How to Land Your Dream Podcast Guest Now, With Ina Coveney

If I were to ask you, who is your dream podcast guest? What name comes to mind? My guess is that it's someone with a huge following who seems kind of impossible to reach, right? It's that one name that you dream of seeing at the top of your podcast feed in an episode title. That name on your feed would mean that you made it. Who is that person for you? Have you invited them onto your podcast yet? I've asked that question many times and often the response that I get is, oh, no, no. I'm not ready for that. Or the response is, yeah, right. I would never be able to get in touch with that person. That's impossible. Well, I've got some news. You might already be ready. And it's not impossible. In fact, I know someone who is so good at landing dream guests for their podcast that they were able to get two of their dream guests to be the first two guests of their show. That someone is here with us today. Her name is Ena Coveney. She's a podcaster, a public speaker, a coach, a lead generation expert, and she was one of the very first students of the Grow the Show podcast accelerator program. Ena and I met at podcast movement way back in 2019. And then in 2020, when I announced the launch of the Grow the Show accelerator, Ena joined right away. She's a day one. But this episode is not about the accelerator program. What we're here to talk about today is what Ena did shortly after joining the program way back when. I remember it like it was yesterday because I was floored. Ena had just launched her podcast a couple weeks after joining the program. And her first two guests were two of my dream guests for this show, who I still haven't had yet. Those guests were John Lee Dumas and Pat Flynn. And after having those two guests, Ena continued to exclusively feature dream guests for her podcast. And so today, finally, after two years of watching Ena do this, I had to get her here with you to share her secrets with us. So today, the student becomes the teacher. Because today, Ena is going to teach us how she has been able to land huge names as guests on her podcast without having a massive audience or a ton of fame beforehand. And in doing so, she's going to teach you how you can land your dream podcast guests right now. This is Grow the Show. The podcast to help you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidland and my mission is to help you the independent podcaster to grow your audience and monetize now so you can have a thriving podcast business. Today, you're going to realize that you don't have to wait as long as you thought you did to invite your dream guests onto your podcast. And you're going to learn how to make any cold pitch into a warm pitch. And by doing so, you're going to be able to land all the dream podcast guests you want anytime you want. So, if you're ready to learn how Ena Coventy has exclusively featured dream guests on her show and how you can do the same, then stick around to this episode of Grow the Show. My name is Ena Coventy. I'm a business coach and the host of the Global Phenomenon podcast and I help online coaches get clients even when they have a tiny audience. Ena began her career following in her parents footsteps. I know people I have like corporate pedigree, right? Like my father was the CIO for the biggest company in my country. My mother was a really successful software project manager. And that's all I saw, that's all I knew. But I had very ingrained fear that because that's all I knew. I was going to wake up at 65, retiring from the company that hired me out of college. And that thought frightened me. But I didn't know what else there was. So, I just started looking into things. Okay, I'm going to create an app. And this app is going to like change the world, right? I actually like scheduled my time to create apps and none of them ever saw the light of day. That was just me experimenting with what I wanted to do with my life. Because I just knew that it wasn't what I was doing. But that's all I knew. And that being, being incorporated chasing after the VP roles, the team leader roles. Like that's the whole example that I had in my life. That didn't exactly happen. Or else Ena probably wouldn't be on the show talking to us today, right? But she found that the example that she had didn't quite fit. So she started to look outside of work for fulfillment. It did start learning French. And I started taking the piano. I started taking medical terminology classes. I was just exploring because I didn't know what I wanted. I just knew it wasn't this. But without an example, how do you get out of a box? A box that you've lived in all your life. How do you get out of it if you have no idea what's outside of it? So she started to veer into entrepreneurship. I had started making websites for small businesses. But it wasn't because I had this entrepreneurial bug. It was just one of those things. Learning the piano, making websites. It was just something else I was trying. A friend of mine told me, hey, we should start a mastermind together. I'm like, great. What's a mastermind? What are you talking about? So she did what anybody who has that question would do. I looked up on podcasts. Anybody talking about what a mastermind is? Because actually now we know masterminds as kind of like basically group coaching programs. But a mastermind is actually something a lot more specific. It's a meeting of masterminds. It's getting together a marketer, a finance person, a mathematician, somebody who does social work. Like getting masters in their field together to give each other feedback and to give each other ideas. So I looked up podcasts. We're talking about masterminds. And eventually, you know, I would listen to one episode. And