WHY YOU NEED TO FIND PODCAST GUESTS
This week we’re talking about how to get amazing podcast guests to come on your show. How do you find those great guests that are going to bring your show to the next level?
Getting great guests, as you guys know, is critical for building the reputation of your podcast. Why is that? A great guest says a lot about your show.
Your podcast guests tell people what kind of information you’re going to be talking about. They let people know what kind of network you have and the kind of people you like to be around. It also sets the listener’s expectations up for what level of expertise you are going to share. Are you an amateur or a professional?
It’s a lot of information all gleaned by looking at the clout of the guests that you’re bringing on the show.
BUILDS YOUR RAPPORT THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS
Beyond just what it brings to the image of your show, it also helps you build new relationships that can be the catalyst of your success. When you’re interviewing someone for an hour, you have a little bit of time before and after the show.
Also, that hour that you’re talking to them, you are building a relationship. Whether you know it or not, you are establishing rapport.
In talking about the topics from your show with your guests, that guest has now spent an hour of time with you diving deep into the things that they really believe in and that they like to teach.
You were the catalyst for that, and that develops a relationship. Now you are more than just someone who they ran across in a room one day. You are someone that they have gotten to know a little bit better.
That’s a start of a relationship that you can now follow up on, and reach out to check how they’re doing. Thank them for being on the show and start to create more touchpoints. Run into them at different places and at different speaking gigs; engage with them on social media.
You are now someone who has a different relationship with them than most people that come into their world. It’s a huge relationship developer.
GUESTS BRING VARIETY AND VALUE TO YOUR SHOW
We’re here to talk about how to get these great guests on your show, but that’s why it’s important. I want you guys to understand that because when I started, I did just solo shows.
I did thirty solo shows and I deleted all of them because I got coaching and found out the value of adding guests to the show. Not only did it add more variety and make the show more interesting, but it also brought all these benefits that I just talked to you about.
My audience is not only getting my knowledge; they’re also getting the knowledge of people who have been doing it a lot longer than I have. They have written books on the topic. They’ve spoken on the topics of marketing, and I’ve gotten to bring all that to the show and increase the quality of my show.
Most importantly, that opened the door to all these new relationships that I have in the business. That was huge for me, especially if you’re looking to speak one day. Get people who are already speaking at the places you want to speak, from a public speaking standpoint. You now have relationships with people who’ve already done it.
You can ask them how they did it, or you can ask them who runs the show and use them as a referral to become a speaker.
There are a lot of benefits there, so the three things we’re going to dive into today are how to build your Dream 100 Guest List, how to perform guests research, and then how to do guest outreach.
CREATE YOUR DREAM PODCAST GUEST LIST
Let’s start with the Dream 100 Guest List. This isn’t a new concept. This is something I’ve learned from lots of people. (I think Russell Brunson from ClickFunnels has a great explanation of this.)
If you’re developing a guest list, don’t just write down the people you know that you think are easy to contact. Create a wishlist and write down everyone that you think would be a great fit for the show. Whether you think that they’re achievable or not, whether you have any contact with them or not, make a list of everyone that would make sense for the show.
BRAINSTORM AND THEN ORGANIZE INTO GROUPS
You can organize this into three buckets. Organize this into people that you know are easy to get ahold of. They’re in your circle. Then jump to the hard part and say, “Okay, who are all the top-notch people that would be amazing for my show?” They may be hard to get ahold of. Write those names down.
Then fill all the names in between, where you think you might be able to get to, but you have to reach out or start a relationship with them. Maybe from your top-notch guests, look at their circle of friends. You want to talk to those people to maybe get the referral to the highest people on your Dream 100 Guest List.
Make a list. Just start at first. Don’t think of those buckets, just literally write down every name that comes to mind that would fit because you’re going to run out before you get to one hundred, I guarantee you.
However, write every name down. You have to set those goals upfront. This list is so important because most of us don’t challenge ourselves to really get great guests on the show.
AIM HIGHER THAN YOU THINK YOU SHOULD
If you set this goal ahead of time and you write this list as something to shoot for, you’re giving yourself a chance to hit them. If you don’t set goals, how are you ever going to accomplish anything? You have to set those goals if you hope to achieve them in the first place.
Building that ideal guestlist actually allows you to map out those goals and set up a plan to reach those goals. Now that you know what you want to accomplish, you can actually figure out that maybe for the harder people to get ahold of, this is a long-term goal that you have to build a plan for overtime.
