Why You Need To Guest on Other Podcasts with Dustin Riechmann

Welcome to profits through podcasting, where we help health focused entrepreneurs generate leads and revenue for their business through podcasting. I’m your host, Joel Oliver, CEO of east coast studio. And today we are talking about podcast guesting. Now this isn’t you having guests on your podcast, but rather appearing as a guest on other podcasts.

It’s a very valuable way of promoting yourself and your podcast. Plus your business, gaining exposure to new audiences and growing your network. You don’t need to have a podcast of your own to actually do this. But being a podcaster naturally lends itself to podcast guesting. Since you are already comfortable being on camera and in front of a mic. And you’re likely connecting with other podcasters if you’re doing interviews already.

So if you are a podcaster, it is highly beneficial for you to also be making guest appearances. Today’s guest is going to walk us through everything that you need to know about podcast guesting. His name is Dustin Riekeman. He’s the founder and CEO of seven figure leap and specializes in helping mission driven experts.

Build seven figure brands by telling their story as podcast guests. Dustin has helped over 200 entrepreneurs at over $20 million in revenue through his profitable podcast, guesting strategies.

Hey, Dustin, welcome in.

Hey Joel, great to be here.

So you’re joining us as both an expert and a podcaster today, because you do run a business and you use a podcast as a marketing tool for that. But we also want to learn from you all about podcast guesting. So later in the show, we’re going to get to talk about your podcast and how you’re using that for your business, but we’ll get into the guesting side of things first.

So you’ve built this business seven figure leap. It’s around podcast guesting. Yeah. I want you to share the story of how you got there. Cause you had a business at one point that was struggling. You’re looking for a new way to reach potential clients. How did you realize that there was something lucrative here for both you and other entrepreneurs to go share that in terms of podcast guesting?

Yeah, absolutely. So, to kind of set the stage, so I became a partner and helped launch a company called Fire Creek Snacks. based on a central product. It’s a snack stick, a better for you meat stick, a healthy Slim Jim, as some people might say, right?

So, we got into this world and we were selling online and what that turned into is a lot of wholesale activity, meaning getting our product into brick and mortar stores. And so where that led us was through trade shows and something that was brand new to me, but in 2019 I went to a dozen trade shows.

So basically standing for four days on concrete floors, yelling at people as they’re walking by to try our snack stick. And we actually had a ton of success with that.

And that was all working great until this little moment in time, known as March, 2020

when I was, yeah, you remember that? so I was driving to Chicago from my home in ST Louis. To a trade show for Ace Hardware and I was like almost there and they said, Hey, the trade show has been canceled. I was like, this is weird, you know?

So I’m like, okay. So I turn around and drive home. And at this time, , I had fire Creek snacks that I was a partner in. I was doing all this traveling. And then I had my marketing business, which served a lot of online and a lot of local businesses, and so within the course of a couple of weeks, I lost about 80 percent of my revenue from my marketing business because Not only there was just uncertainty in general, but literally most of my clients were shut down.

like I had a dentist and a restaurant and a real estate broker and like people that were just literally shut down in our state. And so, that was rough. And then I had the Fire Creek Snacks thing where we were growing really well with this, with this toe to toe selling approach. And of course that was completely taken away.

And so, at that point in time, I was a avid podcast listener. I’d never even really thought about. Not having a show, but definitely hadn’t even thought about being the guest. But what I started to think about was like, how are some of these other brands that we really admire growing their businesses in addition to the channels that we were using and something that was common among every brand that we had sort of modeled our consumer package, a good health related business after was podcasting.

And I started to think, some of these companies are 10 million, a hundred million billion dollar companies and their founders are telling their story on podcasts that I listened to. And I’m like, there’s gotta be something to this. So summer 2020 on the, after reflecting and trying to figure this whole thing out, I pitched myself to the first podcast and.

Told the story of how I helped this local business bring a product online, which was very timely at this in this kind of COVID COVID zone that we were in. And they said, yes. And we sold some meat sticks and, I really fell in love with the medium and had created some great relationships and kind of the rest is history.

That that’s what brought me into podcast. Guesting was growing our fire Creek snacks business because I had to, because I didn’t know what else to do when I couldn’t travel and sell the way that we’ve been selling.

