72: How to Pitch Yourself as a Podcast Guest

Hey, Kevin Schmidland here, and this week's episode of Grow the Show is going to be a little bit different than usual. And there is a reason for that. Today, we're going to be giving you a peek inside the Grow the Show Facebook group. Just last week, we had a live training in the Grow the Show Facebook group where I presented about our framework for how to grow a podcast really, really effectively and efficiently, and that framework is called targeted podcast pitching. And more specifically, that session was about how to write a great pitch email that has a really high chance of getting you featured on other podcasts. So today, we are going to share that session with you. So if you were there, let this be a reminder. So I'd listen to it again so you can pick up on stuff you might have missed. And if you weren't there, now is your chance to catch up and learn how to write a great pitch email for getting yourself featured on other podcasts. Now the recording of this session is also available to you in the Grow the Show Facebook group. And so if you want to watch the video portion or check out the discussion that was happening in the comments of this session, because there was a lot of good information being exchanged in there, join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group. The link is in the show notes. So here's a very special thanks to Catherine Nails, the producer of the Grow the Show podcast who helped me MC this session. You're going to hear her voice first. And of course, also here's a very special thanks to everyone who attended in the free Grow the Show Facebook group. We'll be hosting more events like this, more live trainings in the Facebook group in the future. So definitely keep an eye out and join us there. The link is in the show notes. But for now, please enjoy this training about how to craft a great pitch email to get you featured on other podcasts. And of course, let me know what you think. Enjoy. My name is Catherine Nails. I'm the Grow the Show content manager. So I produce the GTS podcast and most of our content. But I will be MCing today and just helping to guide the conversation, make sure your questions get answered. So this is the first of what we hope to be many of these live training events. And today we are going to be talking about crafting the perfect pitch. And by the perfect pitch, I mean the perfect pitch email to send to podcasts who you would love to be a guest on. Now the way this is going to work is that Kevin will give us talk and I will be hanging out asking my own questions and asking some of your questions. So feel free to leave those in the comments. We'll try to answer as many as we can, but obviously we can't get to all of them. So our team member Lauren will also be hanging out in the comment section to chat with you guys. And the awesome part also is if you stick around, there will actually be a freebie at the end. That's something we give our accelerator students that you will be getting for free because you attended this event. So without further ado, I'm going to introduce Kevin to those of you who might not be familiar with the story. I actually met Kevin back in 2019 when he was still working on his first podcast, Philly Who. He eventually grew that to 100,000 downloads and $100,000 monetized. He taught me everything I know about podcasting. My background is actually as a newspaper journalist. I had really no podcast editing experience at all before I met him. So I worked a little bit as a freelancer for him. And then in 2020, Kevin approached me with this idea that he had for a podcast about podcasting and this accelerator program idea. He presented me with his vision. And since I knew firsthand what a great teacher Kevin is, I was like, amazing, fantastic. I'm in. So two years later, under Kevin's leadership, where the show has reached seven figures and revenue, our accelerator program has grown to include 250 plus students. I think we're over that now. And the team has grown to include a bunch of super, super smart town to people that we're all so grateful to work with. And I know I have to say all these nice things because Kevin is my boss, but truly, truly it has been an awesome journey. So without further ado, here's Kevin. Katie, Katherine, thank you so so much for the introduction. Oh my goodness, wow, what an introduction, incredible. It has been a heck of a journey. So yes, today we're going to talk about pitching. I've been at this for a while. So I launched my first show in 2018, as you guys know, launched the show in 2020. And what I found in making this essentially devoting my life towards podcast growth over the past four years, no job for a while is totally single. All I did was work on how to grow podcasts. And what I found is that in my opinion, the highest leverage, the most effective and efficient way to grow a podcast is to get yourself featured on other podcasts. And here's why number one, everybody that you reach when you're featured on another podcast, you know for sure is a podcast listener. There are a lot of other great strategies to grow a show, including my own targeted daily engagement, which if you've heard of that, you know that it uses social media to get people to discover you and then check out your podcast. But even with TDE, which is a really great growth strategy, you will sometimes reach people who don't actually listen to podcasts, right? And you're not going to be the one to convince them. I mean, maybe you can try. But in most cases, you're not going to convince them to become a podcast listener. So even though it's a great interaction, it's not going to get you another listener. The thing about getting yourself featured on other podcasts is that every single time you know for sure that everybody who hears your voice is already a podcast listener. So that's the first reason why in my opinion, this is the best growth strategy. But the second reason why is because not only are you guaranteeing that everybody you're reaching is a podcast listener, but you're also reaching them at the very moment that they are being a podcast listener, right? So they're already in the context of being a podcast listener. You since you have a podcast, I'm willing to bet, are a podcast listener, right? That's why you started the show because you listen to shows and you're like, I want to make one of these. And so you did. And so you know that you listen to podcasts in a fairly set moment in your routine. It happens. At certain times throughout the week, it kind of always happens then. It's when you're doing something else. And that's when you as a podcast listener are most open to discovering another podcast because in that moment, you're a podcast listener. But when you're on the couch at night, after serving some Netflix, about to go to bed and you're scrolling on Instagram and you come across a new podcast, what has to happen in order for you to actually tune into that podcast? Well, you have to be like, Oh, wow, that's really cool. I want to check that out. Maybe you open up your podcast app and subscribe to that show. Maybe hopefully, right? More than likely you put your phone down, you go to bed, you wake up the next day, you get ready for work, you get into the car, you finally go to turn on podcasts and