How am I going to do that? I might start by getting involved in their world and think that maybe in a year or two I might have a chance to meet them in person at some point.
You set those things up. I’ll go to events where they are at. I’ll engage in their communities and join their coaching programs. At some point, I’ll have gotten to know them enough that I can ask them to come on the show. That’s a long-term plan.
For the short-term people on your list, you can say, “Okay, who am I going to reach out to directly, make a phone call or email?” Whatever it is, you can build a plan now that you have them on the list.
DON’T LIMIT YOUR PODCAST GUESTS ONLY TO ‘EXPERTS’
I have some advice to make this a little easier for you guys after you’ve written down your list of the kind of people that you would think about for your show. A lot of people, especially if they have business shows or coaching shows, like to have guests that are experts on the topic, or at least have been involved in a topic enough that they can talk smartly about it.
That’s great, but what I would actually encourage you to do is say, “Okay, let me go beyond that. Let me think about not just the experts. Let me also look at who are influencers in this space. Who are people that have taken time to build their own audiences, who have already built a following?”
Maybe they have their own email list. They have their own ongoing show and it’s a podcast. Maybe it’s a YouTube show. Maybe they have their own blog that’s popular. They’ve been out there long enough that they already have people following them and a great group of people that already is doing that.
It doesn’t have to be celebrities that are on TV that are impossible to get ahold of. You can seek out people that are speakers. Look for people who are at all the conferences, and people who are authors that are writing books. Go to Amazon, check out new books, and see who’s out there promoting a book.
Most people that are promoting books are looking to come on podcasts to tell their story to your small audience. Look at coaches, people already out there teaching something that they are experts in.
RELATED: Build your personal brand with the Content Marketing Starter Guide.
LOOK FOR PEOPLE WITH A FOLLOWING
All these groups of people, speakers, authors, coaches: 1. Have already built an audience that you can tap into; and 2. Know how to speak on their topic. They’ve gone through the trouble of synthesizing all of their ideas into understandable explanations.
Most of them have already done PR. They’ve already gone on shows, so you don’t have to train them on how to be a good guest. They already know it half the time, or at very least they know how to talk about what they’re experts in as opposed to someone who is a professional in a space, but not a speaker, author, or coach. They’re just a professional in their industry.
This was me back in the day. I knew how to do my job, but it didn’t mean that I would have made a good guest on a show. It didn’t mean that I knew how to take my ideas and convey my perspective in a way that was interesting to an audience.
When building your Dream 100 Guest List, think about that. If you would do want to go after celebrities, maybe start with second-tier celebrities, people that are popular for something very specific, but maybe aren’t bombarded with emails every day.
Find something that’s notable where the name would be recognized by your audience, but they’re not the hardest people to get ahold of. You can put those in your middle tier.
Again, this is something you continue to update every quarter, every six months, every year. As you knock people off your guest list, you can add more to it to continue to set those goals, grow your show, and make it better.
HOW TO SUCCEED AT PODCAST GUEST RESEARCH
Number two is guest research. I talked a little bit about this already when talking about the Dream 100 Guest List, but after you’ve made that list, you should be ranking your guests in terms of difficulty to reach as we talked about: easy, medium, hard.
Challenge yourself to get a little bit of each group. Aim for the middle ones also because if you just get the easy ones, eventually you’ll run out of the easy people to reach and you won’t have set the stage to bring in the harder people to reach on your show.
CHOOSE GUESTS FROM EACH CATEGORY OF YOUR LIST
What’s great is after you’ve started the momentum of getting people on your show, it becomes easier to get other guests. You’ve already got the people that you can look back to and say, “I found these great people on my show. You’d be a great guest too.” Or you get referrals, and we’ll talk about that, but start by grouping your list of people into different groups.
Then what I would do is map out the places where you’ll be able to interact with them online and offline. This is the research part that is going to help you with the next section we’re going to talk about, which is outreach.
BE WHERE YOUR PODCAST GUESTS ARE
However, you have to do the research first. You have to understand if they have shows already. Are they online, or going live online? Interact online in a place that you can jump in and engage regularly so that they can at least start to get familiar with your name or see your handle and see that you interacted.
Do they have a Facebook group that you can join, comment on, and interact in the group? Is there an event that they’re speaking at where I can go attend and reference? Do they have a book that I could read? Is there something that I can consume and engage with and be a part of their world?