So you got into it yourself a little, saw that it was great. We’re getting some results there and then realize, okay, I can actually help other people with this. So let’s dive into the benefits there a little bit more. If you’re making the case to say a business owner, more specifically podcaster in the case of our audience, , why should we be making guest appearances on other podcasts?

Like what are the main benefits here?

Absolutely. I mean, I would say number one, if you’re already a podcaster and you’ve got your own show. I haven’t met one person that would disagree with this so far. Like the number one way to grow your own show is by being a guest on other people’s shows. And so as long as you’re choosing the right shows, the right sort of adjacency to the core thing that you teach, You know, podcast listeners are podcast listeners.

And so if they like this other show and they really like what you have to say, they not only may come and actually do business with you, because I mostly now work with coaches and consultants and agency owners, but if you have a podcast, they’re also very likely to come over and start listening to your show, or at least go sample it if they like what they heard on the initial podcast, because it’s all in the same medium.

They already have a podcast player. They’re just going to go add yours to their playlist. Right. So I think as a podcaster, Growth is the number one reason most people might start guesting. And then on the business side, I’m kind of drawing a line between these two, even though they obviously connect, there’s the podcast specific growth benefits, and then there’s, how do you sell more of your services, right?

So that whether again, coaching, consulting agency stuff, or even physical products, we could literally do a whole show. I think about like the benefits of podcast guesting. but some of the things I would just say at a high level are. Lead generation, clarity about your own story and your ability to, message effectively.

I think there’s a ton of benefit in the world of things like SEO and authority and credibility. the number one thing that most people don’t actually think about on day one. And I didn’t, I didn’t anticipate until I was like six months plus into this whole journey is actually relationship building.

So a lot of us like have this sort of I should have a bigger network. I should know more people. Like if I, if I was more well connected and I can get into these rooms or on these stages, like that would really make a big difference for my business. And we don’t know how to do it. And podcast guesting is like, to me, the ultimate shortcut to building those relationships at scale.

if that makes sense.

Absolutely. That’s a great thing about both podcasting and guesting because I’ve had this challenge where I’m wondering, how do I do that? Like you just mentioned, I know I should have a bigger network. How do I do that? I need more social media content. How do I do that? How do I do SEO? And if you just kind of focus on this realm of podcasting and guesting, it just takes care of all that for you in a much more streamlined way than trying to figure it out separately. So, Let’s assume we like that. We’re going to go ahead with this. We’re already podcasters, so we’ve got a microphone, we know how to sit here and get on Squadcast or whatever the case and do an interview. What is the next step there? Like, you mentioned identifying the podcast, the correct ones to be on and pitch.

Is that the next step or what do we have to think about next once we decide let’s actually do this?

Yeah, so it’s a great question. I think this is a great time to introduce my main framework and how we work with people. So seven figure leap like our tagline is we help mission driven experts grow seven figure brands by telling their story and the mechanism or the vehicle by which we do that is podcasting and specifically guesting to start.

And so everyone that we work with, we go through the same five steps. And what you just mentioned, which is like identifying the show is actually step two, step one, and I’ll, I’ll just say I’m real quick and we can unpack them a little bit more.  they’re all P’s, but step one is purpose. Step two is plan or research.

Step three is pitch. Step four is perform. And then the last step, which is my favorite and where we spend most of our time is profit. Like I am. Very focused on how to grow your business with podcast guesting and not just podcast guesting for podcast guesting sake. So the first step purpose is really getting clear and answering the question.

Why would I want to do this in the first place? Like what are the metrics I’m trying to drive? What are the results I really want for my business? who am I trying to reach? And what is the message that I want to focus on as I’m, as I’m reaching them? So it’s, it’s really the why and the who, right? And so that’s step one is getting really clear.

And that may seem obvious to people. I would say almost everyone thinks they know that, and then when they get in and they really start doing some work, working through some frameworks, like I’m a story brand guide, so we use some story brand tools, it’s like, oh, wait, like there’s actually a much better and more simple, clear way to say this, and there’s a much more direct And narrow audience that I want to reach.

But once we know who that is, then step two, which is plan or finding the right shows actually becomes really easy because once you know who you really want to reach and what you want to say to them, it’s way easier to pick a show.  as you probably experienced, Joel, people think. if only there were 10 podcasts that I could be on, they would unlock so much and then you find out there’s 1000 or 10, 000 and they realize there’s like way more opportunity than they could ever capture.

