How To Get Booked As A Guest On A Podcast

SPEAKER_01 0:05

This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. What's happening, everybody? Welcome to the show. I really appreciate you taking some time out of your day to listen to me. Chat about things that I find interesting that I hope you'll find interesting. This show is brought to you by my friends at Self Publishing School.com. I'm currently writing my second book with Self Publishing School. They've got an incredible program. They put over 2,000 people a year through their program. That means 2,000 people a year are writing a book with their proven system and program. You too can write a book just like I am. Find out more information. Schedule a free consultation call with a book launch specialist just like I did. And uh you too could be making your book dreams come true. More information at self publishing school.com forward slash beyond the story. Daniel Geffen, what's up, dude? What's up? Podbooker.com. Podbooker.com's up. Yeah, yeah, I know, right? Finally. Well, that's great news because there's a huge need for a bridge to be connected in between people that are looking to be on a podcast and people that have a podcast that are looking for unique guests. So I've I've actually started to experience that by utilizing uh podbooker.com. I noticed one of your Facebook posts the other day you had you had asked, How do you get booked on podcasts? or who's looking to be on more podcasts? And everyone and their brother reached out and said, Well, of course, I'd love to be on another podcast. I'm available for a podcast, and you just were able to strategically introduce them or reintroduce them to your platform. So let's let's back up. How did this whole pod booker idea come about?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

How far back do you want me to go? Well, the beginning. The beginning. Yeah, really? Yes. Okay, so four years ago I was playing tennis. Um, and I think I was winning, because usually I no, I'm kidding. Um, I don't remember. But um, I get a phone call um totally out of the blue, and I call this the the phone call that changed my life, even though it sounds really chase cheesy, but but it but it really did. Um and this guy on the phone said to me, Daniel, I heard you have an interesting you know business story. I'd like to have you on my podcast, and I'll never forget my response to him. I said, What the heck is a podcast? And I had no idea what it was. So he had to explain to me what what a podcast was, and I got very excited. I said, Oh, that sounds awesome. I'd love to be on that. Um, you know, at that time I never had any speaking experience, um, zero online presence whatsoever, no social media following at all. Um, I had a somewhat successful um business, but it was offline. And so I went on this podcast and I loved it. I fell in I fell in love with the mic, just shared my backstory about being, you know, a class clown in in high school and being bullied and you know that whole thing, and then you know, working for people and getting fired because I just didn't know how to, you know, listen to people's rules, and then starting my own company and building that up. And you know, the hour was done in the blink of an eye, and I was like having so much fun. And then and then the host said, Well, that's a wrap. Thank you so much for coming on the show. And I said, Wow, I could do this for for for for hours. You know, this was so much fun. But how many people were listening to this? And in my head, I thought, he's probably gonna say 20, 30 people, right? He turns around and says, Daniel, there were over a thousand people listening. I fell off my chair. I'm like, What? Are you crazy? No way, there's no way there's a thousand people listening to this. He said, Yeah. I said, Where are all these people? Right? Because I'm sitting there in my pajamas staring at my bedroom wall. And he goes, Well, they're all over the world. And he starts listening all these countries. And at that moment, I said, That's it. I'm going all in on podcasting because this is gonna be huge. So two weeks later, I started my own podcast called Can I Pick Your Brain? And decided I'm gonna pick the brains of the most successful entrepreneurs and leaders in our generation. Two problems. One, I didn't know any successful entrepreneurs or leaders in our generation to interview. Uh two, how do I get people to listen to this podcast? Like, how do I how do people find me, right? Um, and so that's when I had this aha moment. I said, hold on a second. That guy had uh over a thousand people listening, and he had me as a guest, and I'm I'm a nobody, right? So why don't I just get on lots of other podcasts as a guest and then just talk about my show, and hopefully I'll get people to listen to my podcast. And that worked a treat. So basically, leveraging other people. So I'll just go and leverage their audience. Within a very short period of time, my podcast um it hit over a quarter of a million downloads, became a top-ranked podcast on iTunes, um, and then I attracted some really big guests. I interviewed four billionaires, uh, the smartest man alive, the leading hostage negotiator for the FBI, the US Memory Champion, and a whole host of other incredible guests. Um that's the first part of the story. Second part of the story is then I started getting bombarded with emails from PR agencies and book publicists, uh trying to get their clients on my show as guests. And I would get dozens of these emails every day, and I would just send them to spam because one, they didn't have a relationship with me, I didn't know who they were, they didn't know who I was. And two, is their pitch really sucked. Like they all just sounded the same, they were boring, not interesting at all. So that went on for a couple of months, and then one day, it's about three and a half years ago, I woke up and this I had this light bulb moment. I said, Hold on a second, people are spending a fortune on these PR agencies and book publicists, and they're just spamming hosts like me. Well, I've got a top-rated show myself. I've um I've been on over 60 podcasts as a guest. I'm friends with all these other top-rated hosts, and I've interviewed over 150 high-profile guests. So I know what a great guest sounds like and and what a top-rated host is looking for in a guest, and I have the relationships as well. Why don't I start my own podcast booking agency? And that's how I started uh GefN Media Group, and that was the podcast agency that I that I still run today. Um and then Podbooker really came about because I realized that there were two massive markets that were not being served, right? So you've got our you've got 1.5 million podcasts that are currently out there, and um a very small percentage of those podcast hosts are getting guests from these agencies, whereas all the others, there's hundreds of thousands of podcasts that are not getting guests because they're they're not they're not big enough. And then on the other side of the coin, you've got all of these people who can't afford to spend thousands of dollars on a podcast booking agency, but they want to get on podcasts, and that's where the idea for Podbooker came about. Love it. And how long ago was that? Podbooker, I had the idea two years ago. Um went through eight different developers, um unfortunately, you know, lost some money, a lot of time, and until I found the right partner who who who now built an an amazing product, an amazing platform. Um I made the mistake of promoting it too early before we actually went live. And unfortunately, we had a competitor who who heard me on a podcast and then launched before us, so you know, took my idea basically and went with it. But um, but we're live and we've had some incredible traction and we're gonna kick their ass, basically.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Nice, I love it. I love it. So and how many people do you how many podcasters do you have on the platform right now?