That’s the research part of this, online and offline. If you’re only doing this research online and you’re never going out of your way offline, you are slowing yourself down.
MEET THEM IN PERSON IF POSSIBLE
If you have a chance to get out there in person and meet somebody in some way, shape, or form, that’s going to be the fastest way for you to build this list, have all the starting points of relationships that you need to get your show off the ground, and start building a long-term engagement and outreach plan. Map out a year.
Maybe you realize that a couple of amazing guests for your show all speak at one event. Then you can look at that event and say, “Okay, who are all the other speakers at this event that would also be great people for my show? Who are the other people that are thought leaders in this space that are friends with this person?”
Finding those connections is going to help you build your list. Maybe you’re going to get to know people that weren’t on your radar. You might find that there are a lot of people in your space that are industry leaders that you just had no awareness of, but now that you’re doing the guest research, you’re going to start to see their information more.
Follow all of them on all their social media so you can start to see where they pop up and see if they’re a fit. Start building that long-term engagement now.
TAKE ACTION AND REACH OUT TO PODCAST GUESTS
That’s your outreach plan. Next is going to be the actual outreach. The best way to get a great guest to say yes is to already have formed a connection with that guest. That’s what I’m trying to teach you guys today. The first time that they hear from you should not be an email saying, “Hey, I have a show. You’re awesome. Please come on it.”
That’s not the first engagement. First engagement should be you saying, “Hey, this is great content. Thanks for putting it out.” Or, “I love what you said about this in your last live,” or, “Hey, I have a question.”
Leave a review on their book or on their podcast. Show up in their world and ask them questions face to face. Engage in some way, shape, or form. Virtually would be the easiest.
OUTREACH IS A MULTI-STEP PROCESS
Before I go to any conference, I reach out to all the speakers of the conference. I DM them on Instagram or on LinkedIn, and I say, “Hey, I love this content article, and I hope to shake hands with you if I see you at the conference.”
Then when I get there, even if they don’t remember seeing that or never saw it, I can refer back to it and say, “Hey, I did this thing. I’m so glad I got to actually meet you in person.” It just builds a rapport that you were thoughtful and didn’t just bump into them haphazardly. You put yourself in that place to meet them.
When I was starting the show, I went to a conference called Social Media Marketing World and actually did these things I’m talking about. I DM’d every single person that was speaking that I thought made sense. I introduced myself. When they were live on social media, I participated and joined their Facebook groups.
Then when I showed up, I wasn’t a stranger. Sure enough, not all of the one hundred people, but about ten of them were happy to say, “Hi” and knew who I was, or at least had a sense of it. They were happy that I was already engaging their community and happy that I could refer to that when I talked to them.
I could then follow up with them. Either I can ask them face to face, or I could follow up with them afterward in an email and say, “Hey, it was so great meeting you.” You send them a picture so they remember it and then say, “By the way, I have a show and because of how you talk about this thing, I think you’d be perfect for my show.”
PODCAST GUESTS SAY ‘YES’ WHEN YOU INVEST IN THEM
Now that we have that one-to-one relationship, they are so much more inclined to say yes than some random cold email outreach. Building those relationships face-to-face is huge. Taking pictures with people is huge. It’s all a step in saying that you’ve invested in the relationship.
What I like to tell people is if you want people to like you, you have to like them first. If you want to build amazing relationships with influencers, you have to put in the time to show them that you are engaged in their content.
If you want them to invest in you, you have to invest in them first.
DON’T FORGET TO ASK FOR REFERRALS
The second best way to get people on your show is to have someone on your show refer the next guest. Any time someone is introduced to you via someone you already know, it already breaks down the barriers to the invitation. In other words, it’s not a cold outreach anymore.
It’s someone saying, “Hey, I met Brandon. He’s great. I was on his show. I think you’d be perfect for his show.”
How you get them to do that is a big question. One of the things I like to do is when I’m actually interviewing them, you can build it into the interview. You can say, “Hey, do you know anybody that would be a great fit for the show?”
Let them answer and see if they have anyone off the top of their head. If they don’t, you could say “I’ll follow up and ask again, in case it’s easier to remember later.”
However, if you can get them to actually say the person’s name right there live, it’s that much easier because now you can reach out to those people and say, “Hey, this person referred me to you.”
You can also email them after the interview and say, “Do you mind setting up an intro to that person you mentioned?” Now they feel inclined to do that because they mentioned the person’s name already.
