RV (00:09): I wanna share with you my eight favorite techniques for growing your podcast. This is coming off my interview from Hala Taha, my friend talking about some of the technical sides and some of the, the detailed sort of tactical things that you can do to grow your podcast. And if you didn’t listen to the interview that her and I did, you have to go listen to this. Like, the interview blew my mind. There was so much about the world of podcasting that I did not even know. So what I’m gonna share with you are sort of like the eight conceptual things that have grown our podcast, right? And this podcast is the second time that we’ve grown a podcast to over a million downloads. And we only started this one a few years ago. So here we go. Let’s dive in real quick. RV (00:55): I’m just gonna give them to you the eight, my eight favorite tips for building a great podcast. So number one is appear on other podcasts as a guest. That is for sure. The fastest way to grow your podcast is to appear as a guest on other people’s shows. I remember interviewing Jordan Harbinger on this podcast. We actually talked about this. He started a show many years ago called The Art of Charm, grew it to millions and millions of downloads left the show or lost the show, and then started his own show, the Jordan Harbinger Show. And he rebuilt the whole thing like in a matter of a year. And the way he did it was by appearing on other people’s shows, like, so that is the fastest way. And part of that, right, is because people want to stay in the platform they’re already in. RV (01:43): Like, it’s harder to move somebody who’s like an Instagram follower to follow you on a podcast or a YouTube subscriber to like follow you on Facebook. People like to stay in the format that they are in. Now, you wanna try to move everyone, obviously, to your email list. But anyways, moving people from one podcast to another is much easier than moving somebody from some other platform to your podcast. So guest on other people’s show, which leads to both number two and three in my list, which are strategies for how to achieve, number one, to get book on number on other people’s shows. So number two, strategy is to help book all of your guests from your show onto other people’s shows. Yes, that that’s, I’m, I said that correctly, that one of the best ways for you to grow your podcast is for you to spend time and energy helping all of your guests who come on your show to get booked on other shows. Now, at first you might go, why? Like, how does, how does that work? Like how does that make sense? How does it grow my show? The reason it grows your show is because it causes you to network naturally with other podcasters, RV (02:59): And that forces you to build relationships with other podcasters, and you add value and you build relationships with all of your guests. So helping your podcast guests get booked on other shows is one of the fastest ways that you can build a relationship with somebody. And so what happens is they, you become friends, and so they start referring other guests to be on your show. And they start fu referring you to be on other shows, because when they go on shows, the the shows they’re off and on will ask ’em and they’ll say, Hey, who, who, who should have me on? Who, who show should I be on? And who should I have on this show? Which leads me to number three which is asking, asking every time you’re on a podcast as a guest, say, are there any other podcasts that you think I would be a good fit for? RV (03:51): That’s what you want to ask every time that you’re a guest. And similarly, when you’re the interviewer and you interview someone on your show, you should always ask them, who else do you know that would be a great fit for this show? Right? You gotta make the ask. You gotta make the ask. So that’s really, really key. Now, number four, here’s the secret to getting big guests. Okay? The secret to getting big guests is to offer them help in their time of need. Okay? So on any given day, a a an invite for a celebrity to come on a podcast is sort of an annoying, disruptive thing that they have to say no to or turn down, or they say yes, and it kind of throws ’em off the rhythm, right? Some, some, for a lot of high profile people, that’s, that’s how it occurs. RV (04:44): It’s like, I, I I’m not in podcast mode, so you don’t really wanna ask for that if you don’t already have a relationship or a warm referral or introduction to them. So what you wanna do is wait for their time of need, right? And you go, ah, they just had a book launch come out, or they just had a new TV show come out, or they just, they just, you know, they’re doing something right and you’re keeping an eye on the, the guest that you really want. I call this the Gretchen Rubin story because this is how Gretchen Rubin and I genuinely became friends. Like I for years admired her and thought she was so great and, and, you know, both academic and, you know, and also like in the personal development world and just really sweet and a fantastic writer. And, and so, you know, I waited until she had a book coming out, which is the easiest time to do it, right? RV (05:29): Everybody wants to go on shows when they have their book coming out. So I almost always wait until they have a book coming out, and that’s when I’ll ask them, because that’s when they’re most likely to say yes. In fact, here’s a little advanced ninja tip from one of our brand builders, group strategists. This is Matt LaBree. So Matt, this is a shout out to you brother. What he does for his show is he actually