SPEAKER_00 8:12

We launched about, I want to say it's maybe two or three weeks ago, and we now have almost 400 um users on the platform, and we've had over 150 bookings, so 150 guest bookings through the platform so far.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Excellent. Well, I'm on the platform. I got all signed up this weekend. In fact, I just approved an interview request as we were on this interview just now for an individual that wants to be on my show. So, well, and you and I have not had a chance to have a conversation before. That's really the goal of getting you on the show, not only to better understand what Pod Booker is all about and the opportunities available. If you're listening to this right now and you're thinking I want to get booked on other podcasts, and I also want to identify strategic guests for my podcast, you need to go sign up at podbooker.com. It's free right now. Okay, do you hear me right? Do you hear me clearly on that? It's free right now. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it won't be that way forever. So now's the time to get in and cash in on being able to identify podcasts that you could potentially be on and also identify strategic guests. So moving into that, segueing into that, next thing I want to talk about is what is the future for Podback Podbook or what it what is the revenue model look like, or at least sketched out to be.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Well, I mean, our big goal is pretty much to be um the place for podcasters. That's our focus. Our focus is, you know, there's there's a two-sided marketplace. You've got the podcast hosts and then you've got the guests. Um, and I'm very bullish in just serving mainly the hosts because that is our bread, like that's our supply chain, right? Right. And and the the great thing about it is that pretty much I would say, you know, almost every host that has a podcast will also want to be a guest as well. So you have two different types of profiles. You've got the the host profile, right, and then you've got the guest profile. Um, we're seeing, I think, 90% of hosts that sign up will also sign up as a guest. So we're focusing on the hosts, and what that means is we need to deliver a lot of value to the hosts. We want to make it an absolute no-brainer for hosts to sign up to Podbrooker and stay with us. Okay. Um so we're gonna we're gonna be coming up with features that are um that are gonna help hosts to um there's two things that really I found that hosts really want. Um, one is to grow their podcast, like you know, they're like, I just launched, but I don't know how to get more people listening. Right. And two is how do I monetize? Those are the the two pain points that hosts have. So we're gonna be addressing those. Um we're also building it out to be more of like a social platform as well. That's that's gonna happen, I think, in phase two. Um, right now you can get reviews from hosts. So as a guest, um, you can have a portfolio of all the podcasts that you've been featured on. So that's great. So, you know, which is great because right now there's nothing out there that currently exists where I've been on 60 podcasts, but I I have no idea. If you asked me, you know, which ones were you on, I don't remember.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

