How To Turn Podcast Guesting Into a $1M Business

What if your marketing was coaching, teaching, and serving the way that you love to serve? A really effective, scalable way to do that is podcast guesting. The influence that comes from this is worth $100,000 of Facebook ads.

Are you good at what you do but not so good at marketing? Dustin is the founder of 7 Figure Leap, where he helps mission-driven experts build 7-figure brands by telling their story. Let's get into your framework. What is the actual process that people use?

The 5 Ps. Purpose, plan, pitch, perform, profit, which is the most important step, but you can't get to it without the foundations of the first 4 Ps. The first question most people say is like, which podcast should I be on? Who do you serve? What's the transformation you provide? What are the compelling emotional words that are gonna draw people in? That makes it very clear which shows to be on.

The pitch is a step that does everyone get wrong or just 99.9% of people?

Yes. The really quick answer for how to do a good pitch is to ask, who are you in this interview? We want the version that's going to drive clients at the end of this. So one great powerful one that anyone could use if they've landed on any podcast at any point is this call to action is the bridge into profit.

Okay, so Dustin, you're making $1 million a year. Off of podcast guesting and teaching others to do the same thing. But your career was as a traffic engineer. Like, help connect some dots here. How do you go from a traffic engineer to where you are now?

Yeah, and for context, not a traffic engineer like website traffic. Traffic engineer like beep beep, you know, like cars and buses.

Yeah.

Um, so yes, I actually had a professional career, master's degree in civil engineering, and got into this kind of specialty of traffic.

This is like a new subdivision is being built and they're like, we're doing a traffic study, how are we gonna increase road.

Exactly. So I was the monkey at the front of the room at the city council meeting that everyone would throw darts at and be like, you're gonna run over my kids with these— all these cars that are coming from the new Walmart. Like, that was more of my actual existence. But no, but I did that for 15 years and really enjoyed it. But I always had an entrepreneurial itch to scratch. And so about halfway through that career, through work my wife and I were doing through marriage ministry, actually came online 2009, sort of the heyday of blogging, and started writing, wrote a book. And so I got into online digital marketing through that. And then for about 5 years, still did engineering, but also would like take vacation time from engineering to go to marketing conferences. I was like in this, in that zone. And finally, in about 2018, I left engineering, was a marketing consultant, just doing all the things for all the businesses, you know, local and online. And so the real bridge between engineering and podcast guesting is actually meat sticks, as you might have predicted.

I did not predict that.

And one of my first clients was was a local butcher shop, and I hit it off with the owner, and we became friends. And he's like, hey man, can you sell stuff online? I was like, as a matter of fact, I can. What do you have in mind? He's like, I got these meat sticks. So this company, Fire Creek Snacks, I became a partner in it, and that became my major focus for several years. And so we got into like traveling to go to trade shows and sampling and like learned a whole new side of business and sales. And that was all good until March 2020. I was driving from my home in St. Louis up to Chicago for a trade show and it was canceled. So of course I come home, our entire marketing and business plan's thrown out the window because it was basically traveling to trade shows and saying, try this meat stick. And so that wasn't working. And I lost a bunch of my marketing clients who were local businesses and shut down. The silver lining was that was what pushed me to try podcast guesting for the first time. So summer 2020, I got on my first podcast as a guest for the Fire Creek brand, this meat sticks brand. I started selling meat sticks to random, like, strangers on the internet and learned it worked.

Direct to consumer then.

Exactly.

Okay.

Yeah. Like, we were— I was literally— I didn't know what I was doing. I was getting on untargeted shows, giving a coupon code to go to our Shopify store and order some meat sticks. And so that worked to get direct sales. And what I actually found was it started creating these really powerful relationships and we started building a community around the brand and started to figure out the power of story. This was all new to me in 2020. And for about a year, that was our marketing plan as I was getting on and on repeat and telling the story of this brand and getting more refined in how I did that. And then people started coming to me and saying, hey, I heard you on this podcast. Really interesting. How do you do that? And that's what led to what I do now, which is podcast guesting for creators.

Wow. Okay. So there's so much in there. I think a lot of people hear podcast guesting and they think about businesses like your current business, my business, you know, maybe John Meece or Jake Klaus or like other mutual friends of ours where you're like, well, yeah, you're talking to creators. It's like that works great in that niche. But then you're coming in, you're like, and meat sticks.

Yes.

And hundreds of other niches. What are some examples that you've seen of people in like a less conventional niche beyond meat sticks go and like have success with podcast guesting?

Yeah. I mean, at this point in our main program, we've had about 180 clients. And so it's literally every industry. And that's one of the things I love is sort of collecting new industries of like, oh, I don't have one of those yet. Like, I would love to work with you and show that this works. But, you know, lawyers, doctors, and those may be a little less obscure sounding, but yeah, like literally one of my— in the first— the first person who ever paid me money for this was a guy who ran an organic chicken ranch in California. And he had this like 4-generation family farm. He's like, I got these chickens and we sell them wholesale in our local market. Of course, he was attracted to my Fire Creek story. He's like, I want to sell direct-to-consumer, very expensive chickens, right? Uh, and so like, how would that work? And we helped him use podcast guesting to sell chickens. But most of the people I work with, you know, nowadays are— would identify as an expert, you know, a creator, an expert. But you know, there's As you know, there's some pretty obscure niches even within the sort of expert side of things, not just the physical products. So we do work with some SaaS companies. We do work with some physical product companies. The strategy on those are typically finding centers of influence more so than direct consumer the way I started. Okay, so it's finding partners, collaborations, people that already have an aggregation of their audience. Like that's more the path that we take with those sort of lower ticket item-based businesses. But most, I'd say 90% of the people we work with are in the higher-ticket services, coaching, consulting, agency owners, authors, speakers, you know, the typical type of people that people would expect. But anyway, but they, they still have some pretty unique niches that they find themselves in.

Yeah, I like it. What's something that surprises you about, like, or surprises your clients when they come in that either it would work in this way or maybe it can be scalable? I'm super curious about that.

