SPS 251 The 5 P’s Of Profitable Podcast Guesting with Dustin Riechmann

I think what I like and find interesting about Dustin is he's successfully scaled multiple companies , so Ecommerce Company , dustin's wife Bethany , founders of a company called Engaged Marriage Just a bunch of really interesting company background experience and now is kind of parading that experience and has a successful niche in profitable podcast guesting .

So he's friends with Tony DiLorenzo , which check out the episode with Tony and Elisa on the podcast , if you haven't already . Six Pillars of Intimacy also just awesome book , great episode , a lot of good stuff . But I figure what we talk about a lot today is just a profitable podcast guesting master class of sorts .

So authors this is a great way to sell books . We talk about that all the time , but how do you actually do it ? We'll talk about that today . And then , obviously , entrepreneurs this is a great way to get clients and scale your business . So we'll dive into the nitty gritty on that as well . So Dustin , welcome Great to have you .

So I was at the time in 2020 , I had some marketing consulting clients , mostly local and then I was a partner in this company called Fire Creek Snacks , which was the e-commerce company you're talking about . So we were running hard on Shopify and doing online stuff and then we were mostly building a brick and mortar presence . So we were traveling to trade shows .

So if you ever experienced that , it's kind of a drag and a thrill all at the same time . But we were doing that . We did a dozen trade shows in 2019 . I was driving to Chicago from St Louis in 2020 . I got a phone call that hey , this hardware trade show that you're coming to is canceled .

I was like uh-oh and I came home and I lost 80% of my coaching client or not coaching , but marketing clients because they were local businesses that were closed down and so I was trapped at home with three kids and a wife who could no longer teach at school and was trying to teach from Zoom and it was a big chaotic and I thought what in the world am I

going to do ? And so I decided , hey , why don't I sell meat sticks to random people on the internet through podcast guessing ? And so I actually pitched Nick Loper from Side Hustle Show . It was the first podcast . It's a pretty big one . It was the first podcast I ever pitched , got on there , had just an amazing time .

We actually sold some product and was kind of off to the races , and so that was really what pulled me in in the first place and I really focused on the e-com side for about a year .

And then in doing that and it became this whole story of selling you know seven figures of meat sticks I was interviewed by Brian Harris on his podcast and just like became a thing . And so then people started asking me how I did it , and I started coaching people and one thing led to another and now it's like my total focus is helping people with this .

So that's how I got into it , and then we can obviously talk about the framework , the process , but profitable podcast guessing is really my niche .

Within the niche , you know , there's a lot of people that teach you how to get on shows , even how to sell books from it , which is awesome , like I listened to James Clear's episode with you and he's like I was on my 200 podcasts for the book launch and that's awesome .

Where I go a little deeper is in how do you actually like make like high ticket sales and like coaching , consulting agency sort of services from podcast guessing as well . So it goes a little deeper into the profitable side .

Seven figures in meat sticks through podcasting is a hell of a hook . Pretty good . Yeah , that's awesome and maybe we'll circle back to that . I guess . Can you just take the picture , big picture , how can authors use podcasts to sell books and how can entrepreneurs use podcast interviews to get clients ? Like , what's the big picture ? Kind of like .

So someone's got your audience that want to buy your book , they want to hire you for your services , and someone's already done a bunch of work to like aggregate this audience and they have their attention captured .

How can you go get in front of that audience and serve them in a way that is a win for the audience , a win for the owner of that audience , or the podcast host in this case , and a win for you as the guest ? And so that's really , if you just want to boil it down to really something simple .

It's like how can I go teach , tell a story , inspire in a way that will then attract people over to me , and kind of the master of this , if you want to think big pictures like Oprah , like Oprah had this huge platform but she was constantly bringing on Dr Phil and Dr Oz and , I think , rachel Ray and like these other kind of sub experts and they would

pull out of the audience people that wanted to hear from them specifically , but it never was like a loss to Oprah , it actually grew the pie .

So that's how I think about partnerships in general and for me , podcast guesting is a really tactical , like universal way for anyone with an online business or with a book that you can buy online to drive those kind of results specifically for their brand .

