How to Vet Invitations From Podcast Hosts Before You Say Yes

00:00
Jessica Morgan
If you're just, you know, more is better. We're going to do all of this. You're not putting the, you're not bringing the value to the host. You're not putting the time in all of that. Whereas if you're intentional and you're not just trying to get on every single podcast, you're. You're very selective and such, and, you know, putting the time and providing value and such, that right there is that lasting effort. You know, you're building that relationship with the host and the audience there. Welcome to the Podcast Interview Marketing show, where we explore big ideas with leading experts on how to grow your brand and business with targeted podcast interview.

00:37
Tom Schwab
Have you ever gotten one of those podcast invitations? That feels flattering at first, but then something about it just doesn't feel right. Today, Jessica Morgan, our operations manager, and I talk about a growing problem in the podcasting world. It's called the Trojan Podcast. It looks like an opportunity. It sounds like someone noticed you, but in reality, it may not be a podcast at all. It may just be a sales call, all dressed up as an interview. And for coaches or consultants, nonfiction authors, professional services, and category designers, this matters because every interview you say yes to becomes part of your brand. It builds your trust, authority, and demand. Or it can confuse your audience, hurt your reputation, and waste your time. In this episode, Jessica shares a simple way to evaluate podcast invitations.

01:39
Tom Schwab
Before you give away your time, your voice, and your credibility, we'll talk about the red flags, brand alignment, audience fit, and why more interview is not the goal. Better interview are because podcast interview marketing is not about being everywhere. It's not a megaphone. It's about being everywhere your ideal clients already are so you can attract them like a magnet. Jessica, we have talked about this, and sometimes we'll call it the Trojan Podcast. Other times it's guest pollution. But it's becoming more and more of a problem that is everybody is talking about. So can you sort of explain what it looks like from the receiver's end when you get this?

02:28
Jessica Morgan
Absolutely. It can be a multitude of different ways, right? Maybe it's a host, a podcast host, which I'll put in quotations, reaching out to you via email, reaching out via LinkedIn, a multitude of different ways that they can reach out, but it's a mass spamming of, hey, I want you to be a guest on my podcast. Sometimes it's the flip side of I can get you guests on your podcast that you don't have, but most of the time, it's Hey, I want you to be a guest on this podcast. And we have so many clients come to us saying, I'm not sure if this is even. Is this worth my time? Is this a good podcast for me? Is this, is this something I should follow through with? My time is valuable. My time is precious.

03:07
Jessica Morgan
Does this look like a good fit for me? And so I just think it's a really big thing to talk about with a mass amount of emails and spam kind of messages or requests that are going out. It can even be via. There's different services to match you up with podcasts and such, which are great services. However, is it a right fit for you? And so that's something that I'm excited to dive into today to just say, you know, you get a mass amount of emails in what percentage is actually a good fit for you?

03:39
Tom Schwab
I see this. I'm getting it on LinkedIn all the time and a lot of emails too. We just listened to your podcast on so and so. Right. And it always looks the same. Right. Scraped. We would love to have you as a guest on here. You know, click here for the pre call or the email that says, you know, it's forwarded from one person to another. You know, hey, my boss said that you would be great for our podcast. You know, can we get you on here? I want to get you scheduled. Let's do a pre call. And it's one of those things where the. Your first reaction is, wow, they noticed me.

04:23
Jessica Morgan
Yeah.

04:23
Tom Schwab
But when you look at it a little bit quicker, you realize, hold it. I've never heard of this podcast. I've never heard of this person. And even the website looks a little bit weird on that and do a little bit of due diligence and you find there's no podcast. You just got invited to a sales call, so.

04:43
Jessica Morgan
Exactly.

04:44
Tom Schwab
Let's talk about a little the things that you look for when you say, is this a legitimate podcast or a legit. A legitimate invitation.

04:54
Jessica Morgan
Absolutely. First I would look at one of, you know, the links. Is there a link to the Apple, Spotify, whatever it may be? And I would ask for that link. Sure. Absolutely. I'd love to do a deep dive on the podcast. If there's no link, that Right. There is your first red flag. Right. But say there is a podcast link first. I would look at how long has this podcast been around? Has it only had one or two episodes? How are they posting consistently? That's a huge thing for us is, you know, the majority of podcasts burn out after the first 10 episodes. So has there been at least 10 episodes on there? Are they posting frequently? Consistently? You know, some podcasts only post one a month.

