The Five Ps of Profitable Podcast Guesting

Chris DuBois0:00

This is agency forward as a podcast host, I get tons of pitches for people that want to be on my show, and some of them are could be decent fits, but the pitch is always like miserable. What is the secret to pitching to get on podcast.

Dustin Riechmann2:23

Well, great, Chris. Question, Chris, and I can say that even before I had a podcast, I got pitched for my podcast that didn't even exist, right? Because this is definitely, this is definitely a problem, and it's a lot worse with AI. So, I would say the secret to doing this well is to actually not send cold pitches. That doesn't mean you can't send numerous pitches, and that you can't do this as a sustainable marketing effort, but each pitch really does need to be unique to that host and connect with them in some relational way, and with that, I'd say that's part one, and part two, the sister to that, that's also really important, is it you should always be leading with the value to the recipient, in this case a podcast host, which really means the value to their audience. So don't write a pitch that makes you sound like God's gift to the topic and set you up in some weird third-party languages, like it would be a favor to you as the host. I will grace you with my presence. It's always in a humble, service-oriented way that's all about specific value you can give their audience, and that will cut through a lot of the noise out there.

Chris DuBois3:28

I think the my favorite pitch so far has been someone saying the first line was, "This is a pitch, like it's cut to the chase, that's good. And then they like, "It looks like your podcast does this, and like, all right, you know what? Because he was so different, like, I threw him a bone, and then he never responded to anything, so good, you missed that one, buddy. But for the most part, these pitches are coming from podcast booking agencies, and they're like, they're bad, like, I know you didn't listen to my podcast, like, why are you opening this relationship with a lie, yep, right, like all these different things, and so, yeah, I think the more personal approach, right, being able to say, like, hey, I, here's what I can actually do for you, I have listened to your show, we know these same people, like finding any connections to be able to make it work, it's like it feels obvious, yes, but yeah, is it just like because people are going for the mass play, like yes,

Dustin Riechmann4:24

I think that's a big part of it, so there's really like two flavors of how this typically gets done, one is basically just cold email, like same way people do cold email for marketing, where hey, if I send 10,000 of these, maybe 10 will say yes, right, and so they necessarily just have to be generic and sort of capture scraping emails off RSS feeds and going out into the masses and hoping someone says yes, so that definitely happens, and you can immediately see the patterns when that's happening, because if you are on the receiving end of any of these, they really, you'll see that you'll be like, oh, this is one of those, there's like, but. At a is all those, and then the other is one you just mentioned is podcast booking agencies. I'm always a little careful about this, because I have friends in the industry. I think they can serve a valuable role. For example, if someone's like, "Hey, I'm writing a book, my publisher says I have to get on 10 podcasts, I actually don't care about like what they're about, or I don't expect any business results. I'm not trying to get leads, I just need to say I've been on 10 podcasts. You should go use a booking agency, because that's what they do well, right? Like, they're paid to put you onto a podcast and check that box. Now, in the pitching part of that, again, they're templated, and they are doing kind of how I open in part two of my answer to how to do this well. Chris was, I feel strongly that a good pitch will come from the individual, and it will be connecting with the host, and it'll be showing how, how I, as the individual, wants to serve your audience, an agency, just sort of by the nature of them being a third party to that, that relationship, they always write them like Chris DuBois is the best-selling author of this, and you know he did this in his business, and you know he would, he would, he would give you the pleasure of being on your show, and I, I've yet to meet a host, and I talked to a lot of them, right in the work that I do, who's received that well. That's kind of like sounds like it's the wrong posture, right. And so, coming at it from a place of third party introduction, and like it's clearly like an agent athlete sort of relationship, which almost immediately feels adversarial to the person they're trying to sign, if that makes sense, to use a sports analogy. So, yeah, but the big idea here is, in whether it's a just a mass cold email or it's an agency who's doing this repeatedly as sort of a conveyor belt assembly line process, it's missing the personal connection, and it's missing the core value proposition that I think I'm sure we'll get into makes this actually effective, which is I, as an expert, want to come onto your podcast to serve your audience and add unique value, fill a gap in your content, get to know you, build a relationship, like that's actually the exchange of value, and I feel like both a cold email or an agency approach, a booking agency approach, is typically focused on a transaction, and it's like, I want to check a box, will you check my box, and like, I don't actually care about who you are or who your audience is, and of course, that starts the whole relationship off on the wrong foot,