Yeah, that's a great question. So a typical thing, I'll shake someone's hand and say, hey, you know, I help people with podcast guesting and people usually fall into two buckets in that introduction and they say, oh, like, that's so much fun. I was on a couple of podcasts last year. My buddy got me on one of them and it was a lot of fun. I actually got a client, man, if I could do that. All the time and that was my marketing, that would be awesome. But they don't see like the path to scalability. So we can obviously talk about that and unpack that a little more. The other side is I was on 100 podcasts last year, Dustin, and I'm really good at it and I love it and I have no problem getting on there. And I'm like, that's great. Like, you're an entrepreneur, right? Like, tell me what it did for your business. And they either say, I don't know, or nothing, because they do nothing on the back end to actually leverage each of those appearances. To monetize, you know, and grow their business. And so we teach a framework, which obviously we're going to get into, and that framework sort of addresses both of those misnomers or misconceptions about what podcast guesting is for and how it actually works. And I'd say the other one that falls in that category is this idea that you have to get on the big shows to move the needle because, you know, it's like, oh, if I got on Joe Rogan, of course it would change my life. And I'm like, yeah, but like The chance of that happening is pretty slim. Yeah. So we pretty much live in this zone of what I would call small to medium podcasts. And we can talk about sort of like how we determine that.

Yeah.

But, you know, I've been on some decent-sized shows like this one, but, you know, that's definitely the exception. And so I built two 7-figure businesses with small and medium-sized shows, and that's really where our clients typically live. And I think that's a huge misconception because people think, oh, like I could just be on like actual, like, approachable shows and actually have a huge impact on my business? And you absolutely can if you're leveraging it in the right way.

Something that I've thought about a lot as I've kind of come out from behind the curtain building Kit, right? Because for a while it was very much— well, I guess the early days of ConvertKit, it was all my brand. And then the middle, I don't know, 6, 7 years was very much ConvertKit's brand. And then more recently, the last couple of years, and we've rebranded to Kit, it's very much about like bringing my brand back into it. And one thing that I realized or that drove that decision was realizing how much that attention was worth. And that by going, you know, on these podcasts, like so many of the biggest podcasts are customers of ours. You know, if you were to run through the top 10, whether it's Tim Ferriss or Huberman or all these people, right, their customers. And so I know all of these people. But then also realizing that I could spend probably $100,000 on Facebook ads and get not as high quality, maybe as much, but not high quality engagement or attention as going and hanging out with my friends on My First Million, right? Or Anthony Pompliano's show, or one of these where it drives just a ton of attention. And then even to your point about the smaller scale, like there's lots of shows that I go on where they're not the biggest show, but they might be a top 200, top 300, you know, business podcast or something like that. And we end up getting 10 really great leads from it. And like, oh, that was a great use of time. Yes, there's so much that comes from that.

And it's fun, right? And that is, that is a huge difference. And of course, when you're talking marketing like I am, it by default gets contrasted against other forms of marketing. And as I said, I grew up doing all the certifications and kind of came up through the digital marketer, you know, side of the world. And so, you know, I understand paid ads and, you know, and SEO and social media and all that stuff. And it all— and I'm not against any of it. I'm like, I'm not the person who's like, it's podcast guesting, everything else is horrible. It's not that. They obviously work in concert, but I do feel that podcast guesting is much more approachable for most people, and especially people like most of the people listening to this. So my ideal client will say these words: I am really good at what I do, and I'm just not very good at marketing, right? Like, I'm an expert coach. Like, I love to consult with this type of business. I love running my agency, and I just, man, I do anything for our clients. And like, I am a bona fide expert. I'm on a mission. Like, I love it, but I don't know how to market very well. And I'm always like, well, What if your marketing was coaching, teaching, loving on people, and serving the way that you love to serve? And that just became your marketing. And that's really what we try to empower people to do. And so a really effective, scalable way to do that is podcast guesting, because you're literally teaching what you love to teach. And a lot of times you're coaching the host, or, you know, they're, they're bringing you on and highlighting case studies of your work. And so you literally just get to show up and do the thing you love and leverage that. So I went off on that tangent a little bit because It's fun. And then I think the other thing, Nathan, that you shared, just to put words around it, is you said the influence that comes from this is worth $100,000 of Facebook ads. And so why is that? It's not that the reach— you probably have— I'm sure you have much lower reach on the podcast than if you spend $100,000 on Facebook ads. But the distinction is those Facebook ads are interrupting people who don't want to hear from you, whereas the podcast that you're on people are downloading on purpose. They understand, they see the title, they see who you are, and most importantly, they already trust the host who's bringing you on. And so you're literally borrowing that audience and coming in and serving. And through that service, you're building know, like, and trust. So you're kind of short-circuiting the whole marketing playbook of, you know, right, trying to pay for attention and shortcut, um, that cycle. And so I think that's just to point that out, that maybe that's obvious, but for a lot of people it wasn't. For me, like, that is why this is so different than something like a paid ad strategy.

Yeah. I mean, in paid ads, you'd be working someone down through an ad funnel.

Yes.

Right. And so it's like, okay, we can actually pick people up, you know, by the end of a 60-minute podcast episode, they're pretty far down the equivalent ad funnel.

Exactly.

You would've spent a lot for that. So there's two things that I wanna do. One is a lot of people listening are going to be thinking about like, okay, but What's, what's Dustin's business? Yeah, they're gonna see the million-dollar number and like, all right, I want the breakdown of your business. So we'll dive into that. And the second thing is for people thinking, okay, how do I apply this? Then we'll dive into the framework.

Absolutely.

Do that. So let's get up on the board.

Yeah, let's do it.

I want to start by understanding your business today. So $1 million a year. That's a lot. And you shared some numbers. Give me the last, like the numbers from the last 3 years because your growth trajectory is Wild.

Yeah. And I want to point out that this is not only a, you know, creator business built on creators, right? Like we had $1 million also in that snack stick business.

Yes, we've done it before.

So we did it in a physical product business and then found that this was actually the place that I felt called to really help people more. But yeah, so in basically 3 years ago, our first year doing this business, we had about $50,000 in revenue. Okay. It was the first group coaching program I ever launched. So we did $50K in 2022 and then 2023 we did $500K. So we literally had a 10x year.

That's clean.