then I would listen to the next one of that podcast. And I would just drop it. I just started on subscribing from the podcast I originally subscribed to. Except for one. The only one that stood the test of time was Amy Porterfield's online marketing made easy podcast. I downloaded it just because in one episode she talked about masterminds. And I just kept listening. I'm fascinated by the fact that this woman had created a company where she's the head. And she is it. It's her knowledge. She monetizes it. She has a million dollar business. And it's just doing whatever she wants in her own terms. And there is no cap to how much money she can make. And that was my eyes opening to this universe of the online coaching world. So that was like this part. It took me years after I learned about her. I started investing in programs and everything to finally decide that I wanted to do this full time. But to become a full time entrepreneur and coach, Ena would have to quit her day job. The reason I actually quit my job was because I basically just got screwed over for the last time. I was like nine months pregnant when my boss pulled me into his office and told me that he wanted me to take on a more leadership role. That he needed my help now. So like the badass that I am, I went and I did what he asked me to do. I transitioned my old job to another contractor. I got a new contractor to shadow me because I was about to go materially so that the job could continue to get done. I got a promotion on paper saying you're the new implementations manager for the entire company. Everything was great. And then they refused to give me a pay raise with the promotion. And the reason was because in my boss's words, I was going on maternity leave anyway. Which is by the way illegal to withhold raise and promotion to women going on materially. So I consulted a lawyer and I said I'll deal with this when I get back. So I had my baby and then I got the call that the male contractor that I had hired to backfill me was doing such a great job. That he was going to keep the promotion and if I wouldn't mind going back to doing what I was doing before. And that's when I was like, it's not worth it to me. These people clearly don't know what I do, what I'm worth, but I do. And I know that I do not deserve that kind of treatment. So she and her husband took a look at their finances and they decided to take a risk. We determined that, you know, if I didn't work for a year, we would be okay just with my husband's salary. It was not an easy decision. It meant slashing our entire income in half because my husband and I always made about the same amount of money. So slashing our income in half was not going to be easy, but my husband understood and we decided to do it. Back then, I wasn't even thinking of coaching necessarily. All I knew is that I wanted to have, and this is a very immature way of thinking about it, but this is how we all start. I want to be rich and famous. I want to live a life that looks like a paid vacation. I want the passive income. So after quitting her job and deciding to strike out on her entrepreneurial journey, Ena was on her way to becoming an online coach. But to be a coach, you have to have something you want to teach people, right? I started by creating an online course. If you want to know, it was called WordPress for complete beginners. It was supposed to teach moms like me how to make WordPress sites so they could stay home with their babies, which is exactly what I was and what I was doing. It took me six months to create it. I sold four copies, never talked about it again. That's when somebody had was very wise and told me that's not how you grow a business. You really got to talk to people. You can't just take what you think. However smart you are, you can't just take that put it in a course and expect it to blow up. You got to talk to people and actually help them with their problems, which means you got to start helping them. That's when I started coaching. It was about eight months after I had quit my job. This was a huge decision and Ena already had a lot on her plate. Because at the same time, Ena already had two podcasts. The first podcast, it was called Ena Nachel Pod and I would interview entrepreneurs. That's what I did. It was like my little play thing. After 45 episodes, I quit because the editing process was just grueling. I hadn't taken your program. I didn't know that I could monetize it. I didn't know what to do with it. It was not like it was my passion. Then I started a new one because I said, I don't want to rely on other people anymore. I just want to get on a microphone and just talk. It was more like a dear diary kind of. It was called biased today. It wasn't something that I was thinking consistently. I wasn't really thinking long term with these things. It was just a whim. Then when I started the business, I wanted to launch my WordPress for complete beginners. Even though she was working on selling her course, Ena still felt drawn towards podcasting. I saw that somebody else had started their podcast with a 21-day challenge. I'm like, I have a challenge coming up. It's going to be five days. That's it. That's going to be the first five episodes of my podcast. I started a podcast and ended up being an amazing podcast. It started being called corporate trailblazers. That was a little confusing because it sounded like I wanted corporate people to rise up the ranks. I wanted corporate people to get out of corporate. On episode 50, I changed the name to trailblazing out of corporate life. I had 100 episodes in that podcast, which was mostly solo episodes just teaching. The truth about this is what you need to be doing to start your business and to get out. When I met you in 2019, I had