you're like, what was the name of that show? I don't remember. I'm going to listen to whatever your favorite show is. So even though that podcaster that wanted to reach you as a listener successfully did so, because there were so many steps between that moment and the moment you were in the context of being a podcast listener and ready to listen to one, you fell off and you didn't become a listener of that show. So what does that mean for you as the podcaster? If you're able to get people to discover your show, number one, who are definitely already podcast listeners, who have that a part of the routine. Number two, in the moment that they're already being a podcast listener, then the odds that that person will then tune into your show and become your devoted fan, go way, way up. So all that is not to say that the other podcast growth techniques that you know and love don't work. It's just that this one is really effective. Another reason why this particular strategy is so exponential is because it's just that exponential. With TDE targeted dealing engagement engagement with people online, the amount of listeners that you get out of that is going to be directly correlated to the amount of time that you put into it. You want more listeners? Do more engagement. Likewise, even if you're buying ads for your podcast, the amount of listeners that you get is going to be directly proportional to the amount of money that you spend in same amount out. But with this, you spend one hour of time getting interviewed for another podcast and you could reach tens, even hundreds of thousands, even if it's just a few hundred, right? So spend one hour, reach thousands in perpetuity because people will probably listen to that show months and years from now. So I think I've sufficiently made it clear why this strategy is so powerful. So the big question is, okay, fine. How does it work? I'm going to be honest, I slept on this strategy, even being the growth guy for a long time until this past winter, when podcasting legend Dave Jackson, anointed me as an official podcast guy by inviting me on the school of podcasting, which is the honor of all time, was on his show and looked at our downloads for Grow the Show. And in one week, just by me being featured on that other podcast, our downloads grew 25 percent in one week. So really, really, really, really powerful. And so let's talk about how it works. So. Also, it's important to include there that our downloads grew by 25 percent, but that we saw that spike and it didn't go back down. It wasn't a group of people who came and listened to one episode. They stuck around to a totally great point. You're absolutely right, because I'm sure we've also all experienced that where you get a huge spike and then it goes back to where it was this didn't go down. It stayed and has never gone down since then. So great call, Catherine. So you know that being featured on other podcasts is a great strategy. The next question is, how the heck do I make that happen? And more importantly, how do I make it happen on a regular basis, right? And so that's what we're going to dive into today, which is our framework that we have built around getting featured on other podcasts, which is called TPP targeted podcast pitching. So I'm just going to on a high level go over what that framework looks like. I go into it in more detail in episode, I believe it's episode 60, yeah. It's 60 of the Grow the Show podcast we dive deep into TPP. We're going to focus on the last step of TPP today, but just as a summary, the idea is this, if you have a podcast that has guests, odds are that the guests that you've already had on your show haven't only ever been on your podcast. They've probably been on other shows, right? Well, the odds are also probably good that the other shows that the people that you've had on your show are probably good podcasts, right? They're probably worth being on. So the idea is this, when trying to figure out what shows you should target to be featured to collaborate with, to be a guest on, to pitch to be a guest on, to have on your show, to swap, whatever it might be, a great place to look is the podcasts that your guests, your previous guests have already been on. And what we found is that that is absolutely true. It is an incredible way to filter the three plus million podcasts that are out there. Because odds are if they picked your show and deemed your show worthwhile, the other ones are probably worthwhile too. So with TPP, what we do is we first start with a list of the best guests and the most relevant guests that we have had on our podcast. We then say, okay, what other podcasts have those guests been on and we compile that list? And oftentimes a list of five guests generates 50 to 100 podcasts that are equal to your size and listenership or larger that they have been on. These people have already prevented this list of shows, which makes them a really, really good idea to pitch. But another reason why it's really good is because you have a connection to those people, right? So they have had the same guests that you have had on your show. So, you know, Catherine has had has a podcast about how to grow a podcast, right? I'm like, okay, I think it'd be good for me to be on Catherine's show because her listenership is totally, you know, the people that I'm trying to reach. And we have both had Eric Newsom author of Make Noise on our podcast. I'll then reach out to Catherine and say, Hey, loved the Eric Newsom episode. I had them on the show too. Isn't he a great guest? Awesome. Have you ever done an episode on your show about pitching for other podcasts? So that's what I'd say to Catherine. Now, you'll note that I pitched myself a little bit differently than how you hear other podcasters often pitching themselves to be featured on podcasts and we'll go into how it's different in a moment. I'm going to say really quickly. We had a really good comment from Nathan. It was a question and, you know, we talked about how you can farm ideas for podcasts to be a guest on from your own guests, but Nathan was wondering if there's any good directory of podcasts that he can look for, look at to search for guests or guest swapping opportunities. Great question. Glad that you interjected with that. So that actually brings us to the next step in the process. And I'll give you that directory right now, which we use, there's a million of them, right? So podcasts for sure, pod chaser is, is a really, really great platform that is trying to basically be like the IMDB of podcasts that platform is really, really robust, especially if you're on their paid plan, you can just, you can just like click a button and see what other shows guests have been on. What I'll say is that it's a little bit more complete for bigger names and celebrities and bigger shows, but also it's true on the independent circuit as well. It's kind of good. But what we use is a database called listen notes, listen notes, L-A-C-E-N-N-O-T-E-S.com. And so that is a full database that you can search for any podcast that's available on iTunes. And so that's where you can go to look for pod other podcasts to be featured on. But the thing is the thing that makes it difficult to just go to listen notes and start searching for shows is that it's just going to bring you all the results