Yeah, that was fun and stressful, mostly awesome. And then last year in 2024, we hit that million-dollar mark, like just over $1 million in revenue. And so we doubled in this from year 2 to 3.

No big deal. 10x, got both.

No big deal. You're on big numbers.

That's fantastic. Okay, so what's the offer breaking down? Like, what are you actually selling?

Yeah, so our core program is called the Podcast Profits Accelerator. Okay. We basically lead a small group of 12 entrepreneurs at a time through a process that we're gonna go through here in just a moment, the 5 Ps, as we call it, our framework. But the Podcast Profits Accelerator program is a $10K program. Okay. Or we got a $1,000 a month payment plan for people that, you know, that works better for them. Yeah, but we're working through a 90-day process and then we have a full year of support built into that too in our community. So it's sort of a year, but we have a 90-day front-ended accelerated growth channel. And then the only other offer I have is a mastermind program. So my company is called Seven Figure Leap. So we call it the Seven Figure Leap Mastermind. And so graduates of the accelerator, you know, 15, 20% of them are like, this is awesome. I love this mastermind experience. I want to keep the party going. How can I keep learning from, from Dustin and this amazing community? And so that's my continuity program. So those folks come in that does not have a defined endpoint and we're sort of solving the infinite problem of growing a 7-figure business and doing it in a way that honors your family and honors your values. And sort of, you know, those are sort of the people I attract. But yeah, so it's basically about 80% of our revenue comes from the accelerator. And then the mastermind, which is right now $1,000 a month investment, that's about 20% of our revenue.

It's clean. Like looking at this, not only have you hit consistent growth numbers, but you haven't done the thing that I see a lot of creators do where they're like, well, I've got the $29 and then this and then that and it upsells. But then actually if it downsells over here, if you, you know, raise, you know, you do all these things and you're like, Do you— did I hear 11 offers to an 8,000-person email list?

I've been very tempted, but I haven't done it. And we'll talk later about scaling. And I've really resisted that, Nathan. I think that is a trap in the seat that I sit in with helping people with these, these types of businesses. That's usually one of the things that derails people because they get so diluted in their focus, whereas it's like, hey, Dustin, I think podcasting is awesome. I believe in it. How do I work with you? There's only one answer.

Right.

And so maybe that challenges people and stretches people a little more. And then, you know, we do, we do back up our promise. It's, it's expensive, right? And it's expensive by design because it requires a high level of commitment from the client. And it keeps it simple. And it used to be like, hey, it's $10K or nothing. And then now that we've got this really cool community behind it, we're able to basically spread it out over a year. And so for people that are not sitting on a $10K saying, I know I want to invest in coaching this year. They're like, I don't have that, but I'd like to cash flow this. We do have that $1,000 a month in option, which makes it more approachable without diluting the value.

So I like that of how do I work with you? And there's only one answer.

Yes. Right.

Because they're coming in here into the accelerator and then those who finish that then can go into the mastermind.

So we don't even talk about the mastermind.

No need to.

We have 2 people in it that did not go through the accelerator. It's just based on the phase of business they're in, and they're direct referrals from existing members. So there's really only two ways in, and there's basically one way in, and that's from Accelerator to Mastermind.

I love it. We have this whole sheet of paper here that we'll use to dive into where we can go with the business.

Yes.

But let's get into your framework.

Yeah, absolutely.

How— like, what is the actual process that people use?

Yeah, so maybe it's easier to list these and I'll go back through each one and kind of describe them, but The first step for everyone is we call it purpose.

Okay.

And so the brief statement about what purpose means is like, why do you want to do this? Right? And that, while a simple question, is actually very deep and it gets into a lot of detail around like storytelling and their ideal client profile and the transformation they provide, all to answer why do you want to be on podcast as a way to grow your business, right? So it seems very easy and it's also the thing that everyone kind of skips in this process because as I go through the next ones, people are going to be like, that one kind of stands out as weird. But number 2, which is plan, that's how to find a profitable podcast for your business, right? So if I said, hey Nathan, I do podcast guesting and I help you grow your business, the first question most people say is like, which podcast should I be on? You can't answer that until you've really answered why you want to be on it, who do you serve, what's the transformation you provide, etc. But we go from plan to pitch. Okay, so once we say, hey, like, I know which podcast I want to be on, and that's that creating a plan for your, for your strategy, then number 3 is pitch. Because again, I think most people have a misconception. Maybe they don't own Kit and they don't have personal relationships with some of the top podcasters. Still a little bit of a cheat code. So for most mortals, the way this actually happens is you have to, you know, compel the host to say, hey, I could totally come on and add value. Here's how I wanna serve your audience and show that you can provide unique value. And we do that in the form of a pitch. So when someone hears pitch, it can have some negative connotations. The way that we do it is actually warm, friendly, and of service to people. So I hope people don't get, it's pitch because it starts with P and I needed 5 Ps, but it's not a cold pitch, it's a warm pitch. And then 4 is perform. So once that host enthusiastically, because of your awesome warm pitch says, of course I'd love to have you on my show, This is how we actually show up and deliver a high-quality interview. So it's not just being friendly and approachable and all those sort of things, it's being compelling. So this, we get into storytelling. Like, I'm a StoryBrand guy, so I've been trained with Donald Miller. So it's like, how do you tell a compelling story, introduce yourself, and have a very strong call to action that leads to the fifth P, which is profit?

I like that one.

Yeah, yeah, this is usually people's favorites. It's my favorite. And I think it's important if people look at this list and you just think of it as 90 days, like you don't need to work with me to do this. But the way that we deliver this over a 90-day period, the first 4 Ps is 30 days.

Okay.

