Proper Guest Selection

Guest interview and planning. Interviews require a lot more planning. They require scheduling and things that need to go on, but interviews. So they seem like a hassle to some people. That's, I guess, the point that I'm trying to make here. They seem like a hassle in the whole process. And people, I don't want a podcast with guests and I have to plan this all out and I have to reach out to them. And maybe you're even a little nervous or a little concerned that people won't want to be a guest on your show. So maybe you're self conscious about that, maybe you're not confident in your ability to draw a guest. What I'm going to tell you is that no matter how early in our show it was, no matter when we asked them, we've never been turned down by a guest. We've had a few guests that were hard to schedule because of their travel schedules, their celebrities, they're hard to get in on who we've never been turned down. So asking through a personal relationship, not just putting a bid out for guests, not doing one of those things, I'm not a fan of, really not a fan of just taking, going to one of these events where they're like, oh, here, here's bid on this person. Have them be on your show. Here we're gonna roll through and do pitches with all of these people who want to be, who want to be guests on your show. Not a fan of those kinds of style events. And you want to get a guest that is absolutely relevant to you, that has a strategy about why you're having them on your show. You need more fans, especially early on, you need more authority and you need to network or build relationships. These are our guest strategy wise. Because at the end of the day we might want to get more fans, get more stages, get more opportunities, get more clients, whatever that might be, that are. Get even more. We walk up, right to raise our authority, right, that we have to have a strategic guest plan. And so that strategic guest plan involves us doing enough research or enough experience with someone to know that they will share their audience with us. They will share the fact that they were on our show to their audience. So you're going to benefit from them, that they are vetted and current. So this is something that I find again and again. So often people ask to be on my show and they don't even have their website in place. They're new to this business thing and they thought, oh, we'll just go on a bunch of podcasts and we'll be able to raise awareness for this thing we're going to kickstart or this new business I'm starting. But you don't have anything that shows that they have valid experience, they aren't vetted and they aren't current in all of their publications and all of the things that they're putting out there in the digital media world. So we care about that. And at the end of the day, the strategic guests are building your business, right? They're valuable to your topic, to the core of what you're providing to it. It could be your message, it doesn't have to be your business, it could be your message as well. The impact you want to have on your audience, right? They're essential to that. They're strategic, they're valuable to that audience, they're relevant to that. So the reason that guesting is so popular and that John Lee Dumas and all of the Pat Flynn and all of the people that started doing this guesting strategy and started putting it out, it's the win, win, win. It's how you build a show without having any fans, with having a zero.

Email list like Tom and I started. Yes, we started having guests on our show, guests in the industry, because we wanted them to share out to their audience. So we call that.

Using other people's audience, right? And so we want to do that where we have the ability to.

Bring those guests on, to make sure that they're sharing us with their audience and they're building our authority and values. So in a marketplace where we don't have any audience yet, right? So their fans or their friends or their followers become ours, we call it use opa other people's audience, right? And so we want to have that in play because we don't have a big audience yet, right? We don't have that of ourselves. And so we want to tap into other people within the marketplace or other people who have the same type of fans we want to attract. The same type of followers we want to attract will come back to us. Now, the Pat Flynn's and the John Lee Davises of the world, like their goal was to sell stuff to them, to eventually advertise to them to make passive income. So all they cared about was the numbers in their audience. So they wanted people with big followerships. So that's where we go to vet guests. If that's your strategy, if that's what you need, then you've got to vet every guest and make sure they really do seriously have this following, right? Because it's valuable to you, but maybe that's not so important. Maybe it's just their authority as an expert in your industry and in the industry you want to be seen as an authority in. So that's a way too. So when you're vetting someone, I call it looking for a platform. Do they have a platform? And the way that we do this is I do this on my Ink column site. It's where I learned it first. You Google search someone, you social, check them. So they may say they have thousands of fans or hundreds of thousands of fans. Check it, you can check it. You can see how big their social following is. More importantly, you can see if their social following is engaged, if they're not communicating, if no one's communicating, if it says they have 10,000 followers and no one ever sends a message on their site, you begin to wonder whether or not those are real followers. Are they fake followers? There are a lot of company, a lot of influencers who bought fake followers because it's how they got their advertisers. So be really cautious here that if you are not seeing conversion going on in terms of engagement, you're likely not to see conversion go on in terms of fans coming and following you. The other thing is because we're trying to build digital authority across the entire digital landscape. On itunes, on social media, on Google. We have to make sure there's a website. We want them to have a website because we want that website. We want a link back to our website. We want what they call backlinks. We want powerful backlinks, ones that are really specific because they were actually mentioned on our show. So we want them to re mention them. They mention us. That's a powerful link back and forth. It's a truly. It's not a bot link. It's not what they call gray hat link or a black hat link, none of those things. It's powerful link back and forth between you and so if they. But if they don't have a website or the website hasn't been updated since, you know, 2008, then be looking at that and saying, maybe this is not the guest I want, then the one step I go further is that I listen and watch them. I want to make sure they're going to be interesting, they're going to be boring. Or what I don't like is if they've been on a hundred other shows and we have people who do that, whose PR agents look them on this tour of doing 25 to 50 shows and when they do that they say the same thing again and again and again. We don't want that because then everybody has them. No one's going to come specifically to my show to hear that same person when they can Hear them on 25 other more popular podcasts than mine. So I'm always cautious. I don't want someone who's been on everybody's podcast. I don't want someone who's out there pitching themselves from a stage going, hey, pick me, put me on your show. I'm desperate to be on any show. I'm desperate to be a guest. I don't want that. I want someone who really is going to have value from being a part of my audience. And my audience is going to get a lot of value and unique information from them that they aren't going to get from somewhere else. So listening and watching them is really critically important to deciding if they're relevant and if they're going to be powerful and interesting enough for your show. So is bigger better? Yeah, if they have a big audience, it's good. But it's not the only thing. Write matters more because if you've got a small but powerful guest who's adding valuable information that no one's ever heard before, that can be even more valuable. It will draw your listenership into sticking with you because you provide them stuff they can't find on their own. That's absolutely important.