That's funny because when I was setting up my platform, I was like, gosh, what shows have I been on? Right? I literally went and Googled Sebastian Rusk podcast. I mean, of course, that doesn't really sum it up because that brings you to all my content that I've created on here, but I did find three shows that I was on recently to be able to add that on there. I think it's very important too, because when you're on the Podbooker platform and you're looking for shows to be on, you're able or or you're looking for guests to be on your podcast. When you go check out that potential guest profile, you can read all about them and see how cool they are and listen to past episodes and really get a feel of what I mean, which is so important. So important because, you know, I've been on some podcasts that have been less than a pleasurable, and I and I got done with the interview and thought to myself, I will never get that 30 minutes back. And had I been able to screen, and that's through these that's the next thing I want to talk to you about, through these interview booking services that are out there where people hop on, act on your behalf on LinkedIn, tell the person they really liked a specific episode of their podcast, the pot the person responds back, thanks so much, I appreciate that. And you give them an old, by the way, if you're looking for anybody that wants to talk, or if you're looking for potential guests that will come on and talk to people about how to start a podcast on digital storytelling, I'm available. So, you know, run through 100 people, you get booked on, I don't know, I ended up on like four or five shows. It wasn't worth it to me to be able to justify paying someone to book a podcast or get me booked on a podcast just because probably I I thought to myself, there's a better way because I'm getting booked on garbage shows, garbage meaning the show isn't isn't even a show yet. It has zero following, and it's just somebody who likes to hear themselves talk. So, what are what are you going to do with podcat with Pod Booker uh to be able to disrupt and and improve upon that process?

