AP 0037: How Do You Get Big Names to Agree to Be on Your Show?

AskPat 37 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody. This is Pat Flynn and welcome to Episode 37 of AskPat. I'm here to help you and answer your online business questions, five days a week.

Today we have a question from Austin, but before that I want to mention a resource for you. One of my all-time favorite resources. This is a blog that I follow and read from my good friend Derek Halpern over at SocialTriggers.com. Check him out, SocialTriggers.com. One of the most educational sites and most entertaining, if you like his style of just everything internet business, online marketing, blogging. It's just, you know, I'm actually mentioning him here today because I want to give him credit for the strategy that I'm going to share, which is the answer to the question today from Austin. So, let's hear from Austin right now.

Austin: Hey, what's up Pat? This is Austin Netzley from the YoPro Wealth podcast and YoProWealth.com. My question is, as you're starting out, before you have a ton of credibility, what are some tips you have to get the big names to say yes to an interview? I really appreciate your work and, oh yeah, will you be a guest on my show? You rock. Thanks Pat.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Austin. Thanks you so much for the question or questions actually. To answer your last question, will I be on your show, I'd love to be on your show. Thank you for asking me. I'm honored. And unfortunately I won't be able to do it until after June. I have a bunch of stuff going on, traveling, and what not. So I hope that's okay. Just email me: [email protected] We'll set up a schedule. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Now to answer your other question, you know, how do you get the big names on your show? I mean, you did the one of the very first and best tips you could ever do, which is, not get on somebody's podcast and ask them if they're asking for questions like I am because not many people are doing that, but you could do what you just did, which is ask. Asking is the most powerful thing and a lot of people are just too afraid to ask, especially when it comes to asking the sort of A-listers and the big names and the gurus out there to be on the show because, you know, they're just scared. I mean, the best tip I can give you with that is just ask yourself, “What's the worst that could happen?” The worst that could happen is they'll just say, “No.” And that's it, nothing else, really. So ask away. I mean, that's the first thing. But I think there's a lot of other strategies you can use to sort of give you a better chance of people saying yes and I'm going to go over those strategies right now.

I want to give credit to my friend Derek Halpern at SocialTriggers.com for sort of . . . this was sort of a strategy that, you know, once you hear it you're like, “Oh yeah. That makes sense.” But he was the first one that I knew to sort of bring it to light and that is really easy because he did it with his show. He has a podcast and he's brought people on his podcast that nobody else has ever brought on. This is Social Triggers Insider on iTunes, which is another great show you should listen to. But the way he did it was he targeted—the very first interviews that he did—he targeted and asked people to come on his show who were already known to be on other shows. So, in other words, start with the low hanging fruit. The people who you know have done interviews before. They're comfortable with it. They seem to be in the groove of doing it elsewhere. They're likely to say yes to you.

Now along the same lines, instead of asking people who just seem to be everywhere, try to get involved and see who is going to be coming out with something soon. Who might be coming out with a book? Who might be coming out with a course soon? Those are people that could potentially come on your show as well because when people are doing book launches, or they're launching products, they want to get everywhere. They want to be in front of as many people as possible and share their product or their book with the world. I mean, they'll set up schedules where every day they're doing 12, 20 interviews. I mean, that's how I got Tim Ferris to be interviewed on my show, Smart Passive Income because he was launching a book, The Four Hour Chef. So it was real easy for me to sort of ask him because he wanted to be everywhere and I had an audience already.

Now of course when you are just starting out you don't have an audience but a lot of people who are coming out with books are going to want to be everywhere and of course you could mention the audience that you already have on your site, if you already have a site, or you could talk about the potential of how much you're going to do this and other people that you might, or are asking to interview in the future. That's another strategy on top of that is, you're going to be talking about and name dropping people that you are going to interview as well or that you've already contacted. That way that name association helps you as well.

But the really cool thing about this is if you get people on, even if you just get one sort of big name on your show, whether they're just somebody who seems to be everywhere already or somebody who's coming out with a book, you are then able to tell people that may not say yes to you right away, that, “Hey, I interviewed Tim Ferris. Why don't you come on my show?” I mean, that gives you a lot of clout right away, just that name association.

So, again the strategy, use this low hanging fruit to build credibility for yourself. Start easy and then you can sort of name drop those people when you try to contact the people who may seem a little harder to convince down the road.

If possible you want to mention any sort of social proof or credentials that you might have that might add to the professionalism or the exposure of your show, whether it's number of downloads, rankings, or rewards that you've had, listeners, maybe other shows that you've been featured on, if that's the case. So, anything that you could do to sort of help people that you're emailing prove that you're going to to provide value to them because, you know, not everyone's going to say yes but you also want to show that they're going to get something out of it as well.

Now, one thing you could do before you send that cold email to somebody is try to make a connection with them beforehand, really quickly on Twitter. That's probably the best and easiest way to do it. Maybe over the course of a couple days you retweet some of their stuff. A lot of people pay attention to that. I do. And then you send couple messages of thanks or maybe even add a little bit of value and share a tip with them or something or talk about something that they're talking about and get in the conversation that they're in already, just so they have a little bit of an inkling of who you are and that way when you email them, it's not cold anymore. It's just lukewarm or maybe little but warm if you've had a conversation on Twitter. That goes a very long way and that's one of the best strategies you can use Twitter for.

Now I do want to end by saying that you don't always have to have the A-listers come on your show. A lot of people, when they start new shows, they just shoot way for the top and, you know, yes, if you use these strategies you'll increase the likelihood of getting some of those A-listers coming on you show. But, you know, some of the most interesting conversations, some of the most interesting content and gold that's out there is from people who aren't on these shows but who would love to be on these shows. These are the B and C-listers perhaps. People in your niche or people who are doing something that you're already teaching. Another vertical is you want to see if there's any sort of opportunity to get people with interesting stories, something valuable for your audience as well.

Remember this is for your audience and it doesn't always have to be an A-lister and a lot of times people enjoy those stories from people who they've never heard of before because those are what people can relate to. “Oh, you had Tim Ferris on your show. That's cool. He's way successful. I'll never be like him.” That's what people think. Where I have a guy named Mike on my show who his wife works in speech therapy and they built an iPhone app together that's now making five figures a month. That's relatable. You know, nobody knows who Mike is but now they know and they can relate to that story and hear about the struggles and what they went through to create this app to help kids with speech therapy with their iPhone apps. Awesome story and people love that. That's why I love to include success stories on my show from people who nobody has ever heard of before because that's what people can relate to.

So, don't always feel like you have to shoot for the A-listers. You could maybe even start with people that nobody had known before because that's going to help build a little bit of credibility for you as somebody who really understands who their audience is. And then perhaps you can get those A-listers on later.

So, Austin I hope that answers your question. Thank you so much for it and of course an AskPat t-shirt is going to be headed your way. Thank you for asking me to come on your show. Again, email me and we'll talk about that later. And again the resource of the day here is SocialTriggers.com. If you go there from listening to this show, tell them I sent you because he doesn't know I'm dropping his name here.

And, as always, I'm going to end with a quote, and this is from Brian Tracy. He says, “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What's in it for me?'” So, always, always do what you can to serve others and great things are going to happen to you too.

Thank you so much. This is Pat Flynn, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.