The one part of that right fit though, is making sure that they're going to actually share you. So when you're vetting them and when you're checking them out and when you said, this sounds like the right person, but if at the end of the day they never share you, then you don't get what I call instant authority power. You don't get this side by side power of being seen with someone like Les Brown or Forbes Riley. Like, you don't get, you don't get side by side authority from them. So if you have no idea, you know who Tonya Willis is and you'd be like, okay, I have no idea who that is, but wow, she's on stage with Tony Robbins and she's on the stage with, you know, all of these great people, like, I want to find out more about her. That's the same thing that happens with your hosting, with your guesting. Sorry, that's the same thing that happens with your guesting. You're being side by side authority transfer power. So when Oprah interviews people, she's the power one. She's the one whose audience tunes into week after week, their guest is just a bystander. It's a, a pass through. But if their guest has power, it's transferring that guest power back to the host and the host power is accelerating. That's how we're building a higher and higher authority. So we want to have those, especially within our industry, being known in our industry like this wouldn't do you any good if you didn't want to be on the speaker stage, right? This 4% international conference, right? Who wants to be a part of that? Unless that was your goal was to be this top speaker in this type of world you want to have an association. I can be associated with Amazon selling groups and other things like that. And those are small time things, but my association with them adds a lot of authority. And so we want to look at that as to where do you want to be associated? Where do you need to bring authority? Where do you need to bring the side by side showing that person who has authority in this marketplace and me as well, where can I bring those two things together? So it raises my value and, and I'm getting to help tap into an audience that I know is the right fit for me. So remember I said skip those Mewtwo guests, right? You don't want the ones that are saying the same thing again and again and again, right? We don't want the guests that have been on everybody's show in our niche. It's one of those other things that when you're out there reaching and you're taking a look at them, you're making sure that that doesn't happen because you want your show to be unique. You want people to tune in because you provide them something special. Following up and making sure that people actually share you. So this is a mistake because if we think that we have like a top celebrity. So I interviewed John Travolta.

His PR firm asked for digital calmness, right? People who are writing online articles asked for that because he gets interviewed on videos all the time on TV shows and all of that. But he doesn't have a lot of digital authority. He doesn't have a lot of that Google authority. So they wanted to build that. And so they specifically requested me as one of the five people who are going to interview him on this nonprofit organization's event red carpet. And so I was like, cool. I don't know how much value he's going to add to my column. I'm going to have to really carefully think through my questions. I'll interview him and hey, I'll be associated with having interviewed John Travolta. That will elevate me as an interviewer, which is great. And he's got a lot of fans, so maybe when they share me, I'll have a lot of value. And maybe this will be one of my most read articles. Right? Maybe there's a large audience there.