And that’s where we go back to narrowing our focus to make this as simple as possible. But once you know which shows you want to be on, you got that list of 10, 20. You know, 30 shows that you really want to be on. Step three is pitch. So that’s the very direct, but warm and cool way to reach out and show the host how you really want to add value to their audience and serve.

So that their yes basically becomes inevitable, right? This is probably extremely opposite of what most inboxes, like when people ask us for stuff, it’s not an ask, it’s, it’s very much a give. It’s like, here’s what I want to give your audience. Here’s what I think I can show up and really add value to you and your show and what you do.

Can I have that opportunity? Right. And that’s the pitch.

. So let’s say someone is kind of starting out with their business. Maybe they don’t have a big social media following. They have value to offer of course their expertise, but they pick their 20 they want to pitch and maybe some of those are a little bigger league and they’re kind of nervous.

Hey, maybe they’re not going to accept me just yet. Does that happen? And do we need to consider that in terms of how we pitch? Like maybe waiting until later to pitch bigger ones and starting smaller, or what, what do we need to consider there?

it totally depends obviously on where you’re at,  where you feel like you. are in your own journey, the credibility that you have in general though. Yeah, if you’re coming to me and you’re like, I know I want to do this, maybe I’ve dabbled in it. , but I’m not very confident yet. Like I just, I’m not, I’m not sure I’m ready to sit here and take questions from someone who I will have this nagging fear in the back of my mind that if I screw this up, it really is like, me.

So because of that, we often will say, Hey, make your list and we help people sort

that list. Right. And if, if you’re a beginner and you’re like, I want to get some reps in, I want to do it in a live setting, but I’m not ready to like push my chips in and really bet on myself yet. Cause I’m just not, I’m not there yet.

Then yeah, absolutely. Start with, with smaller shows. And if even that sounds intimidating, do mock interviews, but then, yeah, then the next step up from that is like, let’s do it live. Let’s get on a newer show.

Let’s get on a friend or a friend of a friend and something that’s very low pressure that, even if you messed up, which really never happens, but even if you messed up and you felt like you completely blew it. Not that many people are going to find out. It’s not that big a deal. So

Right. Yeah. Okay. That’s great. And one more minor thing there on the pitch section, before we move on. Curious if people are looking to do this, is there any sort of technology or website that you recommend for them? Like, how are they going out and actually finding these podcasts?

yeah, so that’s kind of in step two, which is the finding the shows. There are databases and matching services. There’s lots of technology that you can use. to be honest, we have a pretty high ticket program and the two tools we use are free. They’re Google and listen notes. If people aren’t familiar with list, listen, notes.

com, it’s basically. Google for podcasting. and so the, the simple way I’ll describe this is again, we’ve already in step one, define the niche target market you want to reach and we know what you want to share. So then when we’re looking for shows, we’ll put something into Google, like let’s say you are a ketogenic diet coach, right?

Like you have this, you have this niche expertise and you’ve got success either from your own story and or client stories. I might go look for top. podcast for ketogenic dieters 2024. And that’s going to in Google generate a lot of listicles like top 20, top 30, top 40. And with that, you can open up and very rapidly start to open a lot of new tabs with lots of different podcasts that you can start to see, Oh yeah, they only interview doctors.

This isn’t going to work. Or Hey, yeah, they interviewed a lot of athletes and I’m an athlete or Hey, they interviewed a lot of moms and I’m a mom and you can start to sort of get a feel pretty quickly for the types of People are featuring. And so that, that will give you some initial, podcasts to consider.

And we give people screening criteria and things, so you can really quickly sift and sort these. And then step two would be listen notes. So maybe you find a specific show that you think would be a good fit. You can go in listen notes as an example, and you could use it many ways, but one, maybe say that you feel like, man, that host is a lot like me.

maybe I won’t be on their show. Cause we’re very similar. But I would love to be on shows that they’ve been interviewed on because I know that we have a similar story. And so maybe I put Joel’s Joel Oliver’s name and listen to those and I go see where Joel’s been interviewed and I can see that in a snap and now I have a whole nother list of opportunities.

That I can piggyback on that sort of initial Google research.

Yeah, listen notes is a really, really useful tool. Okay, well, let’s move on. You take it to step number four, the perform.