05:32
Jessica Morgan
However, it's still a great podcast because it's really valuable insight and they have a dedicated listener base and, you know, an engaged audience on top of that. Also, what is their presence on LinkedIn? The host there, do they have, are they actively posting on LinkedIn? As far as the podcast itself, I would also look at, you know, are they posting show notes? Are how, what does the image look like on the podcast and such, you know, what does that thumbnail look like? Because even if it's a smaller podcast, say it has only been around for a little while, however, you can you listen to the audio quality and the audio quality is great and the show, the show notes and the thumbnail is great. It looks beautiful.

06:11
Jessica Morgan
That still, even if they don't have a super large audience yet, it's still probably worth your time, number one, if the audience is there. So if it looks like it's an audience fit, if you know, who are they wanting to talk to, what are they, what is the core problem that podcast is solving? And if that's something you can add value to, then I would still say, heck yes, go on it. It's a new podcast. However, what you can get from that podcast by repurposing it, you know, utilizing it, creating content from it, even though it's a new podcast, I still think it holds a lot of value there. But the first thing I would look at is the legitimacy of the host and the podcast itself.

06:46
Tom Schwab
Yeah, and that's the thing. It's like so many people, podcasts are hot, so they're trying to use it and it's referred to as the Trojan podcast, where it's not even a podcast. Right. It's like they run a list to find out their icp, their ideal client profiles and say if it's, you know, business owners of businesses between 5 and $20 million, well, that's everybody they invite on the podcast, right? And they're just sending an email. There's no podcast. You jump on there and it's a, maybe a 10 minute conversation with a sales development rep. And they're asking you the same questions about your business, about your challenges. There's an agency out there right now that does podcasts like this for people, right. And it's a machine, right.

07:37
Tom Schwab
All they're trying to do is get you on a 10 minute podcast so they can get you in the pipeline and sell to you and you'll never good luck unsubscribing from that. And you can sort of see that because they're putting out 12 podcasts a day and sometimes they won't publish any of them, other times they'll publish them just raw. Nobody's engaging with them, they're not promoting it. So you look at this and say, is this something I would be proud to be on? And to me that's absolutely. That's always the litmus test. Would I be proud to be on this? Because it becomes a problem if you go on a new podcast and you don't know what they talk about, who the other guests are. Right. You may go on there and you may not like the company you're keeping there.

08:24
Tom Schwab
So it's one of those things where this interview is going to live forever. So make sure that you're comfortable and proud to be there.

08:34
Jessica Morgan
Absolutely. It's brand alignment as well. Like you said. When you look back, is this something that you're like, yes, that's, you know, has the brand affinity for me and that's where I want to be. I also think outreach wise, is it a personalized outreach beyond just what AI can do? Is it. Have they truly. Do they truly know what you're doing, what you know, what your business does, who you're looking to reach and all of that? Or is it just a templated outreach? And like you said, so many of those end up being just sales calls and that's. They're using this podcast to just get people into their network and just spam them, essentially. And so, yeah, I definitely think it's. Are you proud to be on that podcast? Is it aligned with who you want to talk to? Is there consistency? There is.

09:17
Jessica Morgan
What's the professionalism? Does it look like a really good podcast? Is the production value there? All of that. And then does the Host have a LinkedIn presence? Is the host promoting this? Because you might be going out and promoting this episode a ton, but if the host isn't doing anything, you know that shows the engagement there as well, is my thought.

09:36
Tom Schwab
We were just at the Build a Better Agency summit meeting with by Drew McClellan and agency management Institute and I loved. Was it Lori Highbaugh?

09:47
Jessica Morgan
Hybe.

09:47
Tom Schwab
Yep, Lori Hybe. Sorry, Lori. She gave a great presentation on social media and one of the things I loved that she said about LinkedIn is it's no longer social media. It's a trust asset and people are going there to see are you legitimate? And so when I get those invites, right? Well, first of all, I forward them onto the team and they take care of all of that. But the things that I would be looking at is can I find this person on LinkedIn? If they don't exist there, it's probably a made up name. It's just AI sales development rep. And you can sometimes even see that in the URL that they send it from. And it's amazing.