Not true. So first off, it was just to tell you a funny story about it. So I, along with four other people, interview him one after the other. We have, like, two to three minutes on the red carpet to interview him, and then that's it. And so I think I was like, the third one to go. I asked him some questions. He doesn't quite answer them. He gives this very strange answer to a question of how do you keep taking innovative risks as an actor? Is what I asked him, because I'm writing about innovation, so I had to do this. And he said, oh, I never take risks. I especially never take risks with money or anything like that. Entrepreneurs take way too much risk, and that's why they fail so often. And so he was really, like, surprisingly negative about it. And I was shocked by that. And I was like, okay, how am I going to turn this into something? So then I thought, well, maybe I'll ask him about airplanes, because he loves everything having to do with flying. And I thought, okay, I'll talk about technology, 3D printing, changing remote airports. And I asked him this question, and he has no idea what 3D printing is. So I explained it to him, and he said, if it gets more young people into aeronautics, then that's going to be fabulous. And I was like, okay, great. So I still can't use that. So I go a week later, and I'm writing out the article and it's all ready to publish. And one of the other people has a radio show who is on the red carpet, and he has me come on his show, and my article is supposed to air that afternoon. That morning, one of the other writers she writes for Forbes, released her article. And I'm reading through her article, and the quote that I used in my article that John Travolta said to me is exactly the same as her quote. And I thought, oh, no, what am I gonna do? My editor's gonna think I plagiarized. I've got to get rid of this. I'm gonna have to rewrite my article. So I pulled it down, and then I go on this radio show. It's for Inc. Radio, and I go on it, and I'm. And I'm. And he plays A spot of his recording of John Travolta and his questions to John Travolta. And John Travolta says the exact same thing that was in the first article and that was going to be in my article. And HubSpot, he got talking points from his team and he, like a good actor, repeated them. And so this was the. I had to rewrite my entire article. I restructured the whole thing and I flipped it on its end and I didn't end up quoting him at all, but I did still have his picture on it and I did still have this picture, actually. And, you know, I had all of that going on in the article and I thought, wow, his team is going to share it. It's exactly what they wanted. They asked for online articles. I made him look good, even though he didn't say anything great. I made them look good and they're going to share this. And I got crickets. They didn't know what to do with it. And so a while later, I checked back to his website and I saw that they put ink as one of the things on his press page. But when you clicked it, it went to ink.com. it never went to the article. He was never sharing this article. So sometimes the celebrities are the laziest or the most disorganized or their team doesn't know what you should be doing here. They're not educated in that. They're all about just getting his next promotion out there. They're not about doing something with the ones that they got because their job is to make sure that he's in front of someone every single day because that's why he pays them. So thinking about that is sometimes a higher the celebrity, the worse the value. So double checking how they share and whether or not they push you out and they do any of that, they tweet about you or they do any of those things, that is extremely important. Now, there are ways to make that happen where you do a promo spot with that person while you're on the air and you make it happen. But there's not always a great way to make sure that they're going to share it. They're going to be tagged, they're going to respond to the tagging, yet you do. So making sure that that happens, that may be a decision for you for not choosing someone that's a celebrity, but then again, maybe having a picture like this in your portfolio is worth it. So you choose, but you have to decide for the right reasons. So as you noticed when I was Talking about John Travolta, right? I prepped questions, right? I make sure to ask questions. I make sure to prepare them ahead of time, sort of. And this is what I prep and think about, what I want to ask them, how I want to channel them, but I don't actually write out the questions. So let's talk about great questions. Questions. So you can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. So by asking people great questions, by being interested and curious about the thing you want to be an authority in or that you already are an authority in, by involving others in that, that interest is going to add tremendous value. Value. So one of the guesting strategies we have here is being able to make sure that our guests become maybe our clients or become our new relationships by showing great questions. By being interesting to your guests, you can also provide value and build a stronger relationship later. So I have actually a show that I've done. It's a podcast show. We have it linked in the potatoes.com bootcamp.

We have it linked in there straight to the video for that, for this page. So the best interview questions are a specific video I did it on as a video podcast. And then there's a blog post as well. And these are the types of interview questions I go over. And I go over it in great detail. I wish we had enough time to do it today. But because all of you are not doing interviews, this may not be relevant to every one of you. So this is the one homework. I'm going to say that you want to go back and you probably do want to listen to this if you are doing interview questions. Because I have a process by which I do these seven questions. It's actually the order that I do it and I do switch up the number one. That's the one thing I want to make clear here, is that sometimes I need to put them at ease because they don't know me and others I can dive straight into one of the harder challenging questions right at the get go. Whatever it is, though, when I'm putting it at ease question, when I'm starting my interview, your first question and how you start it is your most important. It lets people know whether or not you are rookie at this or you are a pro. So if you're gonna script any questions, and I don't recommend that you'll hear that here, I recommend kind of bullet pointing what you wanna ask, because otherwise you ask the questions a little more Stilted and it sounds like you're reading your questions.

