How Great Thought Leaders Use Podcasts to Scale Influence | Ryan Estes | 673

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest, who is no stranger to podcasts, is Ryan Estes. He's the co-founder at Wildcast and Kitcaster. Kitcaster was acquired recently. By Moburst, and he's got a lot of experience in sort of the every angle of the podcast world. So, uh, welcome aboard today, Ryan.

Peter, I'm so happy to, uh, to be here. Thanks for having me on your show.

Oh, my pleasure. So, uh, two questions. Why the hell would anyone host a podcast? And then why would anyone wanna even be a guest on one?

That's a great question. Um, why would somebody wanna be a, uh, host a podcast? I think some people are just compelled. There's a whole sector of people that just never shut up.

But do they have anything to say?

Yeah, it's arbitrary, you know? So those people must find microphones and must talk, you know? I, I find podcast hosts to be kind of the most extraordinary, dynamic, curious people out there. You know, we get this amazing opportunity to make connections and that happens all over the place, but like, right, podcast is unique largely because you put away your phones, you, you tuck away the, the browser, like you're actually engaged, uh, because recording something like bubbles up the butterflies in your belly. You get a little bit excitement about it. So yeah, I, I, I love podcasters. Why would people do, uh, be a podcast guest? Now Kitcaster, that's exactly what we do over on Kitcaster is we, we work with funded startup founders, entrepreneurs with exits, CEOs, pretty much the whole C-suite and book 'em on other people's podcast. And largely the biggest reason is they're looking for distribution. You know, there are the, I've met the most brilliant people in the world that have created things in their closet, but they don't have anybody to tell. And, you know, founder-led marketing is shown to be like 80% more effective than brand-led marketing. So for them getting out there, talking to their audience, talking about their product, talking about their project, being able to like find an open audience is really important. So. I think it's important for their business, but I think personally it also resonates kind of a different vibe too. Largely because Peter, you're an entrepreneur, you understand, you know, probably your friends, your partner, they're sick of hearing about your business and what you're working on.

So likely so. The other piece is that the exchange is really, the guest is providing some interesting content or perspective and idea, et cetera. And the host gives to that guest, we'll talk about the audience in a minute, you know, a platform and an audience that they've worked years and years to develop and curate, right? So that exchange of some, some time is really a cool exchange. The audience gets the value of both sides of the equation, obviously, right? For me, I don't like to write. It's not my favorite thing to do. I'm not great at it. It's something that needs to be done from a marketing perspective, but I have conversations all day and, and as a host. I don't have anybody on that doesn't teach me something. So selfishly, you know, I'm learning something. I get to share that. I'm building relationships, I'm elevating the brand. And unlike media hit, which is kind of a dopamine hit, kind of the assets that you create on a podcast from the, from the perspective of a guest have a much longer shelf life, right? You could use derivatives and, and repurposed pieces of that as collateral almost in, in perpetuity. So I want to sort of shift a little bit. The market's gotten real crowded, right? The world doesn't need another podcast, right? So how do you make a decision as a guest as to which ones you should be on relative to your specific agenda, goals, objectives?

You bet. You know, I think at any given time there might be 2 million active podcasts, which is, feels like a big number. But when you start to really get into the different niches, you know, they're actually a very small amount, you know? So I think that relevance is gonna be the, the, the most important thing, you know, especially with the folks that we're working with, startup founders. I mean, right now I would say 80, 90% of our clients are building with AI. So they're making very kind of, uh, small audience buyers, in some instances, podcasts might be the only place that their buyers are in aggregate, you know, it's not like a B2C play. Like if I was selling black sweatpants, I would sell them on Instagram. And I know that because that's where I buy black sweatpants.

Right, exactly. Well, and black sweatpants are a commodity and you don't really, really need to understand the philosophy of the manufacturer of the black sweatpants and Price and convenience are probably a factor. I think a lot of what we're doing today, whether it's professional services or technology or whatever, it's fairly complex, right? Like once you tell me black sweatpants, I'm thinking, okay, I get that. Like now I might ask you, are they lightweight? Are they, you know, what's the material? Are they like closer to Lululemon or The Gap, whatever. But it's not like, you know, a, a tech stack or something more complicated. And sometimes a conversation that a listener has with two people answers questions they might not even knew they, know they would have as a potential buyer.