10:33
Tom Schwab
If you get an email from Interview Valet, it's always going to be someone, a person's nameterviewballet.com but so many of these come and they'll be like, try interviewvalet.com or get interviewvalet.com they have set up 50 different domains to just start spamming people because they know after they get enough spam complaints, that domain gets shut down and they have to go on to the other ones. So there's little things like that to look at where you can say, is this legitimate? And I even tell people, make just an autoresponder or a little snippet that you can put and say, you know, I'd love to be on your show. I want to make sure that I can bring value and that I align with the show. Can you give me the link to it on Apple? Right.

11:26
Tom Schwab
And if they come back and say we're not on Apple. Well, if you're on an RSS feed, which is what podcasts are, you're on Apple, you're on all the rest of them. So that pretty much tells you it's not a legitimate podcast. And the other thing that we learned from Kerry Wilkerson, right, when people would ask her to be on a podcast and if she didn't want to be on there, she would always say something like, you know, that she didn't have time that quarter. Right. If it was a brand new podcast, it was just starting out, she would say, could you reach out in 90 days from now and I'll look at it again. And the thing is, I do the same thing and say, I don't go on brand new podcasts that are launching, but please reach out in 90 days.

12:11
Tom Schwab
And I would love to look at this again. They never follow up. Right. So that either means it wasn't legitimate or the podcast died off.

12:19
Jessica Morgan
Exactly. And a lot do within those first 90 days. And so I think some people kind of worry about, you know, are, am I just being selective for selective sake? Right. But I just, I think it's really important that you're protecting the investment that you're making with your time, you know, your reputation, all of that. So low quality production, that reflects it on you, that reflects poorly, especially as you're starting to maybe go out on more and more podcasts. You don't want this to kind of be mumbled, jumbled within the mix of a low quality, possibly an unethical host or just anything like that. A host that's using your namesake, your likeness to go out and, hey, look, I had Tom Schwab on my podcast and now they're associating you with this host and such.

13:04
Jessica Morgan
And so I really think it can damage your reputation and relationships and such. So it's important to be selective because it is your namesake, it is your business, your brand, and it's your time investment that you're putting into that.

13:17
Tom Schwab
Yeah. I recently talked with the client that came to us and he had signed up for one of these services that it's the matchmaking services, right? It's basically Craigslist for podcasting, right? Low level guests, low level hosts. And he thought, well, I'll just go out there and I'll get a bunch of reps, I'll get practice. And he was so excited because the first week he got 22 invitations and he's like, I'll get 22 interview. And we started talking. I'm like, will you be proud of me to be on these and that what you put out there into the Internet, other hosts are going to find? And I'm like, would a thought leader like you? Right? And he was a executive coach for C level executives. He got his PhD. All the rest of that.

14:11
Tom Schwab
I said, do you think these shows would be an appropriate place for you to be seen? And he came back and he's like, no, but it's just practice. I'm like, no, it's not practice, because people are going to find that, right? It's like the client that came to us and said, people say, you should be everywhere. Right? You should be everywhere. And he's like, I reject that. Right. I'm a high level consultant. He's like, I don't want to be advertising on a bus or a billboard or doing a TikTok dance. He says, I want to be everywhere my clients are and they're making decisions.

14:47
Jessica Morgan
Absolutely. And that's, you know, when they say, well, it's just practice. Well, you know, here we do practice interview for our clients that ask. On top of that, practice in the mirror, practice with a coworker, you know, a spouse, a loved one. So that's practice. It's not on the Internet. It's not evergreen forever and the hosts aren't going to find it. You're practicing your content and possibly like pivoting with the hosts and all of that. That I think is more powerful than just going on any and every podcast that ever reaches out to you.

15:14
Tom Schwab
Yeah. And it goes back to our core mission that we started 11 years ago. Right. Introducing inspiring thought leaders to millions of people they could serve for the betterment of all. You've got to look at that for the betterment of all. Right. This better be good for the host, for the guest and for the audience. And unless you know about the podcast, you don't know if it's good for you. You don't know what you have is good for the audience or good for the host. So just be. I would say the word is intentional. Not picky, but being intentional in where you were seen.

15:47
Jessica Morgan
Well, it's also too, you know, as you start building and growing and such. I can think of a client who came to us and he's like, hey, you just ran an audience report for my website and I am getting not who I'm targeting because say, for example, digital is in his name, or he went on some podcast that had a different target and such. Well, now that's muddling who he's trying to target. So I think the same can be said for podcast interview. Right. If you're going on just any audience, any site, anything like that, and you're possibly drawing some people in, possibly not, that are not a good fit, that affects your audience that's coming to your website and who, you know, who maybe AI is recommending your site to, all of that, the indexing and such, that right there, you've muddled it.