Yeah. So basically now you’re, you’ve pitched them the host and they said, yeah, absolutely Dustin. I think you’d have a great value in that pitch. We’re actually going to include a bullet point summary of the things we want to talk about. so. In essence, when we show up for the interview, we pretty much know what we’re going to talk about.

So that takes a lot of the pressure off of this whole, like, Oh man, I got to think on my feet and be impromptu. You pretty much know what you’re going to talk about, which also the host loves. Cause they basically got an outline in advance. They don’t have to do show prep and all this stuff.  so anyway, when you get to the perform step, it’s really about how do you show up and be a compelling guest and, serve the audience and meet the goals that you set way back in step one.

And so you kind of think of an interview and a few different pieces. One that many people have a fear over and struggle with is the introduction. In many shows.

Hey, Dustin. Welcome to the show. Please introduce yourself. And that is such an intimidating, open ended question. So what we like to give people is basically that elevator pitch, that one or two lines that describes what you do, opens some curiosity loops, so it’s both clear and compelling. And you don’t have to, you know, it’s basically baked into you, so you don’t have to think about it on your feet., the point is if you have a nice, clear, repeatable introduction, then it sort Decreases the pressure in the room. It makes you feel comfortable. It makes the host feel comfortable.

And from there, the conversation can be much more natural. So you have introduction and at the other end of the interview, at the very end, you have your call to action. And so in every interview you do, you want to have a single clear call to action. Hey, if you’ve been listening to this and you’re really into what I taught today or you want to know more about the story that I shared, please do this next and give people one clear call to action.

So that’s kind of the beginning and the end. And then once those air set, the middle becomes much more, again, natural. It’s basically the content that you’ve already said you wanted to share. And with that, we’d like to tell a few. Key stories and we use a model and if people want to think of a story, they could tell about their company or about their business and the thing they love to do.

My thing is, if you have your own story, which many of us do, like of us, the reason we do what we do is because of our own story. So telling your own story in a compelling way, if you don’t have that, maybe do something that’s not your own personal transformation, then think of a client that you just love to talk about and brag about and use them.

And the key in telling a good story is always, it’s a one, two punch. It’s empathy and then authority. So if you weren’t interviewing about fire Creek snacks, but let’s say you said, Hey,  Dustin, like you had this great success story with fire Creek snacks. And I, and I told you sort of the empathy part, Hey, we had this thriving business, things were going really well and then COVID happened.

And so like, I know how it feels to have unexpected changes, lose your clients, lose your referral sources, and we kind of left it there. But this was about that story, I would have followed that by saying, and once I figured out podcast casting, Within six months, we were at a seven figure run rate.

We ended up in Walmart. We got a 550, 000 purchase order from the largest subscription box in the United States, all through podcast guesting. That is an interesting story. And just to contrast that, if I said, Joel, and you’re like, Hey, Dustin, tell me your story. I’m like, dude, we’re awesome. We’re in Walmart.

We got in the biggest subscription box in the country. You’d be like, you sound kind of like a pompous, you know, a hole, but if you leave with empathy and then you follow it with that authority. Then it’s a powerful story. So as people are thinking about perform intro one compelling story, and some teaching moments and then call to action,

And so like we talked about a bit of practice kind of making you comfortable with actually doing this. So something I want to touch on here is you mentioned when you pitch, you can actually include some topics that you would like to discuss, how would that look? Could that be questions as well?

Cause I know this is something people could be nervous about is what if they ask me something? I don’t know. What to say, or I don’t know how to answer. And that will come with the practice. But yeah, if you could just talk a little more about that.

Yeah. So backing up to the pitch. I mean, it’s, if you think about the pitch, it can come in different forms. Let’s just think of it as a simple email. So the first part of the email is going to be connecting with that host as a human, having some personal connection. It could be. I know we know someone we’re from the same state, we’re from the same hometown or something from the same industry.

It could very well be. I listened to your interview with Adam and I got this great takeaway. Thank you so much for the work you do. It’s something that you know, this is not some pitch email, right? It’s a, from a human, not a weird, random weirdo on the internet. Then the middle part of the email is what you’re asking me, which is what’s in it for them.

So that’s the, that’s the mindset. If I’m writing this to Joel and I want to be on his show. What can I do for him and his audience and his audience is also who he’s serving. That’s going to be a huge win for them, right? And so I like to do like, think of it like three or four bullet points. Just keep it real simple.

