, or at least getting a better picture of what our efforts are doing to drive sales and to drive marketing.

[00:21:07] Teddy Smith: Well, the tool can track your, sales that come directly from Amazon ad results. We can't really track your sales if they come from external marketing like Facebook ads, for example. 'cause Amazon doesn't really let you see that data. They're pretty, they're pretty, they, they, they're a bit of a gatekeeper when it comes to their data.

[00:21:23] They don't really let see it.

[00:21:25] Eddie Rice: Okay. That's fantastic. And so this is a really great start, Teddy, to be honest. And I would love to send a follow up questionnaire to get into more of the angles. But I'd love to hear about your background, your why. Hosts love to hear this. They wanna hear your origin storage very much like in a Marvel movie.

[00:21:41] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:21:42] Eddie Rice: So what motivated you? What's your, what's your reason for, for doing all of this? Why do you get up in the morning for your podcast? Why do you get up in the morning for your software? What's 

[00:21:53] Teddy Smith: driving you? I think the main, the main thing driving me is to not having to go back to a corporate job again.

[00:21:58] It was a pretty straightforward one. I liked, you know, get, on online marketing and getting, getting my name out there. And so the, the best I, and I'm quite good at speaking, is people and things like that. So it, the main thing that was driving me was, you know, fear of going back to where I was before and then wanting to.

[00:22:16] Get out there and speak to people and help them, in the first place. So it's sort of the, the two things looking forward, and also fear of not going backwards. 

[00:22:23] Eddie Rice: Well, tell me a little bit more about that, because I think we've heard that story from many people over and over again, and I'm looking for a fresh angle to give to it.

[00:22:32] Um, what was your background? What was the type of job that you were doing, not necessarily the company, and what made it so unfulfilling, that you just had to get out of it? 

[00:22:41] Teddy Smith: I was a management consultant, so I was working, in the city of London doing quite. Yeah, doing things like, software testing and things like that and management consulting for banks and big retail companies.

[00:22:54] And the stuff I didn't like was, just doing really long hours of difficult work, but with very little reward and not finding it very fulfilling and, you know, not really being respected and or able to get promotions. There was lots of problems with like, just the amounts of. Just rubbish work. The who's doing rather than anything that was actually fulfilling.

[00:23:18] Eddie Rice: And I think that's one thing that we can tap into with the people that we wanna reach on these podcasts is that, you know, if you're an author, if you're a creator, you're doing meaningful work every single day. Or at least you hope that you are much more than most corporate jobs are. And I think that's one angle we can talk about is finding meaning in your work and how to.

[00:23:40] Promote that as a creator so that you get paid for it, because it may be that your work is meaningful, but you can't use that to pay the rent. Um, so instead it's really about how do we make meaning, but also how do we make money at the same time from that meaningful work? So I'm thinking about that as well as a possible avenue.

[00:24:00] That we could go down. 

[00:24:01] Teddy Smith: Great. 

[00:24:02] Eddie Rice: And then just one more question, before we finish this off. This would normally take, you know, at least an hour. Yeah. Uh, if I was talking to a client, but we're doing it in a truncated version. Uh, tell me about your online reach. What's your mailing list look like approximately?

[00:24:15] What does your website traffic look like? What does your social media presence look like? What's your best platform? What do you, what can we sell to the podcast host for promotion efforts? 

[00:24:24] Teddy Smith: Yeah, so my newsletter is about five and a half thousand people at moment, and then YouTube is about 2,700. And then, the other social medias are around, I think Instagram's around 800 and then others are about the same.

[00:24:39] Um, but probably YouTube and newsletter are my main outreach. Plus this podcast reaches quite a few thousand people as well, so. 

[00:24:45] Eddie Rice: Oh, that's fantastic. That's gonna be perfect to pitch a, a, a host in terms of the promotion efforts. And because you are a content creator as well, they'll have, no doubt in knowing that you know how to create audio content.

[00:24:58] You can create video content. You can create content for different platforms. That's going to be absolutely amazing when that show hits. You can create audiograms from the Headliner app. Yep. Or just short videos for YouTube, shorts or other platforms as well. They're going to love to hear that. 

[00:25:15] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:25:16] Eddie Rice: So Teddy, thank you so much.

[00:25:17] I think this is a great fit for us to work together. I would love to send over a proposal and a few more questions if you'd be open to it. And I'd love to work with you 100%. Great. 