just wrapped up 100 episodes. I had decided that I was going to stop it because I wanted to create something new. Then we met. In your program, it went and started the global phenomenon, which is the podcast that I have now. In a launched the global phenomenon from within the Grow the Show accelerator program, and what we teach here at Grow the Show around social media engagement provided her quite the light bulb moment. The end of 2020 beginning of 2021 is when I start practicing what you teach about doing your daily engagements, about going out there and meeting people, about not just preaching from a mountaintop, not just letting the podcast do its work, it's about me doing the work, me getting that on the ground and talking to people. In us talking about our flagship social media growth framework targeted daily engagement. It's where you spend a little time every single day on social media engaging with your target audience, rather than simply posting self-promotional crap all the time. It's about building relationships one step at a time every single day. Now, Ena was first exposed to this within the Grow the Show accelerator, and when she was, a lot of the success that she had in the past started to make sense. I was out there getting to know people. I was out there establishing relationships. I just didn't know what to call it, and I didn't know really how to do it right. It's almost like you created a framework to explain how I was able to get clients. So when I started learning from you, like light bulbs were going off everywhere. I'm like, oh my god, this is what my clients need. They need me to teach them how to get clients. But really those lessons completely changed my business. I created my Instagram account called your engagement coach. Because of this, like you are my papa bear. Like everything that people are learning from me. They are learning because I learned it from you. So I have so much gratitude for having found you, for having found this program that was able to put words into what my clients needed at the time. This is the funny thing about a coach mentor relationship. Because from my perspective, Ena is not giving herself enough credit here. I just helped her see clearly what she was already doing well and how she could do more of it more systematically. But to Ena, it's little nudges like that that make all the difference. I think this is how coaching works. That sometimes you just need someone to give you permission to be a little bit bold. When I first joined your program and I was going to your coaching calls, you had a lot of really good wisdom to impart. So there were a lot of things that you said on those coaching calls that really embolded me to go bigger. Do not just stay little. It's like, no, just go out there and do your thing. Ena's thing is being a bold relationship builder, which goes a long way when trying to land dream podcast guests. All Ena needed was a little encouragement and confidence. So I was observing. I saw all their podcasters. And one person in particular, he was having pretty big guests on. And this is somebody that I had met through another event. And he had John Lee Dumas. So I asked him, I'm like, how did you get John Lee Dumas? And he told me, I asked, I'm like, what? Like, did you have connections? Did you, like, were you in his program? And he's like, no, we're connected now. But no. And I'm like, OK. So I'm just going to go and ask. I'm just just going to go and ask. So I went and I asked. And the answer was yes. And they sent me a call in their link. And I'm like, OK, so that happened. I've actually interviewed John Lee Dumas twice already. Because actually, you know, this happened. I interviewed him the first time before your program, way before your program, in March or February of 2019, I had interviewed him. And I met him a podcast movement in the same conference where you and I met. I met him in person for the first time. So when I started your program, I'm like, OK, I'm going to try that one more time. And he said, yes, again, so I actually interviewed him twice. Pat Flynn totally came from just feeling bold one night. I was in my, with my laptop on my lap. And just like, just thinking of words that you had said. Just like, if we're going to like go big, we go big, right? So I asked, I went to Pat Flynn's website. And I went to his speaker form. And his speaker form says, OK, what event is this for? What is your budget for Pat? And anybody else would have just stopped there. Would have realized that, well, this is to book him for an event. I clearly don't have a budget. Maybe this is not the right way to do it. But I just didn't let that stop me. And third in there, I don't have a budget. But my audience would love to hear from him. And I put in a story in there about how I almost met him at Pat Gas Movement. But I was too chicken to say hi. And turns out he never even read that. I thought I'm like, oh, that's what got me in. The fact that I had like a cool story about not having almost having met him. He had no idea. He didn't even read that. I just got a message back from his admin a couple days later saying, Pat would love to be on your podcast. And when can we do it? Now, what Ena is saying here is that part of getting your dream guests is just being confident enough to ask. Because the worst thing that can happen is they say no. Which yes, that sucks. But the good news is that it's not that hard to drastically improve your odds of getting a yes. I don't cold pitch. I mean, what's the point? Like I said, it's, you know, I'm a small podcast. They've never heard of it before. Now I'm able to put a really nice picture of all of my guests. And it's on my Facebook profile, right? Like the picture of all of my amazing guests. I can