Automate Your Podcast Guest Booking with Jessica Rhodes

Jessica, thank you so much for coming on the show. You are actually the first guest on this new show on The Automation Show, and I'm excited to, to have you and talk about your automation and your business.

Oh, thank you. I'm honored to be here and be the first.

Now, you're the founder of Interview Connections, right? And you are a podcast booking agency. Let's quickly give our listeners just a snapshot of what does that mean? What do you do?

Yeah. So we book entrepreneurs as guests on podcasts. That is what we do. We help them monetize, but we are— we go out and book them on podcasts.

That's what everybody needs, right? If you're into podcasting, that's what you need. Now, pretty, pretty remarkable. Over 30,000 podcast interviews you've booked with 800 clients. I mean, that's, that's a huge credit.

Thank you.

Now with that, anyone thinking, okay, well, you couldn't have manually done that, there must be some kind of process or systems in your business. Let's pull back the curtain.

Yeah.

And let's talk about like, how do you run that business?

Yeah, so there, it's interesting because we are able to do things at such a high volume while still having a very personal touch. So we don't necessarily like automate the pitches and, and the like the service delivery and like the human-to-human contact, but we've able to grow and to scale and to grow our visibility through leveraging automations and some very key points where human, like the human manual touch isn't required. And so first and foremost, it's in the sales and marketing side because that's the top of the funnel. That's where people are coming in. And so we give a lot of like manual human touch to the service delivery. But then on the sales and marketing side, as people are first finding us, that's where we're using a lot of really great automations. We use HubSpot. And so I don't know if you want me to just dive right into like where the automations are.

Right into it.

Yeah. So our biggest lead generator is our podcast guesting masterclass. And so there's some really cool automations we use to make that funnel really smooth. And I always love when a marketer registers because they're like, oh, I love this, I love this funnel, like everything you're doing here. I'm like, yeah, totally. So people register, we use lead ads on Facebook and Instagram. So it's a really quick like autofill contact. They automatically get a welcome text and a welcome email. So we use HubSpot for the, the welcome email, and then we use, um, AloeWare for the bulk text. So as soon as they register and they get tagged in HubSpot, there's a text message that they get, you know, welcoming them, giving them the link. And then we have a whole pipeline in HubSpot for our masterclass. So there's multiple stages. The first stage is registered lead, and then they get automatically a deal gets created in that pipeline, which keeps it really organized. Because before we had that automation and we had that pipeline, we just had this giant list of registrants. We didn't know which ones were qualified leads. We didn't know which ones had opened the emails. Like it was all kind of chaotic. Actually, before HubSpot, there was just a spreadsheet. It was, it was like very chaotic. So now everything's very clean and organized. They go into a pipeline. We have virtual assistants that manually go through and qualify to see who's a qualified lead, and they're working their way through manually from there. But there are that really key automation of— and then the other automation I'll tell you in that process is if they've been marked as an unqualified lead before, someone that's not a good fit, they ought— if they register for another masterclass, they automatically go to an unqualified stage. So we're not having to look at them again and again and again because sometimes you have people that want to attend your stuff all the time, but you don't have to keep asking the same question. So I'll pause there. Those are a couple of my favorite automations that have opened up so much extra time for my team.

So many follow-up questions that come out of this and very familiar for a lot of people who are probably either have come from running their business from a spreadsheet. I hear that all the time and trying to get it into a system. But you keep saying we and your team. Let's kind of get, get an understanding of, of the size of your team that you have now. And, you know, when you started this, was it just yourself?

Yeah. So it was just myself when I started. I started out as a virtual assistant and so I was booking interviews for, you know, for my clients and I've grown it. So we've been in business for 11 years. We have 12 full-time employees that all work locally, remotely, and then we have, uh, 3 virtual assistants, um, who help kind of support some of the operations. So all of the service delivery, the pitching, the booking, the client support work, our consultation calls, all of that is by local full-time employees. And then we have a few virtual assistants, um, who help us with that, like qualifying and the sending the welcome messages. And like when there's a mass volume of things and it requires like a copy-paste template, like just we need it done like the same thing done over and over again. We have some virtual assistants that help us with that. So that's kind of what the team looks like.

Oh, excellent. Now talk about this masterclass. How did you come to that idea of, of that's going to be your main lead generator?

Yeah, I mean, I grew the business to multiple six figures, actually We grew it to 7 figures with no conversion event. We just did calls with people who found us or referred to us. And then in 2019, right at the end of 2019, we started using this, uh, it's called the Live Launch Method. We were in a mastermind group with a woman named Kelly Roach who coined the Live Launch Method. And so we followed her structure of how to do this live masterclass where you get people registered, they come on Zoom, the recordings expire 9 days after it starts. So it's a whole kind of formula. And we implemented that even though we weren't really sure if it was going to work for us, right? Because everyone's like, is this going to work for me? And she's like, it works for every type of business owner. So we gave it a shot and it was really effective. And so we've continued to do that and it's just provided this really great way for our prospective clients who aren't quite ready to have a— is this like have a buying conversation but want to learn more? Because like some people just go right to our website, book a call, they're buyers, and other people are like, I'm interested, but I like to learn first. So the masterclass has been that perfect addition to our marketing strategy.

And your masterclass is 3 live classes, is that correct?

Yes. Yeah. So it's 3, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. We do a live class each of those days at 1:00 PM.

Okay. And you do this every week?

We do it once every, about once every month.

Okay.

So there's 2 months of the year where we don't do it. So it ends up being once every 6 to 8 weeks. Uh, but yeah, it's, it's, there's a very regular cadence. We've already scheduled all of the 2025 masterclasses, like everything, it's mapped out far in advance.