[00:25:26] Teddy Smith: Well, I love how much information you pulled out there in just a short amount of time. Um, like even just thinking about those different angles and the way we could approach those conversations, that's super valuable for, for authors.

[00:25:37] Um, thank you. What, for authors who haven't got so much of a reach, so I mean, my reach is relatively small, really, but people might be even just starting out, have you, what, how would you, help them? How can people provide that value, uh, you know, to the podcast host? What's the best way to standing out of standing out there?

[00:25:55] Eddie Rice: Well, I'm in that same boat, to be honest. What happened with me is that, when I released Toast, it was right at the end of COVID. And I didn't have a full-time employed job at the time. I was still looking and I got that job and it took up all of my time to where I couldn't promote the book. I couldn't grow my social media presence, and I'm really starting from scratch all over again.

[00:26:17] So one thing I'm experimenting with is paid traffic. I know a lot of people love the idea of organic traffic, but one. Google's algorithm has changed so much from even just a few years ago to where organic traffic is a lot harder, and even the social media algorithms, you have to pretty much play their game.

[00:26:37] And one of that is through paid advertising or boosted posts. Organic reach on social media platforms is incredibly low, so what I would suggest for you as an author. Um, and someone who's trying to grow their audience is experiment with very small paid ad promotions and paid social boosting promotions.

[00:26:56] We're talking $25 at a time, $50 at a time. There's plenty of tutorials out there. I love the ones from digital marketer.com on how to do it, but you essentially are going to have to pay to get your reach, and I know this is not the thing everyone wants to hear. I tell the truth a lot of times and it's, you know, it would be great if all of the algorithms behaved and all the GRA greatest organic content, the best content got out there.

[00:27:23] But that's not the name of the game. The name of the game is paid promotion. So if you've got a small audience, you can say, look. To the podcast, host. I can put paid promotion behind this, in X amount of dollars to get it out onto various social media platforms and to grow my audience as I grow with yours.

[00:27:41] And I think a lot of them are going to say, okay, that's, that's enough for me. That that would be great for you to do that. And then of course, at the end of the day, please focus on building your email list. That is the single best seller of books. It's the biggest seller of client services. It's something that the algorithms can't mess with, and you'll always have it no matter if a platform gets banned if they change their algorithm overnight.

[00:28:05] You still have your email list of engaged subscribers at the end of the day. That's the first place to start. After that experiment with paid advertising and paid search to get traffic to your website and then of course, still build up your organic content, but know that it takes a much longer time. To get that rolling and to get it moving and to maintain it with Google and all of the other algorithms out there.

[00:28:29] Teddy Smith: Yeah, so once you've had, once you've appeared on podcasts, and especially if you're new and maybe you don't have that reach, what's the best way of making the most of that podcast episode being released? 

[00:28:39] Eddie Rice: What you wanna do is have a promotion plan ahead of time. And it really depends on how much time you have and what content you like to create.

[00:28:49] So one app that I mentioned earlier was headliner. 

[00:28:51] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:28:51] Eddie Rice: And what it'll do is it will take your podcast. Transcribe it and then use AI to figure out some of the best snippets. And then you can create audiograms out of it. So those social media posts with the waveform on them that, bounces up and down with the, subtitles.

[00:29:07] It'll create them automatically for you. And then you just gotta do a little bit of editing for what you want it to look like. And then you've got promotional materials. But then of course, I'm a fan of chat, GBT. In using it to repurpose content, not to create something from scratch. 'cause it's horrible at that.

[00:29:23] But if I give it a transcript from a podcast. And ask it, take this transcript and give me five different blog ideas that I can create out of it. Well, I've just got a new idea for a blog that I can also put the podcast into, as a way to enhance the content. And then of course, you can ask it to repurpose it for.

[00:29:43] Other social media platforms, you can say, Hey, what would be 5 140 character messages that I could create out of this podcast? Or 280, given the new limits on other platforms. But the idea is, is that you wanna take that podcast. I. Repurpose it into other platforms that you have. I'm also a fan of the tool blaze.ai, which I just found where it will do a lot of the automated AI work for you when it comes to content creation.

[00:30:11] And then even schedule your posts, schedule your blog posts on WordPress and your various social media platforms as well. So it's about working smarter, not harder, and not taking 20 hours to repurpose content. But instead, maybe one hour instead. That's probably the best tip that I can give. Look for the tools that are out there.