Right. So it's a little out of skew because we actually spend the vast majority of our time on the 5th P, which is profit, which is the most important step. But you can't get to it without the foundations of the first 4 Ps, if that makes sense. So Someone comes in on day one and we start with purpose. It's like, who do you serve? What's the transformation you provide? What are the compelling emotional words that are going to draw people in? It's kind of this deep question, and we create this before and after matrix that makes it very then clear which shows to be on. And once you know which shows to be on, it becomes very clear how to approach them. And once they say yes, then we can coach people up on how to perform to get to this call to action again, which is the bridge into profit. And then most of the time we're actually spending on number 5, which is I got this awesome asset, I was on this podcast, like how do I leverage that into actually growing my business? And so that is the part that most people miss. They miss 5 or 1, right? And so I talked earlier about the two sides of the coin. If someone comes to me and they say, I actually got a client, I think this is awesome, but I don't know how to do it systematically. It's because they don't have a profit machine to do this consistently at scale. And if someone says, I've been on like 100 podcasts, I just don't know how to like make it work, they've probably skipped this part, which is who are they actually trying to reach? What are the KPIs they're trying to drive? Do they have a measurable strategy that we can then use to scale?

I want to do two things. First, I want to hear an example of a client that you've taken through this.

Sure.

And maybe some of the things like some of the small tweaks that you were able to help them with. And then second, I think after that, let's dive into like, let's just use me as an example.

Okay.

Let's assume that I don't have all the, you know, the relationships already and the customers. But yeah, who's someone that comes to mind that you've taken through this?

So John Meece is the obvious example because, you know, he was in a, in a recent episode with you. So I want to go a little more less household name to the kit community. So we'll talk about Michelle Schaefer. This is a woman that just finished my program. She's a career coach from Canada, super like sweet and like the most non-bro marketing person you'd ever meet, right? I think is an important distinction. She literally can just show up and teach and have that be her marketing because she's not a marketer at heart. She's a career coach at heart. So, so with Michelle, you know, step one in this thing is coming in and saying, yes, I know you're a career coach. She actually just wrote a book, and so she's very clear on her teaching style. But what she wasn't clear on was what are the— what's the specific outcome you're trying to drive, right? And so in her case, it was initially, it was the obvious, which is like people that are unemployed who want a new job, and she helps them with resumes and strategy and stuff. But as we got into it, we're like, well, is that really the profit driver in your business, right? Let's think ahead. Like, if you got 100 of those, is that good or are these actually your worst clients? Right. And so we actually started to shift her perspective. She's like, actually, my top 3 clients in the past 3 years are not unemployed. They're actually very successful professionals who are just at this kind of stage of life. They're at this mid, this mid-career point. So we actually changed her target ideal client before we like tried to actually go find podcasts to find them. Does that make sense? So we actually made a huge shift in the purpose, which informed everything that comes after, because otherwise you go down the entirely wrong set. Yes. Then you attract more of them. And I don't see this as like a value statement of the human, but like they're bad clients from the sense that they're broke, they're, they're desperate. You know, they're in these situations where she's at this stage in her career where she's been there and done that and she really wants to be working with 40, 50, 60-year-old high-octane professionals who simply want to make a shift. And they've been out of the career-seeking mode for so long they need a new strategy. Yep.

So how do we go from there into the plan?

Yeah. So then it's like, first of all, with plan, if anyone's thinking about this through their own strategy, you can cut 80% of the podcasts off the list right off the top. So if you think of where do these professionals hang out that Michelle's trying to reach in this example, that's going to be a big list. There's a lot of podcasts. There's plenty of podcasts that would cater to this professional who's wanting to uplevel their career, first thing you can look at is do they do interviews? Because if it's a show that does solo content or they have a co-host situation and they don't do interviews, you're not going to be the first. So don't try. So do they do interviews? Is it being updated? Because again, the majority of podcasts are actually dormant. So if you look at them, they're like they started in 2020.

There's no episode for the last 3 years.

So forget those. And are they within sort of your sweet spot of size? Right. And we won't get into all the details of like how to determine the size. But, you know, in some cases, depending on your strategy, you might actually want to be on a lot of small shows to start because maybe you're testing an idea. You don't want to, you know, kind of like leverage a relationship prematurely. You want to get some reps in to get comfortable. Then we kind of move up and most people kind of fall in the sweet spot of what I call medium-sized podcasts. Right. So they're still approachable. You don't need a personal relationship to get on, but they also do move the needle because they have a loyal following and they've been around a long time. So that's sort of a, you know, 3-step way to narrow the focus greatly. Like, yes, find your industry where your ideal client is already showing up and listening, but make sure they do interviews, make sure it's an active podcast, and then make sure that the size is appropriate for your current area of focus.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so then the pitch is a step.

Yes.

That I— does everyone get wrong or just 99.9% of people?

Yes, 99.9.

I'm on the receiving end of a lot of sales and they're terrible. And then people think, oh, you know what I should do? I should hire a professional to help me get on these podcasts. And those are just as bad, if not worse.

Usually worse. Yeah, yeah, usually worse because then the person's not only coming at it as an entitled, you know, weirdo from the internet, but they're also with this weird dynamic of like, it would be your honor, Nathan, to have Dustin Reekman on your show because Dustin is the best, you know, God's gift to creators or whatever. And so it's even worse than if Dustin sent it and it was kind of crummy. So yes, and we— I'm happy to break this down, but the really quick answer for how to do a good pitch is to actually make it custom and actually make it warm, right? And so And of course we have AI and frameworks and we have templates that we help people with to make this as easy as possible, but it still requires work, right? So I am much in the camp of don't send 1,000 horrible pitches that risk ruining your reputation. Send 10 that you're actually thoughtfully creating. And ultimately we help you. We'll actually train a virtual assistant to write these for you in your voice with your story and all those sort of things. But basically 3 pieces to an effective pitch. Number 1 is a relational anchor. This is the most important part. So this is literally showing you that I'm not some like random weirdo. Yeah, yeah. Like I actually know who you are and a little bit about you. Not too much. Like, not too creepy. I'm not including your children's names in the pitch, but I am talking about something that we relate on. Maybe, you know, some value I got from a recent episode, like real value, not just like grabbing the headline and being like, I may have listened to this.

You had A.D. Porterfield on blah blah blah. It's like, well, you didn't have to listen to the episode to know that.

Yeah.

Or.