100%. Yeah, there's a big demand gen because, you know, folks are building very specific tools to solve problems that, to your point, that users don't even know they have yet, or they haven't been able to like enunciate the problem. And, but once somebody comes on, it might take 15, 20 minutes to unpack the value prop., and then they're like, oh my God, actually, yes. I didn't know there was a tool that fixed that. Boom. Then they, they have customers. So, you know, I, I think that kind of relevance is, is huge. You know, the, I think the other point is, is to find podcasters that elicit great responses from the guest. Yeah. There's a, there's an energy and there's a vibe that happens on a podcast and it might be tangentially related as far as the relevance of the topic. Yeah. But if the—

stay there a minute because I find, um, a couple things, 'cause I, I'm a guest frequently as well as I've hosted 650-some episodes. As a guest, the podcast that I refuse to go on lately, and maybe I've just moved into my cranky old man phase of life, which is fine too, is when they're so structured that, you know, they're sending you, here's the 7 questions I'm going to ask you. Yeah. And I'm Well, there's nothing fun about that, right? Yeah. Like there's nothing, I can't connect that to in 3 weeks from now when we're gonna record and say, you know, it's interesting, I was just reading an article on, it's so scripted, it's so not fun. Like why do we need to allocate time live if you want to ask me questions, right? Like that's like doing my taxes, right? So totally.

It'd be, it's like the most boring cocktail party ever.

Yeah.

These are the questions we will be discussing.

Yeah, exactly. And now sometimes there's variations on that where during the course of a podcast we typically do A, B, and C, but, but it shouldn't feel so, at least in my opinion, so, so structured that the guest is just has to, you know, the guest has to stay in the coloring, you know, the, the lines of the coloring book. The other thing I think is really interesting, and again, I'll swivel to my, my host chair, I'm shocked at what I call sort of horrific guest hygiene. And I don't mean that they smell, maybe, maybe some of them do. Maybe they do that. But I think about it and say, hey, when I'm a guest, here's what I want to do out of respect for the host. Number one, if there's a pre-call or some prep work, I want to know something about them. Right. And I find we always do pre-calls just to make sure we put out a good show. We get to know each other, build a little, you know, you and I did one, right?

Yeah.

I'm surprised at how often people will say, I'll ask them, you know, have you listened to any of our episodes? Have you checked anything out? And I don't expect them to invest hours, but they'll say, no, I was gonna do that after, you know, uh, uh, we scheduled the time. And I'm kind of like, not that this is a job interview, but like if you're on a job interview and somebody said, do you know anything about the company? And they said, well, after you hired me, I might have done some of that work. It's kind of lazy.

Yeah.

You know, there's not a lot of, and then, and then the after, we do a lot of the heavy lifting and say, hey, When this podcast goes live, we're gonna give you a bunch of stuff. We'd like for you to share that on social, right? We want you to amplify the message, get the word out, whatever. We're gonna do the same. The compliance rate on that is, is under 50%. And I'm like, why did you bother to waste your time if you're not gonna take the asset that we created together, this bespoke thing, and share it with your community?

That is an amazing question. And I've noticed the exact same thing. It is very difficult for folks to publish. And I, I think that there might be, I'm just speculating here, but I think some people have an aversion to social media in, in general. I think some people are afraid, you know, that like, how am I gonna be perceived? That like inner narrative, like a, a lot of what we do aside from podcast booking is really working on kind of the psychology and the enthusiasm behind founder-led marketing. And like realizing, like if you're running a company or if you have a startup and you're not willing to put that company on your back and take some on the chin, then you're not a founder and you don't deserve it and you're gonna fail. Like you have to develop the tenacity and the grit and the rigor to like get out there and put yourself out there continuously to have the risk.

