The BEST Way to Pitch Podcasters to Become a Guest with Joe Fier

Most emails are all about me, me, me, me, me, me, me. It's all about the guest. It's all about, hey, don't you want this guest on your podcast? This guy's great because he's been everywhere, he's had media, he's sold this business, he's about to sell this business. He runs this kind of business and works with all these famous people. It's like cool. I don't care.

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They're saying more than 80%. Not only that, you're getting this full 360 view of your customers in this smart CRM that basically helps and supports you in the marketing, sales and service delivery and success of your team, but also making the experience much better for your customer, which boosts your revenue and your business growth. Go and visit HubSpot.comservice to learn how this all new solution can help you deliver for your customers. Hey, what's happening y'? All? This episode is going to be another actionable one for you Solo with me. And it's Piggy backing off of the episode I dropped earlier this week with Brandon Lavorgna and that guy, he's a friend of mine and he's also been a veteran in the news media. He's worked actually on the news desk as a reporter in the field. He's done, he's consulted for people to actually work with the media and get publicity through a whole bunch of channels and I had him on the show. So if you didn't listen to that podcast first, go peek at that from a few days ago. And this Episode here is going to piggyback off of that and talk about how you can also take that kind of mindset into the podcasting space, because. Handful of reasons. Podcasting, of course, is a big media. It's growing. There's a lot of shows, there's a lot of noise, honestly, and there's a lot of inbound happening. So as a podcast host, as you might be, you might be experiencing a lot of inbound people wanting to become a guest. And if you're like me, you get like four or five per day. It's insane. It keeps ramping up. So again, it's becoming noisier and noisier. So it's more important to cut through that noise because the media is strong. We talked about the importance of podcasting and not only getting on a show, but also all the media that can come from it, you know, Evergreen. But also through things like paid media. You can put social media clips. I mean, you've seen it with, you know, the Joe Rogan clips and all this. It's now YouTube is really taken up the podcasting realm and growing that in a lot of ways. I'll do a future episode breaking down what's to come on YouTube. Point is, podcasting is where you want to be. You don't have to start your own, but to be a guest or to even start your own or if you have your own, this episode will be for you. I'm gonna talk about how we are filtering and actually identifying who are great people to be our guests. I'll talk through my process, but even more importantly, you're gonna get an outreach template, and I'm gonna walk through it in this episode of how you can go pitch other podcasts to become a great guest and cut through the noise based off of what I've seen come in. That's definitely not working, at least not for me. I'm pretty critical. But at the same time, what is working on the outreach side of things and how to become the most valuable option for folks to choose to work with and to be a guest on their show. So without further ado, I'm just going to start breaking into things here. So working or listening to Brandon's episode, definitely, definitely go do that. He broke it down with a big emphasis on TV and other media and working with the news and things like that. That. That is spectacular. It's something that a lot of folks have asked for, you know, in terms of insights and how to do it. That's what that's gonna do. Now I'm Gonna start as a podcaster and then going into later in, like, if you want to become a guest on podcasts, I'll give you that outreach template and kind of break things down. But the first thing is a lot of inbound. So as a podcaster, you're likely getting people to want to be a guest. And let's be honest, most people that come onto this show, the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, they are referrals. They're people I know, or at least through people that I know like and trust. It's just how the world works. It's who you know is like 90% of the game, you know, maybe more. And that honestly fills up my calendar almost entirely. But occasionally someone will come in that's cold on any of the channels. Let's call it email, just to be safe. But you know, it might be social media and all that inboxes, which I definitely recommend as a tip, if you're trying to cut through the noise, go reach out on social. Don't just do the email thing. But let's say you are getting a lot of inbound. As a podcaster, I highly recommend that you don't just consume your time reading all these emails and thinking about and replying, because it's honestly, it's going to bog you down. And there's a lot of bad pitches. But I'm not saying they're bad in terms of guests. It's just the approach could be better. There's a lot of ways to go around it. But as a podcaster, I highly recommend you set up a Google form or something that's going to help you fill it. Filter these things. And this goes for anything. I mean, let's be honest. Like, you want to filter and have people kind of prove to you that they are legit, that they're going to be the best valuable person that shows up on time, shows up with content value, prepares in advance, actually knows the show that they're pitching. That's a biggie, and is going to do the work, like afterwards to not even reciprocate, because it shouldn't be a reciprocation thing. But at the same time, really focus on spreading the word about their appearance, because that's something that benefits them as well. But at the same time, it's your stage, it's your virtual stage. I talk about it all the time. Podcasts are like virtual stages. And if you are invited to speak on a stage somewhere, I'm sure you're going to tell people about it. You're probably going to post on social. You might even tell your email list, maybe we'll make some videos about it. It's like all these things. Same thing applies to being a guest on a podcast now. Now this page here, I'm not going to share this link, but if you happen to pitch me on being a guest, this is likely what you're going to see. And you know, you see my email down here, it's okay. You can pitch me if you want. Joe hustle and flowchart.com it's