But some actual real value or something that we actually connect on. And that's number one. Number two, the middle. Think of this as an email. There's different ways that we deliver these pitches. It's a bullet point summary, 3 to 5 bullet points of exactly how I'm gonna serve your audience. What's in it for you receiving this? Once I pass the sniff test and you're like, this is not horrible, like your eyes are naturally going to go to these bullets. And those are the things that are actually going to catch your attention and make you think, well, wait a minute, this actually could be a cool addition to the, to my podcast. Like I'm actually going to go back and read the first paragraph and see if they are a random weirdo. But that middle part is the most work because if you write a book, it's like the back cover of the bullet point summary of your book, right? It's copywritten, it's got some catchy numbers, you name some of your frameworks, like, but—

spent a lot of time on that.

But you can recycle it. Yeah. Right, as long as you stay in the same target market, you're always gonna customize the introduction, the relational anchor, but this middle part can be recycled. So that's the good news. And then the third part, again, a lot of people miss this, is just a clear call to action, ask. And so my default ask that I like to teach and use is just, are you interested?

So if I say, hey Nathan, so you're not even saying, can you guarantee a slot on the show?

You're saying, are you interested? So I'm saying like, here's how I know you and I think you're awesome. Here's the unique value I can give your audience in a bullet point summary. And then I'll say something with a bridge like, I know because I'm a fan that you get a ton of great opportunities to interview people. I would— I think I can add unique value. Are you interested, Dustin? Not a bunch of links. There's no one sheet. There's no like trying to show you again. I'm like something. Crazy special. It's all about you, serving you and your audience. And the 'are you interested' is a fun close because it's hard to say no to. Yeah, it's like you can say— you can respond yes in many ways. Yes, talk to my assistant. Yes, here's our form. Yes, book, you know, book an interview. Or yes, but not right now. But it's, it's kind of hard to just say no to someone if they say 'are you interested' versus 'do you have 15 minutes today for a quick Zoom call?' A true no to Like if you get a no in that case, it closes the entire category.

And you know that it's actually a no. Instead of asking something like, could you get on a call this week to talk about it? I can say no to that 100 different ways that might not actually be no to—

To the idea, to the bullet point value that you can provide.

That makes sense.

So yeah, so anyway, getting clear on Michelle's market, identifying who she can serve, writing her custom pitch that's specific to her and her value. And then they say yes. So now we're into the perform part. And so the perform part is, I'd say, as much art as science. And this is really just coaching people up. And a lot of this happens through, you know, some mock interviews and some prep. If people aren't used to sort of freeform conversations like this, and it's not just as I kind of open with, it's not just being a friendly person. Like someone like Michelle, my example. I mean, I'm sure I could sit down for 3 hours and have coffee with her. She's a very just heart of gold, right? That doesn't mean that it will get clients if she presents herself that way. So we start with how are you going to introduce yourself? Who are you in this interview? There are lots of versions of Michelle that can show up for an interview, right? And like, we want the version of Michelle that's going to drive clients at the end of this interview. So you want to be friendly, but you want to be an authority. And you want to show, you want to have empathy and authority. That's kind of the magic combo if people want to think of how to be a memorable, effective interviewee. Empathy, authority, empathy, authority. And so we'll coach people up on 2 to 3 go-to stories that they can bring up within the course of the way they teach. And we'll just make sure that it starts with empathy and is backed up with authority. And it makes you memorable and it makes people think not only does Nathan or Michelle get me, but she can actually help me. Like she actually has authority and credibility in this space. And then the most important part of perform is the call to action, right? So you got to have one clear, distinct call to and logical call to action, right? So you did all this work. So we worked with Michelle for 30 days to get her on this interview and even coached her on how to tell great stories and introduce herself and have everyone remember her. If she doesn't tell people what to do next, she loses almost all the value of being on this interview, right? So call to action is what you're going to do it later for me. I hope, you know, if people are interested in this, what should they do next?

Right.

One clear, memorable way to have people take that next action. Right. So you want a very memorable URL typically. Yes.

What's Michelle's, uh, or like, or like, what is she pointing people towards?

Yeah. So in her case, it would be an assessment, right? So an assessment, there's lots of examples. People, people may think of this as a lead magnet. They may think of it as a strategy call. There's lots of forms and functions depending on your goals. But in her case, yeah, like an assessment of what would be the next career pivot for, for me as a mid-career professional. Right. And they can answer 5 to 10 questions and it spits out a prescriptive answer and invites them to a call to unpack the results. Like that would be one example of a clear call to action. Yeah. So, hey, You resonate with my story. You think what I teach is cool. You think the case studies that I've outlined are relevant. The next step is for you to get some personalized insight. You don't have to talk to me to get that. I've got an amazing assessment that's been proven with my clients, and you will have the option to talk to me if you want, right? Yeah.

Okay. That makes sense. And then we're going all the way through to profit.

So profit, you know, could be a part 2 interview. So we, you know, again, it's 2/3 of the process. But it's also the most customized to each business, right? So you can imagine, you know, this in 30 days is sort of a standard process. And when we get to the profit, it sort of becomes a little more choose your own adventure, right? So there are examples. I'll give you one for Michelle just to try to drive home an idea. This will be very actionable for everyone listening. So an example of a profit strategy is— so profit is everything that happens after the interview is published. Okay, so how do we leverage that? So one great powerful one that anyone could use if they've landed on any podcast at any point is a guest list strategy. And so a guest list strategy is saying, I was on this podcast and there's these other 200 guests that were on the same podcast, and now there's another one every week. So there's this evergreen component of new guests coming on. How can I, as Michelle, in this thought leader example, connect with the appropriate guest and leverage that to grow my business. So if you think of a guest list like that, it's public. You can actually listen to the episodes if you want, but you know what they're about, their LinkedIn profiles right there. And you can go through and say 3 buckets, you know, person number 1, oh, they're a potential client. They are an attorney in this stage of their career. And they were talking about the fact that they're on a second part of their life mission or something, right? Client would be bucket 1. Bucket 2 would be partner. So maybe this person was a guest on the podcast. They're not necessarily an ideal client, but they, uh, work with my same clients in a different way, right? And so there's lots of great partnership opportunities when you view the world through those collaboration lenses. And then the third bucket would be platforms. So who in that guest list also has a podcast, right? So we can shortcut this whole process and not even have to write a pitch, because the key with the guest list strategy is you've got an automatic shortcut into how you communicate with these people.

You and I are both on the same show.

