TRANSCRIPT: Become a Podmaster – S1E4 – Podcast Guests

[00:00:00] Hendrik Baird:  Ethan, what do you call three average white dudes? 

[00:00:03] Ethan Baird: Yeah? 

[00:00:04] Hendrik Baird: A podcast. 

[00:00:05] Ethan Baird: Okay. Okay.

That was actually funny.

[00:00:13] Hendrik Baird: So you’ve got two average white dudes making a podcast, and we’re from Baird Media, Ethan and Hendrik.

And we talking about podcasting and how to make a podcast and it, it goes with a book, “Become a Podcast Master: everything You Need to Know to Master the Art of Podcasting.”

This is the practical.

Let’s talk to the experts and get their opinions to go with a theory of the book.

And then of course, you can book a six week mentorship program with us.

If you are ready to start your podcast but don’t have a clue what to do, we will physically help you.

Practically to do everything you need to do to produce at least one episode and have your series planned and do everything else that a podcast requires, which is quite a lot of work.

People underestimate it. 

[00:00:56] Ethan Baird: Yep. So in today’s episode, we are going to talk about guest coordination. 

[00:01:03] Hendrik Baird: So a lot of podcasts use guests.

I mean, I’ve listened to podcasts that don’t have guests like panel discussions or things like that, but, if you are in business and you’re using it for a network tool, as we spoke about in a previous episode, then guests are gonna be important and, and how to manage those guests and how to get the most value out of them certainly is something we need to talk about.

[00:01:23] Ethan Baird: Yeah, because I don’t think that’s even, that we recording this podcast got enough value out of our guests. Yet? 

[00:01:31] Hendrik Baird: Not yet. No. 

[00:01:32] Ethan Baird: Not in comparison to the people that we’ve spoken to, at least. 

[00:01:35] Hendrik Baird: Well, the people we’ve spoken to are, you know, some of them are really high quality guests, and I would love to speak to them again.

I just want to like, sit at their feet and worship them and go like, tell me everything.

But you can’t do that with somebody.

Hey, you’ve got a limited time period, but you spend with them.

So you’ve gotta be strategical, also in, in how you approach your guests and how you, uh, you know, interview them. 

[00:01:56] Dan Sanchez: My name’s Dan Sanchez.

My friends call me Danchez.

I’m obsessed with marketing.

I generally advise people, especially if you’re just starting your podcast, you need to have a few episodes in, in the hopper first.

I mean, you don’t.

You probably could, if you’re really scared, just start doing outreach.

But to have like three episodes in there, probably just solo episodes. 

First episode is why are you starting this podcast?

Second episode, on something that you think will be significant for the audience.

Third episode, talk about where you want to take this podcast.

You know, like in the future what you’re hoping it becomes, and then just say like,

Hey, I’m, I’m gonna reference this episode in the future, I’ll be calling back to episode three, right?

So just keep it simple.

Make them like five, six minute episodes and just throw something down and then just start doing outreach.

The best thing I like to do is find people who are active on social and then shoot them a DM.

The key is that DM.

Needs to be like how you would write it to a text message to a friend.

If it’s more than three sentences, it’s too freaking long.

Like make it casual.

Don’t send them a link to your podcast.

They’ll ask for it if they want it.

Be like, “Hi Ethan, I noticed you talked a lot about X and I love what you had to say about y.

I have a podcast on that topic.

Would you like to be a guest?”

It’s literally that simple.

Like just take the exact words that I just said, go rewind it back.

Take the exact words, write it out, and then just do that with five people and just replace their name and some of the details, right?

And then just send that out.

Some people will ghost you.

Fine.

I’ve done this hundreds of times now, and I can count on one hand the amount of people that said no.

And it’s usually not like a hard “no”, it’s a “not right now”, no.

I don’t think I’ve gotten one hard.

No, but I will say that I was representing a show with a lot of downloads, so that was a little easier for me probably reaching out to a few people that probably we would’ve said no if it was a new show.

But I will tell you that like 90% of people that I reached out to will probably say yes to you too.