of all the shows that are available. And so I highly recommend using this guest filtering technique where you look at the guests that you've had on your show. And for those of you who don't have guests on your show, I'll tell you in a minute what you can do because it's just as effective. But you look at the guests that you've had on your show, then you use a search engine like Apple podcasts or like pod chaser or like listen notes to then search to see what other podcasts those people have been a guest on. And then that gives you just a perfectly curated list of shows that you can then target. And that helps solve the problem of, you know, I searched for marketing shows or shows about baseball and 300,000 shows came up. Which ones do I pitch, right? So we use this filtering of people that we already know, guests that we already have, to select which ones to pitch. When you're on listen notes, listen notes has a metric called LS, listen score, which is not perfect, but can give you a good indication of how big an audience a show's audience is. If you search for your podcasts and if you find a show and it does not have a listen score, that generally means that it just, it doesn't have, I'm going to guess two to 400 downloads per episode is when listen score starts to appear. I'm not really sure they don't publish their algorithm for it, but just in knowing shows that don't have a listen score and those who do that seems to be where that happens. But essentially, if you look at the listen score number, you can see if it's a 25, that's the lowest score. If it's, you know, a 98, that's like Joe Rogan, I think, has a 98 or a 99. And then, you know, anything lower than it gets, it goes lower in size based on the lower in score. So you're able to use listen notes to search for the shows that your mutual guests have been on, see which shows have an equal or higher listen score than your show. If your show doesn't have a listen score, then all shows are fair game. If you do have a listen score, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be on shows that don't, it just means that that show has a smaller audience, but that's okay. That's, those actually tend to be better audiences to reach because they're more engaged. And so now you have this list of podcasts, spoiler in terms of how to contact them. If you pay for listen notes, which I think it's like 10 bucks a day, which I wouldn't leave on, you can just like sign up for a day, pay 10 bucks, do like three months worth of research and two hours and then stop the subscription. But if you subscribe to listen notes, they'll actually give you the email address that each podcast has on their RSS feed. So when you sign up for your podcast, you had to give the RSS feeds. So whether you're on Lipson or megaphone or anchor or something like that, your podcast feed has an email attached to it. And so if you pay for listen notes, they'll give you the email that's on other podcast feeds. And then you can email that podcast to make your pitch. So that is essentially the TPP process. I totally skimmed over it. Like I said, we go deep into TPP in episode 60 of the Grow the Show podcast. It does take some time to do research. If you're a Grow the Show accelerator client, remember, we will do that research for you. So if that's new to you, definitely reach out because we can do that piece for you. Don't do it yourself. But everyone else, you can totally, totally do it yourself. It only takes a couple of hours. If you use listen notes, if you go for the guests that you have that you've had and you know, look for the shows that they've been on, it really only, it doesn't take that long. And it's a really, really, really powerful way to get yourself a curated list of podcasts that are just a, not only a perfect fit audience wise for you to be a guest on, but also you have friends. You have mutual friends. So it's not a cold pitch. You can reach out and say, Hey, we know the same person. By the way, you know, makes it way easier to pitch. So that's all going to say about the TPP process itself or how to identify shows to be on. Let's now talk about today's session. Why we're all here, which is, okay, now that you have this list of shows to target to be a guest on, what's the best way or what's a really effective way to make a pitch and make the case for you as a guest of that show. So that's what we're going to talk about today. This episode of Grow the Show is sponsored by Riverside.fm, the leading platform to record studio quality podcasts. More than 70,000 other podcasters use Riverside, including myself, GuyRaz, GaryVee, Spotify, and even the New York Times. Riverside is not only great because it has unbelievably high recording quality regardless of your or your guests internet quality, but it also gives you separate audio and video tracks for each person speaking. It's high tech, but easy to use. From like Zoom, you don't have to have anything installed on your computer and your guests don't either. And did I mention that the audio quality is way better? If you're recording your interviews remotely, get off of Zoom now and hop into Riverside for your next interview. Your listeners will thank you. Head over to Riverside.fm and use code Grow that's GROW to get 63 minutes of recording and 15% off a membership plan. The link is in the show notes. And this is so, so important because I cannot tell you how many pitches we get where people are like it's like they clearly haven't listened to the podcast and they slide it. And because we get so many pitches from people got to catch our eye, otherwise we're going to skim over it and move on. You know, we can have everybody on the show that pitches us. So we're going to teach you how to catch the eyes of the people that you're pitching. Absolutely. And honestly, I'm sure a lot of people here get tons of really bad pitches too and know what they look like. Right? And it's easy before it's, hey, my name, is Joe Schmo and I am a trillionaire entrepreneur who almost lost it all. And I would love to share my story of resilience with your audience. I'm like, get out of here. I don't care about your story, right? But that's the pitches that people make. And as pitching expert Angie Trueblood says, those people just spray and pray, right? So they just send this canned pitch to every podcast under the sun. And they actually wind up being on a lot of shows because of it because if you if you pitch 100,000 shows, some of them are going to say yes, but it's not targeted, right? Those people that they're speaking to, first of all, this podcast, there's probably don't have much of an audience and second of all, it's probably not going to be your exact specific target audience that you're reaching. And so one more time, definitely listen episode 60 of Grow the Show so that you can hear in detail how to conduct TPP research so that the list of shows that you are pitching is really well curated. It's almost certainly going to be a perfect fit for your audience targeting. And all the hosts you have a mutual connection to, so you already have a foot in the door. So once that happens, how do you actually reach out and make the pitch? Well, number one, before we even talk about how to write a great pitch email, the first thing to do would be for the podcast that shows up as the