Exactly. We're both in a cool kids club, right? So anyone that's been on Nathan Barry's show here, you know, they would feel comfortable reaching out to me and saying, hey Dustin, I was also on Nathan's show. I'm going to immediately be like, credibility, cool kid. Of course I'm going to shoot that phone call.

On shows like in this case, right? Then, you know, like, oh yeah, how was it coming to Boise in the studio? And did you enjoy dinner at Percy? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

There's a shared experience. For sure. But even without that, even if it's more of a normal show and you're, you know, and you're one of 200 guests, right? I mean, I can tell you from experience when— if you want to connect with someone on LinkedIn without this, yeah, you maybe get 30, 40% acceptance. We're getting 80, 90%, and it leads very naturally and comfortably into the next part of the conversation, whether that's a sales conversation ultimately, or that's a partnership conversation, or that's a platform conversation.

Yeah. I like it. Okay, so quickly thinking through my version of this.

Yes.

Because I basically where I'm at is I have lots of inbound requests to go on shows and I say no to probably 9 out of 10.

Yep.

And we filter through it and decide what to go on. If they're a customer, I'm more likely to go on their show, like that kind of thing. But I don't really approach it with a lot of purpose or a clear plan. And then the pitch is easy. Though there are some big shows that I've gotta, you know, I think about like going on a show like Rich Roll or someone like that, right? The absolute biggest podcast, but not business. So I'm trying to figure, you know, I'm working on that of like, how do I, maybe I can apply flywheels to, you know, lifestyle design or those, like there's ways that we could tweak and optimize that pitch. And then I think the other area that I don't do a good job of is the call to action. Because I'm not as clear of like my plan and purpose all the way through, I could be talking about flywheels and then the call to action should be to go, you know, to creativeflywheels.com and download the 10 sample flywheels. Or most often it's like, go check out Kit.

Yeah.

Which is kind of a weak call to action because it's like, do you want me to just go sign up for an account? Do you want me to watch it? Demo video? Do you want me to talk to a salesperson?

Right.

And I haven't like really nailed that part, though I'm very good at the profit part of it.

Yes, yes, yes, you are.

But I'm, I'm, I'm curious what feedback you would have, um, in any of those steps, maybe especially in the, the perform step.

Yeah, so if you're— let's just— obviously there's different hats that you wear, just like there's different versions of Michelle that show up. So if we, you know, we would choose one up here, and for the interest of time, I'll choose one for you. So let's say you're Nathan wearing the Creator Flywheels hat, and you've got this course, and of course you're also the CEO of Kit. And so you can use one interview to sort of check a couple boxes, but you still need to have one primary outcome, right, which drives one primary call to action. And so I think in that case, where I would be looking at is a call to action that is— so you're— say the interview is all about Creator Flywheels and your teachings on that and case studies and, and all those things. So people are wanting more flywheel stuff, and that does not have to come with the expensive kit. So I think in that case, a call to action could say, hey, you know, like, the good news is I'm the flywheels guy and the kit guy, and so I've actually got an amazing resource for anyone listening, uh, whether they're a kit customer yet or not. They can go to kit.com/flywheels or whatever that would be, and it's going to preload in the 3 flywheels that I talked about today so they can get in there and play with it. And if they want to, you know, choose to continue on with kit, great. If not, they'll already have flywheels they can use in their email platform of choice. But, you know, so having one call to action that sort of bridges your two identities in this case, right? I think like that would be really powerful in your case.

Yeah, there's a bunch of those. You know, you customize them for a specific audience, right? So if I'm on an author marketing podcast, then I could teach, say, James Clear's 5-Star Amazon Review Flywheel.

Exactly.

And then say, go here to get it. And included with that is the kit automation that does the whole thing.

Of course. And then it opts them in to, you know, some kit follow-up to talk about, hey, if you want to actually use this in your business and you're not already a customer, obviously you'd have the logic to know if they're already a customer, but it could also opt them into, hey, if you are like really into flywheels, I actually teach a whole course on flywheels. Right. And so, and that's a really important distinction. I'm glad the way you said that, because on the podcast, there's still one call to action. If you want to sort of have some branching logic to let people choose their own adventure from there, have it happen after they opt in from the one call to action.

Yeah, don't say, well, if you're this kind of person, sign up here, but hold on, if you're this kind of person, here's another URL. And if you're— and they're like, I'm driving, I—

exactly, they're driving, they're, they're out on a walk with their kids. They need to be able to remember and take a single action. But then once they do the initial thing, then you can say, now which of these best describes, you know, what you're trying to get out of Flywheels at this, at this point? Are you an existing— I'm an existing kit customer who wants to add this to my account.

I'm a—

I want to try a free trial of Kit. I don't care about Kit. I just want a PDF version of James Clear's Flywheel. Fine. And then they can select their own adventure. But that's the place to give them choice, not here.

One call to action.

Yeah, exactly.

That makes sense.

I love it.

Okay, this has been really, really valuable. We've packed a lot into a short amount of time. One thing that we were talking about at dinner last night is where does your business go from here? Yeah, right. You know, we've got this trajectory here. $1 million in 2024. I'm curious about like what's next? What do you want? What do you want to scale this business to?

Yeah, I mean, it seems like, you know, you kind of follow the trend here. It seems like I should be looking at like a $3 million business, right? And like, what's it, you know, ones and threes are typically the way that businesses grow. You would know much better than me. And so it starts to require some really important questions about what does the $3 million version, right? 7 Figure Leap look like? And honestly, I'm still kind of trying on this identity of like, do I want a $3 million business? Because that requires new, new choices. I want a team. Right now it's basically me and then some contractors. And then as of 4 months ago, I have my first full-time executive assistant. Okay. And she's also our client success manager. So we have one full-time employee and me running a million-dollar business.

And so what's the profit margin on?

69% last year.

Okay.

So yeah, so it's pretty good. Yeah. And so my goals this year are like a $1.2 million top line. Like, I don't want to actually grow a ton from a top line revenue. I want to make it more sustainable and prepare it to scale should I choose. Yeah. So I know the immediate plan over the next 9 months is basically—

2025 is all about systems.