So if you think of like the meat sticks , like we also did subscription box placements , a webinar would be this . Speaking from the stage , like you and I , were speaking on the stage at TNC , like those are all forms of partnership marketing . It's just podcast guesting to me is very

easy to teach as a system and again , it's my universal . It's not that hard to do compared to like getting home to stage .

And so for us you know Pedro and Peter are spearheading all of our business development stuff and gosh , I mean we did a little bit over 5 million in sales last year from partnership marketing or what we call BizDev , and the goal is 8 million , with a 10 million stretch goal this year , and so it's one of the fastest growing kind of customer acquisition channels

for us . So that's like part of why I wanted to deep dive on this Like a really practical application is this ?

No , like we both win in that scenario because we're complimentary and not competitive .

For podcast is profitable , podcast guesting is that almost like the gateway drug of partnership marketing for a lot of people , Like it's the clearest , simplest thing that you can explain to people that they can have a quick win and then , once they see that , they'll start to learn from you or develop like a lot more of the partnership stuff 100% and in fact ,

it's even in like my main .

But when you get to the end of the 90 days , 100% of the people in there are like the podcast guesting was cool , but like you've changed my worldview about like partnerships and abundance thinking and like growing my network .

And I think the actual best part of podcast guesting , when you do it the right way , is it's like a way to build relationships at scale .

So it's like , hey , if I could talk to the coolest people and have their audience listen to me and have a relationship with the host and even start to reach out to the fellow guests , which is one of our strategies Like how rapidly could I grow my network with people in my industry ?

That positions me as an authority , and so I think that's why I think it's so hand to glove with like book writing , you know .

So I feel like me , having a book is just like just throws fuel on the same fire , and likewise , if you have a great book , this is an incredible way to position yourself as a thought leader and grow your relationships in your network while you're doing it . So , yeah , it goes way deeper than the tentacles .

But , like at this , at the surface , just think about getting on a podcast telling a really compelling story or teaching what you love to teach , having a strong call to action that pulls people over in your world , and , at the very base level of this , that's all it is .

And then we can , you know , peel back the onion and get more deep and more yeah , just more monetize it in a much bigger way . But you got to plant that initial seed by getting on the show and getting the opportunity .

One of the things we talk about is like a virtual book tour , which is essentially it's podcast interviews , it's Facebook lives , instagram lives , all that stuff , but it's virtually going around talking about your book , right . So very similar to what you're talking about , but I love the intentionality of really nailing it .

What's the steps for me , as an author , to book my first 10 podcast interviews ? Like , what does that look like ?

This is what this is a part of what I talked about at traffic and conversion and at PodFest . So , and they all say I'll start with P and I'll just go through them real quick and I'll come back to each one so we can unpack it a little bit .

So number one's purpose , number two is plan , number three is pitch , number four is perform and number five is profit . Okay , so that's where the profit comes in at the end . But step one is purpose , and I think most people miss this , and that is really just being super clear on why you want to do this .

So if we're just stick with podcast casting like , what are my specific goals for this , what are the KPIs ? Because once you know why you want to do it , then step two becomes much more clear , which is what I call plan , which is really like research or finding the right shows .

So once I know why I want to do this , then it's way easier to find which shows make sense for me to be on to meet my goals . And once you find the shows , you want to be on .

Step three is pitch , because you have to get the host to say yes , right , and so there's this kind of misnomer and there are relationships like this sort of shortcut that process , because I met Peter , but in general people are going to be pitching the host and I always say pitch , like compelling the host about hey , I can come and serve your audience in a

really big way , make you look good , grow your content . That's the pitch , so that's how you get them to say yes . Once they say yes , then step four is perform . So great , I've got this link for Riverside or Zoom . I'm showing up like what do I actually talk about ?

How do I introduce myself , what are the stories I want to tell and , most importantly , what's the call to action . And then the call to action at the end of the interview is what leads directly into step five , which is profit . So step five is like , as an author , if all you want to do is sell books , this is very , really simple , right ?

It's like my call to action is to go buy my book or to get a free excerpt or whatever .

Maybe a little mini strategy in there to get them on your email list or something , but in general , you're trying to get them to buy books , and so in a author situation , I think one of the differentiators is you definitely want to have like a blitz for the launch , right .