Only people that are being asked like five to 10 times a day to be on a podcast.

Those people will say no because they’re all, and then they’re just gonna vet it down to the podcast with the most reach.

But I promise those people are incredibly rare.

So you, you like an author of a book or of a channel, if they’re small, like I have 25,000 followers on LinkedIn.

I only get reached out to speak on podcasts maybe like once a week, every other week.

You have to be pretty, pretty big in order to be saying no to podcasts.

So most people are gonna say yes or they won’t say anything at all.

So you just gotta get over the fear and start reaching out.

It also kills your reluctance to start.

A lot of people procrastinate with getting started with podcasts.

So what I tell the new podcasters is, Hey, just start sending out requests and then you have to fulfill it.

You gotta go and do it now you gotta schedule it because they’ve said yes. A

nd now you gotta actually go through with it.

And you have the pressure to actually, you know, finish editing it if you edit it at all, and then publishing it, because now you have expectations from Joe Schmo that you just interviewed.

So if you want to beat procrastination, just start sending out those separate messages and send out like 30 of them and then bam.

You’re gonna have a podcast cause now the pressure is on. 

[00:05:08] Ethan Baird: I recently was in a Zoom virtual coffee chat with a podcaster who was an episode 80 over her podcast and she says, I still don’t feel ready to reach out to this author that I admire.

And I was like, he’s not gonna say no, he’s not gonna say no because to her, this author is a massive celebrity and he’s a big author.

It’s not like at the very top of their game.

It’s not the interviewing, Tim Robbins or whatever, but it’s an author with a big following, especially in that specific sphere that she’s in.

And what I was telling her, and what I want to communicate to you, the listener, is that you would be shocked, truly shocked at how many people will say yes to an interview. 

[00:05:48] Hendrik Baird: I’ve got a podcast called Hypnosis Works.

I did about 30 episodes and it’s, it’s on hiatus at the moment.

I’m thinking of doing a few more.

The reason I started that podcast was I was a little bit lost as a hypnotherapist.

Didn’t really know how to restart my practice after having abandoned it for a while, and I thought, well, let me just talk to other hypnotherapist and find out what they do in their practices and you know what I can learn from them and maybe that would help me to, to get back into my hypnotherapy practice.

I know quite a few people in the hypnotherapy circles here in South Africa and I first of all approached them and I used Facebook really to, to find them if I weren’t connected to them already.

And just sent them a little, uh, message going like, look, I’m doing a podcast.

We want to talk about ABCD&F.

This is kind of the general structure that, that, that I’m planning for this thing.

Would you like to be a guest on my podcast?

And you know, like 80% of them said yes. I, I actually had to fend people off.

And then eventually I thought, okay, I’ve got a few South Africans in the can.

Let me see if I can talk to some people outside of South Africa.

And that was as easy as going to Facebook and putting hypnotherapist into the search bar, finding these people, sending them friend requests, and then my little message going, it was a standard thing that I did.

You know, this is my podcast.

This is what it’s about.

Want to talk about how you started, what things you specialize in, how you market yourselves, how the community disease, hypnosis, they, those sort of general things.

And I spoke to people in Wales.

I spoke to people in the U.S.

I spoke to people in Ireland and all over the place.

And it was a really, really interesting experience because these people were so forthcoming, ready to share their information with me freely with no expectations of getting anything back.

What I did learn in the process is to have a kind of a release form. 

[00:07:43] Ethan Baird: Yes. 

[00:07:43] Hendrik Baird: Something I think that we need to talk about a little bit. 

[00:07:45] Ethan Baird: So I think this is a great segue because I want to talk about what we can do better going forward.

With guest coordination and managing guests, so that we can hold ourselves accountable on this podcast.

And I’ve put it out for the public to hear.

So if we don’t do it, what are we doing?

And also, I think we did really well with this first batch.

However, having spoken to some of these podcasters, I realized that there’s a lot more that we should be doing.

The first thing, even before the interview is the pre-chat.