It's about systems. Exactly. And getting to like, you know, $1.2 million, great, 20% growth. It's more normal than the preceding years, but I actually want my margin down more like 50%. So I'm reinvesting more in the business from an operations, systems, and people standpoint.

Okay.

Yep, I like that.

So we're going to say systems to scale. Yes.

All right.

So 2025 is all about systems to scale.

Yes.

I like how methodical you are and thoughtful about it. Most of the people would be like, okay, if I did this jump, then I should be $2 million next year and $4 million the year after that and on from there. But I think as you've established yourself in your career, you've done a bunch of these things, you're not chasing money at the expense of everything else. No. As you think about the different processes in this, what are the bottlenecks that you hit in this $1 to $3 million?

Yeah, I think the first bottleneck that comes to mind is fulfillment. So I run a high-touch premium program with 12 to 15 people in a group at a time. Right. So right now we're running 5 or 6 groups a year. Last year, one of the changes I made was I brought on an assistant coach who's an alumni of the program and he's awesome. And so he handles one of our calls, I handle the other. So I've sort of removed myself from some of the fulfillment. But the idea of having, let's say, 2 or 3 cohorts running concurrently that require my attention, that becomes pretty stressful. And that there's fulfillment not only in the accelerator but in the mastermind, which I, I feel that you, you know how to, I know how to solve it. It's just a choice, right? Yeah. So more coaches, more coaches. And I'm blessed with this alumni community that I can kind of handpick people that I think would fractionally come back and be like, heck yeah, you know, pay me, of course. But I would love to serve this community in that way. So it's just more coaches and more mastermind leaders. Yep.

Okay, what's the next bottleneck?

Um, sales and marketing. So, you know, it's— Albert's kids have no shoes. Yeah, so generating more leads, um, more high-quality leads, because there is a path to $3 million. That is what you started this interview with, which is what if you did a course and you had the low-ticket membership and you just had huge numbers? All the things. Yeah, just like Yeah, this is fine, but like, let's do the 10,000-person version of this. What would that look like? And I've tried that on mentally and I've had some coaching around that. I'm like, I don't, I don't like that. Like, I like this, you know, I like the simplicity of this. And I think, I think this can be a $10 million business ultimately. But, you know, looking at the $3 million version, I think leads is probably the primary bottleneck. Yeah, it's finding enough of the people for the accelerator that then naturally lead to the mastermind.

Yeah. Okay. I'm going to dive into leads in a moment, but are there other bottlenecks that come to mind? I have to—

$3 million, still more systems. So, you know, I feel like that's the internal leap we made between last year and this year. I've done— I've invested a lot in that and time and energy, but there's still more to do, right? Like a very building out our kit ecosystem with more support of our, of our sales and marketing systems. But I think that's, that's a key part. Yeah.

And that's where, as we've talked about, like flywheels, right?

Exactly.

Flywheels, automation. I like that. There's a good, good plan there.

Yep.

So as I'm thinking through it, there aren't really other bottlenecks that come up. And so, yeah, it really comes down to leads. And so we're thinking about not how can I get as many people as possible? That's actually the trouble that I have with this podcast is I think about, okay, I wanna grow the show and everyone's like, okay, well here's 10 ways to grow the show. And I'm like, oh sorry, I wanna grow the show of professional creators who are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars a year. And actually if I use most of these tactics, it's going to take me further away from what I want.

Exactly.

I wanna be at a conference and be talking to the speakers and be like, oh, I loved the episode last week. I'm like, You listen?

Yeah.

You know, and I have that experience all the time.

Yes.

And so I have to be really thoughtful about the strategies that I employ. And you do as well.

Yes.

Or you have to have really good filtering.

Yes.

To go from some top of funnel awareness down to the people that should go into the Accelerate.

Yes.

Do you have a sense if we were to focus on one of those two things, going straight for the leads that are highly qualified or going mass market and filtering down to the highly qualified leads. Give a sense of which approach is better.

Number one. Yeah, I like that. As you're even describing those, I'm like, these are totally the two options. And my heart is like, like I want quality over quantity. I love— I didn't say this. This whole thing is not really about podcast guesting. It's about relationship building. I'm a very relationship-oriented person, so I want to find my clients through relationships, right? Podcast guessing is one beautiful way to do that. And other ways that, that fall into that same— it's even, you know, part of this profit that we teach— expansions on the podcast guessing core vehicle are like training in someone else's mastermind, training in someone's community, speaking on stages. I host my own podcast, and having a strategy around that to have I don't really, I don't really try to sell to guests, but I try to invite and welcome guests who are partners. So like joint venture partners, collaborators. So the centers of influence are who I'm trying to attract through that relationship too. So it's just different ways of scaling high-quality relationships, I think, is the key to getting the right leads that doesn't require me to go mass market. I could do that. I've done that with other businesses, including the meat sticks business. But the thing that really fires me up and I feel like is a differentiator in how I'm wired and how I teach is it's really like a relationship-based lead generation system, which podcast guessing is. It's not the only one, obviously. So yeah.

Yeah. So I mean, that'd be interesting to think about is if you just kept doing what you're doing.

Yeah.

Would that get you there? Right. And so as we map out, you know, 2026 and 2027, if I were to assign goals.

All right. Oh, I just did that wrong.

2026.

Just do 2 years. Yeah.

And then 2027, right? I would aim for $2 million.

Yeah.

And then $3 million.

Yeah, I like that.

Because the reason is I love how thoughtful you are about building the systems to scale because so many people try to make this leap and then they're delusional about how much chaos they created in this jump.

Yes.

And so they're like, and now we're going to go to here. And then they hire a whole bunch of people and the profit goes down like crazy and all of this.

Yes.

And so instead you're saying, all right, systems and team. All right, now we're ready to go to $2 million and then on to $3 million. And so what I'm wondering is how many leads, how many quality leads does it take to create $2 million in revenue?