Chris DuBois7:40

right, and I think it was a term you used last year, actually, at the agency builders, and the relationship marketing focus on that, and so, like, that concept, yeah, definitely bleeds through all of this, but so I guess, would you say it's almost like you need to, like, an ABM approach to podcast guessing, right? It's like, let's actually find those podcasts that are like bigger accounts, like accounts in air quotes, for anyone just listening, that we want to win, and then let's actually do a targeted approach. What would convince this person, you know, like of the value I'm able to provide, get me on the show, versus let me get a bunch of these small accounts, and hopefully they all stick and do something good.

Dustin Riechmann8:19

Yeah, I think, well, yeah, I would say that is true. And so I like the account-based marketing sort of analogy here, because what that really says to me is it's very intentional, right? Like, it's like I am choosing these 10 podcasts for very specific reasons, and I'm going to be personal in how I approach them, and I'm going to be first and foremost focused on building a relationship with that host, like that's the main objective. Getting on the podcast, of course, is a good confirmation that I've done that well, right? But they don't have to be large, though, right? So, podcast selection, you know, like why do I want to be on podcast in general, and then why would I pick specific podcasts? Can be, hey, they have a larger audience, and the audience is super aligned with my expertise, and I'm sure there's some clients in there, and I want to generate leads. That's great. However, some of my biggest successes have actually come from very small or medium-sized podcasts, where either the audience was extremely niche and aligned with with me and my values and the things that I teach, and or the host is just like an amazing relationship, right? So building a relationship with the host and the collaboration there could be a really good reason to quote unquote target that podcast, and then the other thing I think people don't look at enough is what's the guest list, because if you get on that podcast and you do a good job, you now have access from a relationship building standpoint to all the other guests that have ever been on that show as well, and so you kind of like select the cool kids club that you want to become a member of, and that could be another reason to be on a show, so size is definitely one of the big criteria, but not. The only criteria, but the bigger idea of what you said about ABM, totally true. Like, our whole strategy is quality over quantity. I don't want to pitch 1000 or 10,000 podcasts, I don't want to be on that many, but I want to be on the right one. So we're much more like, let's pitch 10, get on the right five, and then really leverage each of those five opportunities to build relationships and just, you know, create exponential growth from those five versus doing it viewing as a temporary transaction and going to the next one, next one, next one. It's like, no, we're going to be super intentional about the ones we want to be on, and then when we get that opportunity, we're going to really kind of squeeze all the juice out of it, and make sure we're adding as much value as possible, and therefore receiving as much value as possible,

Chris DuBois10:46

right. So take it back a step before you can even pitch, you need to understand what your, where your value is, right. What am I going to pitch? What's your process for working through that?