[00:08:15] Hendrik Baird: Now, this is something we’ve never done before and I’ve always thought like, why would you need a pre-chat? Why do you need a pre-chat? 

[00:08:22] Ethan Baird: Yeah. So when you just go into an interview cold, you have to spend the first few minutes of that interview, warming it up, right?

And you don’t quite necessarily know what this person’s personality is, what they actually want to talk about.

So you may end up wasting a little bit of time in the actual interview doing things that you could have handled before.

So what I’m suggesting we do going forward is having a 30 minute pre-chat a week, even before the podcast episode that we record, or the interview so that we can first get a rapport with them and figure out what are they passionate about.

Make sure that they’re covering something unique and interesting that hasn’t been covered by other guests, because many times people have similar things to talk about.

And then also to set some expectations about what needs to happen with this podcast, you know?

If we say to them, Hey, listen, okay, Benji, I’m chatting to you now, what are you gonna chat about?

Okay, cool.

Maybe cover something slightly different because you’ve already had someone who said that.

And you know, when the podcast releases, how do you want me to send this to you?

Strategize with them. 

[00:09:29] Hendrik Baird: Mm. 

[00:09:29] Ethan Baird: To get the best possible results so that by the time we actually in the interview A, we’re, we’re flying through the questions cause we know exactly where we’re going.

B, we don’t have to build reports are already done.

And C, the minute that podcast interview ends, when we stop the record button, we know exactly what’s going to happen. And as you said, release forms. 

[00:09:48] Hendrik Baird: Mm-hmm. 

[00:09:49] Ethan Baird: Documentation, all of those things are handled 

[00:09:51] Hendrik Baird: a week or two before the time. I, I think that’s a really good idea and it’s, yes, like I said, I didn’t really understand the value of it.

I just wanted to jump in, but then when we were recording for this specific podcast, we had to explain to people, look, it’s not an interview, we gotta not interview you and put just the interview out.

We are going to do it in a certain way.

We’re gonna chat and we are gonna play some clips.

That are relevant to, to what we are talking about, and people are like, oh, okay. I thought it was gonna be an interview.

And that’s something we could have covered in the pre-chat. It’s the same with the Hypnosis podcast that I did is a lot of people were so nervous because they’ve never been interviewed ever in their lives before.

They just so jittery that they couldn’t get the words out.

And having that, half an hour or so just to put them at their ease and give them some little experience of what it is like.

I mean, talking to podcasts is different to talking to, you know, a man on the street.

It’s never been, it’s like, uh, when you, you have a radio interview and you’ve never been on radio.

[00:10:45] Ethan Baird: They’re nervous.

They’re very nervous. Yeah. 

[00:10:49] Hendrik Baird: As I should be, I get, as a professional, I get very nervous sometimes doing these things.

So the, the pre-chat seems to be, a valuable tool and, and yeah, I agree with you, it’s something we’ll do further, but the release form also for me is important because I had that one experience with hypnosis work.

[00:11:04] Ethan Baird: Oh yeah. I was wondering if you gotta talk about this. 

[00:11:05] Hendrik Baird: Yeah. And of course I have to talk about that because I do all the work.

I arranged the guests, I do the recordings, I did all the editing, I did the intros and outros and recorded all of that. I designed all the graphics, I did all of the work, posting it, sending it up, and then this person took my work, my intellectual property, took out all my branding, rebranded it for himself or herself themself, and posted it on their platform as if it was their product.

And I was like, hang on, you’re, you’re stealing my work.

How can you do that?

No, it didn’t understand.

It was gonna work like this and I should have explained it better and you know, Yeah. Okay.

Maybe I should have, and that’s what I learned, that you need some sort of documentation that somebody agrees to that this is the, the terms and conditions of you participating in this event.

[00:11:57] Ethan Baird: I mean, also legally in our country and in many other countries, we’ve got the, well, that’s, 

[00:12:01] Hendrik Baird: it’s, that’s copyright infringement.

Yeah. I can’t just take my stuff.