biggest, like juiciest one where you're like, man, if I was on that show, it would be amazing. I recommend asking the guests that you've already had on your show that has also been on that show that you really want to be on for an introduction. Just say, Hey, Catherine, I had you want to grow the show. I saw that you were on entrepreneurs on fire with John Lee Dumas. Any chance, like, what was that process like, you know, oh, Catherine would be like, oh, they were great. They were wonderful. And I'd be like, oh my gosh, I'd love to be on that show someday. Do you think it'd be possible for an introduction and Catherine would say either, no, which if it's, if it's no, it's fine or most likely, absolutely, I'd love to put you in touch with the team. And then again, you've got your foot in the door. So I would do that with one or two of the shows that come up on the list. Then for the rest, I wouldn't ask Catherine to introduce me to 50 shows, right? It's too much work. I would pitch myself. And so let's talk about what makes a great pitch. So what I'm going to do is I am going to pull up a template that you can use to send these pitch emails. And I'm actually going to grab a link real quick. And we're assuming that you're sending these pitches via email because you can do it through social media DMs. And sometimes that works if you've been interacting with somebody on Twitter say, and you get into a good conversation. That would be an instance where it might be good to slide into their DMs or maybe they slide into yours. But for the most part, we recommend pitching via email. So that's why we're pulling up this email template. Yep. So that email is much easier to send out in bulk, right? So you can send a bunch of pitches that you can send like 50 in a day. You can do all this via DMs. And you know, there are several grow the show podcasters who have gotten crazy good success sending video pitch DMs, right? So you find the podcaster on Instagram or something or whatever in the Twitter. You send them a text DM or even an audio or video DM of essentially what we're about to outline for you. And that has gotten a really high take rate as well. What we've tried and true is emails. And so let's go through here an example, a template for what first we'll start with an example. So here's what an example looks like of a great TPP pitch. So first of all, I'd say subject. Now this is somebody named Craig, the podcasters name is Craig. And let's say that the mutual guess that we had was RL and this and black. So shout out to RL who is one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life. If you don't follow her on Twitter, what are you doing? She is so smart when it comes to podcast growth. She's like the queen of podcasting Twitter. That's correct. So I had RL on Grow the Show incredible episode about how to do podcast off of media. Listen to that if you haven't. But let's say for this example that RL was also on a podcast about podcasting that I would like to be on that I'm like, ah, if I could reach that audience, I could serve even more podcasters. And that podcaster Craig also had RL on the show. So what I would do is I would send Craig an email that says this subject, RL, this and black episode, right? So Craig going to see that and it's not going to be, oh, this guy is another guy trying to pitch himself for my podcast. It's, oh, I had an episode of my podcast about RL on this blood. This is about that. Let's see. So I'd say, hey, Craig Kevin here, I host Grow the Show, the podcast that helps independent podcasters get their first 1000 listeners. I came across your show because we both featured RL on this and black on our podcasts. I really liked how you dove into her background prior to squad cast in my episode. We didn't get to that part as much. Anyway, you're hearing from me now because I was shamelessly wondering if you're currently accepting guest pitches for audience audience is the name of the show. This is actually a real show. I haven't sent this pitch yet, but I'm totally going on this weekend. I'm shamelessly wondering if you're currently accepting guest pitches for audience. I think your listeners might love an episode that teaches them how to grow a podcast audience by spending only 15 minutes per day on social media. So I'm alluding to my framework for how to grow an audience on social media, which I call TDE targeted daily engagement. So I'll say, and if I could be so shameless, I'd love to throw my hat in the ring. I've managed to grow two podcasts, past six figures in revenue and my framework targeted daily engagement has helped more than 10,000 podcasters get 25 to 50% monthly downloads growth. I'll also be happy to help the episode get downloads by sharing it to my email list of 10,000 and also running paid ads to the episode. So what do you say? Any chance I might be a good fit for the show. No worries. If not, just figured I'd shamelessly shoot my shot. Either way, consider me a subscriber of the show and I actually signed it as Craig and me as Kevin. That's because I'm Kevin, right? So that is what I recommend the pitch looks like. And so now let's break down what I'm doing here and how it's different. And caveat, there's a million ways to do anything. So there might be people who disagree with how I pitch. There might be better ways to write this copy. I understand that this is not the only way. This is not the best way. It's a way that works. It's worked for me. And I think it could work for you. So here is the template for what I did there. So first of all, I'd say subject name, name of mutual guest episode, right? And the mutual guest is the person that we, that me and the podcaster that I am pitching both had on the show. And so it'd be hey name of the podcaster, right? My name here, Kevin here. I host, Ro the Show, the podcast that helps you grow your podcast. So this is the part where you're really going to want to have a catchy specific ten more description shout out to Eric Newsom for coming up with that exercise. I came across your show and then honestly say, how did you come across their show, right? Are you just cold pitching them or how did you come across it? So for me, I said, I came across your show because we both featured R on this black on our podcasts. Right? Pretty simple. Then I would recommend having something specific about how that podcaster interview that other podcaster or just anything specific about that podcaster show. Now, if you're sending a hundred pitches in a day, yes, you could take this out and not add that personalization, however, I will say it is a fantastic touch that is really effective. And also it's just cool. It's a good thing to do to actually check out the show of the podcast that you're pitching. So I do highly recommend you take that extra step, just to sample the show that you're pitching. It really doesn't have to take a lot of time either. I mean, if you scroll through their list of episodes, look for one whose title stands out to you. Listen to ten minutes and pick out something that you really love from that ten minutes. It doesn't have to be you listening to five episodes until you find something that you want to talk about. Exactly. Usually within the first like two minutes, you hear something interesting and something unique and you're like, oh, that's cool. How are