If you have a framework you want to talk about, if you have a number that you can throw out to say, like how I built this thing to this level, or I helped a client go from this to this,  numbers are really compelling for people.

And the other thing I would say is if you have anything else that you can assign a name to, like my five step fat burning formula or whatever, if you’re like a fitness coach, Things like that, they both stand out and the host is immediately thinking, Oh yeah, I’d like to unpack that.

I’d like, I can imagine Dustin teaching me about this and that’s really what it is. It’s just three or four things you’d like to teach the audience and you can teach in facts, figures, and formulas, but you can also teach in case studies and stories, right? It’s like how I helped my client Joel get X result last year and I think your audience would really benefit from that because you know, I’m the ketogenic diet expert.

could be my personal story, how I again, I’m just putting on this total fake persona of a ketogenic diet coach. But how I ran an ultra marathon on a low carb diet, you know, like that’s compelling to a ketogenic diet audience as an example. But yeah, that’s really it. And what’s really cool, though, is these three or four bullet points are repeated in every pitch as long as you stay in the same market.

So it is worth the effort to kind of get these dialed in. That will not only make the pitches super easy, because all you have to do is really customize the top part to each host, but it also creates a structure by which you’re always interviewed kind of on the same topics, not in a boring way, because every conversation takes on its own nuances, but basically you’re always talking about the same three or four things, which makes it it.

Really good. And he makes you really good. And then the final piece of this email is just the call to action. Like, Hey, are you interested in having me on? But that’s really that’s that’s the pitch. And to your question, Joel, those are the bullets. And then, you know, depending on the style of the interviewer and stuff, they may be a one of those bullets, maybe like all they want to talk about, or they may want to just go sequentially and talk about all four.

You’re fine, though, because all four things that you said you want to talk about, you can practice. Yes. Usually it’s like your own personal stories that you’re going to tell within those bullet points.

Right. Makes sense. Okay. So let’s, that’s great. You know, this, framework that you’ve introduced is kind of lined up with the questions that I had prepared to ask about anyway, so this works well. So I don’t think we fully got into number five yet. So the profit part, let’s, let’s get into that and tell us what that consists of.

Yeah. So profit is, and so you can think of those first four P’s. That’s basically, if you want to be a guest on podcast for any variety of reasons, you’re going to do those all four things, right? so. you like, I wrote a book. My publisher wants me on 20 podcasts. You can just follow this first four steps and you’re done.

 So there’s lots of reasons to be on podcasts that don’t have anything to do with profit, but for you, I know your show is profitable. This and my, my whole frameworks about profit. So step five is actually where we spend about two thirds of our time when we work with people. So the first four steps is kind of getting this.

Engine running, getting on the shows, doing it in an efficient way. We teach people how to, how to use a virtual assistant to run this process. And then how do you make money from it is really what step five is, right? So what are the strategies we can use once we’ve been a guest to leverage each of those opportunities to grow our business?

We work with people for 90 days doing this. So we’re not going to talk about all those things today. But I think as one way to think about this, maybe it will enlighten your audience if you forget about having your own podcast and we’ll talk about how there’s mirror images of everything I’m talking about for your own show.

But if you’re a guest, let’s say you got on these three shows, they got published, you felt really good about the interviews and and like, okay, how do I make money from that if you take the common approach? Most people think, well, it’s. All about the audience, right? So there’s these listeners that download this show and they hear it and I’ve got my call to action.

So some of them are going to come get on my email list and they’re going to hire me for my coaching. Yes, that’s all true, right? And so most people kind of just think of that. I call that level one. It’s like, here’s here’s like the basic thing everyone should be focused on. Level two, though, above that would be what I would call the peer to peer or partner relationships.

So during the same interview with the same effort, basically, you not only are connecting with the audience, but if you do it right, you’re actually connecting with collaboration partners, other people with platforms that you can be featured on. And so it’s not just about the audience, the listening audience.

It’s also about collaboration partners. And almost always one of those is the host. So this is where it gets into relationship building, right? And so being very intentional about building relationship with the host. , I’ll come back and talk about like the guest list as part of this. But the final, the third layer of this, of this,  we talk about an analogy with like a profit cake.

These kind of layers stacked on top of each other. You got the base layer, which is the listeners, which are very broad and, and shallow. Because not many of them are actually going to become visible to you and do business with you. But there’s a lot of them. The middle layer is the peer to peer partners.