all right. I don't bite my teammate though. Watch out. So you go here and I a lot of folks will be sent to this form and essentially it's like, hey, I see your interest. Joe gets dozen of requests weekly. It's probably more like two dozen now weekly. And so it might take a while to get a response. But at the same time I want to have them fill out their information here. This is kind of hurdle number one and ask them some questions. What's your name? What's your email? Who referred you to this show so we could thank them? What's your company website? Do you have a website or podcast of your own? If so, drop it in. Maybe Joe could be on yours as well. So a little swap action there. That is an effective way to grow an overview of what you'd like to share. What are three to five topics that would be great for my audience? A short bio of yourself, A one sheeter if you have one. I'm going to show you mine and show me yours. So have you been on other podcasts? If so, directly linked to the episode so I don't have to do the research. I want them to come prepared and show me the specific episodes that would be the best fit and then tell me about the business or anything else interesting. Anything upcoming dates I should know about that kind of thing. That's your form. Ain't rocket science, but it helps. And what we have now is literally a database of hundreds of people and most of them unfortunately I have not reached out to and I warned them. But what's really cool is actually this is another hint. We use AI to help source some of the we'll actually run it through ChatGPT or Claude occasionally and look for different keywords or interesting people or some. Something, some search criteria and that's just a great way to do an analysis really fast. So it's a little tidbit there. But point is have these filtering mechanisms. Someone on my team will help me with this filtering. It's not Me going through anymore. It used to be, honestly, a lot of times they would just get ignored because I didn't have the time. But now people are getting more of the time from someone else on my team, but then getting here with a more likelihood chance to get onto the podcast, not guaranteed, but it's just a great way to sort people through. It's kind of like hiring someone similar kind of hoops now. All right, that's if you're a podcaster. And this is also good to know if you're pitching shows. These are different ways to come prepared and shine where most people are not. Because, let's be honest, I'm going to now kind of switch to the pitching of a podcaster. Like, so you as a guest have something of value, you have something to talk about, you have some talking points. You have your one sheeter, ideally for prepared. I'll show you mine in a moment so you can kind of get some ideas. And the point is, you want to go on a virtual stage because they have the audience that is there curated already and you want to get in front of them. This is a great way to instantly become an authority in your space, is when you get to borrow someone else's stage and essentially edified on top of that. And my friend Charles Byrd is actually calling right now, which is of kind, kind of funny. Sorry, Charles, I gotta ignore you, but he'll be on the podcast soon. I should have silenced my phone. Real life, not gonna cut that out. Keep it in, Jake. All right, so getting into an outreach approach. Most emails are all about me, me, me, me, me, me, me. It's all about the guest. It's all about, hey, don't you want this guest on your podcast? This guy's great because he's been everywhere, he's had media, he's sold this business, he's about to sell this business. He runs this kind of business and works with all these famous people. It's like, cool. I don't care. I really don't care. It's great. I think it's an awesome success. But I. The approach I take is completely different and I don't do a lot of outreach, but when I have or when I support people, my clients, to help them do outreach, this is the approach. It's not about me, me, me, me. It's about them. Go figure. And, and it has flattery in there. It has personalization, it has engagement. It's offering value in advance rather than a bunch of asks and assuming that, you know, and then, then these annoying Follow ups too. Like a lot of this stuff is either A AI generated or B it's done by a robotic follow up system. There's things like mailshake.com is one I've used in the past. Not for this, but for other things where you can automate personalized responses. Not so personalized. There's a bunch of other ways to do it. Not ragging on it. Love marketing. Follow up's important, but at the same time personalize this thing. Actually, actually care. The thing I'm not putting in here, which is a little tough to put in a template, is to also include a video, a loom video. I talked about the power of Loom L o O M. I highly recommend everyone utilize Loom as a purpose personalized way to communicate with people at scale and show who you are. I would plug that into any email that you send. It's just a great way. Again, no one does this in podcast pitches. So carrying on. I'm going to walk through this email template here. If you want this template, just simply I'm going to put it on screen so everyone sees it. Joe hustleandflowchart.com come and get me. All right, so email me and I genuinely want to hear from you. I will send you this template, but you need to, you need to come through me on this one. It might be my team that initially sends it to you, but I will read your email. Especially if you have some really cool feedback or some case studies or you want to learn about something on the podcast. Which actually this is a second call to action. Hustleandflowchart.com onething not the book. One thing. It's a great book and Gary Keller, go read it. But hustleandflowchart.com one thing will get you to this form, separate form. And it just asks you what's the single one most important topic that you'd love to hear covered on this podcast. I want to hear it. I do want to hear it. This is a form. It doesn't go to my email, but it does go to a log where I can then go in and make better content for you. But if you want this outreach template, this outreach template for podcasts or two podcast hosts, email me Joe Hustle and flowchart. Com if you're cool with it. I'll probably add you to my email list too, if you're not on there already. But either way you will get this template. I'm going to pause the episode really fast and shout out another show that's on the Podcast network over at