SPEAKER_00 13:05

You know, that's a really great question. Um, and I know that's why I asked you. Yeah. I've been on podcasts where I I literally wanted to pull my eyeballs out.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Oh, yeah, poke them out with a pen, one by one.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Yeah, while I was on the show. So um look, there's two answers to the question. Number one is you got to realize that there are people who to them getting on even small podcasts that are not big, it's it's still valuable because they're just starting out and they're building up their portfolio and that you know they want to um you know get some podcasts under their belt so they can get on some bigger shows. So, you know, there is value to some people, uh to a lot of people. Um, on the other hand, I do hear you that we need to start to um get rid of podcasts that are not gonna be um valuable to guests. Um, and by the way, the question could go to also the guest. Like, what if you get a guest on Podbooker that totally sucks and all these things? Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Okay, so case in point right there. That's exactly the problem that you have to solve uh and add to the Podbooker platform. You heard it first right here on the Beyond the Story podcast, okay? And that is how do we make sure that we're identifying quality shows that actually have some sort of following? Like there's somebody listening other than their mother, right? Yeah, and then also how do we make sure that we we you know the the guests that we're getting booked on shows are actually who they say they are? And I believe there's a lot of parameters you already have in place, like hey, your bio and any mentions and some press and media and past shows, and that that tells a lot. You know, if I had to if I had to make a decision on how that would be done today based on what your current infrastructure is, I would say unless you can fill out every single one of these sections with legitimate content that's somehow verified, then you're not a fit for the platform.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Yeah. So I think at some point, um not telling you what to do, just ideas here. No, no, no, no, no. I love this feedback. This is amazing. Um, like I said, this is all focused on the hosts. So my main goal is to get feedback like this from hosts like you so that we can go back and and develop features that are gonna that are gonna work for you. Um in terms of the guests, so the guest is a bit easier. Well, let's go. I'll talk about both for a minute. So the guest side, um, like I said, guests can get reviews from hosts. So you're gonna see similar to Amazon, like if you're buying a you know a product on Amazon, you don't know if it's gonna work well or not. So what do you do? The first thing you do is you go to the reviews and you see what people have said about it. So so too here, you can go to a guest profile. Yeah, the guest is gonna say they're amazing, of course, but now you want to see well, what do the hosts say about this person? That's gonna be key. And as more and more people use the platform and start getting reviews, it's gonna become a lot more valuable. Um, the other thing to look at is you know, um, you can actually listen to uh previous episodes that they've been on. So you can actually hear the guest on a previous podcast, and you know, you could just scroll through and and you know maybe listen to like five five, ten minutes, and and you'll pretty much know whether someone's you know gonna perform well or not. Right. Um the other thing with with podcast hosts, so we have uh iTunes reviews that pull into the profile. So when you look at a host profile, you'll see the iTunes reviews. You could see how many uh five-star reviews they have, um, and you can listen to some previous episodes as well. Um, if you listen to the last episode of a of a of a podcast and you could tell the host doesn't know what the heck they're doing, they're asking really stupid questions, then you know, then you know that's not the podcast to get on. Um there are other things that we're looking into, for example, um rankings on iTunes, like how how they're ranked. Right now, the unfortunate situation is that iTunes is not the easiest um platform to work with. Uh, they only show the top 250 podcasts in each category. Uh they don't show more than that. So that's a little bit of an issue, but we're gonna try to see if we can work away to um there's other tools and other platforms out there like Spotify, chartable, um, which we're gonna try to aggregate data from so that you'll be able to get a lot more information on Podbroker than you would anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Okay, that's great. That's fantastic. And music to my ears because I think that's gonna be because when I look at the pod, I mean we help people here at the podcast launch lab go from idea to iTunes in 90 days or less. So we run them through the program, they graduate through the program and they become a podcaster, and then we continue to produce their show. Once we continue to produce their show, they're they're open and and and and and and they want new resources that are gonna help them grow their show, market their show, grow their community, and and overall contribute to the ongoing success of the podcast. Getting booked, which in fact that's the next phase that we're introducing uh at in the beginning of 2021 during Q1, which is guest booking and research. I haven't figured out what that looks like yet, but I can tell you right now, Pod Booker is going to be a great start to say, hey, everybody. In fact, we're not gonna wait till the first of the year to get our existing students that are on right now launching shows and that have launched it on Podbooker. I'm gonna tell everybody about it. In fact, I want to get you as a guest on my next monthly mastermind training that I do with all of my existing students and alumni that we continue to produce their shows so we can talk about this and just get everybody signed up in real time. And I look forward to seeing what you and I can come up with too and helping us flush out what it looks like to be able to offer a guest booking and research service where we're getting our shows lined up with strategic guests and we're getting our show hosts booked on strategic shows to get them to talk about what they do, which by default markets their podcast. So I look forward to seeing what we can come up with with that, Daniel.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Well, that's awesome. And I just had a really great idea that you you just gave me. So um the other thing we can do, by the way, is we can educate hosts and guests. So uh let's say, you know, why does a host suck, right? Well, there's reasons. There's reasons why a host might suck. And so if if they were educated and they were trained, then they would learn how to um produce a podcast in the right way, right? And so to a guest, like I had a guest on my show once who every time I asked him a question, his answer was, Well, Daniel, in page 36 of my book, you know, I answer that question. And then I would go, I would say, okay, well, what about this? And he's like, Well, on page 139, I answer that question. All right, schmuck, you're not gonna be produced. I'm not producing this episode because no the whole episode is just you promoting yourself.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Yeah, you want to go the opposite direction, right? I'm the host here, I'm asking the questions there, buddy.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

