For the last two months I’ve booked myself on 1 podcast a week with about 90 minutes of work, total.

The process is surprisingly simple:

1. Find a podcast you want to be on. Listen to 2 – 3 episodes or read the show notes.
   1. Here’s a quick hack if you read fast like me. Take their podcast, run it through a transcription service, and you can read an hour podcast in about 3 minutes.
2. Find the host on Twitter.
   1. You can use a tool like Sparktoro to tackle this from the other point of view, too, and find all poeple who have “Podcast” in their bio + work in a field you want to be heard in.
3. Do 3 things that are helpful to them.
4. DM them with a 3 sentence pitch for why you’d be great on their show.

Success rate for me is about 50%.

How this works in action:

Step 1: Find a podcast

I came across Ramli John on Twitter and saw that he’s an authentic guy who has great things to say about growth and onboarding into product. He also runs Growth Today (a podcast I found out about because Corey Haines recommended it).

Step 2: Find them on Twitter

I got Step 2 for free here, because I found the podcast on Twitter to begin with. I followed Ramli immediately on Twitter and he’s a great follow in general, producing high quality Tweets with regularity.

Step 3: Do 3 things to help

Ramli isn’t just host of a podcast, he has a day job at ProductLed and he’s a great writer who’s created a fantastic book about product led onboarding and product design. If you’ve never written a book yourself, here’s a tip: the best way to an author’s heart is by saying good things (true things! but also good ones) about their book. It’s like telling a parent that their kid is fantastic.

Thing 1:

So I checked out the book, downloaded the preview chapter, and reviewed it publicly on Twitter. I tagged him, of course, and he saw I had broken down 2 of the lessons from his book in Twitter thread form.

Thing 2:

I also noticed a few minor errors with the website for his book. So I let him know that there were some simple things he could fix. That was more than just reviewing his book, I also helped him convert more future visitors.

Thing 3:

Then, finally, I reviewed the podcast I wanted to be on after reading a few transcripts.

Step 4: Pitch yourself succinctly

More than 3 sentences and you’ve gone too long.

Secret step 5 for reading this far

If you’ve read this far, congrats: there’s a secret step 5 that also helps a lot: check out https://www.podbooker.com/. A lot of the work of finding podcasts to book yourself on can be done right there. As an added bonus, you can pitch through the platform as well. You do still need to do some research on each show before you submit a request, but with a little work you can quickly reach out to 4 – 6 podcasts with some tailored pitches like these below:

Show up regularly for best results

Growth Marketing Today is a podcast where Ramli gets guests who seem like much better company than I usually hang out with. The same is true of some other podcasts I’ve booked myself on. And because I had a very focused process for research, helping someone, and asking to be on their show, I was able to book enough podcasts to fill out May and June with 1 recording a week with a total of about 90 minutes of work each month.

The key here is show up, help others, and sometimes ask for something in return. I’ve been engaging on Twitter more actively in the last month than I have previously, and a lot of people who are in the startup / growth Twitter space have been seeing me more regularly. That increases receptivity in general.

Give first—I often drop in on #buildinpublic, #growthmarketing and #founder threads and answer to the best of my ability—and then when you’d like to ask for something, you can be surprised how well people respond.

What works for you? How do you find interesting people to talk to?