I from staff? So anyway, you're hearing from me now because I was shamelessly wondering if you're currently accepting guest pitches for audience. I think your listeners might love an episode that and then here's the key and this if you walk away from anything from the session, this is the one thing to distinguish about what makes a pitch that kind of comes across as a little icky and you asking that podcast so that you're pitching for a favor versus the other way around where you are offering to do them a favor and it's this. When you pitch to be featured on another podcast, if you pitch the topic that you can talk about rather than pitching yourself to that podcaster, in my experience, what I found is that the pitch will be way more effective and here's why. What a lot of podcasters do based on the evidence that I get from the pitches that we get is podcasters will pitch themselves in their story and why they would be a great guest. And then by the end of reading the pitch, it feels like that podcaster is asking you a favor. What you have me on your show, will you let me access your audience that you spent all this time building, right? Compared to the other way around where the podcaster that's pitching me does the work to propose a topic, propose some content that we can cover on Grow the Show. So if you're pitching Grow the Show, don't be like, I'd love to share my story of podcast success. If you instead pitch the topic, the content, the thing you would talk about, it's going to be way more compelling. So instead of saying, I'd love to share my story of podcast success, you might say, hey, Kevin, if you're interested, I think your listeners might love to hear what growth strategy particularly worked for me as I took my podcast from zero to a million listeners. I think it might be helpful in teaching your listeners how to grow and monetize. I read that. I'm like, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. Number one, number two, Catherine and I had a meeting this week where we're like, what content do we make next? So you just did that work for us, right? And said, here's what content you should make next. Now you're doing me a favor by saving me time because you're bringing me content that I can share. And you have made it clear that you understand who my audience is. And you know that my audience is going to love this. Now you're doing my job for me compared to when you pitch yourself and it feels like you're asking me to give you the audience that I've worked hard to build. So that's the difference. Think about it like this. I know a lot of us here are online business owners, experts, and even if you're not, you have a thing, right, that you're, that you can talk about that you're really interested in and passionate about. So when you're pitching yourself to be featured on another podcast, and I hate saying pitching yourself, but you get it. Imagine you're pitching for a conference that you're going to attend. So for anyone here who has attended any sort of conference or convention before, maybe you've pitched yourself to be featured at that conference or convention, more so for conferences. When you pitch to be featured at a conference, they don't ask you about your story. They ask you, what are you going to talk about? What is your conference talk going to be about? What are the attendees of your talk going to learn at this conference talk? And so any of you who have spoken at a conference had to do this. You had to say, I'm going to do a talk about XYZ. People who attend are going to learn one, two, three. And the conference organizers go great. We would love to feature a session about that. They didn't pick you. They picked your topic. The same thing is true with pitching podcasts. If you come to them with a topic or an angle, odds are way higher that you're going to get accepted. Because again, you are doing that podcaster a favor by serving up a week's worth of content on a silver platter. Now this absolutely applies to entertainment shows. Because I hear from entertainment shows all the time, we're like, oh, well, I've done a coach. Is that going to work for me? It totally will. You still have a unique angle that you're going to talk about. So for example, maybe your show is about, I don't know, Star Wars. If your show is about Star Wars, and there's another podcast that's about Star Wars that you're going to be featured on, you're not going to pitch that podcast and say, I'd love to share my story or talk about me. You're going to say, I'd love to come on, forgive me, I'm not. I don't know enough about Star Wars. So there's any Star Wars fans, this may or may not be accurate. But you would say, hey, something like I love to talk, I'd love to come on the show and talk about why this year's season of the Mandalorian was terrible, I don't know. And that's going to be the angle. Don't come at me. I've never seen it. I don't know what it is. But you get what I'm saying. Would you like to talk about that on your show? And that Star Wars podcast might be like, oh my gosh, yeah, let's totally do an episode and debate about the Mandalorian or something like that. You go on the same. So this is the key here. If you pitch the topic, the content, the episode that you would bring that show rather than pitching yourself as the guest, you're going to have a much, much, much higher take rate. And so if you don't know what that would be, here's the hack. Just sort your podcast episodes by number of downloads that they got and retention rate and see what your most popular episode is and talk about that. That's all you have to do. I'll also call out that when I do this, I said the word shameless twice. So you can, you can debate whether or not you should include the same word twice. But basically, I like to approach this in a very like, hey, I'm calling out that I'm totally shamelessly pitching you here. So I like to acknowledge that and just be like, totally like to shamelessly throw my hat into the ring. And that just makes it less salesy and just lets you, when you call out the elephant in a room, it lets you feel a little less nervous about being salesy, right? I also think it's a really good idea to expand upon the experience that you have with this topic. So if you are a expert or a coach or consultant, talk about the results you have driven that have given you credence to talk about this thing. If you are not a business owner and your show is about, it's a talk show. It's about sports. It's about entertainment or something like that. Just share where you've talked about this before or how this, you know, how, what, what experience you have with the topic, right? And then the other key. So if pitching the topic is rather than yourself is number one, the number one thing to remember, if you have room for one other thing to remember, also include something that you will do to drive listenership to the show, to your episode, you don't have to spend money. But if you come out and say, I would also love to help the episode get downloads by the link. It might be sharing with your email list. It might be posting on social media. You might even say by personally texting the link to 150 of my friends, right? Or if you're somebody who has the budget by saying, I will run Facebook ads to this episode. Anything in between. If you call it