So James Clear is like I did 200 interviews in like less than a month when the Hama Cabix came out . Now he continues to do interviews and kind of feeds the machine , but it's more of a blitz format .

It's a podcast tour or , like you said , a virtual tour , and that could be it If all you want to do is sell books where , and so I could pause there and then I can get into the more like high ticket sales side of this , if you'd like , as a separate discussion point .

That's going to change is if you're an author .

That ties right back to step one , though , is like okay it to steer the ship in the right direction . To get to step five , we have to get a real clear map in step one with the purpose , yep .

podcast interview ? So what does that look like ?

But yeah , the first step is first step's purpose .

But then , really practically speaking , if you're like , hey , I want to address this target market , so like I have this book on gardening and so I want to get in front of an audience of really enthusiastic organic gardeners , well then there's a couple of really simple tools like Google and listennotescom , which is like Google for podcast and you can basically put

in at the simplest level . Go to listennotescom , it's free , put in gardening and you'll get a ton of gardening podcasts , many of which will be small , and that's totally fine when you're starting out right . And so find one that you're like this they do interviews , it's still being updated . This seems like an approachable podcast .

Then you're basically going to send an email to the host that says hey , I got this new book . I have this passion about organic farming or gardening . I would love to come on and teach your audience these couple of things . Are you interested in having me ? And that's kind of the process in a nutshell . Now , obviously , if you're , if you want you to .

The thing with this is the caution is when you do that for the first time , what you're going to realize is it's not hard to find one .

It's actually hard to not find 10,000 at the same time and it gets overwhelming and you got to be able to sift and sort and prioritize and so that's kind of the next problem that emerges is okay , like I see in this target market lots of opportunity . Which shows do I prioritize ? And we can go into that if it's helpful to linear , linear others .

But for my first show I'm just trying to like maybe pitch three and hope that one of them says yes .

So , pitch three , get one . That's the goal for getting your first podcast booked and then parlaying that into your first 10 , your first 10 podcast bookings . You I've got some follow up questions on the monetization side of things , but let's first start .

You key to know something you said you know I'm clarifying even which ones I want to be on , which I know for some people who haven't booked any yet , you might be thinking like , hey , I'll take any pie cast I can get and sure , maybe for your first five or 10 , maybe that's like , hey , get some reps in .

But then , once you've done that , how do you figure out , dustin , which podcasts are going to truly move the needle , either book sales or revenue wise , and how do you kind of narrow that target of where you're looking ? Yeah , 100% . So , to keep it simple , right now we would get into more .

Step five there's multiple reasons to be on shows that you can monetize in different ways that actually don't have a lot to do with the size of the audience .

So you want to be on the right size shows based on how much downloads or how big their audience might be . Now , the tricky part with podcasts is you don't really know . Because you know YouTube , you can see the number of subscribers , instagram , the number of followers , but , like podcasts , is basically blind .

The only exception is if , like the show does advertising and they might like say they have so many downloads , but you still it's not necessarily reliable . So what I do is like a surrogate to having real data . Is I just real ? It's real simple . I just open up the ones I'm looking at and Apple iTunes or Apple podcast and just look at the number of ratings .

So it's a public like I think your show has six or 700 ratings on Apple . So Then you know . So you look at that . The first three things I'm going to look at are do they do interviews ? Because if they're not doing interviews , I'm not going to be the first one , I'm not going to convince some of that .

It's being updated because a lot of shows become dormant and so if they haven't done a show in a year , there's no point . And the number three is this this the size . And so in Dustin World I made this up but it seems to work really well . I would say , like zero to 100 is basically quote , unquote , small .

100 to like 350 is medium , and then 350 and up is large . It's very relative because , like one review or rating is very different than 99 , but I'm still putting them in the same bucket . And 350 is large . But there's podcasts with 35,000 , maybe even 350,000 ratings , right , so there's very different sizes .

But in the world of interview based , creator led sort of podcast , this is very . This seems to be very reliable . So if I was just starting out , I'd probably actually target the smaller ones , just to not put a ton of pressure on myself . But once you're in the rhythm I actually find the sweet spot is the medium , so like hey , chandler Bowl here .