Like, I can’t just take music and say, oh, no, I, I made this.

No, it’s Beyonce’s music. 

[00:12:08] Ethan Baird: Yeah. And, and there’s things like the POPI Act and everything as well, where you’ve gotta be really sensitive about people’s data.

Like this is something that’s going to live on the internet for years, forever, right?

So if, if you record something now and you don’t have all products in a row, if someone comes and says, Hey, I didn’t actually want you to publish. X, Y, and Z out of the blue, or you got their email address from them and maybe they actually didn’t want you to have that email address.

You could get into serious issues.

And then just quickly circling back to, you know, this experience you had, I’ve had people ask me, okay, cool.

So when I have the podcast, I’m just gonna download it and publish it as well.

Right.

I’m like, No, no, that’s, but it’s a clearly disconnect about what is a podcast some people have never listened to.

They’re completely unaware of it.

They’ve heard the word and they eat there, but they don’t.

So it’s not even necessarily like people will be malicious, they just might not understand what it is that we’re doing here.

So just getting them on the same page.

And then also from a business perspective in terms of the release form / intake form, whatever you wanna call it.

I recently was chatting to a person who I’m going to be on that podcast and their form, their Zoom booking link for their podcast is like 12 questions.

That name, surname, industry.

What do you do?

Short bio.

Upload your picture of yourself.

Give me your cell phone number. 

[00:13:27] Hendrik Baird: Well, that’s really important because I mean, with this podcast that we did on content marketing, I now have to go back two months after the fact and like, please send me a nice high quality image of yourself.

And then they send me this terrible little, like, I can’t use that.

You know?

So that, that’s also very valuable information you’re sharing as you get that information before the time.

We didn’t do this for Dan, I mean, or any of our guests.

Now we’re going to have to reach out, go back to them.

Well, there’s a good, good reason to go back to them and continue the relationship, but it’s something we could have done right at the beginning.

[00:13:59] Ethan Baird: Another separate note on guests, is being selective with the guests, and I think the pre-chat, can help weed out some potential guests that you might not actually really want to record.

Everybody that we have on this podcast, we love chatting to them.

We have a very good reason to put them on.

Nobody that we recorded for this specific podcast was excluded.

We were all happy with all of them.

So just to set that up.

However, they’re have been times specifically of the content marketing podcast and things when I was midway through this chat and I’m like, On the LinkedIn description, this made sense.

But now halfway through this conversation, I’m like, this has actually got nothing to do with anything that we are doing.

[00:14:41] Hendrik Baird: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:14:42] Ethan Baird: Or this person is just very dry. 

[00:14:45] Hendrik Baird: Mm. 

[00:14:45] Ethan Baird: And honestly, I don’t how I’m gonna make compelling content out of this. 

[00:14:49] Hendrik Baird: Mm. 

[00:14:49] Ethan Baird: So there’s also something to be said about having a strategy and we start to figure this out to actually make sure that this is a quality guest.

Before you sit in that recording with them and create all these expectations that we’re definitely going to publish this episode, cuz you might not really want to.

[00:15:06] Hendrik Baird: Yeah, no, that’s true. I mean, they were one or two guests on my Hypnosis Works podcast that should not have been published, but I was desperate for content and they said, well, I’m make edit it as best as I can to make you sound as. But it wasn’t really compelling content. 

[00:15:21] Ethan Baird: And, and you can’t now, after interviewing the person, go say, sorry, I’m not gonna publish it, becuase you’re boring.

Like, I’m sorry, you just can’t because that looks terrible.

You decided to interview me.

Now you’re telling me I’m not good enough.

Like, how bad does that make you look as a business owner slash podcaster?

So just be careful.

Have a strategy when it comes to guests.

Make sure that you know, Who this person is, what they’re talking about, what you’re gonna talk about, and make sure that you have some kind of selection process so that you really have quality content that you can be proud of, and that you don’t just have to publish once on LinkedIn and never talk about again.

[00:15:55] Hendrik Baird: Yeah.