looks on Amazon at all the books that are scheduled for publication in like the next three months. And he, that’s how he picks his guest to come on his show. So is so smart. He’s getting them even before their new book comes out, because that’s when they’re doing all of their pre-launch prep. And he’ll make a commitment to say, Hey, let me interview you before your launch and I will help you during your book launch. RV (06:15): I’ll publish this episode on your launch. Relatedly, the other thing you wanna do with big guests is, is promise them that you’ll do the full court press on promotion. Tell ’em, you know, I’ll email my whole list. I’ll, I’ll post multiple times on social, like, I’ll tell everybody about you. And that’s a big deal because even if there’s a really big podcast that might not perform as well for someone as a small podcast where the host is super enthusiastic about the guest and willing to like, promote heavily the guest being on their show. So that’s the key to getting big guests, is help them in their time of need and, and promise to do a full court promotional, pro press for them, and then, and then do it. Relatedly number five. So here is another simple step any podcaster can do that we so often overlook. RV (07:11): Email your list every time you publish a new podcast. Email your list and tell them you have a new podcast. And if you think that’s emailing them too often, then I would say, well, then your podcast must not be that good, right? Nobody gets annoyed at like having too much like valuable information that’s hyper relevant to them being sent to them. So, and podcasts take a lot of work to, to produce and schedule the time and prepare for the interviews and find the guests and, you know, record and edit and blah, blah, blah. So what I want you to do is make sure that you don’t overlook the step of emailing and telling your people like, Hey, we have a new show, a new episode that just went live. You gotta check it out. And if you’re publishing your podcast on YouTube, it’s especially important that you, you email and you push traffic to your YouTube video the moment it goes live, like the moment it’s published, because part of the YouTube algorithm is a affected by how quickly a video is getting views. RV (08:17): You can, you can force that by driving social and you, you know, your, your email and your social list directly to YouTube to sort of spike the algorithm. So make sure you’re doing that. Number six, make it easy for your guests to promote their appearance. Make it easy for your guests to promote their appearance. How do you do that? Basically by giving them beautiful assets that make them look like the star from when they were on your show. So think about this for a second. Everybody has to feed the social media beast, right? Like anyone who is, you know, a con, a mission-driven messenger of any type and is like, very few people love being on social media every day. So it’s a chore that we all have to do, is we have to put out relevant content on social. So if you can create an asset that’s not about you so much, and not about your show, like take a back seat and highlight your guests. RV (09:22): Make your guest the star of the post, draw attention to your guest and give them assets that they can promote. Or even if they won’t promote ’em, hopefully you can, you can post it and you can tag them. And a lot of times they’ll share your post from their post post. We also related to this, we email our guests every time the show goes live. That’s an important step here, is just alerting them that, hey, like, we prerecorded this show two weeks ago, or two months ago, it’s going, it just went live. And we let ’em know like, Hey please review first of all the page, make sure that we didn’t spell anything wrong. You know, make sure that it looks the way you want it to. If there’s any changes, let us know. And also, here’s an asset if you, if it’s valuable to you, this is one of the highlights from the interview where we thought you really looked like a star. RV (10:16): We, we’ve gone ahead and edited it for you and put it together. But it has to look more like their branding than your branding. No one’s gonna share something that looks like your logo and your show and all that. You gotta take a backseat if you want them to share it, right? You can share it. You make your own assets that are more about your branding and you’re featuring them to your audience. But if you want your guests to share it, you, the asset needs to look more like them and less like you. So give your, give your guests assets to help them promote, make it easy for them to promote. Number seven, consistency. Consistency, consistency, consistency, right? I, I could not put this list together and not talk about the importance of just being consistent. Almost every single podcast does not have linear growth. RV (11:07): It has exponential growth. It’s it’s the hockey stick curve. It starts slow, slow, slow. And I would say you should consider publishing your podcast for a year and not even look at the stats, because that’s how long it takes to even start to begin to get traction. But like, if you’ve been publishing for six months and you look at your stats, you’re probably gonna be depressed and deflated. But if you keep going for like another year and 18 months in, it’s gonna start to catch flight. And by two years it’s gonna be become significant after two and a half or three years. If you’re doing all of these things, your podcast is gonna be a full out asset that produces leads and credibility and trust for