Well, you agree? I would argue that, I would take that one step further and say, you have a responsibility. If you're not gonna treat your baby like your baby, who the hell else will? Right? Like, it doesn't make any sense to me. And it's one thing if, if you don't want to be quote, that guy that's always selling, you know, life insurance at every, you know, Thanksgiving dinner. Nobody wants to sit next to that uncle. Right? But I think that there's, there's some pride that you should have and you would say, you know, wow, we just did a great episode, Ryan. And I, and, and I hope that you would share this with your community. And you would feel the same way unless you emailed me after and say, you know, I, I wasn't on my A-game. I don't like the way I answered that. Whatever the case may be. But I don't understand why people think that the effort in the podcasting is show up, hit record, you know, as a guest and then be on with it. Like that's only a piece of it.

It really is. You know, and it, the bigger question too is like developing distribution for yourself with a personal brand. That, that will carry you beyond your current project. You know, because at the end of the day, every business has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Um, hopefully you have some successful endings, but nonetheless, the, the day after you sell your company or you close the doors, like you're still onto the next project. If you haven't built that personal audience and the personal relationship where people understand your, your values and understand what, like what you're bringing to the table. Then you're starting back at zero.

You know, I love that. Well, and I think particularly as it relates to thought leadership, I always tell folks that thought leadership is one of these things where at a moment in time, you're either working for another entity doing this thought leadership or for your own thing doing this thought leadership. But as you move to the next thing, you get to, it's one of the only things you get to take your ball and move forward, right? Like if you're a coder, you don't own that code, right? You work for Google and Google owns the code, right?

But.

As a thought leader, you get to sort of take at least most of those things, and there's some exceptions to this from an intellectual property law standpoint, and take it with you to the next thing and take that audience with you. So I think that's, I think that's a great point, right? 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. I wanna ask you for some examples of best practices, right? So, What are the things, if I was out there and maybe I'm, I've retained an organization like yours, or I'm thinking about it or, or, or whatever, what are the things that you would suggest I would do to, to get the most bang for my buck?

You bet. You, you start yesterday on this personal brand.

Okay.

We work with it a lot with folks that show up and they're like, I want to go on Lex Fridman, Joe Rogan. I want to go on, uh, the Acquired podcast. And I say, buddy, you got less than 500 followers on LinkedIn and that's all I see about you.

Yes.

You know, so they're holding like podcasts to a very high standard when their standard is very low. And I don't mean it to be disrespectful, and I'm not this direct when I'm talking to prospects or people like that, but it's like, hey man, if you ain't shit, you shouldn't expect shit.

Now, that being said, I like that because a lot of thought leaders think, well, I, you know, my job is to come to the table with an idea or some research or whatever. But I think you're right. You know, a lot of podcasters are looking at the guests going, does anybody listen to this person? Like, I might selfishly find, but are they interesting to anyone else? Have they put in the reps to develop their own sort of marketing brand, their own persona, their own brand? You know, as you say, so absolutely.

And the exchange is fair. I mean, you were, we're finding people that have great expertise. I mean, they, these are brilliant people, well-educated. They've raised hundreds of millions of VC. They're amazing. But the thing is, is that like, there's a hundred of those guys lining up to talk on podcasts.

Yeah.

You know? And it's like the differentiator will come down to like, what's your reach? What's your audience? How, what is your charisma on a podcast? Because that makes a big difference, you know? So I think if someone's considering a podcast tour, there really are podcasts for everybody. If you have zero presence online, but you're an expert, you're a thought leader. Of course there's opportunities and there's like great conversations to be had and there's great opportunities for distribution. But you know, the, the, when you, if you're coming in like, oh, show me who you've gotten on Rogan right out of the gate, it's like you're just destined to be disappointed unless you smoke DMT and eat elk meat and then maybe you can find some chance with Rogan.

But, but even stay there with Rogan. So I get that all the time with clients in terms of, you know, New York Times bestseller list or media placements or whatever. And it's like, you know, you wanna say, why would Rogan possibly have you on? But I think a, a variation of that question is, why do you think that that would be a good show for you? So I think, you know, when I'm working with clients and, and I'm sure, sure you're doing similar things, we wanna find out who their target market is with the highest level of specificity that we can. So if someone comes to me and says, oh, my target market is CMOs in the Fortune 500. Okay. I'm not great at math, but the entire universe is 500, right? Just by definition. So if you think about that and, and, and I'm gonna spend tens of thousands of dollars to get on Joe Rogan. Okay, well, what percentage of the 500 people that I care the most about, 'cause they can impact my business the, the most, are listening to him versus some maybe obscure or unheard of marketing podcast that happens to have a big followership in the CMO community. So I think it's not a gross number issue, it's the percentage of the addressable market that you're trying to hit issue.