Dustin Riechmann10:57

Yeah, so kind of big picture here, we kind of basically have a five step framework, and pitch is right in the middle of it, so they're all Ps: purpose, plan, pitch, perform, profit, and we can zoom in any of these that make sense today, but real quickly, just give an overview, because they're in sequential order. Purpose is what you're asking me right now, which is like, who do I want to target? What's the transformation I provide my clients? What's the messaging around that? Like, what is the emotional authority building story that I really need to convey? Like, that's to me, that's the most foundational step. Is like, why am I doing podcast guesting? Who am I trying to reach? How do I know if I'm winning? And what's the messaging that goes with that. Step two is plan, which is basically finding the right shows, which actually becomes pretty easy once you've done a good job with step one. It's like I know exactly what I'm trying to accomplish and who I'm trying to reach. Finding the podcast is really fairly easy at that point. That's step two. Step three is pitch, which is I know the shows I want to be on. How do I get on them and basically do what we were just going through as best practices. Step four is perform, so it's like, hey, congratulations, you found great shows. They said yes. Like, how do you actually show up and do a good job? Like, what do you, what is going to compel people to take action towards the goals that you have for that relationship and for that podcast audience? And then step five is profit again. This is where, like, what we do takes a big diversion from, like, what a booking agency would do, because most of our focus is the profit part. It's, I like podcasting, like I like money, but I wouldn't do it if it wasn't to grow my business, right? So, the people I serve are entrepreneurs, they're agency owners there? They're creators, and the reason they're doing this is because it's an effective marketing channel. So, we spend most of our time with our clients on the profit part, but you can't have the profit part. You can't leverage the appearance if it's not going back. You did a good job on the interview, had a good call to action, you had to pitch to show to get there in the first place, you had to identify that that was a really good show for you all the way back to the foundation of where this question started of knowing that what, what do I want, what are my goals, and who am I trying to reach. So that's why we do it in that order, because most people are like, how do I make money from podcasts? I'm like, well, let's let's take these four steps back and first figure out how you make money in the first place. Who you serve, why they pay you, why they choose you, what messages resonate with your ideal clients. And once we do that kind of hard work upfront, the flow from there into the podcast guesting opportunities becomes a lot more repeatable and consistent.

Chris DuBois13:39

Yeah, where do most people get hung up with the process?

Dustin Riechmann13:43

Well, most people skip the first step, so, so that, that's best. Fatal, fatal flaw number one. People show up to me, and they meet me, and they say, oh, you do podcast guesting, you know, strategy work, that's interesting. Which shows should I be on? I'm like, I have no idea. Like, let's go back to step one. So, most people skip step one, which sets them up for failure because they're on the wrong shows or they don't have a message that resonates with the host and the audience they're trying to reach, or the other problem that happens when people do that. Chris is like, they're really good at the other steps, and not doing step one means you can't have step five, and so they're really good at steps two, three, and four in there. In other words, they say, "Hey, I was on 100 podcasts this year, and I'm like, "That's crazy, that's more than I've been on, like that, you know? Tell me more, like, do you have a business? And they say, "Yeah. I'm like, "Well, what did this do for your business? And they kind of look at me with deer in the headlights, and like nothing, or I'm not sure, like I don't know, I don't know how to track it. Well, that's because they never actually set up a purpose behind it. They never set KPIs and goals for it, so you can't really have the profit if you don't do the purpose. So I would say, in general, the big strategic flaw people have is either they don't do step one, they don't define success, and get. Clear on who they're trying to reach, or they do all this work, get on these podcasts, and they don't actually have a step five, a profit system in place to leverage the opportunity that they've created. So they basically create the analogy, they create all these ponds and they put fish in them, but they never actually have like a fishing pole, they don't even know how to get the value out of it, and all this work that they've done to create it, so I would say that's the real issue. And then, more tactically speaking, the things people struggle with, in the kind of middle part that's more podcast guesting specific, is podcast selection. People are really bad at just figuring out which types of shows actually make sense for their goals, and they don't know where to start. They get overwhelmed. They either think there's no podcast for their niche, or there's way too many podcasts, and they don't know where to start. And that kind of analysis paralysis trips a lot of people up in step two in this process.

Chris DuBois15:55

So, let's jump ahead to the profit piece.

Dustin Riechmann15:57

Yes. The

Chris DuBois15:57

what should we be doing within the podcast in order to get people again through our performance, I guess, to get people showing up, or what systems do we need to install, like at the end of this.