16:32
Jessica Morgan
You, you weren't intentional in the beginning of who you're trying to speak to and who you could help in the problem you're trying to solve, which then has now affected down the road, different audience and who's coming to your site.

16:44
Tom Schwab
Do you think you're muddling it not only for people and confusing them, but also for the AI? So if all of a sudden I see you on a family podcast, a leadership podcast, an E commerce podcast, like all these different places, does that confuse people and then the AI too?

17:05
Jessica Morgan
Absolutely. I think there are some people that have such a wide audience that's completely fine, but if you are fairly niche down or have a very specific target, absolutely. It's confusing the AI. It's okay. Hold on. He's talking about being a Good dad over here, but now he's talking about leading C suite and his experience over here. And now he's on E Commerce. Like what is he doing? And so I just think it's being intentional. Intentional is a perfect word. The intentionality of where you're showing up, who you're reaching the pain point and the problem. You can sol going from there because it also helps with exactly the AI indexing, which is a huge thing right now, as we know.

17:42
Tom Schwab
And as you said that I thought of Chris Voss, right. Wrote the book, Never split the Difference. He's an FBI hostage negotiator. And that is the best parenting book, the best marriage book, the best business book I've ever read. Right. Because you can apply it to all the different things, right. He, one of the things, if he was on a parenting podcast, he'd say, you know, if you think it's hard to negotiate with a terrorist or something like that, he's like, at least they have fully formed brains. Right.

18:16
Jessica Morgan
Dealing with a two year old.

18:18
Tom Schwab
Yeah, try with a two year old or a teenager. So he could apply there and he would go on all these different ones. And it's been interesting over the years. Now the only place you see him is talking about it for business. And it's interesting because early on he was just trying to sell the books. Now he's got the Black Swan Group, which is great consultancy for businesses. Right. And contingency plans and stuff like that. So at this point, if he started to go back to, you know, how to raise a two year old, it would confuse people, it would confuse the AI and it really wouldn't be a great use of his time because while he could bring them value, the audience couldn't necessarily bring him value.

19:02
Jessica Morgan
Right. And so it's building that audience and the know like trust and all that in the beginning where like you said, he could apply it everywhere, but now he's really narrowed down and I'm sure he's very selective on the audiences he goes on the podcast, the people he talks to, because like you said, that's who he's targeting. That's who he can help out with their pain and such.

19:23
Tom Schwab
Yeah. And I think of another client that we had where they came to us and I think they had done like a hundred interview in the previous 90 days and got no results with it. And their agency told them it was all about reputation, repetition and reach. Right.

19:46
Jessica Morgan
And they were saying nothing to do with reputation.

19:49
Tom Schwab
Right, Nothing. And probably hurt the reputation because when they came to us, one of the things that we'll often do is reach out to hosts that we know that they were on and say, would you have this guest on again? And to a person that we reached out to, they said, no, I would never would. Because it was so, dare I say use the tactical term, icky. Right. It was like a bad first date where they had the transaction of the interview and then they totally ghosted them afterwards. Didn't respond to it, didn't promote it, didn't repurpose it, and it was just, they got a bad reputation really quick. So because of that, it ruined the reputation for doing that. And they really weren't able to use podcast interview after that just because they had gotten such a bad reputation in the market there.

20:39
Tom Schwab
They looked, they looked transactional. They looked like they wanted to use audiences, not serve them well.

20:47
Jessica Morgan
And wouldn't you say too. Because they overdid it. They over committed. I mean, doing a hundred interview like the, like, that's a lot. We have clients who will come to us. They're doing four a month and they're like, you know, I need to scale back. This is a lot. You know, on top of everything else. And so if you're just, you know, more is better. We're going to do all of this. You're not bringing the value to the host, you're not putting the time in all of that. Whereas if you're intentional and you're not just trying to get on every single podcast, you're very selective and such and putting the time and providing value and such, that right there is that lasting effort. You're building that relationship with the host and the audience there.

21:26
Jessica Morgan
So that's where I would exactly say more is not better is better.

21:30
Tom Schwab
Yeah, it's that idea of it's megaphone versus magnet, just trying to make noise to everybody or attract the ideal. And you know, remember a prospect came to us one time and they wanted to do some ungodly number and it was because it'll bring massive exposure to my business. Right, well, streaking gives you massive exposure too. I don't know that it'll help your business. So it's, that's not a strategy that works. And I think getting back to what were talking about in the very beginning, it's like, how do you vet these? How do you decide it's really being intentional? And does this align with your strategy?