[00:15:55] Christine Campbell Rapin: It also helps them understand that this has a purpose and a point, and I think sometimes that’s where you know, a lot of podcast hosts, get it wrong.

They’re like, and I just need anybody on my platform, and there’s a scramble for guests and, and you know, then it meanders and there’s no purpose.

So we have a very clear purpose with every episode, and when I have the pre-call, it’s us discovering together what’s the best angle.

And so when people, you know, come to me originally and say, you know, I wanna talk seo, I’m like, what about it?

What’s your angle?

What are you specifically trying to address? W

here do you think the elephant is?

Because it can’t just be at the surface level.

And why do I know that so clearly?

Because the reason you’re not seeing client growth is that you’re at that top level.

Well, that’s not what your client is.

It’s not useful knowledge.

It’s like wallpaper.

Well, anybody, you sound like everybody else.

The reason I’m gonna listen to this episode in terms of when I’m pre-leasing the episode in terms of, in the case of the video, like I announce, we’re gonna be having the episode and what is scheduled, and I have this scheduled out typically six to eight weeks out.

That’s the recording schedule I record and I always have this very clear plan, but what happens is I said, here’s why you wanna listen.

Here’s the value right out of the gate.

This is when you wanna listen to, and then of course, that same content is, is already out in the market in a video.

By the time we release the audio, similar content goes into show notes.

Sometimes more goes into the show notes and audio, because I have more space to do that.

But I’m always clear as this is the why you want, this is why you care.

We know what we’re gonna be talking about before we get there. 

And I know where the value is for the audience, and I keep, as a host, my goal is to keep the conversation on track, to get that value out into the audience.

I am Christine Campbell Rappin and I am a business mentor.

My podcast is called Amplify Your Marketing Message, 

[00:17:46] Hendrik Baird: And then also how do you use your guests to distribute your, your content once you’ve published it.

I think that’s something we need to talk about that, you know, some of these people have influential-spheres of influence.

What do we call them?

You know, they have friends and people in high places, and I know when I was on a podcast, I was very eager to share it. 

[00:18:08] Ethan Baird: Yeah. 

[00:18:08] Hendrik Baird: How do you tap into other people’s audiences?

[00:18:12] Ethan Baird: Having that intake form and strategy and pre-chat all will result in a podcast guest who knows exactly what to do when the podcast releases. 

[00:18:22] Hendrik Baird: But, but I think that’s something you’ve gotta prescribe also 

[00:18:24] Ethan Baird: Yes. 

[00:18:24] Hendrik Baird: To, to a degree and tell ’em, look, this is what I want you to do. 

[00:18:27] Ethan Baird: Make it easy for them. 

[00:18:28] Hendrik Baird: Yeah. 

[00:18:28] Ethan Baird: But think about it as you as a business owner now have to write up your whole blog post because you are a podcast.

You’re never gonna do that.

No.

Give them a bit of a, a write up to use for their post.

Give them a graphic, say social media, and wxactly.

Make it as easy as possible for them to share this thing so that they can get value and you can get value so that you don’t. Hope and pray that they’re going to do it.

[00:18:48] Hendrik Baird: So I was in a podcast once and I asked the lady to please share the link with me when she published it, which she never did.

I waited and waited and waited.

Then eventually I had to go Google it and find it wherever it was.

And then share it, which was frustrating.

Like it’s like a common courtesy.

I spent an hour with you, you can at least just send me the link and tell me it’s up and running so that I can share.

Cause I want to share it. 

[00:19:10] Ethan Baird: Yeah. 

[00:19:10] Hendrik Baird: So that two-way communication I think is important as well.

So there’s a to-do list you need to write yourself.

[00:19:16] Ethan Baird: And then we have to write for ourselves with our Future podcast episodes.

[00:19:19] Hendrik Baird: With this podcast. Yeah. 

[00:19:22] Ethan Baird: So what is our list?

We need to create an intake form.

Intake form for sure. 

[00:19:27] Hendrik Baird: Look, we’ve got an intake form.

We just don’t use it. 