[00:30:31] Sign up for the free trials, try them out, see if it makes things faster, and then go from there. 

[00:30:37] Teddy Smith: Yeah, that's great advice. Now, who are the sort of typical people that you want to be working with you, and also, once you've found those people, what does starting work with you look like? 

[00:30:47] Eddie Rice: So I've said this in a few podcasts before, and I, I, I don't want to come off as mean or angry.

[00:30:53] Um, but there are certain people that have certain personalities that don't work with me. If all you're going to do is just give orders and expect me to just, you know, drum up work within 24 hours and to give you the final piece of. A speech product or podcast research without a conversation, without a back and forth, without a true partnership, we're just simply not gonna work well together.

[00:31:16] So it's really those people that are in it for the long term that want that long term relationship with me to take their ideas and spread them out into the world because podcasting or guest podcasting. Is not a one and done type thing. You're not just gonna go on to Joe Rogan tomorrow and be famous.

[00:31:32] It doesn't work that way unless you've got a ton of money and you're already famous and then at this point you probably just don't need me. But for everyone else out there, um, you have to play the long game, and that's going to be us working together over several months to put together a plan, a strategy, and to track metrics and to see what's working and what's not.

[00:31:54] I think I went on to maybe. 35 podcasts with my book Toe. Short Speeches, big impact. And it wasn't until maybe Podcast 15, podcast 20 that I felt comfortable in what I was saying and that I started to see results from those podcasts. So it's very much a long-term thing, and so is public speaking. You're not just going to get a $10,000 speaking fee right off the bat.

[00:32:17] You may have to speak for free. You may have to speak to an audience of one. Sometimes. Right now I have a webinar that I'm trying to get signups for and I've got one guest registered so far, so we're gonna see what goes on with that. I gotta change my strategy and how I'm marketing, but it's just a long road if you wanna do these things that end up getting you paid in the end.

[00:32:36] But just know that you don't become famous overnight. Instead, it's a long haul game of slowly building audience, building trust, and in the end, working with someone who can be your partner, help you stay accountable and make it all happen with you. 

[00:32:53] Teddy Smith: Yeah. It is this. It's what you were talking about before we came on the show.

[00:32:56] Having that accountability partner, I think is one of the biggest drivers of success. You know, someone who can look at what you're doing. Are you doing the right tasks? Are you completing them? When you say you're going to, making sure you're staying on track, I think that's super important. 

[00:33:08] Eddie Rice: Very much. One of the things I've learned, uh, through a program called Commit Action is that you want to be doing the most high leverage tasks in a week to get towards your goals.

[00:33:19] So that might mean for some people not posting on social media, but instead emailing their newsletter list. It might mean instead of creating a YouTube video that you're pitching 15 podcasts and you're getting that done before you do anything else. Or instead of creating 20 blog posts, you create one really great one and then go promote it.

[00:33:38] So you wanna have someone who can kind of check what your weekly activities are and say, you know what? These three are gonna be your highest leverage, and these other three are gonna be your lowest leverage. So let's wait on those and let's do the highest leverage ones first. And that's what's gonna get us results in the end if we do those consistently.

[00:33:56] Teddy Smith: Yeah, definitely. Now this has been a great conversation. I've loved chatting about how to get onto podcasts. It's, I think a lot, I get a lot of questions about it. I get people ask me, you know, what do you want to see from, from people who want to appear on podcasts and authors and especially who want to come onto my show?

[00:34:12] And I think your advice about having those angles out there, I think that's really important. It makes you stand out loads. 'cause I get a lot of people who message me being like, oh, I've got a new fantasy book. And I'm like, okay, well what? What are you trying to do that fancy, but what are we gonna talk about when you come on the show?

[00:34:26] You know? So think about why it is you want to appear. I think that's really good advice and I think working with someone like you to really build that sheet out is gonna be really helpful. So thank you comments for coming on. It's been really helpful to hear about all those things. 

[00:34:40] Eddie Rice: Teddy, it's been absolutely wonderful.

[00:34:42] You're a great host and a great conversationalist and I enjoy this tremendously, especially doing the back and forth that we got to do in the middle of the show. It's just up my wheelhouse. It's something I love to do and honestly, you can schedule a free strategy call with me at my website and we can have that same conversation completely for free, and we'll figure out if we're a good match.