you for the rest of your life. It’s gonna be the greatest door opener you have for networking to high profile relationships, to book deals, to speaking engagements to clients to just attracting friends, to just making an impact in the world around the world globally. If you just stick with it, A huge part of the podcast game is just not giving up. I mean, that’s a huge part of the personal brand game in general is just not giving up. So, consistency. Consistency. And then number eight, and this is my favorite. So I, I saved this for last, although I have a bonus tip for you. Number eight is move the audience emotionally. RV (12:41): Move the audience emotionally. A podcast is intimate, you’re talking right in people’s ears, right there. Your voice is in their head. And so you wanna become a master of emotions. You wanna become a master at using your voice, telling stories, delivering frameworks, pillar points, all things that we teach you. For those of you that are members, brand builders group inside of captivating content, right? Where we talk about the advanced storytelling mechanics, we talk about the six pillar point formulas. We talk about the 17 thought leadership frameworks. We talk about the, the, the exercise and engagement list, all all of these things, behavior drivers, all of these techniques for crafting amazing content and delivering it. You, you wanna apply that to your podcast. Your podcast is stage time. And what makes a great presenter is giving the audience an emotional experience. One where they’re inspired, right? RV (13:39): They’re moved, they’re proud, they’re, they’re challenged. They’re saddened, they’re they’re scared, they’re frightened you know, they’re provoked. Like move the audience emotionally. The, the use your words and, and your stories and your guest stories. And whenever there is an a chance to have an emotional moment, zoom in on that moment. Don’t skip over the emotional parts. People want to be moved emotionally. That creates a visceral bond, visceral attraction. And one of, one of my, one of my favorite quotes from one of our brand builders group clients, so this is not a Rory Vaden quote I did help them come up with this in one of our strategy sessions, but this is, this is their quote, it’s from the attention ears from Hillary Billings is she says, remember when people get emotional, they get promotional. When people get emotional, they get promotional. RV (14:32): That’s from Hillary Billings, from attention ears and Marshall, they that, that’s, you know, one of their pillar points. That is so good and so true. When people get emotional, they get promotional. So you gotta move your audience emotionally. And then number nine, bonus tip for you in terms of how to build a great podcast is interview your top prospects. Interview your top prospects. Even if your podcast never grows, even if it never becomes an amazing networking opportunity, even if it never becomes like a super loyal audience of like lots of listeners, which it will, if you do, it will over time consistently, it’s still the most amazing prospecting tool, I promise you. Take it from someone who went door to door for five years, spent two years calling over the phones to, to enterprises, and spent like five years walking in office parks and cold calling. RV (15:25): No cold call. Like if you’re cold calling somebody on the phone in their office knocking on their door, like 99% of the people are gonna slam the door on you. But when you show up in someone’s inbox and you say, Hey, I’m the host of this podcast. I would, I’ve been following your company, I think you’re so brilliant and I’d love to share your insights with the world. Would you be open to an interview with me? Like, who says no to that? Like nobody. So now all of a sudden you get to learn from them and you get to build a relationship by giving to them first, celebrating them, promoting them, adding value to them first. And now after the podcast is over and you’ve built rapport, now you can have an actual conversation as humans and maybe some that can go somewhere. So podcasting is the most magnificent Trojan horse prospecting strategy, I’ll call it the Trojan horse prospecting strategy of all time. RV (16:22): So it blows my mind that more business development people are not using this tactic, but it’s also, it’s also what I can use to prospect other podcasts to be on, right? Like, if there’s a podcast I want to be on, I don’t reach out to them and say, Hey, will you have me on the show? I reach out to them and say, Hey, can I have you on my show? Can I promote you? Can I highlight you? Can I celebrate you? Can I tell the whole world how brilliant you are? And let me do that first, and then maybe there’s a chance that we’ll develop a relationship from there. So there you have it. Nine of my, my favorite tips on how to build a great podcast. I promise if you do those, it will work over time. I promise it can’t not work. So I want you to share this episode with someone you know, who either should start a podcast or who has a podcast, share this with them so that they have this checklist to make sure that they’re doing it for themselves. And in the meantime, keep coming back. We’re always looking to give you the best of the best that we can to help you build and monetize your personal brand. And I hope that we get a chance to work with you as one of our mission driven, mission-driven messengers, who will one time become one of the members of our community. But until then, keep coming back. Stay tuned. We’re so grateful for you. See you next time.