Dustin Riechmann16:10

Yeah, so in the interview, one of the key things is, you know, you want to teach and provide value, but you typically want to do that with a story, because that's what actually can you know sticks with people and drives them to want to take action. So, assuming you do a good job in the interview of positioning yourself and telling you know a couple compelling stories that relate to people, the big bridge from that perform part to the profit part is a call to action, so a huge missed opportunity for people. If you're listening to this, and you've been on podcasts, I would invite you to go back and kind of watch the tape, and how did you in the interview? What did you tell people, or not tell people, to do at the end of the interview? So this call to action is really important, because you want to have one clear, compelling, logical next step for the people listening who really want to go deeper with this topic, to they just know exactly what to do. You want to prescribe, here's exactly what you need to do next. So that opens us up to the profit part, and then from there it's really, and you said this kind of in the intro, it's the profit part is more than anything about how do you build high quality relationships at scale from these opportunities, right? And so it's multifaceted. We can kind of talk about this flywheel effect that we hope to create, but you can think of it in really basic terms. The listening audience, you got to give them a call to action, which is typically going to be an email opt-in, or some sort of lead magnet, so you can make build a relationship there and make sales in whatever your process is for conversion. There's the host relationship, which there's lots of ways to leverage that and go deeper with that host, and then there's that guest list relationship that we talked about, and then I would say beyond that is sort of the halo effect that comes from the authority building that happens, so back links, AEO, SEO benefits, content repurposing, sort of the credibility of saying, like, I'm I now have this as seen on sort of logo, or I have this relationship with this thought leader in my industry that I didn't have before, so there's a lot of aspects to profit, that's why we spend most of our time there, but that bridge from interview to the profit piece of this is really, really important, and if you miss that, you kind of miss most of the opportunity from an interview,

Chris DuBois18:34

right? So probably way more tactical, like I missed the something that I have loved doing is buying vanity links, and I probably have spent too much money on

Dustin Riechmann18:46

a whole bunch of them too, but the

Chris DuBois18:49

ability to send people to like Stamp Offer system.com instead of like dynamic agency os.com/whatever it's like, even little things like that can be super helpful. Are there any other like quick tips you would recommend?

Dustin Riechmann19:03

Yeah, well, that's that's actually a really good one. So, if you think of the call to action specifically, a couple things I would say: one is, if you get an opportunity to talk about it more than once in the interview and not save it till the end, that's really useful. At the end of this interview, Chris, I'm going to be giving people a playbook, so they can go through these five steps on their own and actually find the right podcast, pitch them, and start getting some traction, so they're going to go to Seven Figure leap.com/playbook to do that, right? So I'm just demonstrating kind of tongue in cheek here, but the idea is like, if you can seed either drop in the URL, but at least talking about, like, hey, I know we don't have limited time here, Chris, and you asked me about pitching. I actually have a template and an AI prompt that people can use to write a pitch the way that we write them. I'm gonna give that away at the end of the interview, like that's so talking about the call to action multiple times is super helpful, and then kind of in the moment there at the end of the interview you just. The number one cardinal rule is only give them one thing to do. I'd say this is the one that gets violated the most, is either there's zero things to do or there's five things to do, and both are basically worthless, right? So, if I don't tell you what to do next, that's bad, but if I also say, yeah, like I'm on Instagram and LinkedIn, and I had this recording the other day, if someone wants to email me, I'll send that to you, and I also have an event coming up, so maybe you can put that in the show notes, Chris. Like, no one's gonna remember or know what to do. Instead, you want to have one very, very clear direct call to action, and you should either have a vanity link, like you said, like buy a custom domain that just redirects to whatever freebie you want them to access, or if it's simple enough, you can use like seven figureleap.com/playbook or slash something really simple, though, because the mindset you have to keep in mind is most people are listening to this interview while they're driving, walking, working out, and it has to stick. So, the other thing I would say in that moment is always repeat it two to three times, and if you don't want that to sound awkward, you can say things like seven figure leap.com it's the number seven seven figure leap, like jumping, like not like a, you know, a tree, so seven figure leap.com/playbook and we're going to give you our playbook, so like I say it enough times of people, like I remember what he was, I remember that, yeah, I would say that's, yeah, I'm just hammering it here with, with my example, but that's, yeah,

Dustin Riechmann21:24

those are all really, really good, like tactical things that people overlook with in what the most important part of an interview,

