Becoming a Legendary Podcast Guest | Dana Lindahl | 511

Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you are joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Dana Lindahl, and Dana is the founder and CEO of Legendary Podcast, which is a podcast agency, and he is also an author of a book called LinkedIn Sales Success. As well as a founder of a couple of other entities over the years. But today we're gonna talk a lot about podcasting and such. So welcome aboard, Dana. How are you?

I'm great, Peter. Thanks for having me. Really excited to be here.

So I'm, I'm excited about today's conversation because just recently we published our 500th episode and I've learned a lot along the way as a, as a host. And I, what I was hoping today is sort of look at this from a little bit more from the guest perspective and how guests can maximize the benefit they get, because frankly, I get somewhere between disappointed and frustrated sometimes when we don't get some of the other things we're looking for from a guest. So to me, I always think about, well, why does somebody want to be a guest on a podcast? Now, let me— so let me sort of throw that at you. What are the benefits of someone guesting on someone else's podcast?

So most people that are going to go and guest on someone's podcast are at the end of the day doing it for some form of exposure. Brand awareness, lead generation, or just getting their name out there in front of a target audience. The challenge becomes how do they mix that in with something that is aligned with what the host wants as well? Because generally the host and their audience is less concerned with, can this guest generate leads from this? Is this guest going to get more exposure? So we need to make sure that we're aligning the two incentives on both sides.

Yeah, so I know, I think that's right. So I think that it's never a direct Hey, call me to, you know, to solve this problem for you. It doesn't need to be that blunt. It shouldn't be that blunt. But I think if you go back to sort of what you said, the audience that a podcaster has developed over the years, that's really a huge value prop. And I think one of the things that guests should be looking at is, okay, great. It's flattering early on to be accepted as a guest at almost any podcast. But the reality is if the composition, the demographics, the psychographics of that audience don't line up with the types of folks you want to get in front of, it's probably not a good use of your time.

Yeah. One of the things that we try to impress upon our clients very frequently is that we'd rather have them go on a show and speak to a smaller number of people who are exactly the right types of people that they want to be speaking to, rather than going on a huge show that's full of people from all over the place, interested in all sorts of things and very general, because we want them to be able to have a conversation that speaks directly in into the ears of the people that need to hear it most rather than just speaking out into the void.

And the more niche a podcast, by definition, you're going to have smaller top line numbers, which isn't really the point. Whether, you know, you really shouldn't judge a podcast on whether it has 100,000 downloads a month or 1,000. I think the better question is, are those the right 1,000 for me? Right? So let me sort of go in a little bit of a different direction. So I'll give you my experience and I'd love to hear your feedback that you might give a potential guest or a client. So people get pitched to us all the time, either they pitch directly or through an agency. We have a process where we do a screening call if we think they might be a guest. And the screening call is really to make sure there's alignment and that the guest understands sort of what our format is, what they get, you know, get them comfortable with who we are, what we're doing, and where the conversation's going to go, format, et cetera, et cetera. I would say I do about 10 of those calls a week to pick 1 or 2 guests a week because we don't want to just have anybody on. I would say that 95% of the folks that I ask them during that pre-call, "Hey, have you checked out our site or listened to any episodes?" And I'm shocked that north of 90% say, "Oh no, I haven't done that yet." And I find that really, really, really disturbing. Could you comment on that?

Well, I think the yet part is really funny because if you haven't done it before recording this pre-interview, when are you going to actually do it?

Yeah, that's like going on the job interview and they ask you, have you researched the company? No, after you hired me, I was going to think about it.

Exactly. I think that this is one of the, the biggest ways to have success within podcasting because everyone wants to get their message out there to an audience. But the way that you do this is not by trying to pitch yourself, not talking too much about your company, but by saying the types of things that actually provide value to that audience. So if you haven't seen how the host interacts with his guests in the past, if you haven't looked at some of the reviews and see what are the parts of the podcast that people are finding valuable, you actually have no idea how to speak to that audience. So you go in talking tone deaf. You shouldn't be pitching yourself on a show. You shouldn't be talking too much about your company. You should be talking about something that provides value. But if you don't know what's of value to those people, you're not going to be providing value. And a lot of people will fall back to, well, here's what we do, here's what we're good at. And that just turns people away.

People don't end up— And I'm not suggesting someone say, oh my God, before this quick 20-minute call today, I listened to 10 episodes. But an appropriate, hey, I skimmed a few episodes, I listened to a bit of a few, and here's the things that I took away from it. Is that in line with what you're thinking? Or There was a guest on your— you could look for a guest that you have resonance with and listen to that one, et cetera. But to just say, not yet, I think is not— is showing that there's just a lack of preparedness. That's number one. Number two, we record the episode. That's actually the easy part, right? Having an engaging conversation for 20 minutes. I think that's usually fairly easy to do. And I've only had one or two instances over hundreds where someone went a little pitchy, you know? And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not an infomercial. Like, we're not going to go there. That's unusual. The second disappointing phase, and this isn't meant as complaint, but is to have an educational conversation, is once we publish an episode, and there's usually a lag of 4 to 8 weeks depending on our queue, and we let people know that, we will provide them with a whole bunch of assets, right? Here's a way to share this on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on the usual pieces. Please help us promote it. And I would say we're lucky to get maybe 40 to 50% do something. And I think just as an etiquette of being a good guest is to show that you're being helpful as well. Because I want my guests to promote to their audience, which is different than my followership. So any, any thoughts on that?