We'll talk about your goals for your book , your dreams , your challenges , your next steps and we'll start putting together a plan . All right , so go to self publishingcom forward , slash schedule book a call with the team . Let's see how we can help with your book . It's time to implement .

But yeah , that's so if you're people are like targeting , I would say like 100 to 350 is kind of the sweet spot . Those hosts tend to still be approachable . They still have , but they also have a sizable audience that is committed and if you look , they've probably done 200 plus episodes , so they're consistent too , which is important .

Right , it's like things become much more selective because they've got a lot more demand to be in those slots , Whereas the medium shows they're far from beginner . So you know they're basically going to continue and continuing is important because one of the unsaid benefits of podcast guessing is it's not just the day it comes out , it's evergreen .

So it's much like a YouTube experience and that people find it way later , they search way later , but if a show goes dormant it kind of loses that . So , yes , I say under a hundred , you don't know if they're going to stick around . They probably don't have a huge number of downloads . I'm saying this as a guy with a fairly new podcast .

I have like less than 20 . So I'm not berating people with less , with less , I plan to get up there , but , um , but , but that's . You know , that's the reality they're .

They're more beginner , stage , smaller podcasts , whereas 100 to 350 , again , and these are not hard , hard numbers , but that's just kind of the sweet spot because they're still approachable , they're consistent , they're likely going to grow into a larger

bucket over time and so you kind of get to go along for the ride .

By all means , if you find one with a thousand and you got a relationship or you just want to try to pitch them and you've got a really unique content , like they may say yes , and that would be amazing , but you're just going to be able to find the like weekly opportunities much more in that medium , that medium bucket .

So I talked at traffic and conversion summit about building a podcast casting flywheel out of this right , and I think I want to set that aside and come back to it Like version of how to grow profit with this is to create a machine out of it and actually create a flywheel effect , which something like Nathan Barry talks a lot about with ConvertKit .

So I would definitely like to talk about that , but again , in the simplest form . You are basically trying to look at three layers of people that you can monetize from right , and so layer one is the audience , and that's like the obvious thing . So , and that's what everyone thinks about and in my presentation , if we had a visual , I call it the profit cake .

So the idea is the audience can like visualize the bottom layers , like the widest but the shallowest . So there's the most listeners , but each listener is not worth that much monetarily . Even if they go all by your books , it's still not that much revenue and most aren't and most are going to stay invisible to you .

So the whole trick with the audience is to pull them out of the ether , make them visible , and usually that's by saying come , get on my email list for this really cool thing or come by the book , but that's just level one and most people stop there . So what gets really fun is like level two of this cake is the peer to peer relationships .

So these would be like narrow or a bit deeper and , in fact , like one really cool peer to peer relationship can actually like change your whole life and I've had that happen multiple times with the different companies . But you can think of this as like the host for sure , right . So if you get on and the host is like man , I really enjoyed that .

You're really cool , like let's do something else , let's do a webinar , like let's do a partnership . So it's a really good way . And by default , the host knows people , they're an influencer in that industry .

And then , beyond the host , it's like referral partners , collaborators , other partners that may be listening or in the guest list , which is like one of the last things I want to talk about . And then , on top of the cake , if you do the type of work that I do and what you guys do at self publishing would be like high ticket prospects .

So these would be like super ideal clients who , if they transacted with you , it would be multiple thousands of dollars , and so they're by far the narrowest , but it's the deepest because consistently they may be . You know , your average lifetime value for an actual customer might be 10,000 plus .

And so how do you find them and put them into your normal sales pipeline Like that's but that's Again , this is usually like a 45-minute presentation on just this part .

Well , thinking in terms of the layers , there's the listeners , the peers and the high ticket prospects and , if it's helpful , chandler , I could go through like one example of how to hit all three in one episode . Let's do that . Yeah , that's perfect .

So this person is a Facebook ads expert and he works with high-end craft food brands . That's kind of like my old company , but that's what he does , just Facebook ads for high-end food brands . So he's going to get on a show . The example I like to use is Shopify Masters . So this is like the Shopify podcast .

I was on it actually for Fire Creek Snacks , so I was able to think through this pretty strategically because I did it myself . But Facebook ads guy , of course he wants to get on there because his ideal clients are likely listening . There are craft food brands who would listen to the show because the show is all about marketing and selling more on Shopify .