Chris DuBois21:30

so yeah, it's like some psyop stuff you got going on there, yeah, so okay, one of the things I have noticed personally, and no, I'm not throwing shade at any guest, but like, very rarely do guests promote the podcast, so like, I create clips from every podcast, I give them the guests, I give the raw footage, it's like, use this however you want, like, it'd be great if you'd mentioned the show, right? Let's build it up, and very rarely does that happen, but the shows I've been on, where I promote the show, like, I mean, there's one that I ran ads to that podcast episode, it was great in

Dustin Riechmann22:09

person, like, that's yeah, that's ninja, that host is never gonna forget that,

Chris DuBois22:13

and that's exactly it, that led to, I think, the speaking engagement, where we got to meet in person, absolutely, and like, it opened up other opportunities because of the relationship, what What do you recommend people do for promoting? Obviously, they have to do - they have all their own content, they're trying to get out, they have other things going on. How do they insert this into it, so they can build that relationship and do all the stuff that they should be doing to, you know, actually get the word out?

Dustin Riechmann22:37

Yeah, I'll just tell you what we do, and what we teach clients to do, sort of as a standard operating procedure. And this is going to answer your question, but maybe expand just a little on relationship building with the host. So, and I'll do this. Yeah, I promise, Chris. So, like, when this episode gets published, you're going to send me a link, and you're going to say, "Hey, your episode's been published. At a minimum, hopefully, like you do, a host may also say, "Here's some clips and some images or different assets that you can use in marketing. But at the moment, like literally, the soon as we get it, and that email comes in that day, we have a process that says this goes to Clickup, and we have tasks that get assigned from that task. One is Dustin personally leaves you an Apple rating, or you know, or Spotify, whatever, whatever, for people listening, whatever is like native to you. So, if you're a guest, in other words, one of the best gifts you can give a host is to leave them a five-star written rating on a podcast player or YouTube, you know, as a subscriber on YouTube, but if they're a podcast, if they're primarily a podcast, not a YouTube channel, a podcast rating and review is very rare. It really, it really stands out, right? It's really hard to do that. And I also host a podcast, so I can speak from firsthand experience. So, if you will just leave a rating and review, and let the host know that you did that. You will be in the top 1% of their guests, like no one does that, and it literally takes like 45 seconds. You know, once you know how to do it, you can just get right on your app, because, like, they're quirky. You have to do it on an app on your phone, but leave a rating review, let the host know, and as you're letting them know, basically, right, respond to that, and say, Chris, thanks so much. Like, had such a great time on your show. Like, I'm really grateful to get the opportunity to serve your audience. I went ahead and left you a five-star rating on Apple, just as a thank you and a show of appreciation for all the work you put into this. So, like, that's step one, and step two, leave a rating, say thank you, and then step three is what you actually asked. I really do try to make a concerted effort to at least post one time about this show and tag the host, right? So, for me, that's LinkedIn. I'm not a big social media guy, but I do, you know, I am active on LinkedIn. And so just a simple post that's like had an amazing time with Chris, and you tag the host and you share that clip, if they've already given you a clip, right, or an image, and maybe give a little insider, you know, knowledge of like this episode was special to me, because or Chris asked me this unique question that no one's ever asked me, just a little inside baseball, so it's not just like a generic scroll through sort of link to a podcast, but it's given your personal experience again, that's they're gonna see that because you tag them, it's amazing, like we do that, and then like every, I think right now it's every other week, but basically we just have a kind of a digest in our email newsletter, where it's like, here's my favorite LinkedIn post that we created this month, here's a YouTube clip, here's a podcast interview, and so that gives us multiple chances to also highlight, and when we do that, we send that email out to our list, and then we forward it to the host, that anyone that's highlighted in those real or in those that kind of highlight real email, we forward it to them and say, "Hey, just want to thank you again for letting us share what we do with your audience. We highlighted in our newsletter today.

Dustin Riechmann26:15

I mean, not hard to do, but you got to have a process to do it, or you'll just sort of like, you forget if you do this frequently, so we just, yeah, we just have an SOP, and it literally creates like task post on LinkedIn by X date task, leave an Apple review task, send a response to the host, from, you know, have Dustin send a response thanking them for this, so that's it's kind of long answer, but that's a really, really important relationship building. It's not even a hack, it's just like a best practice, right?