Less of those, but it’s a, it’s a thicker or deeper, , layer of the cake because any of those could be really valuable like Walmart in our example for, for fire Creek. And then the top layer of the cake for the types of businesses that we run would be what I would call like high ticket prospects. So these would be, think about putting people in your pipeline that you’d want to have as your clients.

And putting them in the top of a funnel, right? And so we treat them differently. There, there are less of them, but they’re very valuable. That’s like the key thing we’re actually trying to drive. And so I know this kind of sounds theoretical. And again, there’s lots of ways to address each of these layers, but one really quick,  strategy people can take away from this and think of all three layers, is, a guest list strategy.

So, and I’ll create, I’ll use an actual client example that hopefully people can relate to. So I have a client, his name is Andy. Andy runs a company that actually is in the health space.

And his, his company though, runs Facebook ads for craft food companies. So basically health, health food companies, right? So he runs Facebook ads, but only for health food companies. And so we worked with Andy and he’s like, yeah, I want to get more. You know, I want to get more clients. I want partners. I can do workshops with other people that compliment what I do great.

So Andy’s going to be on a show. Let’s say he’s on a show that caters to Shopify. So Shopify, you know, is online e commerce stores. So he gets on this show and he’s going to teach about. The latest and greatest Facebook strategies for e commerce health, health food brands. Okay. Like this is literally what he does.

And so he can get on there and talk about case studies. And at the end of that interview, he may say, Hey, I’ve got like a really powerful audit that’s going to let any e commerce health food brand is listening, go through and, and check their own ads to see if they’re maximizing those performance. That’s layer one.

So he has done the interview. He’s called out to the audience. He’s. Raise their hand and say, I am one of your ideal clients and I am listening and I want to reach out and get on your email list and start that process. That that’s layer one layer two, which is the peer to peer partner thing. In 15 seconds in the same interview, he could be like, Hey Joel, I, I, before I get into this next story, I want to say something because it’d be easy for people to miss.

Like we only do Facebook ads. If there are people listening to the show who are into this health food space and they have other clients and they do like content, SEO, Google ads, please reach out to me. We probably have referrals for you. Like we only do Facebook ads. And so what that does is it, it creates a really good synergy where people can reach out and say, I don’t actually want to hire you cause I don’t have a food brand, but I’m an agency who does something complimentary for the same client.

Let’s talk. And that’s where a lot of good partnerships come in. And then the final thing with the, the high ticket clients is Andy could then go after this is published, he could go look at the, all the other people that have been interviewed on this show and many of the people interviewed on a show like that will be.

Founders of e commerce brands, some of which will be health food brands, right? And so if there’s 300 people being interviewed, maybe there’s 50 that have started health food brands and they’re on here talking about their own success story of how they grew this brand. Those are all obvious people for Andy to reach out to connect with and start a conversation with because he knows there’s ideal client they’ve had success and they, he can say, Hey, we were on the same show.

Like I have credibility authority. Like, you know, you can trust me. So that was a lot, but hopefully it kind of gives people a quick exercise of like how to address three different audiences with one interview and how this can grow your business exponentially when you do it right versus I did an interview, it got published, I’m on to the next interview.

There’s so much gold to be mined and putting a little more effort into the interviews you’ve already done.

Yeah, that’s great. Well, that covers the profit step. And I wanted to hear a bit of a real world example anyway, so that, that all came in

there, you go. I went right into it. So.

Yeah. So I want to, at the end, spend the few minutes, like I said, chatting about your podcast and your marketing specifically, but before we move on to that section, I have one final question here, which is a little outside of what we’ve just been chatting about, but I think it’s probably something that people are curious about when it comes to podcast guesting, and that would be payment.

 ethical considerations here for either paying to be on a podcast or receiving payment to be on a podcast. What are your feelings around it? What should people be aware of if that situation arises?

Sure. I’m not in the ethical police category where I’m like, this is you know, morally wrong. I don’t think that’s the case. I will say I was a guest exclusively for three and a half years. I grew the Fire Creek Snacks business. I grew Seven Figure Leap doing this. I’ve never paid to be on a podcast.

I’ve never been paid to be on a podcast. I host my own podcast. I would never expect someone to pay me to be on it. That isn’t, that isn’t in large part because of the way I feel like this relationship should be formed. And so again, it’s not evil. If someone says it’s 500 to be on our podcast, but I find that most, most of the time when that’s the presentation, it’s actually not going to be a great use of your time because they’re not in a place of service.