But being a pro at this point, how you start matters and how your interview starts identifies whether or not you're going to bring something relevant or you're just going to do this me too prescriptive kind of thing that everyone who's doing the guru style interviews are doing where you're asking the same questions over and over again. Because it's building value, it's building SEO, it's doing all of these things that is not the best way to make a relevant binge able podcast with compelling content at the end of the day day. So, you know, asking these great questions matter and especially matters if you're going to do a live event. So making sure that you do that. So here's the biggest question that I get every single day. It's like, how do I find these guests? This is my number one way I network at events. The number one place that I invite people to my podcast is to be a guest at my podcast is at events. I actually have business cards that are particularly for this purpose. I have business cards that have my show brand on one side and they say the show name guest or something like that. And I do that because I want to make sure that I'm getting them straight to the booking link. I'm doing the fastest thing possible. I don't want to wait for them to email me or email them back or worry about all of those things. I want to make sure that I get through to them exactly where to book and how to get started on how to get started with me. So they go straight in and they do it right away because they're excited because I just gave them an opportunity to be interviewed by me. So that's one of the great ways for you to be able to do that. You can make those, we call them show cards and things like that later. We actually need to do an episode on that. So we actually will do that in the near future. And so my team's actually going to hand me one here so I can show you what it looks like. So this is feed you'd brand. So see all my show information is all on here. Is it showing up right on the screen? Come closer. How's that? Good. Okay. And on the back I ask for them to subscribe and everything and give them some little bit more information about how to guest. So Alexandra will take care of it from there for me.

So anyway, doing that, having these show cards are really great way to network at the event and invite people And I have four shows, so I have four different ones and I keep them all and I make sure to hand them out to the right people. And if they get this link, they feel so special and they're excited to do this. So that's one way I do it. The other way when I'm at an event is I will also go through the speaker list and I will friend them on LinkedIn and I will say, hey, I'm about to attend this event. South by southwest, this is 2018 slide. But you know, I was south by Southwest or it might be, you know, fincon or something like that. And, and from there I might go through all those speakers and invite them to be my guest prior to the event, helping give publicity to the fact that they're going to be at this event which is relevant to my show. They love that it is absolute opportunity. So especially when you're also a speaker there, it's a great way to already build rapport with the other speakers. And now what happens is those other speakers recommend your talk at the same event. So they go, you know, they want people to come to theirs, but they also recommend to others, oh, you should go check out Tracy's talk. She's going to talk about this. Because you've already had an opportunity to network pre event with one of the best and biggest influencers at the event. The other thing I do is I, if it's relevant to your topic, right? If there are events that are relevant in your industry, invite the planner, the event organizer onto your show and let them promo their event. We had Chris Primitos, who runs the fabulous event Podfest, which we absolutely love, it was in March this year and it was in Florida. And so we invited him to come on a few months ahead of time and promo the event to our audience who was obviously interested in podcasting. So it was a perfect fit. And being able to build that rapport, even though we weren't going to go and sponsor and we were going to go speak at his event, it helped us to build a better rapport with him. And in the end he named a room after us. So we actually got a little even added promo benefit at the event was that there was a room called the Potatoes Room. So you know, that's a really great way where you're building up this reward because you're giving them publicity and they want to reward you with mentions, with shout outs to you, with thank yous. And also when they're promoing that they're on these shows, they also share People back to you.

To your podcast that you did with them because that publicity helps promo the event as well. So those things can work in your favor. So that is my number one favorite way to do that. I almost never take solicitations of guests. So if somebody were to just apply, fill out, accidentally, find my form and just invite themselves in, they'd get canceled out instantly. They must be invited to be on my show because I'm vetting them, I'm careful about them ahead of time. You may not care. Maybe you want to make it an open call, invite them to be a guest on your show, or apply to be a guest and have a form right on your website. That's a great way too. In the early days, it's not hard to get good guests because what happens is you just remind them that the early episodes of a brand new podcast are some of the most listened to episodes of ever. And the reason is, is because when someone comes and tries the show, they listen to those early episodes. So being in the early episodes, being a guest in there can actually be really valuable to someone in the industry. And you know, of course it's free publicity, so they should want to do that. Another thing you can do is establish value with publicity firms, with PR firms, with PR agents and other things where they have valuable people in your niche. They will feed you a lot of people who maybe aren't relevant to you. So. So you have to be really careful. Make sure you find some that are within the industry, within the niche. I have a few really great publicists who work in the blockchain industry and they feed me some of the most interesting international clients ever. So they come in and are international guests ever. So they come in and we'll do like late night or early morning and we'll do these crazy around the world podcast interview. But they're guests that I would have never heard of if I hadn't been working with a blockchain publicist with someone deep in the industry.

We also have a template.

For the guest planning sheet. So it's also just a brainstorm list when I go in and when I'm starting my show or every month if I don't have enough guests lined up because I didn't accidentally meet them. I brainstorm who I'd like to see and then I go out and I reach out to them on LinkedIn and I start friending them and I start building relationship and I start asking them if they'd be interested. And we work kind of through that. So there are some templates on potitize.com bootcamp offer that also has the email for the inquiry into like would you like to be on my show? So you can take that and copy that and put it right into LinkedIn and use it in your LinkedIn or your Facebook messaging and not just use it via by email. So you can use it any which way that you can get in touch with someone or private message them or meet them. Whatever you do, do not send a standard solicitation. Make it, custom customize it and ask some and be specific about why you want someone on your show. That's going to go a long way to improving things.