And so at layer one , to the listeners . His whole interview is going to be about the listeners . It's going to be like hey , we work with craft food brands , this is our special sauce , these are our best performing ads . This is our favorite case study .

And at the end he's going to have a call to action that's going to call out to those people and invite them into his world . So it might be like hey , we're offering free Facebook ads audits for the first 15 people that come from this show and go to this URL to get it .

So that makes it invisible , visible and addresses layer one , and that's what everyone does and that's where they usually stop . Layer two , a really simple example , would be the peer to peer call out in this case .

So if I was this guy , the Facebook ads expert guy , at some point in the interview I'd make it a point to be like oh Chandler , I just want to be real clear . We only do Facebook ads .

So if there's anyone else who serves our ideal client you do Google ads or social or SEO or content please reach out to me , because we have referrals for you all day long , because we turn all that away .

We only do the Facebook ads , and so that it's true you do , but also it's true that all these people that could reach out also have referrals because they're reaching out to swap services , because you have the same ideal client , but different offerings . Another peer to peer role simply would be the host .

Like , if you get to know the host of the Shopify Masters podcast and he's interviewing these food brands like your top of mind , if they're ever like , do you owe anyone to this ? Facebook ads for Shopify .

But that's level two , and layer three would be it's just a little harder to do without a visual , but just imagine you're on the show and when it's published you go back and you look at the guest list . So you just open it up on iTunes and you're like oh , here's the last 200 guests that have been interviewed here . Which of these are food brand owners ?

Right , and so they're like my ideal clients . And so what's cool about that is then you connect with them , either email or , I usually do , linkedin . You can simply be like hey , joe of Joe's coffee . Like I saw , you're featured on Shopify Masters . That's awesome . So was I . I love to connect with you . And of course , you're in the cool kids clubs .

You're both interviewed on the same show . They say yes , and then your normal sales process picks up . But the difference is you've got a warm connection . You've borrowed the authority of the host .

They can all , they can go look and see what you've talked about and they can see your Facebook ads expert and if so , then you probably lead with value and be like hey couldn't help but look at your Facebook ads library . I have a suggestion on this headline , or have you tried this kind of image and just lead with value and then let the conversation go ?

But that's a very simple strategy , though , to like pick out your ideal clients and put them into your normal sales process , and that guest list actually is full of referral partners , because then you go look at all the people who have been interviewed about Facebook or Google ads and SEO and all that stuff , and it's full of people that have platforms .

You could go on . So your next 10 podcast interviews are probably people that have been interviewed on there , who are experts in your industry , who have their own shows . So that's just .

Again this goes , starts to spiral into a flywheel , but that hopefully that gives people just a real practical like layer one , two and three example from like a single episode how you could leverage that .

So , like , typically towards the end of a show is when you have the opportunity to do a call to action Like how do you look at that and what are the best call to actions that lead to the best conversion from

a podcast interview ?

There might be a 10,000 people listening , but they're all anonymous to you and you have no way of ever knowing them unless they respond to this call to action . So you want to usually call them to some free nugget . That is like the next logical step for someone who's interested in this .

And if you do a good job in the interview , you've been sprinkling in stories and emotional connection , and so by the end they're kind of like man , this is really interesting , I love to know more . And then the call to action becomes very natural .

Like , hey , if you'd like to go deeper on this , you want to know more , go to this very simple URL and get access to our free XYZ resource . That is like that goes deeper into that . I'll demonstrate this at the end of our interview .

But , like , if people want to know more about podcast guessing they're going to go to a certain URL , right , and so at the end you're definitely going to do that , and that's almost always when you're teed up to do it If you get an opportunity .

I didn't do this today , but , like , if you get an opportunity early on in the interview , it's really nice to seed that Like , hey , I'm going to go through these five Ps .

It's a lot , Don't worry , as long as people stick around to the end , I'm going to give them access to a free resource that summarizes all this and lets them customize it to their business , and then that makes people either fast forward on their phone to the end looking to show notes or actually listen all the way to the end .

So that's probably the best practice . I did that in my presentation Seed it early and then actually deliver it at the end .

And then let's break down like why did you pick that and how is that kind of optimized for conversion ?