send them that and be like, you belong in this lineup, right? And that usually gets me a response. But I definitely try to talk to them before I send the pitch for sure. By cold pitch, Ena means that she doesn't just reach out to people that she has never had any contact with before. Those folks are more likely to ignore you or say no. So that's what cold pitching is and it's what most podcasters do. Now there are two ways to avoid cold pitching, other than just not pitching at all. The first is the easiest, but it's also the less likely scenario. Are there guests that you already have a relationship with? Maybe it's people that you've already joined their programs. Maybe it's people that you followed or you listened to their podcasts now or years ago. Like is there somebody that you are already a member of their audience? If so, then become a more visible member of their audience. You do that simply via TDE. Check out episode eight of this podcast to learn how that is done. But start there. Start with a low-hanging fruit. But what about the fruit that's a little higher up? That seems out of reach. So I make sure that I am engaging with the accounts of every guest. But the people that I interview are pretty big, right? So they're probably not even the ones checking their comments, or not even the ones checking their DMs. What I do try to make sure of is that I am putting myself in front of them in some way shape or form. So if it's not participating in their polls on Instagram or commenting on Instagram, I make sure to DM them. And I ask them questions. And I just get myself in front of them. Just for them to know what is it that I do. Note here that Ena does not do what amateurs do when they get the attention of a big name for the first time. She does not ask them for anything. Now you'd be forgiven if you had the impulse to pitch a big name as soon as you got their attention because it feels like it's your only shot, right? But actually that's totally not true. In fact, resisting the urge to pitch right away and instead deciding to play the long game is exactly how you raise the odds of getting a yes from your dream guest. That's because instead of them seeing you as yet another person who's just asking them for something, they will see you as a valuable member of their audience. Besides, it's not that hard to get their attention again anyway. It's pretty easy to get another chance to interact with your dream guest. If you are a member of somebody's community, what can you do to stand out in that community? Is there a Facebook group that you can go and the group belongs to that guest? For example, can you go in and stand out as somebody who is being helpful to members? Can you reach out to the administrators and say like, hey, I'd like to give the audience in your Facebook group something for free. Maybe I can train them on doing something. It's just a matter of how can you get into their line of sight? Can you write a review for their podcast, write a review for their program, leave that review, screenshot it, put it on Instagram and say thank you and tag them. What can you do to get their attention? I would be doing that first. After you get their attention, I would be doing a reach out. Just a warm reach out, just saying, hey, I just left you a great review because I think that you're amazing. I'm a business coach and I've been following you for a really long time. I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate it. You've really made a change in my life. Great. Only if it's genuine. Of course, I'm not telling you to make stuff up. Genuinely show appreciation for the guests that you want to have. Hopefully they will respond. Sometimes they want. Maybe that's not the platform where they're in. Maybe they have virtual assistance so they care of that. Can you send an email of appreciation to them? Can you send them a gift of some sort? Can you do something to get in their line of sight? Get their attention and don't ask them for anything. Simply be helpful, be interested, be the life of the party, and be a valued member of their audience. Then, after warming the dream guest up to you a little bit, then you can make the pitch. I would probably wait a week or so in order to say, hey, by the way, you would be an amazing guest on my podcast. What do you think? It really is that simple. Put yourself on your dream guest's radar by becoming a visible member of their community, and then just ask them what they think about being on your show. Now, there are obviously two main outcomes to asking someone to be on your show. They either say no, or they say yes. If they say no, usually it's not a no. Usually, we're prioritizing other things right now. So, I reply, is it okay if I touch base again in a couple of months, and see if schedules open up, and every single time they've responded saying, absolutely, follow up with us then. And who knows? Maybe they'll tell me, well, we're still not prioritizing. That's okay. That's fine. We are so excited to have her. We're so excited to have him. Can I follow up with you in the next couple of months? What that work? I'm telling you, it took me two years to get one of my dream guests, and it's in the bag, and she loved that interview so much. She's like, I can't wait for it to come out because we need to tell everyone about it, because nobody has ever asked us this. So, a no is usually not a no. It's more of a not now. Unless, of course, it is a no. Be respectful of no. Sometimes, though, it's just not now. Other times, though, you'll get a yes. So, when your dream guest says yes, what do you do? I would be very respectful of the fact that these people probably have a process for this. So, it's not just, hey, I want you on my podcast here's the link. Please