Chris DuBois26:47

Yeah, I think it's last month and just took a the top 10 episodes that I have, and I just tagged all of the people, say, 'Hey, rank ordered, these are my most listened to guests, and it was good, a lot of comments on like engagement for the show, but it's funny because the guests started going to like making fun of each other, like, "Oh, I'll beat you, and like, "I'll take them out, and yeah, it's funny,

Dustin Riechmann27:07

yeah, and it's a really good, and as a, so that's you as a host, but you know, if we're talking to someone as a guest doing a post on LinkedIn and tagging five hosts that you've, you know, had the opportunity to be on their show this year, it tags them, so they see it, but then they're almost always going to comment, right? And then it's just another way to deepen a relationship. They start to, they meet other hosts, maybe they wouldn't have otherwise met, and anytime you can tag multiple people in a post, and it is for a logical reason like that, it gets tons of engagement, like we do this, like we run a cohort-based program, so when we have started a cohort, or when we like end the cohort, and people are graduating, we will tag them in a LinkedIn post and kind of give a little like highlight of who they are, or something they accomplished in the program, and I can tell you from that standpoint, and this goes back to what you just said, but the point is those comments are always going to be very positive. So, when we do that with our clients, we always get comments like this is the best investment I ever made, like this is the best 90 days. Well, I just screenshot those, those all become testimonials, because now they're public information. So, if you're a guest and you highlight the host. I can almost guarantee that many of those hosts are going to comment and say, Chris, really grateful that you came on our show. You were an amazing guest, or like, I really, I implemented something you shared, and it was amazing. Well, now you got a screenshot testimonial from a podcast host to use in another post, or to leverage. So, while these are relationship building, and they're focused on serving the other person. The law of reciprocity means you're going to get good stuff out of it too. So, I love that you mentioned that as a strategy.

Chris DuBois28:49

Yeah, I want to, one of the last sections we get into, I want to talk about the ability to use their podcast guest list to build further relationships. Yes, what's the, what's the strategy behind that.

Dustin Riechmann29:01

Yeah, so if it's not clear what we mean here, basically, if you're on a podcast, and you know, I usually do this when it gets published. This is the other task that comes out of the list I was giving. I talked about all the ways we deepen, deepen our connection with the host. The other side of this is when I'm, when my episode gets published, I'm now sort of part of this fraternity, right, this club of people that have been interviewed on this podcast, you know. So, for me, I'll use Nathan Berry as an example. I was on the Nathan Barry podcast, and so now every everyone at the day of my interview that had been interviewed on that show, I have a connection to, like, I have credibility with, I've shared trust with, and it's cool, because Evergreen, he interviews new people every week. So, basically, I have this ongoing new list of people that I can connect with, and it's not a cold outreach, and they, like, already trust me, because, like, they know Nathan's really cool, and if I was on his. Show, it means I must know something, right? And that's gonna be true of any podcast you're on. So, just imagine you get this list of other guests from the same show that continues to grow over time, and when you look at that, what you'll find is there's kind of three buckets of people in there. There are potential clients, like some of the people are potential clients, partners, so people that like are complimentary to you, so they don't necessarily aren't necessarily a client, but they serve your clients in a different way, and then the third bucket, which will be substantial, are people with platforms like podcasts, right, so a lot of people that are guesting on shows also host shows, and so if you think about those three opportunities, there's and some people are in multiple buckets. They can be a potential client, and they host a show, or they could host a show and be a great partner, etc. But the idea here is you've got this goldmine of relationship capital that you've opened up, and tactically, the way that we do this, and there's other other methods, if you're not on, like, LinkedIn, is we just connect with each of those people on LinkedIn, and we have a really simple connection request. It's like, hey Chris, I know that I saw that you were on Nathan Berry's podcast. I was on there recently too. I'd love to connect with you. I'm not lying, I'm not saying I loved your interview. I'm just saying you were on it, I was on it. Let's connect, and you, as someone who's been on that show, is gonna be like, I'm taking that request, like they must be cool, like they were on the same show, and then from there, after they accept the connection request was part of what we help people with on our program, but like, how do you take the conversation from there? It depends on which bucket they're in, it depends on kind of your normal sales process, but how this differs from cold outreach is they already like you and trust you in some way, and they have credibility, and they know where you're coming from. They can even go listen to your episode if they really are curious about who you are. So these conversations happen as a warm conversation, not a cold conversation. So you still can't pitch slap people and like immediately be like buy my thing, but you can have a, have a really, really valuable pipeline here of conversations that can definitely lead to sales partnerships, and I'd say most easily other podcast opportunities.