GET REFERRALS DURING YOUR PODCAST GUEST INTERVIEW
Take those steps to get in-person referrals. That’s going to be such a quicker way instead of you having to be a stranger and introduce yourself. Now you’ve got someone breaking the ice for you, someone who basically says, “Brandon seems cool, go ahead and get to know him.”
Take the guests that you have, and if nothing else leverage them to meet new people. Every guest you have on a show should at least give you one introduction. They should at least be a doorway to you meeting one other person unless they just don’t like you or their relationship is too disconnected.
This happens sometimes. I’m not going to lie. There are some people that just give you their time because they are a professional, but they are so busy and so popular that they just don’t have time to introduce you to their friends.
That’s fine, and at the very least, you’ll be able to refer to them as clout for the next guests. You can say, “Hey, I got to interview these five amazing A-list people and I think you would be such a great addition to this list.”
You can use them by name instead of by introduction but look for those referrals. If you can get them, look for them and ask for them specifically live and in person. If you wait until email, it’s harder for them to follow through. You might never get a response.
When you’re asking them on the spot, they’ll usually try their best to think of someone that might be a good fit. That is the main way you’ll actually get a response.
When you ask people to do anything, inherently people are just not the best at following through. They have a lot going on with low-priority things and guess what? You’re probably a low priority. However, when you ask them in person and you have them in the moment, they’re very helpful. Use that time wisely.
HOW TO DIRECTLY OUTREACH SUCCESSFULLY
Lastly, I think the third best way to reach out is directly one-to-one with a high-impact personalized message that aligns the show with the guest and demonstrates credibility.
I started to allude to this, but basically, if you’re stuck with just your direct outreach, I do one of two things: either email or direct message. Personally, I prefer direct messages, especially on Instagram and sometimes on LinkedIn, but specifically on Instagram or even Facebook messenger.
I like to send someone a message and say, “Hey, what’s up _______. I saw you were a speaker at this event. Or I saw that you just wrote this book. The topic of XYZ is something I’d really like to dive into on my show with you. I think it’s a perfect fit. I’ve also interviewed guests such as one, two, three, four, five…”
USE OTHER PODCAST GUESTS AS CLOUT
I will list five to eight people that I know that they’ve heard of. How do I know they’ve heard of them? Either they’re such a big name in this space that everyone knows them, or I’ve specifically gone on Instagram, looked at who this potential guest is following, and anyone that has a blue checkmark that I know has been on my show, I list that person’s name.
That way I know that they know them. If they’re following them, they obviously know them, especially if they’re a big-name person. I list all those names off. The more, the better. That lets them know that this show is for them because I’m already interviewing people that they know and they respect.
They would be considered one and the same with these people. They’re part of that same list so they want to be associated with that list of people. They want to also say they’d been on that same show, that same stage.
Mention all these other people. I love doing it direct-to-direct, one-to-one via messaging on a platform like Instagram if they use it. I type each of these individually, and might even say, “For season four or season five, I’m looking for guests.” That also demonstrates the show has been around a long time.
That’s the way that I’ve worked with my coaches to come up with outreach for great guests. I think it’s the easiest way because it’s the most personal to get ahold of people.
FINDING PODCAST GUESTS TAKES TIME AND EFFORT
Try the different ways. Over time, each of these things will get easier. In the beginning, the more you can get face-to-face and into people’s worlds the better. Then the people you’ve already met will become very easy and you move them to the easy part of your list.
Your Dream 100 Guest List will get revised so that your hard-to-reach people are going to be even higher up. You’re going to have to push even harder to find people that are even more amazing, that you never even had hoped to get before. You can now put them on your guest list.
BUILD YOURSELF A NETWORK
That’s the beauty of this. You are now becoming this relationship-creating machine that starts to have this amazing network that you can tap into and look back at and say one day, “Hey, you know what? I want to speak on stage. Hey, great guests, I’d love to come on your show or I’d love you to introduce me to someone.”
Now you have this amazing network of people that really respect you because they’ve seen what you’ve done with the show over time. They are paying attention. 90% are thinking, what does this guy have going on? They’ll notice you, especially if they follow you after you’ve done a show with them.
They see what you’re doing on Instagram and other places. If you’re putting all the content out there and you’re repurposing and doing all the things I teach you guys to get your show out there, they’ll notice.
CONNECT WITH BRANDON
Free Resource: BrandsonBrands.com/resources
10 Podcasting Ideas for Beginners
Instagram: @brandonbirkmeyer
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