out and say, Hey, podcast, or that I'm offering some content to. If you have me on the show, I'll also do some work to make sure that you get some, some more listeners. Jeff Bettenberg actually had a great question. That's related. And he was asking kind of in the same vein, would it be beneficial to review their podcast and offer to do that as well? So review as in. Oh, you mean like Apple podcast, yeah, 100% great calls. Amazing, right? So that's exactly things like that. And it doesn't take a lot, but it's another signal to that podcaster that you're not just trying to milk them for the audience that they've worked so hard to build. And imagine again, everyone here is a podcaster. Imagine if you got pitches that said, Hey, I'd love to come share this topic on your show. And if you have me, I'm going to work to make sure your audience grows. You're going to have that person on the show, right? Because that's what you want. You want your audience to grow. How hard is it to get your guests? I mean, we all big all the time for our guests to share on social media, but they never do. Imagine if one came to you and before you even interact with them, they said, Hey, I'm definitely going to spread the word and bring you listeners easy, right? The last thing that I'll say here, a couple of things is that you always want to give them an out, right? So what do you say any chance I might be a good fit for the show? I might even rephrase this to say, would you consider covering that topic on the podcast? And what this does is it gives you insulation in two ways, two ways. Number one, instead of saying, will you cover that topic on the podcast and demanding a yes or no answer in this email? The question is, would you consider covering that that topic on the podcast? Another reason why if you've pitched yourself before and you sent a bunch of pitches and you got no response, a lot of times that happens because in that initial email, you go for a yes or a no. Will you have me on the show, right? And that podcaster probably read your email, but they don't know you, they don't know yet if they want to have you on the show, but because you demanded a yes or no, will you have me on the show? What do you say? Then they're going to resist even answering you, because they're not entirely sure they want to say yes, and they're also afraid to say no, so they just don't answer you. And that's why you get ghosted. So this is where we are now. What I had here is any chance I might be a good fit for the show. And as I'm reading this, you know what, I'm just going to insulate that a little more and say, would you consider covering that topic on the podcast? So for me, I'd say, actually, I'll just do this. So for mine, I'd say, so what do you say? Any interest in doing an episode about how to grow an audience on social media, right? So what I'm doing is when I pitch Craig here, I'm not asking, will you have me on the podcast? I'm saying, is there any interest in doing an episode about how to grow an audience? So number one, it's less, will you have me? And it's just, is there any interest? Yes, or no, he could still answer me. It's not a high pressure thing to say, yes, I'm interested or no, I'm not interested. Because if he says yes, that still doesn't mean he has to have you on the show. And also, undoing an episode about how to grow an audience on social media, it's easier for him to say no about the topic than to you. And the reason why, and yes, you do want to give them an out to say no to you, because it's better to get a response than to just get ghosted. The last thing there is, no worries if not, just figured out shamelessly shoot my shot. Did I use shameless three times? And then oh my god, gathered, don't let me, what are you doing? This is funny, don't use the word shameless three times. And I said Katherine, what are you doing? Shame on you. Yeah, shame on me. The last thing that I add is either way, consider me a subscriber of the show. Even if you don't have me, I'm excited to connect and I'm in. You pitch yourself this way. You're going to get a lot more yeses and that's going to make it all the more important that you do your TPP research so that you're only pitching shows that are a perfect fit. Because otherwise, you're going to get so many yeses that you're going to be on lots of shows that aren't a perfect fit. So in summation, in my opinion, the strongest way to grow your podcast audience is to get yourself featured on other podcasts. It costs your time and not money and it's exponential. Meaning you spend one hour, you reach a potentially infinite amount of people in that hour, depending on how big that podcast size is. So that's number one. Number two is since there's more than 30 million podcasts for you to choose from when pitching, narrow the field by selecting shows that have also had the guests that you have had on your show. And if you're somebody who has not ever had guests on your show and doesn't plan to, just replace guests that you've had with other people that you know in your field, right, your peers, your friends, your colleagues. If you don't have any friends in the field, number one, do TDE to make some friends because it's going to be a very lonely journey trying to grow your audience without any peers in the space. But you can also just choose other influencers in your sphere, in your niche that are at or slightly above your level and just look at shows that they've been on. And because again, like there's somebody who's already done the work to curate shows that are worth being on. So it makes no sense for you starting from scratch. And so pick the ones that if you have guests, which is most of you that your guests have already been on, look at all the shows that they've been on, consider those to be pitched. Sometimes it's not going to be a good fit. Eric Newsom was guest number one on the Grow the Show podcast. He wrote the book Make Noise. Highly recommend it. Eric is also a prolific fiction writer. So he's been on tons of other podcasts that have nothing to do with podcasts or podcast growth. I'm not going to pitch myself to those. So sometimes when you do this research, it's going to bring up some results that are not a good fit. That's okay. Because it's definitely going to bring you results that are a really, really great fit. And so that's number two. Well, and I'd also add two. And this is another one from Angie Truebletting sort of to what you were saying. Also try to find podcast. They don't have to be an exact perfect fit for your show. So let's say you have a podcast about online marketing. You don't have to be just on online marketing podcasts. Look at entrepreneurship podcasts. Look at marketing podcasts. And you can look sort of for the adjacent subjects that yours fits into. So I think we have there's a podcaster who is a baseball podcaster. There could be whatever sports pod. Like they're different adjacent subjects that you can also look at. 100% another way to a question that you can ask yourself that might help you figure out. What are adjacent podcasts? Is this your dream listener for your podcast? What other podcasts are they likely listening to? So for me, a lot of growth shows listeners are online business owners whose podcast is a content marketing play for their business. There's a good chance that