Yeah, I mean, that's basically 160-ish clients, accelerator clients, right? If we keep the 80/20 split, it's about, it's about 160 $10,000 clients to get the 1.6 that is the accelerator portion. The mastermind sort of takes over naturally for the balance. Yep. So 160 clients. I mean, when we get the right clients on serve call, to use a John Meece-ism, we have a 50% or higher close rate. Like we have a very high close rate because Again, it's relationship-based. When people get to that point, they're pretty bought into what we do. It's just a matter of is this the right fit at the right time? So 160 clients really is 350. Yeah, just to round up a little decent, like high quality leads. Yeah.

And then what does it take to get to 350 high quality leads? Because there's some earlier steps in there.

Yes.

Did we need 1,000 people like to come into your ecosystem?

Yeah, maybe, maybe 1,500. Yeah, I was kind of thinking through the actual ratios. An important point, Nathan, that is blended in all these numbers is 35 to 40% of every accelerator is filled with referrals from a preceding accelerator client. And so there is definitely a flywheel of referability that we are— we've been working on as I've been working with you in the Flywheels course. And so I think that's going to continue to drive a lot of momentum so that that top number becomes a little fuzzy because there's like, well, a lot of it's an internal rate of return of of just treating our clients well and having them do referrals. But 1,500 is a conservative number, I'd say.

Yeah, and so if we say, all right, in 2026 we need to bring in 1,500 business owners, you know, it's not just 1,500 of anyone.

Sure, it's mission-driven entrepreneurs, to use our term, yeah.

I like it. And I love that you brought up the referrals because that's where I wanted to go with the leads. And that's in the Flywheels program, what we're talking about a lot and workshopping right now is how do we double down on that? But I love the clarity that this brings because then you can map out, we can, we're not going to do the live math, but you can just extrapolate for 2027 what has to be true. And it's pretty approachable.

Yes.

And what I love about this is it doubles down on two things. One is your core belief that you're just building relationships with great people. It's your center of excellence is everything you want to do.

Yes.

And the other thing is there's no business model shift.

Yeah.

In any of this.

Yeah.

And so you can actually, in all of the things, you're listening to other podcasts, you're brainstorming ideas, in all of this you can go, oh, let me just set that aside. And when someone's like, you know, you gotta try TikTok, that's the thing, you know, or like you gotta launch this course, you gotta do all this. And you can say, look, I'm not making any changes to the business model. I'm not making any changes to my like core mission, values, beliefs, or how I show up. All I'm doing is saying, how do I attract more of the right people at the top of the funnel and how do I drive more referrals further down the funnel? And those two things, that's what I believe the only two things that have to change to double the business over the next two years.

Yeah, that brings me a lot of peace and it's something I've done but not easily. Avoid the, man, I basically already have a course. Why not just sell the course? And what about all the people who aren't ever gonna do this? Right. But those aren't the people I feel like I'm called to serve at this time. And if I do that, it by default has to dilute from this experience in some way. I'm not saying that that's not part of the ultimate plan, but I think right now you're totally right that like, don't broke— don't fix what's not broken, right? Like, this has served me very well. It's served— we have 100% success rate with our clients. We have like an ROI guarantee built into this thing. Like, because of the way we deliver the experience, like it's— it generates a ton of referrals. And so I think it's just finding more partners to have more of the right people find us. And, and then, yeah.

And I think that that's something is like, okay, what leads into this? Yeah, right. So there's the referrals, but then how do we do it at scale?

Yeah, right.

And so who else has communities?

Communities? Yes. Masterminds.

And you're just like, oh, I can spend a ton of time getting in front of those people because they're already curated. They're already they're already vetted, they're high-quality people worth investing in who have established businesses. And so you can say, all right, I'm gonna get in front of 20 masterminds over this next year. And like maybe that's gonna be the new thing that I do, the new flywheel that you add in. I wanna go back to one thing just as we wrap up on, you said it brings peace. And I, like entrepreneurship is a game of endless opportunity. That's what makes it so, so special. And it also makes it so, so stressful.

Yes.

Because you can pursue absolutely anything and there's 100 ways, 100 good ways to build the same business. And so just this idea of like, oh, yep, those are great. I'm going to set all of those aside.

Yes.

Something that I do inside of Kit is I have endless ideas and I used to really distract the team with all of those ideas. And so it wasn't just like me going off in a weird direction. I would like suggest it to our managers and they'd be like, oh, do you want me to put like 3 engineers on this? Like, and I'm like, well, maybe if it's, do you think it's good? You know, we'd spiral in a bunch of ways. And what I did is I made an idea bin. And it was kind of a little joke about like, put it in the circular file, maybe in the trash can. But I just said, hey, all of my ideas, they go here. And so I'm, when I hear something like, oh, here's the future of how we're going to build the course, here's what we're going to do. Instead of it saying, oh, now let's put it to life, it's like, oh no, that goes in the idea bin. And then periodically myself or other people on my team will go through that and be like, that's really interesting. You know, maybe our director of customer experience is doing quarterly planning. And so she looks through there and says, I wonder what idea. Oh, you know, I did hear about that one. Oh, that is interesting. And so the idea comes when the time is right. And so if you implement a system like that, then you can say, I know where I'm headed. And every time something pops up, I'm not like, oh, forget it. I'm like, great idea, filed away. Now I'm back on target. And maybe when, you know, every year I'll readdress those ideas.

My version of that is actually in my community. And if I have a great idea, a lot of times I'll like resist doing it to my own business, but I'd be like, this is perfect for Michelle. Yeah. You know, in a very healthy way. And then I can suggest ideas to other people and that's my way to deploy employ these kind of entrepreneurial energies that come to us, right, without fiddling with my own model.

Yeah, that sounds good. Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you for walking through not just your business, but also like the systems behind it, and giving us a little sneak peek of where you're going, because it's fun to see behind the scenes. And so now that question, if we were to talk about, you know, we have to bring it full circle. Yeah, someone's following all of this and they're like, all right, this is fantastic, I wanna know more, where should they go?

One call to action, one place to go, right? So 7figureleap.com/playbook. So if anyone's just like remotely interested in podcast guesting, it's gonna give them some really cool resources, including how to do this pitch really, really well. It's gonna give them the template and it's gonna give them some case studies to some examples of other kit creators actually who have used this process to grow their business. So 7figureleap.com/playbook. They'll be all set. Perfect.

Thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks, Nathan.

If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show, then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for listening.