Chris DuBois32:14

Yeah, so I want to hit you with a potentially very different question now. All

Dustin Riechmann32:20

right,

Chris DuBois32:21

what AI has changed a lot of different markets, like I work with agencies, so I guess everybody's being impacted in some way, some positive, some negative. What's what's going on in the podcasting space from that could be something to pay attention to, or this like a benefit for everybody. It's

Dustin Riechmann32:40

yeah, so I would say I spoke again at Agency Builders this year, and this was like my topic, so I'm gonna keep this really brief, but at a very high level, I think more than ever we've got this really, this really tight tension between trust, like we're I think we're in a trust recession, and I think AI is making it worse, and like, you know, it's like this - just everything's sloppy and in not very human and not connected. So we have this need for more trust. We also have this need for more scale, and we have this this amazing technology to do that right. And so where I'm looking at this is like, how can I build trust at scale? And so I'm very much in the camp of not AI everything, but AI appropriate things, right? So, how's it affecting podcasting? I think it's making podcasting as an industry, as a tool, as a medium more and more valuable, because especially in this type of podcasting we're talking about, which is like interview-based human to human education-based content, like people want that, they really do, like we're wired to stand around campfires and tell stories and learn from each other, and podcasting is a really kind of uniquely scalable and personal way to do that, right? Like, you and I are recording this one on one. We had a conversation before, I'm sure we'll have conversations after, but then lots of people get to listen to this later, and people that know you and trust you are gonna be like, 'Dustin guys must be trustworthy because he's on Chris's show, right? And so I think that podcasting in this format will continue to grow in importance, and it's going to continue to be more and more necessary to have long form educational content from a trusted authority in a format that's easily consumable, so that I think that's a very positive thing, and I think on the negative side, like everything we talked about this in the very beginning, as information is ubiquitous, as you could send 10 million emails in an instant, like you can do that doesn't mean you should. Well, then it becomes even more noisy and harder to break through, and so I think the opportunity in that is just being very anti AI. And how you do outreach, how you build relationships, how you actually care and get to know people. So, yeah, we could do the whole episode about AI, but that my short version is there's great AI tools that make our process work better, and we provide those to clients too. But I will never let AI do this for me, either from an outreach standpoint or especially in the actual conversations, because that's also a thing where two AI clones talk to each other into the podcast, and it sucks, because there's no emotion, there's no into intonation, there's no tangents to go off of, like no one wants to listen to that, and you can tell it immediately when you start listening, because it's like it literally sounds like two robots, and we don't - we're not looking, we're definitely not at a stage now in this space where we're trying to get more information, we're trying to get curated insights from other humans who have can guide us along a path that we desire to go down, and that's why I think podcasting still remains a very strong way to do that, as long as we don't jump off the deep end and try to AI fi everything. So

Chris DuBois36:07

right, I was using a notebook LM for some of my articles I was writing, and this way I could put an audio at the top of the article, so someone just wanted to listen to it. Awesome, I stopped using it because the two little AI hosts decided to crap all over one of my articles, like, well, this is where it gets really boring. Hang on,

Dustin Riechmann36:31

like, stop. Yeah, ultimately

Chris DuBois36:35

it comes out like, what, what's better for the relationship? Yes, right? And I think, yeah, ultimately it's humans create relationships? If you're there, are some weirdos out there having relationships with their robots, that's you, do you? But for the rest of us, like, yeah, I think the human touch needs to be packed in there. So,

Dustin Riechmann36:52

absolutely.