So basically , what I did was pull all of our best resources so that people can make this as simple as possible , because in my presentations , and including today , I didn't really get to talk much about the details of how to find the shows , how to pitch the shows , how to perform well on the shows .

I kind of just jump straight to the profit , which is the fun part , but also you need the preceding steps . So , this free resource will equip you with the preceding steps so you can actually get this to work for your business . So if you go to seven figure leap with the P seven figure leap comm slash playbook , you'll get access to this playbook .

And it's got a couple different really cool tools . One is a podcast profits calculator . So people are like you know , like I have this offer and I want to be on this many shows per year or whatever . We have all our proprietary data from working with hundreds of clients on this and you plug in some basic numbers .

It'll give you a really good idea of how much revenue you can generate for your business . It's got that . It's got all my templates for the actual emails I've sent all these podcasts , including Nick Lopez , to like the literal emails they can copy and paste out of a Google doc as a template . And then the last thing it's got is a bunch of case studies .

So I love case studies . It's I'm always like just show me this in action . And so the one I talked about with the Facebook ads Example his name is Andy . He's a client like his case studies in there , like literally the episodes , what he did with it and what results he got and there's like six or seven case studies in there .

So it's kind of a choose your own adventure , but it fills in , hopefully , a lot of gaps for people that are interested . So yeah , seven figure leap , comm , slash playbook and we'll take care of you cool seven figure leap comm forward slash playbook .

Versus been in the whole episode talking about how to write a pitch email like I'll just give it to you . I think it's just like the ultimate shortcut . So that's why I do this in this way . It does convert super well . I think I don't know what my conversion rates were in in the two events we were at , but I was a story brand .

I'm a story brand guide . I didn't mention that , but I was at a little summit and I had a breakout session of 50 people and 38 of them opted in for this . So , yeah , it's a pretty high .

It's a pretty high converting lead magnet and so to the for the audience , I just want to provide like an insane amount of value , because how I want to show up and serve and I want to make you look good , I want to make them feel good , and then on the back end , you know the people that are interested in this depth of podcast guessing are probably gonna

make really good clients for us , because what we ultimately want to do is work alongside you and create this flywheel out of out of these efforts and have it really spike your monetization and book sales . And so it's just like a very my fault my funnel .

Just to get a little philosophical , my funnel is a narrow funnel , like I don't need a ton of people , I just want the right people who are like really interested in podcast guessing . Versus , if I had a really broad funnel where I'm like I do Facebook ads for everyone , then I'm gonna have a very low barrier to entry .

You know sort of funnel , but like this is set up to have a less people but the right people , and that's because that's in my purpose , right , that's in step one , like who do I want ? Like the right people , not high volume but very high quality .

Last , just quick question for you , dustin , is let's flip the script . What about for a podcast hosts like , any tips on how to better monetize a podcast ? As the host of the podcast like , what have you seen Work well ?

So if you , if you have a show that you're like , hey , I really like to feature and highlight my ideal types of clients , then that's who your that's . Your purpose is finding my ideal clients and inviting them onto my show . So it's like a reverse pitch , right .

So now I'm finding the individual interviewees and I'm asking them on on my show which is actually way easier than asking to be on someone else's show and then the perform is like the things what I'm going to feature and talk about in the show should lead to me making them an offer .

If that's what I'm trying to end up doing , and at the end of the show , if it makes sense and they do , there are an ideal client it makes total sense to be like you know what , based on what you said , I think that we could really help you . Like , could we hop on , we could schedule a separate call , and so that's like one if you're .

If you're trying to get high ticket clients as a host , that would be one way and it has nothing to do with the audience in that case . But at layer one , you know , if you've got a big audience , then I think it's like you guys have a larger audience .

I notice in your mid-rolls and at the end it's about Talking to the audience about your offer , like hey , come , book , a call the self-publishing . Or hey , go get this free guide , and so that you're making that audience visible to you .

So it's the exact same thing , it's just it's the nuance is different because of its outbound instead of inbound , or yeah , I guess , but you know what I mean . It's like you have the audience in here and you're trying to Activate them versus trying to like go be in front of someone else's audience .

But yeah , very , very similar strategies work on both sides of the mic .