[00:35:01] Great. I wanna know that ahead of time with people. Just are we a good match? Are we gonna be partners together? Are we gonna make a good connection? And if not, I've got others I can refer you to. But I just wanna make sure that anyone that I work with, whether that's a podcast host, a podcast guest, an author that we just gel and that we match Yeah.

[00:35:19] And that we work well together. Those are the type of relationships that I wanna have with people. 

[00:35:23] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Perfect. So if people wanna get in touch with you, where's the best place for 'em to do that? 

[00:35:28] Eddie Rice: It is eloquent mind.co. So it's dot co. So it's eloquent mind.co. It's my main website and you can book the strategy session there.

[00:35:37] I've got a few online email courses that you can take for free. So it's 10 emails in a series. They're not short emails, they're fairly lengthy and they take you through whether it's getting booked onto podcasts. Putting together a keynote speech, whatever you want. It's just a free way to learn about me and what it is that I do in just a very easy way.

[00:35:58] It's email, no videos or anything like that. Nothing fancy, just straight text, but at the same time really informative stuff. And then of course, I've got a few books that I've got planned that release this year, whether it's on podcast guesting or how to be an author, entrepreneur. Or even how to turn your book into a keynote speech.

[00:36:16] Those are the three big goals that I have for this year, and I can't wait to tell everyone about them when they're ready. Fantastic. 

[00:36:22] Teddy Smith: Is this an exclusive, are you releasing the name of your book here or we have to wait for that? 

[00:36:26] Eddie Rice: Oh, no, I am not, these are very much in draft form. I apologize. I am not announcing, I'm not, you know, trying to do a Trojan horse and announce the release of my new book on a podcast.

[00:36:35] Instead, I just wanna let you know that if you wanna, you know. Get the first chapters if you want to, you know, watch me as I build the books, I'm gonna release parts of the chapters to my email list and a lot of the content that I create is gonna go into them. So if you wanna see the process of how the sausage is made from a nonfiction author, feel free to sign up for the email list as well.

[00:36:56] And I'll keep in touch and tell you, hey. Got this chapter done. Here it is. I'd love your feedback. That's really what I'm looking for here, more than trying to sell someone on something. 

[00:37:06] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for coming on. It's been great to chat to you. Now just before we go, I always ask everyone this question now.

[00:37:12] It's a book that you recommend that everyone should be reading. So this could be something that's helped you out or one that you are really enjoying reading at the moment. But what's a, what's a great book that you recommend everyone should be reading? 

[00:37:22] Eddie Rice: I go back to the road by Cormick McCarthy, 

[00:37:24] Teddy Smith: right?

[00:37:25] Eddie Rice: It's probably the best fiction book that I've ever read. In terms of its writing style, the story that it tells and the way that he tells it. I don't want to give anything away about the book. It's fairly bleak and dystopian, but at the same time. There are just moments where his writing just hits you, it stays with you.

[00:37:45] And I promise that if you read it to the end, you are, it's going to pay off immensely. 

[00:37:51] Teddy Smith: Great. 

[00:37:51] Eddie Rice: But, you know, carry the fire. You know, one of my favorite quotes from that book, the Road by Cormick McCarthy, and that's what I'm hoping to do here with authors is to help you carry the fire and get that message out to your audience.

[00:38:03] Teddy Smith: Fantastic. Well, it's been great chatting, Eddie. Thank you so much for coming on and, looking forward to speaking again soon. 

[00:38:08] Eddie Rice: Yes, very much. Teddy, thank you so much. 

[00:38:10] Teddy Smith: Right. Thank you so much for tuning into the Publishing performance podcast. I really hope you found today's episode inspiring. I love chatting to authors, writers, and people in the publishing world.

[00:38:20] Now, just before we wrap up, let me tell you about publishing performance, the number one platform for authors who want to increase Amazon book sales, but I'm not really sure where to start. Now, this show is all about helping you to sell more books. And if you are looking to boost your publishing game and to maximize your book's potential on Amazon, then publishing Formants is designed to help authors just like you to grow your readership and to reach a much wider audience.

[00:38:46] Now I know who the Amazon ads can be slightly complicated, which is why publishing Formants is like having a personalized ad account manager to create your ad campaigns. So choose your best keywords and to make adjustments in real time. Now, if you are investing in ads, you really want to make sure that your investment is being used effectively and publishing performance does just that It aims to make your budget go further, improve your organic rank, and target keywords more effectively.

[00:39:12] Just go to publishing performance.com to get started with Amazon ads for just $1.