Chris DuBois36:53

All right, two more questions for you. First one being, what book do you recommend every agency owner should read?

Dustin Riechmann36:59

I'm gonna say Unreasonable hospitality. I know that's not like the newest book on the block, but I read the book when it came out. I've been listening to the audiobook recently, and actually Will Gadera and his partner, business partner in his current business, had a really cool interview, actually on Nathan Berry's show, who I'd mentioned earlier. I feel like I really got to know and appreciate, there you go, I got to know and appreciate them better, so the reason I say that is kind of extends from what we were just talking about with AI, like agency services are already and are becoming increasingly commoditized, right? So why would someone choose you and your agency over someone else? Is because you provide the best experience, and so this idea of unreasonable hospitality, while Will's background is in restaurants, totally translates to agency services, to coaching services, to any services, right. How do people feel about you? How can you go deeper with them? How can you actually care, have a more qualitatively, like a higher quality relationship to provide the best experience, and so I think unreasonable hospitality should be a must read for any business person, but I say, especially if you're in service businesses like an agency.

Chris DuBois38:11

Yeah, it's good one, and I do like, I mean, it's probably a good case for podcast guesting. Like, I, I listened to the book when it first came out, and then I heard him on multiple other podcasts, and it was just like I kept, you kept getting other stories, and like hearing things that he had in the book, but like expounded on, it was like I wanted to keep following him via the podcast. Yeah, I'm doing

Dustin Riechmann38:33

the same thing right now, I'm like, I'll put his name in, I'm like, oh cool, he was on this one and this one, and they're from different angles, he obviously tells different stories. Sometimes he's with his business partner, sometimes he's solo. I've seen him speak in person, and each time is a little different. And that, yeah, like you said, it's a really a good testament for podcast guesting as a strategy. And the reason that I want to double click on that is even if you ask me the same questions as another host asked me, I'm going to answer them differently on a different day, because I'm in a different mood. You're going to have a different tone, and what you're actually trying to get at. You're going to give different follow-ups. I'm going to have different stories based on what just happened to me this morning, or whatever, right? And therefore, every interview is unique, even if you're talking about the same topic, right? And that's what people want, they want that like deeper connection, because with that intimacy and connection comes more trust, and again going back to the thing you need now is not more expertise, it's more trust to differentiate yourself as an agency or as another service provider, and so I think there's a lot, there's limited but important ways to build trust, and one of them is long-form educational expressions and story-based content around the work that you do, and why you care so much about it, and how you got into it, and all that kind of stuff, and and then, of course, on your service delivery side, How do you make your clients feel super unique and cared for? Which is where the unreasonable hospitality recommendation comes in.

Chris DuBois40:04

Right? Last question, where can people find you?

Dustin Riechmann40:08

I don't know. I got five Instagram accounts now. So, so obviously you know we, what we do is help people with podcast guesting as a strategy, work with a lot of agency owners, coaches, and consultants, so Seven Figure leap.com is our home base, and as I've mentioned a few times earlier, we do have a really cool playbook. Our whole business model is to basically give our give away everything that we know how to do in templates and step by step instructions, and then some portion of the market always wants personal help, a community, and and coaching around it, and that's how we actually make money. So, if you're like, I'm curious about podcast guesting and how to do these five Ps that we've talked about a few times today, you can go to Seven Figure leap.com/playbook and it's free, and it's going to give you five sequential emails that are going to walk you through exactly how to get started with this. I know Chris has been through it and uses it, and even though he's not been a paying client of ours, I think you've got a lot of benefit from following some of the methodologies that we teach there. So, seven figure leap.com/playbook is my call to action

Chris DuBois41:15

today. Awesome, and we will get seven figure leap.com/playbook added to the show notes, there we go. Awesome, awesome. All right, Dustin, as always, great chatting. Thanks for joining.

Dustin Riechmann41:26

Yes, sir, I appreciate you, Chris. Thanks for having me on. It was great to share.