HubSpot. It's the audio destination for business professionals. This is Mistakes that Made Me. It's hosted by Eman Esmile. She is in interviewing successful business owners and talking about, hey, what are those mistakes? What are the failures? What are the things that you hate to talk about that we can all learn from? I mean, like, let's be honest, do you like to talk about your mistakes? Probably not. Well, that's what she's talking about. And it's going to be there. It is there waiting for you to listen so you can learn from those lessons and learn how to get past them or navigate around those big boulders on your own journey to success. So go listen to Mistakes that Made Me. Wherever you get your podcasts, are you looking to earn more online? It's time to meet Kartra. It's your ultimate all in one business platform that makes it even easier to boost your income online. So with Kartra, creators, coaches and experts can turn their knowledge and services into profits. You can create pages, funnels and attract customers, build membership sites and share your knowledge, automate your business so you can free up your time and do a whole bunch of other fun stuff. Stuff. So Kartra has every tool you need to grow your business in one place. And the best part is that it's super affordable and easy to use. So now's the time to streamline and scale your biz. Head over to hustleandflowchart.com Kartra and snag a free 30 day trial. Again, that's hustleandflowchart.com K A R T R A Carrying on, back to the show. I'm going to break down this email. This is an email you can literally use, customize for yourself. Use it as an outreach email. Make, make it your own. But again, it's pretty detailed. I'm gonna break down the nuts and bolts, but probably not every single word, but maybe. All right, subject line. Starting here, engaging subject line that relates to the content or the host of the content. Something like, hey, I love your episode with X person and I'm gonna preface all this by saying genuinely listen to the show. Genuinely listen to multiple episodes and genuinely make these emails genuine. Don't do this as a spray and pray kind of thing. Or use AI to creatively, masterfully, like actually listen and actually care about who you are pitching here. I hate to have to say that, but I just going to say it. All right, so engaging subject line, flatter the host. Let's be honest, everybody likes A little flattery. Hey, I loved your episode with this. I'm going to open that. No one does that even, like, maybe. Okay, a couple of people do. And I actually open those because you want to sell the open. It's just like any other marketing direct response. Sell the. The open. What you're seeing in an inbox is a subject line. Maybe a little bit of a preview line as well, but at the same time, a subject line that gets me kind of feeling good about myself. I'm going to probably open that email rather than a subject line like I typically see is like, guest. And I just saw this one. I don't want to call anybody out, so I'm not going to show these. But literally guest in all caps, colon, you need to have Bob so and so on your podcast. I'm like, do I. No, I don't delete or, hey, go to this. You know, go to the form, fill it out and see if you actually go through the hoops. They probably won't. Maybe they will. Point is, don't talk about yourself. Talk about them and say how much you like them. All right, carrying on. If you could personalize it, all the better. So your name or like this is written kind of on the behalf of someone sending on your behalf on your team. You can customize this. If it's you doing it yourself, you, either way works, really doesn't matter. But introduce yourself, your company, and then carry on from that subject line. Talk about the episode that, that guest or the topic of that episode, how it affected you, how it resonated with you, and be genuine again about it. Change this if you need, but, you know, call it out, tie it into the subject line. Don't ignore that you actually said that. And then thank them. I love to always give gratitude up front. Thank them about the topic or wow, why you made that, why you thought that was such a great episode, and in how that kind of ties into what you're going to pitch them. That's really what that's about. And then it gets into a little bit of transition and says like, okay, so why are you actually emailing me? Well, hey, if you're open to exploring these, you know, whatever that topic is further, then I'd love to introduce to you the founder or me or whoever it is, because they will be very insightful for your audience, actionable insights. It's going to be helpful for them. So, okay, now it's a tie in. And then, and then what I like to do is to show the person off. Don't start saying like this guy's so great or this guy's so great and blah, blah, but actually show them like link to a clip, link to something that is short and consumable. Let's say a reel on Facebook or YouTube or a short or Instagram post or something like that. That's like less than a minute. But it gets the gist. It shows you or them in person on stage is even better because that's a, you know, an authoritative kind of aspect. You know, you're speaking on stage and any tie ins to like a. If it's a big stage or a mastermind or some group that might be familiar, then put that in here as well. But don't boast again and then link to it. It's just a credibility booster. So these are all like Robert Cialdini's influence principles. You know you got like the persuasive principles. You're giving the. I forget them all but basically there's. You're giving a lot of this great value up front and then showing authority along the way and why they should keep listening to you. So into here is more about like hey, here's the big mission of me or my founder in this case and some of the goals that we're after like with our approach and why it ties into their show and they want to share whatever insights and give their story as well as big story. Personal story is always great actionable strategies I think everyone loves and the bigger mission on that specific topic. And then hey, it'd be the ask. I'd be super honored to be a guest on your show or they would be to do this and you know, here's a little bit more experience maybe in numbers or the types of, you know, reach or some kind of credibility number. Again, ciao Dimi Principle is a big thing. There is authority and then in that field. So then if you have another podcast that you've guested on recently or they have, especially