Agree. And I think really what it comes down to is, and I think most people are sophisticated enough to understand that, you know, the riches are in the niches. That's where you want to go to get customers. But the thing that happens with podcasts and conversations you have nerves. Some people, it elicits a lot of big emotions. If you're not hitting it off with the host or you stumble or something, like, you can end a conversation with somebody and it feels— I mean, you know how it is, you gotta burn sage or something to get, get the stank off you.

Yeah.

So if you have that, like, naturally you're going to want to dissipate that feeling. And oftentimes that comes out to being like, I shouldn't waste my time unless I'm talking to Oprah, or I— you know what I mean? Like, it, it just becomes an outlet for that big emotion. So You know, what we talk a lot about is like working on the things that don't scale, which is like how you show up, how do you look, how do you sound, how's your lighting, how do you, do you feel comfortable? Do you feel excited? Do you feel like if the podcast host completely tanks, you can take the whole, uh, conversation over and still deliver? You know? So these things don't scale. These are what you're—

but those, so those are skills, right? And there are some people like either, uh, historically or naturally or have high charisma or whatever. Have those skills. And the reality is a lot of folks I deal with might be academic or they're kind of behind the scenes. Maybe they're a little bit more into research. The things that you talk about are important, but they're all trainable, right? Whether it's media training or communications training, or you wouldn't go on stage as a keynoter without understanding sort of how does this work, right? What, how do, what am I, how do my presentations work? How does the microphone work? How do I, how does my audience interaction work? So there are some teachable things. And then, you know, the other thing I think that you get better at least for me, as both a guest and a host by listening to others that you admire and respect. And sometimes I, I've reached out to lots of folks that I've heard on podcasts that I listened to that were just really good guests. Like just the way they articulated something really complicated or their, that maybe they were funny, maybe they were sort of counterintuitive or snarky, something about them like, wow, that was just, that was a good listen. Other times, you know, things could kind of blend into one another, you know? Yeah. And oh, totally.

I mean, I've done enough podcasts that like there's a lot of times I'll start a sentence and have no idea where I, I, what I just said at the end, you know. So it totally happens. And I, I think that, yeah, it's like you get better by training, you get, you get better with reps, you get better with like reviewing what you've already done. To your point, you find people that you really admire, like who's the, you know, who's the Bird Parker of podcasting, go listen to them if that's vibrating with you and see if you can, you can use some of those attributes into your interviews, you know? So it, it's definitely, I mean, I think conversation in general is like a place for mastery. I think there's true virtuoso conversationalists and when I find those people, I'll trap 'em in a corner for hours.

Yeah.

It's good just to listen to 'em talk. So, oh, that's very true.

That's very cool. So as we, as we start to wrap here, any final thoughts, recommendations, insights, wisdom, life-changing, you know, a limerick perhaps.

You know, I, I would say to, to the audience, they're interested in thought leadership, like just be brave and start publishing. Just hit record and play and put it out there. You know, if it, it's a little bit nerve-wracking in the beginning because you're like, oh, what if people judge me this and that and this and that? People will forget immediately, but what will happen is you will get better at it. And whatever your project is, it's going to benefit with eyeballs and distribution. You know, don't be the person building in your closet. Let people see it, get the feedback, promote it. Let people know that you stand behind your product and, you know, uh, the value is, it's self-evident. Put it that way. Yeah.

I love that. The one, the one thing I would, add to that, Ryan, is that for many folks, different modalities require different things, right? So if I fancy myself a writer, the written word is very different than the spoken word, right? And if everything I write require, you know, I'm editing in every word and every pause and every sentence and, you know, all that, you know, I'm, I'm treating meticulously, that's different than how do I bring those concepts, those models, those methods, those frameworks to life. In an organic conversation, right? And you, you just have to practice that, right? 100%. An example, because got, obviously got this rotational art. So totally cool. Well, this has been great. I appreciate your time and thank you for sharing what you've got today.

Loved it, Peter. Thanks so much.

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 at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.