those people are also listening to other online marketing podcasts. Those podcasts are not about my topic, which is podcast growth. But there's a really good chance that the people that I want to reach who I haven't heard of me yet are also listening to that show. So if I'm on that show, not everyone is going to be a podcaster, but that's okay because there's a really high chance that some of them are and it'll be totally worth it. So in your case, like Katherine said, it doesn't have to be the exact same niche. And in fact, if there are no other shows like yours, that's a good thing. That means you're unique. You're shows in a category of one. But there still are other podcasts that your dream listeners are already listening to. Because remember, you're not going to get people to start listening to podcasts for the first time. They're already out there listening to podcasts today. And you just need to find out what those podcasts are and then get featured on them. And the way to do that is by making a pitch like this, where you not pitch yourself, but you pitch the topic. You pitch the content, the episode that your episode would be about. And in doing so, you also tell the podcaster what you're going to do to help drive listenership to their show. You do it like that. You phrase the pitch in their best interests and you're doing them a favor. I'm giving you content and I'm bringing you listeners. Who's going to say no to that? So if you want this template, if you want to this document where you can take this template and just drop in all of your information, comment on this post, pitch PITCH. And one of my team members will DM you a link to this Google document so that you can use this template while pitching yourself, but not really to other podcasts. Yeah, and this is the exact same template we give our accelerator students. We give them a bunch of different templates for various reasons, but this is one of the newer ones and one of the main ones that we give them. So you guys are getting it totally for free today, because we're so excited to have you here for this first webinar. So there you have it. That's our first ever Facebook Live long overdue in the Grown Show Facebook group. So we've been talking about these for ages. We finally did it. I hope this was valuable. We've got about five minutes. Katherine, have there been any questions that have come up that we can that we can knock out while we're still here? I don't think there have been any additional ones unless I've missed them, because this chat is is going off. So if anybody has any other questions for Kevin or I, it could be about TPP now that we have the time, though, it could be about anything else. Definitely drop them in the chat. Wow, the chat really is. Not what we'll just hang out. And I know, yeah, this chat is wild. This is cool. And yeah, well, we're here. So I know we mentioned that episode 60 goes into TPP, which is sort of the framework that this sort of pitch is about. But then I also suggest you check out episode 44 of the Grown Show podcast if you're kind of interested in learning more about this, because that's with Angie Trueblood and she is an expert at pitching. So she has a ton of great advice, a lot of what we talked about here. We learned from her. So definitely make sure you check it out. Yeah, she's an absolute pro and she actually also has a membership too for pitching, which is really, really, really great. So her group is called, it's called either Podwise or the Podwise group. Just check out her episode of Grown The Show. We've got links in the show. And I was really, really, really incredible human being. Yeah, definitely. We actually did get a question. So someone was asking about the volume of pitches that you recommend sending out. So they're asking you recommend just a few pitches. More personalized or more of a mass basis. And so you recommend for that. Yeah, so it's funny, because you want quality over quantity, right? So quality personalized pitches will always win, which is why I'm like, I would rather you send 10 really personalized, perfect fit pitches than 100 kind of OK pitches. So quality beats quantity, but quality and quantity beats that. Still that from Alex Armosey. So the more high quality, really, really locked in, perfect fit pitches you can send, the faster your show is going to grow. And so what I recommend to our accelerator students and to anybody is to general shoot for five to 10 pitches a week, right? And if you get a 40% to 50% positive response rate, that's really good, meaning you get a yes or a maybe, not now, but maybe later is really good, right? So 40 to 50%. And so if you shoot to be featured on five to 10 other podcasts a month, you're going to get that hockey stick listenership growth. Now, I know that that's a lot to do, but I would argue that you're probably spending more time on other strategies or no strategies, no time on any strategies, but you shouldn't do, can't do if you want to grow. But it's a really, really, really effective way. And so what I like to do is just pick a couple days in the month where I'm going to be featured on other podcasts, send out my pitches, and then do my best to schedule my appearances on the same days so that I can batch those appearances all in one go. It doesn't always work out that way. And especially when you get featured on a bigger show, you're kind of, you know, you're on their timeline. But that's what I would recommend shooting for. If you really want to go all in, set a target for yourself to get featured on five to 10 shows a month. Adam asked, what about who you should feature on your show to grow? So what sort of guests should you be having on? And how can you target guests for show growth? And I suspect the standards probably going to be a podcast episode in the future because there's a lot of info on that. There's a lot. So the three sources that I recommend for where to find great guests for your show. Number one, the guests that you've had. So my biggest piece of advice to land incredible guests is at the end of every interview that you do, ask the guest, who's one person that you think will be a great fit for this show? If you do that, they'll usually go, hmm, and they'll think for a minute. And then they'll make a killer recommendation. But the best part of it is they almost always recommend somebody that they know personally. And so they'll say, oh, you should have so-and-so. And then you're like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. I'd love to have them. And they'll be like, oh, I'd love to put you in touch. Would you like an intro? Boom, put in the door. You don't even have to worry about pitching. You're in, right? So that's number one, that's first piece of advice. Advice number two, look at conferences and conventions in your world. I don't care what your podcast is about. There are conferences and conventions about your topic. So go to their websites and look at all the speakers and you'll get 100 options of people to choose from. And what's good about those is that those people have something discrete to talk about. So they're usually well versed in being a guest. And the number three is what we just taught you. The best, a really, really, really great part of TPP research where your searching shows to be, to pitch yourself on