They’re not really trying to build a relationship. It’s very transactional. I’m not passing judgment. If someone does that, people have their own economic models in general. I would caution people about paying to be on a show and I would not ever expect to be paid to be on a show. I’ve had a couple clients where it was presented to them like Hey, we have a very niche show.

It matches really well with what you’re trying to do And for 500 bucks, you can, you’ll be on our show. You’ll get a dedicated email blast. We’ll put together, you know, social media assets for you and we’ll introduce you to three people in our community, some three potential clients. So we’re, it’s part of a larger marketing package.

I think it can really make sense, but if it’s totally like an appearance fee. That’s definitely emerging trend. I hear that more and more that as people are asking to be on shows, they’re like, it’s 500 and we’ll think about it. And I’m just like, I’d pass personally. So that that’s been my experience.

Yeah, good advice. I’ve noticed that a little more lately too, and not even for big fees, but people will pitch me and I’m, I’m just a nobody essentially. And they’re just sending out these pitches. Do you want to be on? And I go, yeah, that sounds cool. And okay. By the way, there’s a 50 fee. What? not

How does that starting the, you know, this doesn’t start the relationship on the right foot, in my opinion.

odd. Yeah.

in the way that these relationships, in my opinion, should go is, you know, it’s a little bit like dating, right? It’s like, you know, I like to get coffee with me. Yeah, I think that’d be great. I’d love to get to know you , and, and share more of my story. Great. It’s 50 bucks. you know, like here’s my calendar link. Like, it’s just weird.

I feel like it, it sets everything in a transactional role. And to be honest, 50 bucks, 500 bucks. Like if that’s the price of admission, you could use that time and energy on a show that’s, that’s not, transactionally based and make way more positive impact on your business than that. And save the money.

buy the host a nice gift after if it was a great experience. But like, if they’re forward facing, that there’s a, a, a feed, a pay to play. I just, I don’t know that, that’s not, that’s not my jam.

So, okay. We know that you’re a podcast guesting expert. Of course, you’re using that in the growth of your own business, but you do have a podcast as well. So let’s hear a little bit about that and just to understand how you’re using that to grow your business. First of all, can we hear a brief history?

Like how long have you been doing your podcast? Seven figure leap. When did you first start? How many episodes?

Yeah. I’ve been at it about six months, so as I mentioned, about three and a half years. I, exclusively guested. I could award as a badge of honor. I think my LinkedIn profile at some point said like professional podcast guests. And I kind of took this posture as really more of a marketing positioning of like, you don’t need to, you know, mess with having your own show.

You can just guest. And what I finally admitted is there’s actually a ton of benefit to doing both. they serve different purposes and they’re very, very complimentary and synergistic. So people now ask me, should I host or guest? I always say both. But I would still feel pretty passionate that you should start guesting because you’re gonna get more clear on your messaging, who you really want to talk, talk to, what you want to talk about.

And once you put in some reps, like we kind of talked about earlier, and you’re comfortable behind the mic and you know who you, what your goals are in podcasting, then it’s way more smart, in my opinion, to hire Joel or hire someone else to help you actually do the, the hosting.  so yeah, I’ve been doing it about six months.

When I first decided to do it, it was very much a lead generation play. It was like, , most of the people I work with are doing six figures, multiple six figures in their business. They want to get to seven. That’s been my own journey as a seven figure leap.

and so the name of the podcast is seven figure leap. The initial vision was like, I’ll interview these people who are on that journey. we’ll do some live coaching with them and then if it makes sense, we, we finish recording. I’ll say, I can help you with this. Like, do you want to know more about what we do?

’cause they’re, they’re, they are guesting with me. I, I’ll know a lot more about them. They get to hear, to get to see my kind of coaching in action. So that was the original intent. That’s very, that’s a very logical reason I think to have a podcast, is to basically invite on ideal clients, help them, interview them, get to know them.

Build that relationship. And then when it makes sense, I’m not saying like beef salesy, but when it makes sense, invite them for a further conversation, I’ve done zero of that. So I think we are 30, 35 episodes in right now. My show has become much more about celebrating the success of people that I’ve worked with.