It was stupid, right? And so the thing is, nobody trained him. He wasn't educated. He didn't he didn't know the that there's certain rules, like uh un underlying rules or or or unofficial rules that there are in in the podcasting space, right? So Well, people don't know what they don't know, right? Right. And so what if we had an education section on Podbooker where we actually educated hosts on how to be producing a podcast and educated guests on how to be a guest on a podcast, and you know Oh, I could knock those training videos out today, so hit me up when you're ready to do that. Let's do it. Yeah I'm I'm I'm ready for it. And you know, I'd love to be able to have and and that's another thing as well, is that I'm happy to do sort of um uh partnerships with hosts like yourself who have the experience, who have material like that, or are happy to put together material. And then of course we're promoting you on the platform, which is good for you. Yes, and we're getting we're getting content on the platform, which is great for our users, and everyone's winning because the the less sucky guests on the platform, the more valuable the platform's gonna be. And the less sucky hosts that are on the platform, the more valuable the platform is.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Well, and then you're also you you also increase your credibility in street cred to be able to say this is why we don't take shit shows. Because a shit show. That's a good one. Uh yeah, exactly. Uh but yeah, okay, yeah. Well, there we go. We've got our first opportunity to work on together. I can one what I foresee happening is just doing a interview 101 and interview e101, and then doing an example of what that looks like, and you and I do a little role play via a Zoom call. Oh, and next thing you know, we've got the video content for that section on there, and then I've also got content for my YouTube channel and for my mastermind. So there we did it, right here in real time. That's how shit gets done, is that you come up with ideas and you say, you know what, that's a great idea. I can help you, you can help me, let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Right. How to how not to produce a shit show. Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Yeah. Interviews suck if you don't know how to do one. I just wrote an entire chapter in my book about inter and how to properly conduct an interview because we work on that a lot with our students here at the podcast launch lab to be able to work on tonality to work. Work on how to interview someone because the problem is here's how podcast interviews go sometimes in this day and age. There's a lot of head nodding, there's a lot of yep, and there's a lot of interrupting and cutting off guests, which is completely inappropriate and not okay under any circumstance or any stretch of the imagination. So being able to articulate how a conversation is actually conducted from a host and as an interviewee, I think is absolutely vital. So yeah, let's rock and roll. This is great, man. Podcast, this is this is an answer to the to the podcasting prayers I've been having lately of how do I figure out this whole podcast uh guest booking and research, because I haven't been able to shake the idea because I know it's vital to growing the show and making new connections and building new relationships for the shows that we're launching on here. So plus it's just another uh it's just another notch in our podcasting belt and repertoire of services that we're offering while building a because we're building a podcast network here at the podcast launch lab. We just happen to be the entry point is our initial launch program, and then we move on to ongoing production and guest research and booking, and then we move on to playing matchmaker with advertiser sponsors, affiliate deals, biz dev deals, etc. So, and then we sell to pot we sell to Spotify for 500 million. And then I'm never working on the end goal. Yeah, exactly. And then we just podcast all day.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

That's it, baby. Yeah, yeah. You know what I love about this is that it's all about collaboration.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

That's really the bottom line. Collaboration nation. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Who was it? Oh, uh Vanilla Ice. I mean, in the 90s, broke it down to us. All right, stop. Collaborate and listen. Yeah, you the the last part is left out though. Let's collaborate, but nobody listens, right? Well, Daniel, man, keep rocking, dude. I love this, bro. I look forward to us striking a deal together here. Let's I know we're gonna start with the uh interview 101 section over a podbooker, so let's get a conversation going uh sooner rather than later uh offline about that. And listen, if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, I just started a podcast or I already have a podcast, and boy, I'd love to be on platforms where people can find me and I can also identify strategic guests. Go to podbooker.com right now, sign up for an account. It's free, which last time I checked is a great price. It's not always going to be free. So take advantage of opportunities as they arise like this. If you have a podcast or you know you're gonna be starting one, you need this service. Okay, so you heard it first right here on the Beyond the Story podcast. Daniel, are there any other platforms out there like PodBooker? Because I know there's services to get you booked on other podcasts, but are there other platforms like this?