is that a lot of them are going to be great fits to be guests of your show. And guess what? They can spread the word to their podcast audience. So it's a double win. You don't always have to swap, but it is an incredibly powerful way to rise the tide that raises all votes. All right, we had a really, really great question from Kevin in the chat. And he was saying, asking, let's say you pitch someone and you get no response, should you repitch them? And if so, how long should you wait to send them another pitch? Great question. So in general, I would follow up about a week later. So if you don't get a response, I would send a quick follow-up and actually at the bottom of that document, which I didn't even go over right now. But it's at the bottom of the document that we're going to share with you if you comment pitch here on this post. We'll share the document with you. It's a quick one line follow-up. You just respond to the email that you sent and said, hey, name, just falling up on this email. Have you given any thought to doing an episode about blank? Right? Again, you're not saying, hey, Kevin here, just following up. Can I be on your podcast? I'm not going to get an answer. You'd say, hey, Kevin here. Hey, Craig, just falling up on this email. Have you given any thought to doing an episode about podcast growth? Right? Because again, the answer is, have you given any thought? And whether the answer is yes or no, it's still no pressure to answer you. They can be like, no, I haven't got to it yet. Or yes, I have, but I'm not sure. But either way, it's more likely that you're going to get a response. So I do recommend following up after a week. If you don't hear back after that, I'd give it a couple months, generally three months before you follow up. You could follow up twice if you want. Some people are more persistent than others. So you could follow up twice. But that's generally what I recommend. Follow up once a lot of times. Like, if they don't answer, it's not because they're not interested. It's just how many emails did you not answer this week immediately? Right? That's how we do things, right? So always good to follow up. It's not a burden. You're not going to be annoying. And so that is something that will really, really, really raise your take rate is following up a week later. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And this is a quick question I'm going to have. I actually don't know the answer to this one. Is there a way to get the Groza Show to you? Sure. It's outside of being a member, other than being an employee. Well, so we don't have one set up. But if that's something people are interested in, I use Printful, which is a great drop shipping company to create these. So we could we could throw together a store link pretty easily. So yeah, definitely that we can make that happen. I never even thought I would want to. Yeah. Yeah, just wanted to make sure everybody in the comments knows that we will at the end after the webinar is over. We will make sure that everybody who requested the pitch document will get it. We just have to send it to all of you individually and that takes a couple of minutes. But you'll get it very, very shortly. We just have to wait till after the webinar is over. And also another quick announcement. If we don't get to your question in the comments, there's a couple I know I've seen I will go back through and make sure that you get some sort of answer via the comment section. So we see you guys don't worry. We are on it, but we just have limited time today. So we have a couple more questions. We have one about what your suggestions might be. Kevin, if you're an independent podcast and a niche industry, but you're not a small business owner. So your business, your podcast is necessarily backed by your business. And I know you with Philly, who definitely have some experience in that area. Totally. So I get that question a lot because I do oftentimes angle a lot of what I'm saying to business owners. But what I'll say is this, the concepts and the tenants are exactly the same. And everything that I'm teaching you, I learned on my first show, which is called Philly, who it's about my hometown of Philadelphia and has nothing to do with a business. And so all of these tenants apply the same to an entertainment show or to a show that is not affiliated with any sort of business. So was the question about like pitching specifically or just in general? Yeah, I think just in general because I think like you said, we do tend to kind of imply an angle, some of our content towards business owners or people who are using their podcasts to further their business. But I think this might be a good topic for another quick hit episode. But in general, like it's a little bit more abstract. But if your show is not about business, your show still is a product. It still gives your listeners something, right? Something, whether it's an insight or like, I don't believe that entertainment alone, like is enough, like shows have to be entertaining. It's table stakes. But there's something that your show gives your listeners that they pick, they're picking your show over literally everything else available. You are competing with every single podcaster, the Joe Rogans, the Amy Porter Fields, the barstools, you're competing with all of those, you're competing with Netflix, you're competing with YouTube. But still somebody chose your show for some reason. And so there is some sort of thing that your show gives them that they love. And so it's the case whether or not your show drives an outcome or supports a business, there's still some sort of thing that your show gives to your listenership. And it's a little bit more abstract, meaning you have to think a little bit harder to figure out exactly what that is. But the best way to figure out what that is is to ask your listeners, why do you listen to my show? Why do you listen to this show? And what they tell you is usually a great indicator of what it is. So like I said, let's do a solo episode about that. We can dive more into detail. We obviously can't go into it here. But in short, pretty much everything that we teach here still applies to all podcasts, whether or not your show is supports business or not. Yeah, definitely. And to wrap it up, there's actually one more question we didn't get to that I think I can answer. And somebody was asking how we grow our show using social media, posting on reels and all of that on Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever. So I will say number one that we started with TDE. Like we teach you guys to do TDE, we did TDE. It worked for us when we started out. And then we actually didn't use social media outside of our community too much for a little bit. We didn't find at least for our sake that it was super necessary for growing our audience base. However, lately we've really started to get into it because we wanted to build Kevin's brand. We felt like we were confident with sort of where we were. And we were kind of ready to take the next step with that. So all that is to say, check out TDE. I'll link you to a couple of episodes that we have a couple of GTS episodes that we have about social media. But we will be reporting back to you on that, probably via the podcast, hopefully sometime in the future. Absolutely.