[00:19:29] Ethan Baird: I know that the one that I recently filled in was linked to their booking link.

Like when you go to click on the calendar, there was like six questions.

I don’t know if we can implement that on ours, but we can Google it.

[00:19:39] Hendrik Baird: No, we can do that on our booking link. Yeah.

I like the Google form.

Because in there you can also go like, these are the terms and conditions.

Click if you accept it. 

[00:19:49] Ethan Baird: Yeah. 

[00:19:50] Hendrik Baird: You know, don’t share, don’t you know, don’t copy, whatever.

I sort of like that.

You can, you can easily incorporate that and you can upload photos and cv’s and all that sort of stuff there as well.

I would probably use that as an intake form. 

[00:20:03] Ethan Baird: So yeah.

So we we’re gonna build an intake form for our new podcast. 

[00:20:05] Hendrik Baird: No, let’s say we’re gonna improve our current intake form. 

[00:20:07] Ethan Baird: We’re going to use and improve our current intake form.

And that’s just standard.

And then part of the flow will include a pre-chat. 

[00:20:16] Hendrik Baird: A pre-chat, yes.

[00:20:17] Ethan Baird: Which is on a different day than that. 

[00:20:18] Hendrik Baird: But then also we need to have a short email sequence to those people, because we need to add those people to our CRM, because they potential contacts for the future. 

[00:20:28] Ethan Baird: So on the intake form, we need to get permission from them. 

[00:20:30] Hendrik Baird: To, yes to, because also it’s got a, a reminder, here’s the questions I have any queries, you know, and thank you for the interview and those sort of emails that you don’t want to physically do, but you can automate to some degree.

[00:20:43] Ethan Baird: We might be able to like embed this on our site and have our mail a light link up to it.

We’re gonna have to sit and really make this as easy, because my only fear, is that we overcomplicate it and then it’s like they get halfway through and then they close it and like nevermind. Yeah.

So we’ve gotta make it as simple as possible while making sure that they get everything.

[00:21:00] Hendrik Baird: Yeah. 

[00:21:00] Ethan Baird: And then we need to get permission for them to get onto our CRM and on our mailing list. 

So we can continue to market to these people. 

[00:21:06] Hendrik Baird: And then once we publish their episode, what do we give them then?

Do we send them a little media kit?

You know, something that goes like, here’s the link, here’s an article you can publish.

Here are three social media posts, blah, blah, blah, to make it easy for them as we said earlier.

[00:21:23] Ethan Baird: Here’s your Google Drive link with everything you need.

You can just copy and paste and download and post your heart’s content.

You don’t even have to think about it. 

[00:21:30] Hendrik Baird: Yeah. Yeah, that sounds great. 

[00:21:32] Ethan Baird: Love it. Okay, so…

[00:21:34] Hendrik Baird: So if you want to do this, well, first of all, yeah, so I dunno, get the book.

[00:21:39] Ethan Baird: So as you can see, part of what we are doing here is trying to practice what we preach.

We truly believe that these are strategies that are useful and they’ll work for you.

We have examples from podcasters who have done it and it’s working for them.

And a lot of what we have been talking about is in our book, which you can find on Baird.Media.

[00:21:58] Hendrik Baird: There we go. 

[00:21:58] Ethan Baird: Baird.Media links in the description as always. And then you can also sign up for our six week mentorship program.

This is a program where we literally go week by week giving you homework, making you read the book, and actually work with your podcast.

We don’t do big groups at all for this, for the specifically, for the mentoring program.

What we do is we will work with just you and your team and get your podcast out and running.

By the end of it, you will have episode one.

Produced and ready to publish, and you’ll have a season plan.

You’ll have episode descriptions, you’ll have everything you need to know to get going.

We’ve helped our clients figure out technical issues.

How do their microphones not work?

We’ve helped them figure out what microphone to buy.

All of those kinds of questions we can help answer for your very specific needs. 

[00:22:39] Hendrik Baird: So just go to our website.

Everything is there, including a ton of content, and it’s called Baird.Media.