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Yeah, like I said, there's there's someone that basically took my idea and went and ran with it and they and they launched um in February. So um they they got the head start. By the way, I want to I want to mention something as well, because you said you know it's free right now to get on PodBooker. So not only is it free to get on PodBooker, but the the podcast space right now is free to play. It's an open, free play zone, right? It's undervalued attention because Facebook ads, Google ads, remember when they were dirt cheap, right? So Google ads was like ten cents a click, and it was and actually, even in fact, forget Google Ads for a minute. Remember when SEO was basically write a blog post, yeah. You just wrote a few blog posts and did some backlinking magic, and boom, the phones were ringing off the hook, people were coming to your website, right? Those were the those were the good old days. Sure. But then Google turned it, of course, into a business, and and now it's like you know, $20 a click for a decent keyword, right? It's it's crazy. Facebook ads started out really cheap. And and and again, before cheap, it was free. You posted on Facebook, and almost everyone that was in your uh friend list got to see your post. Today, I mean you're lucky. I think what is it, three percent or four percent of your following actually sees your post. It's it's crazy, right? So what's amazing is that to get on a podcast right now doesn't cost you any money. The host doesn't charge you, right? Did you charge me any money to be on this show, Sebastian?

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Not yet. I'm sending an invoice when we're done now.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Right? So get this. Sebastian's been how long have you been doing this show for? About ten years. Okay, ten years. Um, I can't even imagine how many hours you've put into this, into producing this. Right. You've got to produce this show, you've got to edit the show, you've got to promote the show, you've got to find the guests, you've got to uh prepare for the guests, you gotta then do the actual podcast, and all that is on you. I just show up and I basically it's like robbing a bank. It's like I walk in, free money. I just come and totally get full access to your entire audience that you've built over all these years, right? And it costs me nothing. This is crazy. It really, really is. If if you're listening to this and you don't see how crazy this is, I mean, it it's insane.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Interesting times we're living in. I mean, the time is right now to be able to do this because I do believe the day will come where you can be on any podcast you want for X amount, fill in the blank.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Well, here's the thing. I'm already seeing it, right? Because I've got I run my agency, so we have certain hosts who we used to get our clients on their show for free, but then they started charging money. So, for example, um Entrepreneur on Fire, that's a good example, John D. Dumas. He used to be totally free to get on his show. There was you know a waiting list, but that was it. Today he charges $3,500 per guest. $3,500 just to be on his show. Okay. Now, he's setting a trend. I'm seeing a lot of other you know bigger hosts charging, you know, $1,000, $500, whatever it is. What I see happening to this space, by the way, listen carefully. Within the next year, I I could see that your average host is gonna charge, let's say, around $100, $200 to be a guest. Now, times that by 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 appearances, that's gonna add up really fast. Yeah. And you're gonna be kicking yourself because you're gonna remember this listening to this episode saying, I'm warning you, get on now, get on the train now while it's free before it gets expensive. That's what's gonna happen. And and here's the thing people listening to this might think, oh, but I'm I'm already too late. Like, you know, podcasting has been around for a while. There's 1.5 million podcasts out there. Do you know? Do you realize 1.5 million is nothing? Do you know how many blog posts there are? Blogs.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

There are over a YouTube, you have any YouTube creators. YouTube videos. 15 million YouTube videos. 15 million YouTube creators, and there's just over a million podcasts. So what do you what's what what are you waiting for? Well, Daniel, that sound means we are out of time here at the Beyond the Story podcast, but I am really glad that we had a chance to sit down, have a conversation, a very productive conversation at that. Looks like we're going to be podcast partners in some form or fashion here. So I look forward to that. Uh, friends, you've been listening to Daniel Geffen, founder and brains behind podbooker.com. This is a service to get your podcast on and to also put a profile of being a guest on podbooker.com so people can find you, identify you, and book you for their show. So if you're listening to this right now, that's reason enough to go to podbooker.com and get signed up today. And remember, podcast interviews suck if you're not on them. Daniel, thanks so much for your time. Come back again, will you? I have a feeling you're going to be back on the show again.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Thank you very much, Sebastian.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

It's been my pleasure. All right, friends, signing off from the podcast launchlab.com studio. Get out there and vote. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story Podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Be sure to appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, LaunchLab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.