22:10
Jessica Morgan
Absolutely, absolutely. Go ahead.

22:15
Tom Schwab
As we look at this, right, what's the thing that people should have in mind maybe even a framework to think about when they get that next outreach. Right. Of how should they be thinking about it? What should the structured decision making process be on whether or not to move forward or not with an invitation?

22:39
Jessica Morgan
Absolutely. Because there's so many that we get. I would say to work out a checklist that I would do and you know, any sort of large language model can help you out with that as well. But first, I think the main thing, the most important thing, as you mentioned earlier, Tom, is would you be proud to be on that podcast? Right. First thing I would do though, I would reach out to reply, like you said, have an autoresponder of, hey, you know, I, I'd love to look into this further. I'm honored that you reached out to me. Would you be able to provide me with the Apple link? No Apple link, no go. You already know right there. It can be your standard. Yes, no. And then I would say, okay, is this someplace I would be proud to be on?

23:20
Jessica Morgan
I would look at the consistency and the age of the show. I think it's a great idea to reach out and say, hey, you know, reach out to me in 90 days. I'm a little maxed right now for with my time and such. I can't do this right now. So reach back out in 90 days. If it's something that you're kind of on the fence about, maybe you kind of got midway mid process and you're like, I don't think this is a great fit. That's a great reply. But like I said, show age, consistency, honestly, just how it looks, the host presence and if they're promoting on LinkedIn, if they're consistently posting on LinkedIn, I think it's important to just do a checklist. What's important to you? Where do you want to show up?

23:59
Jessica Morgan
Where do you want to have this lasting impression for not only your audience, but the large language models and such for AI and go through that checklist. Just do these, check the boxes. Maybe you have your own kind of rubric where you're like, if it checks eight out of 10, I'm going on it. If it checks seven out of 10, if it checks six out of 10, I'm not. And that's kind of your own rubric where you have a very clear process. You could even, honestly, you could even set up a scale or something like that in AI. That does it for you. But hey, does this meet my metrics for me to say yes to this show? And if you have something clear like that to just, okay, it's right here. I'm going to check these. Yep. It's worth my time.

24:38
Jessica Morgan
It makes it easier than just all of these flooded coming into your inbox. Spam going, I'm just overwhelmed. I'm not going to do anything. And maybe they are. There are legitimate, really great opportunities for you within that mix there. So. Also, does it look personalized or templated? I think that's the main thing. If it's templated and doesn't look legitimate, I'm probably not even going to reach out to it. I'm just going to market to spam.

24:58
Tom Schwab
I'm going to change one thing on that is not yes or no, but heck yes or no.

25:04
Jessica Morgan
Right.

25:05
Tom Schwab
Life is short. You're going to ask to give up a half hour of your time, promote all of this. Make sure it's a heck yes. And I love that idea of that decision tree right at every one. You're trying to get to heck yes or no on each one. And that's a great way to do about it and think about it before you get those next email.

25:27
Jessica Morgan
Absolutely.

25:28
Tom Schwab
Well, thanks, Jessica. What's ordinary to you? It's amazing to others. And I think you just volunteered to make that decision tree and put it up in the show notes, too.

25:38
Jessica Morgan
Can do. I will use my best friend, Claude.

25:41
Tom Schwab
All right.

25:42
Jessica Morgan
Thanks, Tom. It's a pleasure to be here.

25:43
Tom Schwab
Thank you, Jessica. All the best. What I hope you took away from today's conversation with Jessica is this. Your time. Your reputation and your message are too valuable to be handed to just anyone with a microphone. Or worse yet, pretending to have one. Podcast interview marketing works when it's intentional. The right show can help your ideal clients get to know like and trust you before they ever visit your website. But the wrong shows, well, they can muddle your message, confuse your market, and leave a digital footprint that you're not proud of. So here's your next step. Before you say yes to your next podcast interview, build your own Heck yes or no checklist. Ask for the Apple or Spotify link. Look at the host. Look at the show notes. Consistency. Ask yourself, would I be proud to be seen here?

26:46
Tom Schwab
Is this where my ideal clients are making decisions? Remember, exposure is not the goal. Streaking can give you exposure. The goal is trust, authority, and meaningful connections with people you can serve. That's how you turn listeners into leads and podcast interview into real business growth.