Yeah, we always push our customers to be doing this because it amplifies the appearance that you've already done. Why spend all this time scheduling with the host, spending time to record, to only just let one side promote it. I think what ends up happening with a lot of people, and I don't think this is what happens with your show because I've had pretty good communication throughout, but some shows don't actually send these things to the guest in advance. So they're just kind of blindsided. They wake up on a Tuesday and it's like someone's tagged them on LinkedIn and they go, oh, well, I just don't have time to get a post out today. I didn't know it was coming. But I don't think that's what's happening with you guys. Another thing that I see that happens somewhat commonly is that people are using podcasting to build their audience and their following. So they don't have that following going into it. So they sometimes feel like it's better to just, well, I'm going on this show, I'll let them promote me. And I'm not saying that this is the right way to do it.

I think that even if you don't have a following— so I understand the logic there, but I've gotta tell you that even if somebody had a very, very small following on LinkedIn or wherever, hundreds, thousands, something like that. I think it's just more of a respecting to show that, listen, I might have a smaller audience than you, a smaller reach than you, whatever, but I'm willing to put your thinking in front of my people as I hope you'd put my thinking in front of your people. And I don't look and say, oh, well, their audience is so tiny. I don't really care typically about a guest's audience or reach. I care about having a good conversation that's of value to the audience. Many times they do. They might have one exponentially bigger than mine. That's cool too, but that's not really a select criteria.

Yeah, I agree 100%. I was actually surprised by the answer that I just gave because we received this back from a few handful of our clients in the past where we send along materials to them and we said, "Hey, you haven't posted this yet." And they said, "You know what? We really don't have a big enough following. We're just not going to post it." Every single time we came in and we're like, "Hey, The host that you just had a call with, that is a really good person that you should be building a network with, building a relationship with. If you went on their show, it means that you have overlap in each other's industries. So why would you not reciprocate with posting that? Even if it doesn't result in a lot of views, even if it doesn't result in a lot of impact for the host, he or she had you on their show. They were nice enough to accommodate for you. They didn't have to. They're promoting you. It's just the right thing to do to promote them.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps. As well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. Well, you meant— you mentioned a key piece here that we haven't touched on yet, and that is maybe it's a secondary benefit, maybe for some it's a primary benefit. I have made some amazingly wonderful, awesome relationships from people that have become friends to people that have become clients, or I've become clients of theirs, whatever. Developing this relationship through a podcast experience is really, really fun. It's amazing. And I think a lot of folks don't realize that that's a benefit that happens. "Hey, how did we meet?" "Oh yeah, I was a guest on a show," or, "We did a call to be on their show and now wasn't the time, but we developed a rapport and it was more appropriate for us to do that episode a year later." I think that's a big piece that people forget about is that relationship-building piece.

For sure. For sure. We've had customers make quite a bit of money from simply realizing organically after having done a show together that like, hey, wait, why are we not doing something together? Yeah. Like it doesn't necessarily have legs and they don't have the idea fleshed out right after the episode, but they talk to each other. They realize that they are on the same page with things. They're in a similar industry, but not competitive. And then we've had a number of people do joint venture deals and Yeah.

And you mentioned earlier on, you realize, listen, this isn't some random stranger you sat next to on an airplane. There's some commonality, a subject matter, a focus area. You have something in common. You've had an experience together. And I think that's great. Other thought I want to throw at you, I've got a bunch, there's so much here to talk about, is that I think one of the values of podcasts, and I don't know that everybody really thinks this way, is that you've now created an asset, right? So you did the podcast, you did the work, you spent your 20, 30 minutes getting on the show. You've got an asset and the value of that asset is not one and done. Oh yeah, that got published in October or whatever it was. You should be and can be reusing that asset. Either you can repurpose the conversation, get transcripts made, turn it into blogs or infomercials, or not infomercials, infographics, whatever the case may be, or repost it every couple of months. Just because a podcast, you know, podcast, most conversations lean towards the more evergreen than we're talking about, you know, something in the news cycle. And I don't think a lot of guests sort of repurpose some of the episodes they've been on and they don't sort of categorize them, right? If you've been on 100 episodes, you should categorize different themes and figure out how to integrate that into your sales and marketing process to say, hey, hey, Mr. Potential Client or Ms. Potential Client, you came to me to talk about this problem. Here's 3 episodes of 3 different podcasts I was on. Talking about the same thing. Give a listen. Any, any reactions to that?