don't do that. Do not send people links. Do not send people links. Get a yes first. Get a are you interested if they say, oh, that sounds awesome. Great. Is there an email address that you would prefer I use to send more details? And they're probably going to send you to their admin, to their PR person, to somebody at that level. And then you can go and be super kind, courteous, generous, nice to the people on the other side of that email. So, I've done this many times where the person on the other side, they're human too. Even if they're signing team so and so, that is a person on the other side. And you might not even know their name, but you're going to be so nice. And you're going to be the best podcast interview they're ever dealt with. And you're going to be the most flexible and you're going to be the nicest. Even if you have like a tight timeline for your podcast, you take what you can get. You do not dictate big people's schedules. If they decided that they're only going to spend August 8th in the entire year to do podcast interviews, you want to make sure that you're going to be in that lineup. I don't care that your podcast was supposed to go live the three months before that. You take it and then you schedule your podcast episode for whenever it has to go out. But you do not stick them to a timeline. You'd never make them feel like they are on your timeline. Even in cases where their request really grinds against your schedule, you should still make an effort to accommodate them. For example, I am preparing for season three. Right? Season three of my podcast is coming out in May. I would love to have the interview before May. I've received questions like, well, we are doing a launch in April and our episode go out in April. I am actually not going to change my podcast timeline because somebody wants me to do it a whole month earlier. That would be really heavy for me, way too much work for me. So I responded saying the podcast actually, I have it going out in May, but I'll make sure that this is the first episode that goes out to make it as close to April as possible. I feel like that's the best I can do. What do you think? And they said absolutely. So how often can you reasonably hope to feature dream guests on your podcasts? Well, that depends on how big you're willing to dream. My goal for my next season is I am only having dream 100 guests. We do an exercise in the Grow the Show accelerator where we make a list of 100 podcast dream guests. And we call that list the dream 100. You know, is saying that her goal is to only feature guests on that list. I can't wait. I won't lie. The timelines vary. I completely expect that there will be guests that I won't get to interview until maybe the end of the year. But then that means that they're going to be in my podcast the following year. So, but the only way that I can be so confident in doing that is if I know that my podcast is here for the long haul. You know what I mean? Like if you have a podcast and you're not really sure like how many episodes you're going to have and when you're going to break, then you're not going to make this kind of long term investment in it. Right? But for me, I'm hoping the global phenomenon becomes the next entrepreneurs on fire. Right? I'm hoping that this is the place where entrepreneurs were coaches particularly want to be featured. In fact, I have this dream. There is a dream 100 guests that I have in mind that I have pitched her a couple times. But the only way that she will do an interview is if I can guarantee that she's going to get sales from it, which is not something that any podcast can really guarantee, especially because my podcast is not a huge podcast. So I cannot guarantee that you're going to get a hundred leads or a hundred signups for your partner. And I cannot guarantee that. I did get back to them saying, you know, I cannot guarantee those numbers. But the way that I interview my guests, I am sure the people that you have nurtured are going to love you even more. And it's going to make them want to sign up. They didn't go for that. They still said no. But I have her on my mind that I'm not going to stop pitching just in case things change because they may soften their approach. Maybe at a different time of year, they use different criteria. And I'm hoping that one day she'll be the one pitching me asking me if she can be on the podcast because every single one of her big shot friends has been in it. And she's the only one who hasn't. So those are my dreams. So I am here to stay. Play the long game. Sage Advice from an incredible podcaster, a great student, a fantastic coach, and a good friend. But playing the long game does not mean delaying for the sake of it. There's a difference between playing the long game and getting after it. So who are your dream guests? Who is that guest that you have been putting off inviting because you don't feel that you're ready yet or you're just afraid of hearing no? Now it might be the time to send them an invitation. And now you know exactly how to do so within about a week and with a higher chance of a yes than the vast majority of other podcasters who are just cold pitching everyone. And when you do get that yes way quicker than you thought, be sure to let us know in the Grow the Show Facebook group so we can help you celebrate. We'd also be happy to give you feedback on your pitch before you send it to that dream guest. And so if you like that, the link to join us and 2300 other growth-minded podcasters is in the show notes. Grow the Show is a Q9 production. This episode was produced by me and Catherine Nails with post-production by Jeremy Bishop and a very special thanks to Ena Coventy. For Grow the Show, my name is Kevin Schmittland. See you next week.