if it's a large name, big name or respected someone, then put it in here or a YouTube video, whatever it might be, but something related to what you're pitching, throw that in here, another link. It's another opportunity for them to dive in and be like, oh okay, they're legit. So and then we get into all right, I thought of some topic ideas for you. I'm not going to have you wonder of what we're going to talk about or wait for the next email and kind of hold back. I actually did some research on your show already because guess What? I already listened to it and I already have actually consumed and thought about this pitch. And my angle. Well, here's three different ideas of what we can talk about on the show. So some general topics, maybe some specific questions, but you don't have to go deep. It's, it's just get the mind kind of going. And again, it takes a load off of the person listening or considering your pitch. And then what I like to put in here is like, hey, we'll actually send you a doc of suggested questions and topics that you can review in advance. Makes your preparation for the interview simple. We do the heavy lifting. We're not expecting you to do it for you. For us, that's the big thing. That's always what we're thinking. And then I like to say something like, hey, do you like any of these? A little open ended question is good, good. Or we can chat about other topics that would land better, totally open. It's not like we're like, we gotta talk about this. All right, so here's another biggie that most people never ever do. This is like 99% of the time they do not add this. And I add a bunch in here is how are you going to help promote this thing? Every podcaster is thinking about this. If they're large or if they're small, it doesn't matter. They're, they're looking for more awareness around what they're doing. Because, because podcasting is a lot of work. As a guest, you can't just show up and assume that you're like, ha, ha, ha, I'm here and then I'm out. Peace. But like, no, we're together as a co creation. You're helping everybody grow and expand. If you actually care, you're gonna wanna have their audience succeed. You wanna bring your audience into this. Cause you obviously found some value in this show, in this community. Everyone wins when you share, that's the end of it. And they're gonna remember you as the person that's connecting them to a new show or audience or topic. And so you will not be forgotten. You're not losing anything. Share freely and widely and tell them how you're going to do it. And I like to bold it as well. So basically we're going to say like, hey, you already do marketing really well. You're doing a lot of work. We want to make it help, like basically have it get seen. Well, we want to make it easier for you. We want to make us seem like a no brainer to say yes to me. Or the founder. And then I want to give you everything to make that appearance the most valuable for years to come. It's not just a one time thing. This is literally evergreen. So we talked about after we get on the show, we're actually going to promote this to our email list, our social audience, maybe some other stuff. Maybe you're going to run some paid traffic to things that's super cool. You can go to YouTube and for like a few bucks a day or so actually start to push this out. That's totally up to you. But however you're going to promote it, talk about that here. We're also going to make a website or a post on our website and optimize it for SEO Evergreen traffic. And you can even show what you've done for someone else there. We're going to tell our colleagues and our networks and all these mastermind groups that we belong to about you and my appearance on the show, or at least the show in general. And on top of that, we're going to give you more. Well, wait, there's more. We're going to give you a whole pack of promotional materials, basically a swipe copy of everything we created. You know, Instagram Reels, LinkedIn snippets, all these posts things for your written posts, use it for your media, your community, emails. Essentially what we do and we, I have a whole training on, on this that's separate is that we'll give literally the video clips, we'll take the, we'll ask for the recording and then run that through things like opus clips which I talked about in previous episodes, where that's going to clip and make a whole bunch of vertical, vertical or you know, horizontal square posts. Doesn't matter, it does it all and it's all AI. It's great. And then also we'll use cast magic to basically create the written type of stuff. So it could be emails, newsletters, blog posts, social written posts for LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube or not YouTube but you know, Facebook, you know, all these other things and essentially give them all of these things that will make the promotion side of things easier. Again, you're just showing all the cool stuff that they're probably not even doing for themselves. And you as a guest are like, hey, I'm gonna do all this marketing stuff for you. You want me on your show? Why not? Top social assets, so. Oh, actually on top of this, sorry, are social assets and promotions. So imagine if you have something of value to that host, make it clear that you're willing to give it to Them like in my case, maybe it's like a podcasting course. Hey, I've sold this for a couple thousand dollars and you know, you're, you know, maybe they're, they're interested in growing their show or expanding that in some way. And for some reason I know that then I would offer that for free. Or maybe it's some of my time or my team's time or maybe a different product could be a service that I offer. Maybe you're running a specific amount or you have a tier that you can get gift to them and then maybe that even becomes a talking point for the interview. So you can kind of tie it in there. Could even give you the opportunity to get two rounds of interviews on the same show if you do it that way. Just an idea. You can line out the value this way. And then going into here, this is more of the closing. It's like, hey, I sent you a lot. But I hopefully you see that we're serious of giving value up front to your audience. You know, you know, we're passionate about this topic X topic and we want to give the actionable ways to basically support your audience. And would you be open to having a quick chat? And I like that framing. It's an open ended question. It is a yes or no kind of thing, but at the same time it gets them. It's a very.