Yeah, no, I'm a big fan of, of repurposing content. I find it works really well in the sales process as well, particularly if, if you're doing sales yourself or even if you have salespeople selling for you. Cuz oftentimes you'll have people following up with you and asking questions about, you know, various elements of your, your service offering or whatever it is that you're selling. And I find it's a huge authority booster to be able to say, you respond back with a quick answer to their question and then link it. I actually went way more into detail on this podcast right here. You can find it at, you know, this timestamp, right? Because now not only are you answering their question, but you're linking them to a resource where you're being interviewed by an expert about the question that they have.

Yep. And then, you know, some other things that I think would, might be valuable or helpful to folks is If you've been a, you know, you're a guest on a podcast and you're talking to a host, you might say, you know, wow, I, you know, I was just a guest last, you know, 2 weeks ago on this other one. It seems like you and that host might have something in common. Might, might I broker an introduction? Right? Or I'll say to folks sometimes, hey, you know what? If you look through my guests, many of them have podcasts on their own. If you'd like, I'd be happy to make an introduction because I think they're a good guest. And I think it's a mutually beneficial thing for me to reach out to, to a friend or a colleague and say, hey, I just had Dana on my podcast. He was a really super guest. We had a great conversation. I think you'd be a great guest on yours as well.

Yeah. Most podcasters are, are very, very open to this sort of podcast swapping. It's one of the ways that they grow their shows as well. And it's all a networking thing as well. So podcasters know other podcasters and it's a great way to get the foot in the door, do a couple of shows and start asking these other hosts, hey, who else do you might know that I should be in touch with? Who else are you looking to be in touch with that I can introduce you to?

So I just want to push on the swapping because I think there's two ways that that comes to life. One is organically, naturally, hey, Dane, I think you're a good guest. You know what? I was on this thing two weeks ago. I'm just going to make an introduction. There's no expectation. There's no quid pro quo. I get solicited often, hey, Peter Winick, let's do a, you know, a podcast swap. I'll be on yours if you'll be on mine. Wink, wink. And I just don't like the keeping score of that. Like where I won't do this for you unless you agree to do this for me. Because I don't, I don't know if I want to have you as a guest. I might be a great guest for you, you might be an awful guest for me, and vice versa. Let's not make— let's not force it. Any, any thoughts? Am I, am I being picky there?

No, I, I think it's, it's very valid. I think the swap works better when it doesn't start off as a swap, but it starts off as a singular appearance. It is a great conversation, and then they both realize like, hey, I've got a podcast too. Why don't you come on mine? We can approach this same conversation from a slightly different direction on my show because my audience talks about different things.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Any other thoughts or things that you have recommendations for guests in terms of what to do and what not to do?

Yeah. Besides the make sure you do a little bit of research on the show and make sure you don't pitch yourself, there is generally one opportunity. In every podcast where you do get an opportunity to be a little bit promotional, and that's when the host is asking, how can people get in touch with you? And I find that most people waste this opportunity by simply giving a, a link to their homepage or giving a link to their LinkedIn, you know, requiring the audience to take that next step to reach out, send a connection request. That's something an introverted person is never going to do on their own. What I find better is to, for every appearance that you do, have a special link where you can send people to, not your homepage, where they can find more valuable materials from you to build upon what you've talked about on the episode that you just did. So it's a great way to let people find out.

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna have you eat your own dog food. So Dana, how do people get— so I love that idea because oftentimes they'll say, oh, it'll be, you know, it'll be in the show notes. I'll put a link to how to get in touch with Dana in the show notes, whatever, whatever. But the reality is the use case of a podcast is I'm in my car, I'm in the gym, I'm taking a walk, whatever. I don't have that, right? I'm not gonna go back and look at the show notes, right? Mm-hmm. So why don't you model this for us? How, how would folks get in touch with you if they wanna get in touch with one of the best podcast booking agencies out there?

Yeah. So if you head over to legendarypodcast.com/guest, you can find a whole lot of guest resources for how to appear, how to find the best shows, and what to talk about while you're on there to further your business goals. You can find some content there that's ungated. Some of it is behind an opt-in. Some of the best practices that I've just used in giving this link is one, I've made sure that it's very, very simple to remember by memory. No one needs to write it down. It's just my website slash single word. You have to remember.

So I love what you did there because obviously it's implied that if they're in the market for an agency, you'd be glad to help them. Clearly we know that, but you're, you're leading with generosity. You're leading with a gift. You're leading with insight and saying, hey, Go check this out, right? Like, go take a look at this. Here's some of my best thinking, which is a great example of a use case of thought leadership to drive a business. Now, not everyone that's gonna go there is obviously gonna bring you on or hire you, but I think if they're looking to, A, move into that space or, or look at an agency, you've automatically differentiated yourself because it, it's not salesy. It's beneficial to me at a moment in time where I'm thinking about potentially doing this. So I think that's awesome. So I wanna, I wanna thank you for your time. This has been fantastic. I've loved the interactions you and I and our respective organizations have had over the last couple months, sharing ideas and sharing guests and all that. And I appreciate lots of wisdom today. Thank you so much, Dana.

Thanks so much for having me.

To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.