So, case studies, interviewing people that I’ve, I’ve worked with. , I’d say that’s like a third of it. A third of it is really interviewing people. I admire. So, Ryan Dice was like a mentor of mine from afar. He’s a digital marketing expert. And so I’m like, Ryan, I’d love to have you on my show.

He says, yes, and we spent an hour and we, I think we talked another half hour after I quit recording. He gave me, it was like a 10, 000 consulting session. It was like free and it created great content. And I’ve got Jay Papasan on here in a couple of weeks. He’s the author of the one thing.

I met him at a dinner and it’s just like way more natural for me to be like, Jay, I love what you do. Your book changed my life. Could I interview you on my podcast? Sure. Like here’s my link versus, you know, can you coach me for free?  so people I admire, which I think It really adds credibility to what I’m doing, but it also gives me really good access to build relationships with people that I probably would have access to otherwise.

And then the other third of what I do is solo content. And this is not something I intended to do initially, but I found it actually so I may increase the proportion of this I’m doing because as I’m doing that, I find that that really moves the needle in conversion. Meaning I get a lot of people now who are like, Hey, man, I listened to your episode on how to select a target market, or I listened to your episode on, , how to create partnerships when you go to a conference or whatever, like very kind of tactical strategic things that I love to teach.

, and part of that is it will will take clips out of mastermind meetings that I lead. With people’s permission to kind of give people an inside look at what it looks like to be in a mastermind, the insights that people get, the transformation. So it’s a, it’s a mix of showing people what I do by showing them live coaching, by highlighting success stories of people that have, have made big changes in their business through podcast guesting access to people I really want to talk to.

And this is a great reason to get to build a relationship with them. And then this sort of. Of niche, expert content that I can sit behind the mic and deliver. and It’s a place for me to kind of get this stuff out of my head. So it’s, it’s pretty, pretty much every week someone asked me a question and I’m like, Oh my gosh, I got to record a podcast about that.

And now it’s in public for other people to see. And of course we repurpose all this stuff into our social media and things like that. So I think I answered your original question, but that’s sort of.  when we started, what we do with the podcast and I have done zero to like, try to generate leads from it, but it’s really become for me as a conversion tool, more than anything, more, more so than a discoverability tool,  which I think is actually pretty awesome.

So

Great. Yeah. Some very notable benefits there in terms of what podcasting can bring that we don’t always think of. So it’s great to hear what you’re doing with it in the real world. And you know, building it is one of the big things anyway. You can, you just start, you build it up and you can think about your, your leads and your call to action at some point, but you’ve got this great thing that’s growing and it’s giving you content.

So. Yeah. That’s fantastic. so you’ve taught us a lot here about podcast guesting. And of course, you’re, you’re a coach, you help people with variety of things. So yeah, if it’s not clear already, you do offer this as a service. I think we’ve got a good idea of what it is that you can help people with. If anyone’s curious to learn more about that, or perhaps work with you, what would be their best next steps?

Transcripts

absolutely. So, our brand is seven figure leap. You can go listen to our podcast, you know, seven figure leap, for people that are listening to like, I’m actually very interested in knowing more about this and getting some kind of hands on experience with it. I’d love to give people a free podcast profits playbook that I put together So you can use a seven figure leap.

com slash playbook. It’s free it’s gonna give you three different resources in there. So one’s gonna be a calculator You’re going to be able to put in some things about your own business, your own clients, your own, you know, packages and things like that. And it’s going to let you choose your own adventure about like how frequently I want to guess what size shows I feel comfortable being on.

It’s going to give you a very detailed calculation of what that could do for your revenue. That’s based on working with over 200 clients and having a bunch of proprietary information. so that’s the first thing it’s, it’s just scratch your curiosity itch. the second thing it does. Is gives you the pitch that I talked about earlier.

Like, here’s how we write those bullets. Here’s how we write the introduction to the host. So if you’re like, I think I want to pitch a show, you can literally, it’s a Google doc. You can copy it into your own Google drive and use it as a template. And the third thing that’s in there are several case studies where we walk through the kind of before, middle and after of us working with clients.

to show what we changed about their marketing strategy to unlock like real growth. Like it’s the before and after story of several people. so yeah, so seven figure leap. com slash playbook that gets you access to all that stuff for free. And, of course we’d love you to love for you to come over and check out the podcast as well.

Great. Well, we’ll have that link and everything else in the show notes. So people will be able to easily find where you’re at. So thank you.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.