It'S not like a hey, are you ready to have me on? Or like, hey, do you want to open quick chat? Maybe there's some stuff we could talk about or do you have a process? That is another question. Do you have a process to use to book your guests? So it's kind of assuming the sale a little bit and you know, we can, you can play with those questions or like, would it be crazy as you know, it's kind of another influence type thing. Would it be crazy if this person would be on your show or if I would get to guest on your show? I don't like that ending as much. You'd probably have to work on it. But either way, have an open ended kind of question to your email. There's thank you and then thank them for considering them or yourself and also thank them for what they do for their audience on their podcast. In a nutshell. Now ultimately in there and you can link to your one sheet or to your website throughout that email. And again, if you want this template, email me joeustleandflowchart.com I will send this to you, no strings attached, if you're okay with it. I'll add you to the email list as well. But it's, it's literally giving you more cool free stuff. But I'll give you this as a PDF, the last thing to do here. So link within the email any links to your website and your one Sheeter. But I would also attach your one sheeter to the email as a PDF. And this is an example of my one sheeter. And this is basically a nutshell of like or it shows like a one shot of my show and you know, what the, what it's all about, who I am, the snapshot of the show, downloads, episodes, rating, core discussion, what we talk about, some notable guests and, you know, different people who have sponsored the show or partnered with us, who's tuning in, things like that. It's just kind of another credibility thing. And that should be attached to the email as well. So just in case they're not clicking links, at least they can see that attachment in the bottom and then open that up and see your pretty face and all the cool stuff and reasons why they should have you as a guest on their show. All right, said a lot, but I hope this helps kind of seal the deal in terms of pitching for the media. You have everything covered from Brandon Lavorgna over here. He released, or we released his episode the other day. So definitely go listen to Brandon. He is a badass. He knows what he's doing. He's a veteran in the, in the legit media space. No, in the, like the news and the publication space and how that works, the intricacies of that whole media industry. And then what I just covered, of course, is more on the podcast side. So as a podcaster, make sure you're filtering and make sure you're having people do some legwork upfront. And then of course, use some really smart outreach strategies for going to podcasters. Don't think about yourself here, think about them. Personalize everything. And if you want this, get go to or email me hustleandflowchart.com that's not my email. It's joe@hustleandflowchart.com and I will send you this PDF and, and you'll be off to the races. So I can't wait to hear what you have to say. One more reminder. I do want to hear what you want to hear or watch on this podcast. Go to hustleandflowchart.com One thing, and I want to just literally, it's one question. Tell me what you want to hear, what you want to know about, and I will do my best to talk about that and find other guests that can, that can basically talk about that topic as well. One final ask if you're watching this on YouTube or if you haven't found us on YouTube yet. It's growing. It's a slow, steady growth, but I know the right people are watching and listening and you'll see some new stuff. We're doing some new growth stuff and I'm popping, popping on more podcasts. To grow this thing, go to Joe or actually just go to YouTube and look up my name. Joe Fear. J O E F I E R. You're going to see more of these visuals and also hit the subscribe button to make sure you're getting the latest and greatest. We put out a lot of shorts and I'm thinking about doing some extra kind of solo tutorial, kind of deeper dive videos on there as well. So make sure you're going to YouTube and go find me Joe Fear is my name. And I'm done yapping, so I'm out of here. See you next time. Bye. Thanks.