Excellent. So as you've went from being, you know, a virtual assistant into growing this business, you know, you probably didn't just go from like everything was manual to suddenly this full-blown automation system. I'm assuming like most people, you've, you've brought in automation in different phases, correct? Can you take us through that journey of, of automation evolution?

Oh my God, absolutely. I, I feel like I have been slow to adopt automation because my skill set— like, I come from door-to-door canvassing, I'm in sales, like, I'm a visual, like, talking type of person. So like the techie automation stuff was very slow for me. I mean, like HubSpot was introduced to us, I think in 2021 we started using HubSpot, and that's where all of these automations were. So the agency that we work with for ads have just introduced— oh yeah, HubSpot can do that, HubSpot can do that. And so then I started learning, I bet HubSpot can do this, how can HubSpot do that? So it took time. And every single month in our business we do a retrospective of the previous month. So we look at like what went well, what was a challenge, what were our obstacles. And from those retrospectives we'll see like where was there a pitfall, where was something just troublesome and like taking a long time? And it's usually that type of conversation that will lead to, is there a way to automate this? It also would happen where the team, like our service delivery team, would say, we're entering this data in 3 different spreadsheets, and then we would say, what's the automation to help with that? And so it was usually whenever there was something that was like, this feels like it's harder than it needs to be. Okay, what's the automation that can help with that? So that was kind of like what the journey has looked like.

Yeah, it's almost like, like comparing it to prescribing, you know, a medication for a pain or something. Like once it becomes a pain, we need to solve it that way. Um, you know, now you mentioned, you know, you use an ad agency and I wanted to touch on that when I heard you say that, because up until that point, people may be thinking you guys are just running your own ads and everything like that, you know, to scale and get to that level, you know, you do have to use other professionals that are in there. What would be your advice to our listeners about, you know, that relationship with working with an outside agency for certain aspects to really make it successful?

Yeah, I, I really think you need to have like an expert. I've never tried to run my own Facebook ads because I log into the portal and I'm like, nope, I walk right out. I'm like, I don't even know how to manage this. And the algorithm is always changing. So my recommendation is to work with an agency that is comprehensive, that looks at the full picture. Like, we started running Facebook ads with an agency that just does Facebook ads, but then it kind of hit me like, well, if our landing page doesn't convert well, then these Facebook ads aren't going to perform. But if the Facebook ads agency doesn't touch your landing page, then it's not working. And so I'm a big believer in having a team that is looking at the whole picture. So the agency we work with, they manage our website, they design our landing pages, they're, you know, help their HubSpot partners. So they're looking at the whole picture, not just one ingredient in the whole plan.

That's a great point. Now let's talk about some, some productivity tools. You as a, as a business owner, as a professional, are there any tools that you found that really help you in your day? May not be just with marketing and sales, but just productivity and making your day flow a lot easier.

So I like— me and HubSpot are like this, like, and if you can't see me, I'm crossing my fingers. Like, HubSpot is— I couldn't live without it in this business because it has everything. This episode is not sponsored by HubSpot. Like, it has everything. And I know there's other CRM, like there's other similar platforms that do it, but I like— that's where I go. It's where I send my emails. It's where I have like tasks. So like when I have to do something, I have a task list. So HubSpot's huge. We use Slack. I mean, that's critical for having a remote team. We have that one place where we're going to message. And then I'm so cliché, but ChatGPT, I was like a late adopter, but like ChatGPT is my buddy. Like I'll just ask it questions. I was coaching my salesperson on how to reframe the call and so I just go to ChatGPT like, how could we phrase this? Like, so those are probably the three main sites that I'm like Slack, HubSpot, and ChatGPT are probably my three main things that help me run my day. Pretty smoothly.

Excellent. I mean, HubSpot's amazing. I was certified for several years with them, so I know the power that's there. So, um, let's talk in the last couple minutes about your service offering, um, because people may be listening to this and thinking about podcasting and things like that. Who is ideal to be interviewed for podcasts? Like, like, how can I— I guess let me rephrase that. Yeah, how can being on a podcast really help you in your business if you're trying to grow it?

Yeah, so podcasts are the perfect way to educate your audience. So to— I want to answer like both of your questions, because if you have a business where you're selling something that requires your clients to have a certain level of understanding of what you do, right? Like for me, selling podcast booking, I need like— I need my clients to understand the strategy or else they're not going to buy it and they're not going to stick with it, right? You need your clients to kind of have a base client understanding, like, why automation is important. So if you have a service or product where you need your clients to be educated in your industry, educated in what you do, or educated in the problem that you solve, podcast guesting is perfect for you. Because the number one reason— well, not the number one, but one of the main reasons people will not make an investment is they don't understand how it's going to help them, or they don't understand the problem. So podcast interviews are the perfect way for you to fully educate your market where it's not a sales conversation. Their defenses aren't up. They're fully listening with an open ear. So if you need to educate your market, podcast guesting is for you.

All right. You heard it here. So if you're like, this is me, how can, can people get involved with, with your company helping them do that? And what type of investment are we looking at here?

Yeah. So, I mean, we are very comparable with other high-end agencies. To give a range, you should be prepared to spend like just under $2K per month if you do our payment plan. We work with clients for a year, so I'll leave it a little vague depending on when you find us. But, you know, it's not, it's not an impulse $500 buy. Like, we're a very high-end, high-touch service. So that's a little bit about kind of the investment. InterviewConnections.com is our website where you can go to book a call. But since we talked so much about our masterclass, if you want to kind of experience that funnel that I just explained, it's InterviewConnections.com/live-masterclass. You can register and kind of go through the journey of what I just explained.

Jessica, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for, for sharing and pulling back the curtain behind the automation in your business.

It was super fun. I don't get to talk about this that much, so thank you.